Guts: The Endless Follies and Tiny Triumphs of a Giant Disaster Read Online Free PDF

me. I closed my eyes and Sully, without even saying a word, made a fist and punched me with all the brute force he possibly could.
    Except he didn’t punch my face as I was grimly expecting. Instead, his massive fist plowed, with the force of a battering ram, directly into my nine-year-old vagina. The force of it swooped me up into the air and flipped me over into the snowbank, barely missing a tree. I gracelessly landed in a heap, the wind knocked out of me. When I could finally breathe, I curled into a tight ball of pain and shame, my mittened hands holding my throbbing crotch. Eventually, tears streaming down my face, I looked up to see the five boys laughing, the setting sun making them glow like angels.
    In my school, you were considered “out” if you wore the wrong brand of socks. Therefore, due to my penchant for footwear that made me look like a mad Scottish golfer and because I was a book-loving, “learning disabled” theater geek with a loud mouth, I think it’s safe to say I didn’t come close to being “in.”
    However, I soon discovered being “out” was the least of my problems. Because at around ten years old, something unsettling began to occur that transported me way, way beyond the world of “out” and crash-landed me directly onto planet “Freak.” Up until then, I was average height, same as everyone else. But overnight I started to grow. And grow. And just when I thought it was over, I’d relax, thinking, Thank God THAT’s over with! I’d suddenly begin to grow some more. I grew so furiously, so relentlessly that by the time I was twelve, I was almost the height I am now, six feet tall. I towered over every single person at the school, even the priests. My ever-lengthening shins and forearms would actually hurt from growing, and the bigger I got, the more I’d slouch, praying I would appear smaller. Unfortunately, all this did was make me look like a giant Freak with crappy posture.
    I have a clear memory of being driven by my sobbing mother (in her fur coat over her tennis whites) from Milwaukee to Chicago so I could see a specialist because she and my father were worried that I was literally becoming a giant . As in one of those eight-foot-tall people who have funny voices and have to have clothes especially made for them.
    To my mother’s eternal relief, I wasn’t a giant. To my soul-crushing horror, I was simply a Freak. At least, that’s what I secretly called myself. I was the master tormentor of my own mind, a bully toward myself so hateful and venomous I even rivaled Amy Grable, the undisputed ruler of the our grade in the vast kingdom known as grade school. To this day, I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone so powerful and manipulative in my entire life. And I’m in show biz , for Christ’s sake. I’m not sure which came first: Amy’s derision toward me or my hatred for myself. I do know one thing: my self-esteem was utterly decimated by both of us.
    There is nothing like the absolute power we give to the cruel when we’re young. Somehow, as if our whole class were filled with tiny Squeaky Frommes, we all just accepted that Amy was our QUEEN, simply because she said it was so. We were her mere disciples, there to do her bidding and (for a tiny faction that included Tharah and myself) to be available at all times for her torture. Like all good/evil queens, the gods had smiled upon her in almost every way. She had perfect teeth; full, glossy lips; long, shimmering blond hair (that I’m still convinced she got professionally blown out every morning); alabaster skin; long legs; and, at an outrageously young age, proudly displayed a set of real, honest-to-goodness boobs (not the Kleenex-in-the-bra boobs like the rest of us). It didn’t matter what sex you were, you could simply not refrain from openly soaking in her Amy-ness. She only had two minor drawbacks. She was dumb as a box of hammers and mean as a snake.
    It was Amy who first anointed me “the Jolly Green