Almost 5'4"

‘Everyone knows. How could you do this to us?’

I thought about ‘everyone.’ Did she mean my friends? Did my father know? Did she mean all of Syracuse?

‘Everyone thinks you’re a slut,’ she continued, without letting me say a word. ‘I was working at Kirby’s as a hostess and one of the cooks comes up to me and says, “I saw your sister on the Internet the other day…and she was naked!”’

When she said the word ‘naked,’ my knees buckled and I fell to the floor. I was naked on the Internet for all the world to see. I couldn’t take it back. The words I had spent my whole life running from, words that stung – whore, slut, loser – now reverberated in my ears. I thought no one would know my secrets if I kept them back in New York, yet my family had seen the photo in Syracuse, before I’d had the courage to warn them.

‘You know what Heather,’ my mother said. Oh God help me. ‘You are supposed to be in school!’ Typical for a teacher. I rolled my eyes like a schoolchild.

‘Why are you wasting your life? I have worked so hard for you girls!’ She poured on the guilt. All the car rides, money she didn’t have, always running around to take care of our needs, and how that left her with no life of her own. ‘You are supposed to be making something of yourself, not becoming a whore!’ She sat on the bed staring at the photo, her eyes wide. It was all so predictable and that just made me feel worse.

‘You’ve shamed the family,’ Lara chimed in. Suddenly I was my plump mother’s daughter again. My alcoholic father’s daughter. The below-average scholar. Yet I knew deep down I was doing the right thing. For the rest of my life, if that’s what it took, I would prove to them I hadn’t made a mistake, that modeling wasn’t just another ‘silly phase.’

But right now I had a situation to deal with.

‘I’m sorry.’ I could hardly breathe or speak.

‘And what about me?’ my sister continued. ‘I’m getting dirty looks at school and people are calling her a slut to my face.’

She was still talking as I stormed to my old room and slammed the door shut.

That Thanksgiving Day still haunts me. The look in my mother’s eyes, like I wasn’t her daughter anymore. Lara’s frown, her knowing look, reminding me that this big sister wasn’t worth looking up to anymore. I had lost my father to divorce and the bottle; I had lost my virginity to a boy who didn’t deserve it; I had lost my track scholarship. There was no way in hell I was going to lose my modeling too.

And Heather would not lose again. I would make sure of that. I decided to change my name and really make a go of my modeling career.

Dad (#ulink_9cb239d7-c87a-5bb5-8ec9-1affcbf4d6e7)

My alcoholic father never gave a shit about my modeling, which was a good thing because he was one less person to impress. I don’t think he ever wanted to be a father. He told me so a few times when I was a teenager, but it didn’t bother me. The only good thing he ever did for me was to pass on his gift for running.

Back in the mid-1960s he was a long jumper and a track runner. He had been born in Syracuse and raised in a series of foster homes. His mother was also an alcoholic; his dad left when he was two. As a result, he never really wanted to have kids. He has never paid child support; he could barely even support himself. When he showed up at my track meets in high school, my parents wouldn’t sit together. My mother and Lara would be in the stands, and he was always down by the track. Sometimes he showed up a little tipsy but at least he was there, which was all I needed to know. He called me his ‘running rebel.’

His honesty about not wanting to be a father meant that I could tell him anything and not worry about being judged, the complete opposite of the relationship with my mother. For a while this was pretty cool but I soon realized that I was becoming the parent in the relationship, listening to the many problems and tragedies of his ‘death of a salesman’ life.

I think I understood his troubles from an early age. I can remember as a twelve-year-old pouring a six-pack of beer into the sink, watching it slip down the drain so he couldn’t drink it, wishing I could make him stop. I would stay up all night worrying about him and how I could help to fix things. But there was already too much jail time and rehab for this little girl to make a difference. Even so, I really believed that if I ran fast and performed well on the track it would make him proud of me and that maybe, just maybe, he would stop drinking.

My father’s problems meant I didn’t have a constant, stable man in my life. As a result, I craved male attention and I certainly got it, mostly from immature boys who had just discovered their penises.

And so began my sexual curiosity.

Boys (#ulink_d1c32190-9d30-515d-b7bf-bf3dbd8751e5)

I craved the feeling of being wanted by a boy, being desired by anyone who would look in my direction. I would wear short skirts and tops without bras. I liked the looks and stares from boys at school, at the track meet, at the water park, at the mall, wherever. I gave the impression of the sexy, sassy teenager but, in truth, I was still a naïve young girl. I was interested in sex but didn’t know anything about my vagina or what to do with it to have an orgasm. But that didn’t stop me.

Almost a month after I turned fourteen, I had sex for the first time.

I wrote about it on a piece of paper and stuffed it into my dresser. A few days later I found myself taking a deep breath and walking downstairs to speak to my mom. She was reading on the couch and cramming greasy macaroni salad down her throat. I could smell its stench filling the living room air and see her cheeks puffed full of the fatty salad. I shuddered, vowing to run even harder so that I didn’t end up like her – but she was still my mom. I took another deep breath.

‘I have to tell you something.’

She looked up from her plate. She was tired from a long week of teaching kids. I sat facing her with my legs crossed Indian-style. I touched her hand, to feel close. I could smell the scent of her peppermint hand cream. It was better than the macaroni.

‘What is it, honey?’ she asked with a smile.

‘Please don’t be mad.’ I started slow, with an innocent, careful tone. ‘I had sex the other day.’

The house was quiet and my sister wasn’t around to hear. I hadn’t told any of my friends yet. The boy and I had already broken up and we weren’t talking at school. Maybe he didn’t like the sex, that night at the party in the tent. He had said it was his first time too. Maybe he was disappointed in me and my small breasts. Or maybe he just didn’t like me anymore. I still liked him.

She looked puzzled. She actually stopped chewing and took a deep swallow.

‘Well, when did this happen?’ Her calm tone confused me but when I took a breath to explain she switched to a wicked witch voice. Knowing when it happened didn’t seem to matter anymore.

‘No, forget it! You are just way too young to have sex!’

‘I know, but I am…and we used a condom,’ I added in panic, like I should be rewarded for being smart.

‘Well, I don’t care. You’re fourteen! You’re going to the doctor!’

The sound of that scared me but later that week I paid a visit to the gynecologist and started on birth control. I guess my mom knew she wouldn’t be able to stop me having sex and wanted me to be safe. I tried not to be too obvious about it but, like most teenagers, I would often have sex in the house. She caught me out once when she found an unflushed condom floating in the downstairs bathroom.

When I wasn’t acting upon my sexual curiosity, or flirting with boys, my time was spent running on the varsity track team. I felt a purpose when I ran. For most of my high school career I was the captain and the top runner on my team. By my senior year I had run States, Empires, Junior Olympics and I hoped for a college scholarship as a track runner. My coach cared about my grades and was more of a father than my own. He never failed to keep me focused when there was a chance of me going off the rails. He would honk the horn so loudly on Saturday mornings when he came to pick me up that it woke the entire neighborhood. The whole team would be waiting with him in the van for the captain who had slept in again. But once at the track, I was tireless and pumped for ten miles.

I thought running was my only ticket to becoming something more.

Scholarship (#ulink_b7d2adfb-f467-5531-b8a3-fcc50421bedf)

My mother and I screamed when we opened the acceptance letter from the New York Institute of Technology. I jumped on the couch and almost broke it. Then we both cried because we couldn’t believe it.

I was going to college. I was going to see something new, get the hell out of Syracuse and, just for sugar on top, I had a scholarship to run at a Division II school. I felt very important as we packed the car with tons of college supplies and goodies from Wal-Mart. It was like Christmas three months early. We drove down to Long Island a few days before my birthday, and five hours later I was free and on my own. An advertising major and a collegiate athlete.

But after just one semester I quit running.

Just getting into college was the biggest achievement of my life. Once I arrived the running didn’t seem to matter anymore. My father wasn’t there to see me run. There wasn’t anyone to win for. Running no longer felt special.

A piece of my heart caved in as I sat down at my iMac computer in my single dorm room to email my coach. I typed in the words, ‘I quit.’

Despite the hurt involved in making the decision, I immediately felt lighter and excited about the unknown future to come. That four-letter word – QUIT – was a new kind of freedom, one I had never felt before. Overnight, my scholarship was gone, but I did stay at NYIT. I stayed out of loyalty. The school gave me a chance.

Running had served me well and now, without it, I didn’t know who I was or what I stood for. Since seventh grade, running was my religion; there wasn’t anything to believe in anymore. I badly needed something to live for or at least to make me feel strong again. I needed to make myself over. I had just abandoned the one thing that had kept me safe. Now, I needed to create a new goal.

I joined a sorority and did the usual college campus drinking and partying till 4 A.M. It was great not to have to sneak around in case my coach or someone from the team caught me. Over time, not running felt normal and I could just be myself. I made it through my first year without gaining the typical freshman fifteen pounds from beer and cheese doodles. I still looked like my skinny, old runner self.

One day, I invited my friend Audrey to my dorm. I gave her my mini photo album from high school to look at, while I flipped through TV channels.

‘You know you could model,’ she said, looking up at me.

‘You think?’

‘You look like an Abercrombie model.’