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  It was unappetizing and terrifying. And unfortunately, since my mom was not used to providing meals, I was not in a good bargaining position most of the time. I had nothing to barter with, and I would stare at these kids’ lunches because they had something and I didn’t. It bothered me less that I had an absentee father than it did that I was not in the lunch game.

  As I sat there, watching all these kids eat and trade and work their sick magic on one another, it reached a fever pitch in my life and truly affected me. I became the Seagull. Staring eyes. Hungry. Darwinian. Too prideful to beg and yet I had to develop a swoop-in approach to get anything. I would suss out my prey and sidle up. “Oh, Peter, it looks like you’re not finishing that Ding Dong, can I have it?” or “Sammy, I noticed you have a turkey sandwich—you know, I’ve never tasted turkey before.” Sammy would just look at me like “I don’t give a shit.” But I would survive.

  Each day I took a different tactic with a different kid, and I got my scraps. Don’t worry. It built character. It was a power struggle I suppose we were meant to have. Everyone knew what their leverage was that day. Some days, when a kid would unwrap an aluminum triangle and reveal a piece of last night’s pizza, he might as well have produced the Hope Diamond. Everyone would race over and start bidding. Mayhem all over again. Of course, that kid would either reap half the goodies from the entire group, or he would just sit there and eat it, exaggerating each bite and taunting the other kids. As he masticated that slice, the other kids would slowly go crazy with jealousy at the lunch tables. Heads would explode.

  And this sick ritual would start all over again the next day. Day after day for years. I am sure this is where whoever wrote The Hunger Games got the idea. I should look up if she went to Country School.

  And I will say that, years later, at every meal, even if I have food in front of me, I watch what everyone else has. The other day at breakfast this lady ordered the smoked salmon I had contemplated before going with the eggs and sausage instead. When her plate came, I could hear the music start to rise in my head and feel my eyes zeroing in on her plate. It looked so good. Goddammit!

  I turned to my husband, and before I could even speak, he knew exactly what I was up to. It’s as if I become Lou Ferrigno in The Incredible Hulk and I start bulging up when I covet food and I need to be talked down. I covet to this day, and that’s why my friends still call me the Seagull. I have that desperate look in my eyes, and yet it is pointed, not sad.

  However, there is good news, and the moral of this for me is that I will assemble my daughter’s school lunches with love and detail. I will labor with bento-box-style precision. It is going to be a chance for me to do it the exact way I would have dreamed of when I was a kid. When I became a seagull in the first place. But don’t worry, seagulls are no chumps. And neither am I.

  Texas, 1996

  TODDETTE

  My partner Nancy and I had always talked about driving across the country. We’d always said to each other, “We have to go on a road trip, and we have to go in an RV.” We had fantasies of one of us driving while the other scrapbooked at the table! Sleeping wherever we damn well pleased! Flipping quarters at desolate intersections somewhere in the great USA and saying, “Should we go right or go left? I don’t know! Let’s flip the quarter!” This was a fantasy we discussed for a few years . . . until one night in 1996.

  I called her up late and said, “You know, we can keep talking about this or we can actually do it. And I say we just go rent an RV in the morning and GO!” And much to my happiness, she said yes, and we did just that! Our plan was to go from Los Angeles to Wolfeboro, New Hampshire, where Nan’s family had a lake house, taking whatever route seemed fun in the moment. We would be on the open road for one month—let the games begin!

  We packed our bags, my dogs, cameras, notebooks, and anything else we needed. On our first night we were driving through Palm Springs, and at a checkout stand at the grocery store we heard the checkout lady say to the customer in front of us, “You gonna go see the meteor shower in the monument tonight?” We quickly found out the monument was Joshua Tree!!! We parked our wonderful RV, which we called the Tioga, after the name of the model. We let the dogs go roam, and we climbed up the stairs on the back—the ones where, when you’re driving behind an RV on the freeway, you think, why are there stairs back there? We lay down on the roof on our backs and stared up at the sky. I took out my old camera and went with a long, long, long open exposure, and waited for something to happen. To this day I have never seen anything like this: All of a sudden, it started to rain stars as if the sky had turned into a shower and the universe was giving us a cleansing from the heavens above! Not bad for night one.

  Next we went through White Sands National Monument; Fredericksburg, Texas; all along the southern coast of the country. And a few weeks in we decided, “New Orleans!” I had never been, so why not!

  Had we thought it out, we probably wouldn’t have rolled in to the outskirts of town in the middle of the night, but being a stupid girl in my early twenties, I just didn’t think of dangers like that. And so I decided to pull the RV into the gas station and fill her up. Nan was somewhere in the back; the dogs were sleeping on the bed; it was a typical night in our weeks-long routine. Until the crushing sound—CCCCCCCRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAASSSSSS HHHHHHHHHHCCCCCCCCCCRRRRRRRRRRRUUUUUUUUUUUUUNNNNNNNNNNNCCCCCCCCCHHHHHHHHHHHSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSCCCCCCCRRRRRAAAAAAPPPPPPPPPPPPEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE—of ripping metal. I looked up in shock as I realized that I had underestimated the height of the gas station roof over the pumps and lodged myself under it as our RV ripped through the metal overhang!

  Oops.

  After the loud thunder there was a moment of silence, and I do mean a moment. And then all of a sudden, we heard a shrieking, squawking voice coming out of the glass cashier box. It was distorted due to the fact that the woman was screaming through an old microphone!

  Crackling, clucking shrills filled the air! She was yelling words so fast at such a high pitch that I couldn’t understand what she was saying. I wondered why she wasn’t coming out of there as I moved through the RV to the side door and checked on everyone’s status. Everyone was fine. No one was remotely hurt. This was just awkward! SQUAWK SQUAWK SQUAWK!!!!!!!!! The lady screamed again. But why wasn’t she getting out?

  I opened the side door, and then I saw her. She looked like a cartoon. A very large woman who apparently could not move and refused to try. Crazy wiry black hair and drugstore makeup. She just sat on her tuffet in the glass box, screaming her piece, and her piece finally became clear through the muffled chaos: “I’M CALLING THE COPS!!! THEY’RE ON THEIR WAY!!!!!!!! DON’T EVEN THINK ABOUT LEAVING HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEERE!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  Shit. OK. No problem. I finally got a look from the right perspective at the damage, and the situation was this: Our roof and the overhang had simply become one. They were cats cradled together, and it wasn’t clear how you could untangle it, so to speak. As Nan and I looked around, we started to take in our surroundings in all directions . . . Dark alleys. Trash cans on fire! I think there was possibly tumbleweed! It was clear that we were in one seriously rough neighborhood. I started to panic. It wasn’t even the roof that had me shaken up anymore. I started to wonder if the woman in the box couldn’t lift herself up or if she knew that leaving that glass box wasn’t safe. Shit! I was scared. And just then a figure started coming toward us out of the shadows.

  He slinked toward us, going from backlit silhouette to even stranger stringy person with dainty wrists and greasy long hair, as he started to come into focus. The person looked like a he but in some form of drag—negligee slip, flip-flops—but the most important detail on top of this pipe cleaner of a man was that he was wearing pearls. Perfect. As this creature sauntered over to us, he uttered his first words, and they came out in a long flowing southern drawl: “Y’all better get the fuck out.”

  As we stood there, wondering if he
was friend or foe, threat or our latest ally, he looked us straight down the barrel of our eyes. “You ladies really better get the fuck out,” and he started moving his hands like an airplane conductor on the tarmac, insinuating we birds needed to fly away.

  SQUAWK SQUAWK, the woman continued to shout over the entire exchange.

  “Um, yeah, we’re stuck,” I said, and he looked at me with a calm, knowing look. He didn’t have to say, “Yes, stupid girl, I see that.” Instead he went straight to the bottom line: “The cops aren’t gonna help! The cops are the ones you should fear!” I took in this information. “Oh God,” I muttered. Now I was really flipping out!

  Nan was in the RV making sure all our business was in order. License, registration, etc.—she was a practical person, getting everything organized and perfect, and I was the one outside crumbling! In the darkness the trash cans were on fire as if someone had turned them up. The whole scene was starting to turn into the Michael Jackson “Thriller” video! Figures were coming out of the cracks and from behind abandoned buildings. I ran back to the RV! “Nan, we have got to get this fucking thing unlodged!!! He says we’re in danger, but I think that’s becoming glaringly obvious!”

  I ran to the driver’s seat and hopped in. I poked my head out of the window and said to the mysterious person, “If I try to get myself out from under this, can you help?” He nodded as if I was finally starting to wise up. I asked him my next frantic question. “What’s your name?”

  He looked at me and said, with a Blanche DuBois delivery . . . “Toddette.”

  Of course.

  Nan and Toddette each took a place outside, her in the front of the RV, him in the back. I could see her out of the windshield and him in the side mirror. The dogs were still hanging out on the bed, staring at me. I pulled the gear down and started to slowly put my foot on the gas. Meanwhile the woman’s squawks again turned into “DON’T YOU EVEN THINK ABOUT MOVING!!! I CALLED THE COPS, THEY’RE ON THEIR WAY, ARRHHHHHHHHHHHHH!” The RV didn’t move. So I applied a little more pressure, Nan guiding me from the front like a beacon of all things sane and Toddette nodding small nods over and over! Nothing! No movement. “THE COPS ARE COMING!!!!!” she screamed again! My heart was pounding. I wasn’t going to flee the cops; I just wanted to not be stuck when they got there. According to Toddette, this was crucial—“You better get the fuck out”—as if the clock was ticking and the zombies were coming!!!!! According to the surroundings, being a sitting duck was a fool’s choice! “OK!” I said to myself. “I have to stab it!!! Floor it! Anything!!!!! Watch out!!!”

  I jammed the gas, the RV finally lurched forward, and I flew out in a flash. I heard a giant rip and I looked in the rearview mirror just in time to see, as if in slow motion, the entire air-conditioning system fly off the top and over the back and onto the concrete in a perfect rainbow-arching crash. I then saw Nan and Toddette run to it, each take a side, and crab-walk it to the side door and into the belly of the RV, where there was now a giant gaping hole in the ceiling. It was surreal to see Toddette in the living room of our mobile home. Comforting in a strange way. This strung-out drag queen had become some kind of guardian angel. With his simple wisdom, I did get the fuck out and it was the first sigh of relief I had had in the last thirty minutes!!!!!

  After a minute the woman in the box realized that we weren’t running away and she took it down half an octave, and we had a minute for small talk with Toddette. Eventually the cops did come; I wondered what had taken them so long, and then I realized that, despite this woman in the box screaming her lungs out for an hour straight, around these parts this is probably not a high-priority case for these officers. Two idiots stuck in a gas station must be small potatoes compared to some of the calls these guys were getting. I noticed Toddette starting to recoil and shuffle slowly backward when the cops arrived. I started to feel so sad. Had he just seen too much? Had he been discriminated against so hard? What abuse had led him to these parts and this life? He went from my new hero to someone I wanted to rescue.

  The cops took our information down and referred us to a place that could fix our RV. As they were driving away, I turned to Toddette and said, “Is there anything you need? Is there anything I can do?” Nan came up with some cold hard cash and handed it to him. Again, she is so smart. Toddette wouldn’t have benefitted from my crisis hotline style of care. He could use money for whatever it was he needed; I shudder to think. “Well, thank you truly, Toddette. You really helped us out of a jam.” I heard the engine turn over, and once again, practical Nan was getting a move on.

  I walked to the RV and looked back and saw him slink into the night. In his lace slip and flip-flops. Who knows, maybe he would buy more pearls????

  Days later, somewhere in Tennessee, we needed to have some money wired to us from Western Union—let’s just say Cajun Campers had cleaned us out in repair bills for fixing the hole in the roof. When we were asked at a pay phone what name to put the money order under, Nan and I both looked at each other and, without missing a beat, said in unison, “Toddette.”

  Ballet class, 1982

  KLUTZ

  Aaaaaaarrrrrggghhhhh. I just poured an entire bottle of water all over the counter because I missed the cup somehow. I fell down the stairs this morning. Yesterday my new stroller (which is apparently back-heavy) fell over. Luckily my daughter Olive was walking next to me; her weight would have stabilized it, but it happened walking out of this restaurant where everyone was staring at me—I was so embarrassed. I looked back and they were all baffled. I knock everything over. I trip. I fall. I tear. I spill. I break. Why? Will I ever grow into a graceful person, or will I always be the lame duck who is in a rush? I also find myself apologizing every two seconds. “Oh God, sorry” or “Excuse me” or quickly recovering: “That didn’t hurt,” “I’m OK,” “Are you OK?” When I step on people’s feet or walk into people, where is my head, let alone my eyes? Will life always be this way??????????????

  When I was seven years old, I went on The Tonight Show for the first time, and when I walked out to go up on the stage, I slipped and totally ate it. I think that was the first time I recall feeling humiliated. People said it was cute. But inside I knew I simply couldn’t put one foot in front of the other as well as I should. But I had no idea that I would endure a lifelong incapacity to ever be cool.

  When I was in the school yard, there was no denying that I simply didn’t possess any ability for agility either, as I was always last to be picked for a sporty game. I understood. And although it made me look like a loser, I actually agreed with those team captains. You don’t want me!!!!

  My mother put me in all kinds of lessons when I was a kid. Piano—I wasn’t musical. Tennis—nope, not an athlete. Ballet—don’t get me started. That is a cruel world for girls, it’s a cliché and tough, and I hated it. I was short, with boobs and no grace, so yeah, I wasn’t delusional about my nonstarter career as a ballerina. Like I said, the only budding happening to me was in my chest. Karate was fun and strangely the one thing I really loved. I loved that the boys in the class didn’t make me feel bad about myself. They were just as tough on me and I loved hitting back. Sparring. Getting higher belts of new colors. In karate I was getting somewhere. And I didn’t dread getting out of the car to go. I had a skip in my step. I liked fighting. I liked being tough.

  Then my mother forced me to go to dance class. OK. This was the ultimate screw job. The teacher, Julie O’Connell, and the Julie O’Connell dancers, as we would now be referred to, were required to wear spandex unitards—it was 1984, and so those were common back then. Doesn’t mean it looked good. And she actually made jackets that said “The Julie O’Connell Dancers” on the back. They were disco-rific, satin with gold writing, and if there was one souvenir I could have from those years, it would be that jacket! (If anyone ever comes across it, please find me!)

  But in that class, Julie would simply have no problem comparing the girl
s as we danced around and learned routines. It was as if we were being pitted against each other. And later in life, I would become so protective of girls having each other’s backs, and I think it’s due to some of these experiences. Schools and youth can be a time when everyone is getting their sea legs. Girls learn they have to stick together, but I don’t think that lesson comes without painful youth isolation.

  Anyway, there were always these girls who were more graceful. More capable, physically speaking. Better looking in unitards. Period. I was stumpy and clumsy. I didn’t have the moves. And the only one I did well at was kicking and punching. That would actually come in handy later—I just didn’t know it at the time. Thank you, Charlie’s Angels! And one day I would be a CoverGirl. And then own my own beauty business. But again, we just don’t know what the future is when we are young. I have grown past some things, but I do know that I have never shed my klutziness.

  Every day there will be an incident. Every day there will be some humiliation. Every day there will be damage to something or someone, just hopefully not too bad. I think it stems from a bit of stupidity too, I have to admit. When I am trying to balance and carry something at the same time, that is not smart, and it will cause me to spill or trip or drop something. When I am trying to reach that plate high up on the top shelf, what do I expect? When I am trying to multitask, let’s say walking as I put the shoe on rather than sitting down and dealing, yes, I might eat it! If I am rushing the zipper, I might get some skin. If I am talking on the phone while running around my bathroom, trying to get out of the house like a mad chicken, I might break something! When does it change? Do I need to become a calm, slow, mature, clear-headed charm school graduate and simplify my whole life? Is this even possible?