A weed in the garden

I remember vividly how I messed up my first ballet recital. As a five-year-old, I was able to stand on my toes. I had a ballerina’s neck, my instructor used to tell me. She liked how my chin was always up — something my mother hated. “It makes you look stuck up,” she always said. I was a competitive but extremely weird child. There would be days when I would wear my headband over my eyes and pretend I was Lt. Laforge. Sometimes I would make “soup” with baby cologne, Crayola shavings and powder. My Barbies’ heads were all shaved, their legs tattooed with paisley butterflies. Ballet lessons, I assume, was a means to make me a little more refined, more normal. On recital day, I wore a sparkling aqua tutu my mother made for me. I remember liking how the skirt bounced around as I walked. I remember my hair was in a bun and the pins that held up my curls were torture. I remember the holding room being enveloped in a haze of Aqua Net. I took my position onstage — second row. I was tall for my age. When the music started playing, I started to dance and I danced all over the place. We were supposed to start with our left foot forward. I started with my other left. I never took ballet lessons again.

Just a month after my 12th birthday, my grandparents enlisted me to participate in the Santacruzan, a pageant held on the last day of Flores de Mayo. I wasn’t informed of my role until the day itself, when my lola showed me my gown. It was like Cinderella’s, complete with gloves and all, except it was pink and very, very satin. My shoes were white sandals, also similar to Cinderella’s, but instead of heels, they had white straps that dug into my ankles. I think I was supposed to be Rosa Mystica — I had a bouquet of roses in my hand as my partner, whose face I can only remember as “not my type,” and I tried to walk in sync with the floral arch above our heads. Step-one-two-step-one-two. I remember the shoes being too tight, my feet starting to bleed, taking off my shoes and walking barefoot around several streets in our province. I was miserable. It was hot. I was tired. And my partner didn’t look like Bastian in The Never Ending Story. I never saw him again.

Several years later, the situation was not that much different. For junior prom, my friends and I decided to go stag. I wasn’t as into real boys as I was into fictional boys and TV boys — no one I knew looked like Richard Ashcroft and I held impossibly high standards. Ballet lessons did not succeed in curtailing my influx of oddity, and I had chosen to wear a yellow Chinese-cut blouse and white flared pants, an outfit very much inspired by Chun-Li. I didn’t expect prom to involve so much fast dancing, which led to fast sweating. By the end of the night, my top clung to me like Glad Wrap and my white pants had handprints, many of which not my own. This was when I decided that black would be my best friend and partner in crime and fashion.

For senior prom, I made sure I was exempted from another potential disaster by diving right into another one: joining the band. Our band was good. Two out of four actually went on to become professional musicians. But I was a solo act up until that time, performing only for my trusty Walkman, a gift from my father, which I used to record my songs with. I hated how my voice registered on that thing — it made me sound like a 12-year-old with a cold — but I loved how my acoustic guitar sounded. Two weeks before prom, I had never laid my hands on an electric guitar or participated in any public music playing, and yet there I was, on a road trip to the mountains with a bunch of girls much, much cooler than myself, to practice our set. Prom night was not a disaster. We played chick rock, lots of Moonpools and Cranberries. I wore black and my cherry red boots that didn’t make my feet bleed. I imagined my future self rolling her eyes but I didn’t care. Right after our set, I figured I wasn’t the type to be in a band, but for the first time I felt comfortable with myself. I was not in a tutu, or a gown, or strappy sandals, yet I fit right in.

These days, I find myself in similar situations almost daily. Fashion events, beauty events — I always knew I would be here, in this garden of earthly delights, but I never imagined I would be here as myself. I guess I thought I would magically transform into a woman who could wear satin and not sweat, wear white and not stain it with a ballpoint pen, wear sandals and not stub a toe, and then I would belong. I thought years of drinking, soaking, bathing, wading in the Kool-Aid would turn me the exact shade of saccharine I’ve always wanted to be, but sadly or happily, it hasn’t. I am still deciding. I haven’t distanced myself from overly girly fashion situations — this girl’s world I’m living in is turning out to be pretty tolerant of awkwardness. There’s comfort in knowing that I can dress like a ballerina but dance how I want to, right foot first instead of the left, and I will not be the oddest person in the room. We are a bunch of freaks with varying degrees of weirdness and a whole lot of growing pains and we belong together. Let’s have lunch some time.