"Uptown Sophisticate" was my self-designated title at our wonderfully bland suburban high school, forever emblazoned on my senior page beside a picture of me in a slinky dress and black tights and all the cheap jewelry I could afford on my allowance.
"Pretentious bitch" was my detractors' behind-the-back name for me.
I was aware of it and I didn't care. I couldn't wait to leave behind the teenage wonderland of cookie-cutter houses and lame house parties and football games for the big city. If I couldn't get out until at least college, I could at least dress the part and act it as best I could.
I used to keep a running tally of how many days I could go without wearing jeans, and senior year I managed to never wear them. Naturally the first one to notice was my best friend, Katie, a couple of months into the year. "Do you even own any jeans anymore, Christie?" she'd asked in that innocent drawl of hers.
"Of course," I'd said. "I might need to break down and wear them in winter. But we'll see if I can avoid it!"
"God, don't let my mother hear you say that next time you come over!" Katie had said. "She's always after me to wear skirts more often. I can just hear her asking me already, why I can't be more like you!"
A decade later, having long since lost touch with all my high school friends except Katie, that comment still stung. If only Katie knew how many times my parents had said the same thing to me about her! My best friend since about the fourth grade, the quiet and innocent one who didn't even seem to notice she had breasts for the first few years she did, who mostly seemed happy in plain sweaters and jeans and who showed no interest in dating until Jimmy Newton asked her to prom and even then didn't even notice what a knockout she was in her royal blue gown. Shorter than I and a little heavy, but she wore it well, usually a better student than I was until I decided in ninth grade that I wanted to go away to college after all, the brainiac to my fashion hound, the nerd to my princess, she and I made an odd couple but an inseparable one all through those boring years back home.
Our fifth grade teacher called us Mutt and Jeff because I was three heads taller, and she never quite caught up and so the name stuck. We hated it, but I've got to admit it fit.
That comment about wearing more skirts was hanging heavy in my mind that early spring morning at the coffeehouse as I waited for her. In the ten years since high school, we'd seen each other on holidays in college and occasionally afterward -- just enough to know we'd both grown up a lot, but not everything had changed -- and now that life had finally blown her back my way for a semester in New York, but her studies and my job had kept us both too busy to get together yet. It had probably been at least two years, I mused over my latte, and I wondered if the butterfly had finally come out of her cocoon.
"Christie!"
I looked up and saw it still hadn't happened, even as I jumped up to hug my old friend. No surprise that she was wearing jeans while I was in a skirt and tights, or that she still had the plain long hair she'd worn all through high school while I had a stylish short 'do, and we both laughed at just how much hadn't changed in all that time.
"Nice hair," she said, plopping down across the tiny table from me. She'd lost most of her baby fat over the years, and now looked curvy and robust rather than fat. I was a little envious, to my great surprise. I've been a loyal gym-goer and my figure is slim and beautiful, but sometimes I do think it'd be fun to actually need a bra and to have hips.
"Thank you," I said, patting it with my left hand. "Jean-Charles came very highly recommended by a girlfriend of mine at the gym. He had a six-month waiting list and it set me back two hundred dollars, but you can see it was worth it!"
Katie laughed and quickly turned away to wave down the waiter and order a hot chocolate. "Wow, you sure haven't changed!" she said as soon as we were alone together.
"Neither have you," I said. "Hot chocolate? Don't you know how full of calories that is?"
"Hey, I go swimming at the university gym every day," she said. "I refuse to starve myself."
"Well, you do want to look good in a swimsuit, don't you, if you're going to wear one every day?"
"I'm there to swim, Christine, not to show off. Besides, I get my share of looks from the guys."
"I hope that's all you're getting from them," I said. There was no way Katie knew how to fight off a jerk like I could.
"Most of them are fine," Katie said. "Pleasant looks and conversation, and it's not like I'm not checking them out, too." She giggled, just like back in high school. "Speaking of which, I can bring a guest if you want to join me one of these days."
"No thanks." The poor thing didn't need these guys she was flirting with to see me in my bikini, after all; they'd never give her another look.
"Oh, right, you never did learn to swim, did you?"
"That too." It slipped out.
"That too?" Katie asked. "That and what else?"
"Oh, well, I mean, too busy at work," I said. "Lately it's a pleasant surprise if I get home before seven o'clock. In fact, I'm seriously considering a leave of absence for the summer. It'd be good to get out of New York anyway. Lately I'm feeling like one of those natives who never sets foot off Manhattan, you know?"
"You look like one, too, Miss Uptown Sophisticate." Katie was lucky the waiter arrived with her cocoa at that moment, and she looked up and thanked him.
"You're the only one I'd let get away with that one, kiddo!" And then only because I'd nearly let my concerns about outshining her at the pool come to light. But fair's fair.
"I'm blunt because I love you, of course," Katie said, sipping her drink. "But listen, I was thinking of asking anyway, I've got a fellowship to study in Abu Dhabi this summer and I'll be staying at that commune out in the desert."
"What commune?"
"The one I stayed at last time, remember? Two years ago?"
"Oh, okay." I didn't remember it at all, but then Katie's studies had flung her all over the place.
"Right," she said. "Anyway, if you want to come spend a few weeks there..."
"Are you kidding, Katie?! They hate women over there, or at least women like me! I'd probably be stoned to death the minute I got off the plane!"
"It's not like that!" Katie said. "Especially not at the commune. It's mostly Westerners anyway, and they're all really openminded. Maybe too much so for you, actually."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"Only one way for you to find out, isn't there?" Katie grinned. "To tell you the truth, it's nothing like your style. But I think you could use a little taste of it, to be frank."
"Do you, now?" This was most unexpected of my wonderfully plain old friend. "Then maybe I ought to come over. Fine."
"Wonderful," Katie said, and she looked like she meant it. "But I think you ought to practice your swimming between now and then. We spend a lot of time in the pool there, and you don't want to miss out on that."
