Free Queen of the Oddballs by Hillary Carlip Page B

cheek that hadn’t made the list, either. There I sat, in the middle of the circle, naked and weeping.
    I couldn’t lie. “I hate my body.”
    Hot with shame, I slowly stood up to return to my place. But then, without a word, fourteen naked girls rose and encircled me.
    “I love your thighs,” Molly said softly. “They’re perfectly proportioned and strong as hell.”
    “I love your stomach,” Ava called out. “It’s soft and inviting.”
    “I love it, too,” Sarah and Diane agreed.
    “Your breasts are incredible. So big and round and full,” Jill said.
    This went on and on, my friends heaping praise and compliments—whether they were true or not—on my unloved body: “You have deep, soulful eyes,” “A perfect nose,” “Your feet are so petite and cute.”
    I cried harder. Not only was I moved by the generosity of my sisters, but I also realized that here I was, in a relationship with my body for life, and I hadn’t once cared for it. It was like being stuck in a loveless marriage.
    In that moment, in that room, surrounded by love and support, for the first time ever, I actually felt…well…sort of beautiful. I decided right then and there that I would commit the feeling to memory like an actress learning her lines until the character becomes totally natural. Through my weight’s ups and downs, through being thick or thin, I would hold on to my fellow Teen Libbers’ kind words and start the revolution within.
     

     

Summer
1972
     
     
I work day and night at the McGovern for President headquarters. He wins the Democratic nomination! Two weeks later my co-volunteers and I are all depressed when McGovern drops his running mate, Thomas Eagleton, after it’s revealed he had electroshock therapy to treat depression.
     

See Ingmar Bergman’s Cries and Whispers four times. I am fixated with the scene where the young maid cradles a woman against her bare breast. Develop huge crush on Liv Ullmann.
     
See Anne of the Thousand Days three times. Develop huge crush on Genevieve Bujold.
     
Develop huge crush on my best friend, Karen.
     
Since I’m so conflicted about my sexuality, the number one song on the Billboard charts sums up my existence: “Alone Again (Naturally).”
     
Five men are arrested breaking into the Democratic headquarters at the Watergate Hotel.
     
As my high school women’s consciousness-raising group continues to meet weekly, the first issue of Ms. magazine is published. It’s an immediate success—all 300,000 copies sell in eight days.
     
The musical Hair ends its Broadway run after 1,742 performances. I see it when it plays in L.A. at the Aquarius Theatre and almost miss the most infamous part, as I desperately have to pee and am heading to the ladies room. Luckily, I catch the nude scene from the back of the theater.
     

A week after Nixon and Agnew are nominated for re-election by the Republican National Convention, Nixon claims at a press conference that an investigation of the Watergate break-in, led by White House counsel John Dean, has revealed that no one employed by the administration had anything to do with the bugging.
     
     

(Heart) Breaking News
     
    T he day my seventeen-year-old brother led the police on a high-speed chase in my parents’ Lincoln Continental and ended up going to a mental hospital, I went to Grauman’s Chinese Theatre and saw Fantasia .
    That summer my mother volunteered, transcribing books for the blind. She toiled daily on a Braille typewriter, transforming the novel The World of Suzie Wong into tiny raised dots. My dad spent his weekends wearing paint-splattered shirts and espadrilles, carving ancient Egyptian scenarios into wooden shutters for the den. I was fifteen and going through my Zen period; I meditated, chose a Zen name (Munan Duvi) and read Zen Flesh, Zen Bones until the pages were worn. And Howard, the only white boy in upscale Bel Air to sport a huge afro, fell under the spell of Carlos Castaneda’s Don Juan books and