Free Gawky by Margot Leitman Page A

trying to discern whether she was being genuine. She seemed desperate to make me happy and I knew it. This was my window. What did I want? Ice cream? A Kaboodle? New pants? Then it hit me: I had seen ads on TV for 1-900 numbers and desperately wanted to call. After what happened with Paul and the phone-dating hotline, I had grown fearful of getting in too deep on the telephone. What if I called the New Kids on the Block 1-900 number and inadvertently seduced one of them using my Octopussy voice? The prospect was both thrilling and terrifying.
    At the time, 1-900 numbers were the latest invention, and definitely one of the most high-tech. For only $4.95 a minute, you could call anyone from He-Man to Grandpa Munster, from Paula Abdul to hunky hair metal band Warrant. I wasn’t sure how exactly they worked. Was Grandpa Munster just sitting around waiting for the phone to ring in full stage makeup and costume at all times? Were all five members of Warrant constantly together in case of a call, or was there some sort of high-tech hookup that could conference them all in? And how did He-Man speak directly to anyone, considering he was a cartoon? Thinking too much made my head want to explode. Calling and talking to a drawing seemed like a total rip-off, but calling andtalking to a live band of hot guys seemed like a good investment of my mother’s side money from her jewelry-making business. I had never been allowed to call one of these numbers before because of the price. And I could never sneak and call one because the tan clunky telephone was in my parents’ bedroom, where my mother was often rearranging her stringed pearl collection.
    But this was my chance; very rarely did I have my mother in a position where she actually felt sorry for me. She thought because I was tall like her that I truly had it all. But right now, in this moment, I had her in the palm of my hand.
    â€œWell,” I began in a soft, purposefully childlike voice, “I have always wanted to call the NKOTB hotline.”
    I was a fan of New Kids on the Block but not a superfan. There were girls in my class that had NKOTB curtains up in their bedrooms. That was taking it too far. I had ugly curtains with dainty old-fashioned ladies on them that my mother had sewn herself. As much as I hated those curtains, I thought they tied the room together a lot more than cloth patterned with images of Donnie Wahlberg. But I had been to one New Kids concert, where I was positive Joey McIntyre waved directly at me from the stage (probably because he could see my towering head over the crowd of normal-size girls), and I had also slipped a copy of Amanda and my Jersey Girls demo to a security guard to pass along to the New Kids’ manager. If anything, a chance to chat on the 1-900 number would be a good networking opportunity and a way to follow up regarding our big-time music career that was just waiting to get off its feet.
    The New Kids were older than me but not as much older as Grandpa Munster, so I figured my mother would have to say yes. And she’d be glad that I wasn’t asking to call who I really deep down wanted to call . . . those bad, long-haired, leather-pants-wearing boys fromWarrant. She hesitated for a moment, stirring her tea, clanking the spoon against the walls of her bone china rose teacup from England.
    â€œFine, Margot. Just call it. Anything to wipe that puss off your face.”
    Wincing at the word puss , I thanked her and ran upstairs to my parents’ bedroom so I could seduce a New Kid in privacy (after all, I was a woman now). I shut the door and dialed the number with shaky hands on our clunky tan telephone. As I dialed I debated whether or not to use the same approach I had used with Paul the tiny bank teller on the phone-dating service. I could give them all my relevant stats, just leave out my age, lack of boobs, mouthful of baby teeth, and current gross status of being on the rag.
    It rang once, and before I