I Didn't Come Here to Make Friends Read Online Free PDF Page A

my best friend, Sara, who had taken a virginity pact with me, even though she was dating a guy who became a star Major League Baseball player. I actually looked up sex in the dictionary once just to figure out what it was. Merriam-Webster was not very helpful.
    All this sexual repression was starting to make me really curious, and really hot and bothered. I had a TV in my room and, around age fifteen, I suddenly started noticing that when half-naked people hooked up on Baywatch I’d get super horny (Jeremy Jackson, people, not David Hasselhoff). But it was a particularly steamy make out session between Joshua Jackson and Michelle Williams on Dawson’s Creek one summer evening that sent me over the edge. After I turned off the TV, I couldn’t sleep. I’d heard my friends joking about “flicking the bean” and it was like an animal instinct kicked in. I put my hand down south and went to town. I felt amazing and then suddenly, uncontrollably, I let out a moan so loud I worried I’d woken up everyone in the house, maybe even cute little Dallas next door. I snuck to the bathroom, totally blushing, but thankfully I was in the clear. Apparently nobody heard me.
    Emboldened by my erotic discovery, I masturbated every night for the next—well forever. For a little visual stimulation, I started taping (it was still VHS back then) a montage of the dirtiest scenes I could find on Baywatch, love scenes between James Van Der Beek and Katie Holmes in Dawson’s Creek, and a few Lifetime movies. I was convinced everyone knew I was a filthy degenerate. I was paddling the pink canoe so much my hand was getting cramped. There’s got to be an easier way to do this without getting carpal tunnel syndrome, I thought. Though science was never my strong suit, I had a eureka moment in the bathtub. Like so many industrious women before me, I realized the water stream out of the faucet could do the job. Needless to say, Calgon took me away—a lot.
    So, in a few short years I’d gone from Ryan’s sixth-grade alien kisses to making myself have multiple orgasms. It was quite an achievement, if I do say so myself. I’d give myself an A for effort and execution.
    This is probably as good a time as any to mention that I was not getting As for anything else, except maybe gym class. I was practically flunking out of high school. School and I just never meshed. I cried so hard the very first day of kindergarten, like shoulder-heaving sobs, that I got sent home. I ended up getting held back that year. I was put into “developmental kindergarten” because I was “emotionally immature.” My attendance in school from then on was spotty, bordering on truant. Bored, easily distracted, and possibly dyslexic, I went to the nurse’s office anytime I couldn’t deal with a teacher or student, or wanted to avoid a quiz on my archnemesis, the times table. The nurse would roll her eyes when I walked in pointing to a random spot on my body complaining of a phantom ailment.
    But the thing was my mom was always happy to come get me. I think she was bored, too. Before she met my dad, she’d opened a successful pottery-painting shop in the mall. But after having kids she sold the store and became a stay-at-home mom. Alone all day and desperate for company, she’d scoop me up from school and we’d sit together all afternoon watching All My Children and Maury .
    My early absences didn’t help my future success in school. My parents wanted to test me for dyslexia but my teacher told them I was “perfectly average.” She said I may not excel in school but that I was a “social butterfly” and that would help me succeed in life. By high school, I was getting mostly Ds and forging my dad’s signature on my report cards. I probably set a record for summer school classes needed to graduate. I was embarrassed about my grades and tried really hard to hide them from my friends. It didn’t help that my sister Rachel was a brainiac and would constantly call me