The Makedown Read Online Free Page A

cried out, wounded.
    “You must have known,” Nut said.
    “No, I didn’t,” I muttered. How could my boyfriend—
okay, pretend boyfriend— be gay?
    “Anna, I spend my nights watching TV with you. Don’t you think if I was straight I would be out chasing hotties like other guys?”
    He was right— I was the Liza Minnelli of the dormitory, only less attractive. It was too painful to process.
    “
Dawson’s
is starting. Wanna watch?” I offered, bringing the summit of humiliation and sexuality to an end.
    For the duration of my freshman year, Nut and I watched a minimum of eight hours of television together a week. He was my social life, and I was incredibly grateful for him. For the first time since its creation, I didn’t write anything in Hello Fatty. In June, I attended Nut’s graduation, to which he wore his small OP corduroy shorts under his graduation gown. He waved to his parents as he got his diploma. I beamed back from my place a few rows behind them, imagining he was waving to me. Nut’s only postcollege plan was to move to California to live in San Francisco.
    “Nut, we’re two hours from New York. Why do you have to go all the way across the country?”
    “Anna, look at me,” he said dramatically. I gazed into his eyes, wondering if he would have even liked me if he were straight. “If I am ever going to get laid”— Nut paused, prompting me to salivate— “by a man, I need to be with my own people.”
    I sighed and honestly wished I were gay. It would be such fun to be part of a “people.”
    The following fall, with Nut in San Francisco, I fell into a deep depression. He had been my only friend at Penn (technically, anywhere in the world). Unkindly stationed in a single dorm room again, my loneliness soared, engulfing my every thought and causing me to fill whole volumes of Hello Fatty. I missed companionship as I watched show after show on my tiny TV. Short of hiring an escort, I only had one option: Barney. It was actually an ingenious idea, since Barney had an active fantasy about university life. He had dropped out of community college for a variety of reasons, most of which originated from his laziness, but still clung to the idea of being the big man on campus. Dressed in the Penn sweatshirt and cap he bought online, Barney hit the quad while I was in class. He sat alone on the lush grass and waited patiently for someone to talk to him, but no one did. Frustrated, he took matters into his own hands. “What are you studying?” Barney asked a mousy brunette seated alone on the quad.
    “Astronomy,” the coed replied with a bored affectation.
    “Wow, I bet a lot of people . . . tell you . . . you look like a star . . . ’cause you’re so beautiful and shiny.”
    The girl gave him a look of disgust, stood, and walked away.
    Barney was genuinely depressed when he relayed the conversation to me. I understood his pain all too well, offered him a bag of frosted cookies, and turned on the television. We were definitely related, and we were definitely nerds.

Chapter Three
    E very former nerd has a defining moment that acts as the catalyst for change. For me it was my twenty-third birthday, a night that was filled with embarrassment, racial slurs, and general infamy. Included on this special occasion was Harry, my first boyfriend. He suited my family perfectly with his porky frame, flannel shirts, and jeans with tapered ankles. His hairline started midway across his scalp, a side effect he ascribed to his acne medication. Perfect skin came with a price.
    Life was all about compromise, or so Harry liked to remind me. He certainly wasn’t telling me anything I didn’t know; I ate all the Little Debbie I wanted but had Harry as a boyfriend. At twenty-three, I was seventy-five pounds over what Mother called a “healthy” weight and was plagued by acne that traveled from my forehead to my shoulder blades. This was puberty— adult puberty— at its worst.
    Three and a half years after I