Under the Stars and Stripes (Under Him)

It took me actually slamming face first into my mother, knocking her to the ground, and watching the old Walkman CD player scuttle off her shorts and into a puddle of water beside the rubbery track.

I’ll give you one guess as to which thing my mother checked on first.

Here’s a clue: it was made by Sony.

We eventually made it home and my mom’s sister— who is an ER nurse— spent about half an hour trying to get the little parasite out of one of the closest holes to my brain.

Coincidentally, it turned out to be an earwig, which everyone felt was strange because they weren’t all that common in a city like Los Angeles. Nevertheless, all of this is to say that as someone who once had actual insects invade their body, there is no correlation between such an atrocious freak of nature attack and feelings of giddiness and first love.

Sarah had to explain to me when she had her first boyfriend in the seventh grade that people use that figure of speech because it feels like winged insects are fluttering their wings around in your stomach when you start falling in love.

“But why butterflies?” I asked her then. “Why not moths? Or wasps?”

“Because moths and wasps aren’t beautiful, dummy,” she’d said to me.

“Um, neither are butterflies. Have you ever looked at one’s face? It’s terrifying.”

I guess it didn’t help that I also never felt the winged insects fluttering in my stomach, and this likely took away much of my capacity to understand the emotion— which, by the way, is actually just a physical reaction to horny chemicals in our brains going off.

So, it stands to reason that when finally, 19 years into my life, I think I might be getting that feeling deep inside me, I have to tell Sarah. She’s the only person who will understand why this is so significant.

She answers the phone without saying hello.

“Why are you calling me so early on a Monday? You know I’m unemployed now. Let me enjoy it.”

“No,” I tell her. “This is too important.”

I can barely contain my excitement; and because I’m so distracted by it, I’m forced to keep turning my attention back to my tummy to make sure I haven’t lost the feeling before I even get a chance to describe it to my best friend who thought I was some sort of extraterrestrial upon hearing me say I’d never experienced it before in our tween years when every girl was apparently starting to feel it.

“Did you lose your virginity finally?” she asks.

“No!” I scold. “Why is that always your first guess?”

“It’s the one thing you’ve been saying you were going to do since we were in the 10th grade… and once you even claimed that you did lose it, in the 11th grade, even though I knew that you hadn’t.”

“No, it’s not my virginity. It’s just…” I hesitate because I know how juvenile it’s going to sound when I say it. “I think I finally got the feeling.”

“Ooooh, so you called me first thing on a Monday morning to wake me up and tell me that you rubbed one out? Congrats. But guess what. This isn’t a Catholic school. Everyone masturbates.”

“Omigod, no,” I tell her. “The– you know… the Butterfly Effect.”

“Oh, for the love of God. Is this so foreign to you that you can’t even get the terminology right? It’s not the Butterfly Effect. That is something completely different and scientific. It’s also the name of one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen in my life.” She sighs. “You have butterflies in your tummy.”

“Yeah, yeah, I think so,” I tell her.

“What do you mean you think so?”

“Well… I mean… it’s a feeling I’ve never felt and it does feel like there are winged bugs in my stomach. And it happens every time I start to get excited about Simon coming to help me move into his place.”

“Hmm… yeah, that’s it. I always thought this might be a more climactic moment when it finally happened. But there’s something about it being so focused on you moving in with a man who is literally twice your age only days after meeting him that is kiiiind of ruining the romance for me.”

I roll my eyes, although she doesn’t know this.

“It’s not creepy.”

“It’s super creepy,” I tell her. “And this is coming from someone who drove to Sandra Bullock’s home in Austin, Texas, while she was going through her divorce, to be a shoulder for her to cry on… uninvited.”

“And twice,” I add. “Don’t forget that happened twice.”

“Why isn’t she ever home when I go?”

“You are really starting to stray from the point so I’m going to hang up.”

“Okay, whatever, good luck. Don’t forget to steal that money back from your dad while he’s gone. I’m running low already.”

“If it’s here, I will. If it’s not, I’ll just give it to you out of what I’ve got.”