Screw Everyone: Sleeping My Way to Monogamy Read Free

down the roll call list, study my pale face, light eyes, and suspiciously dark hair, and ask me if I was Black Irish, or maybe my parents were hippies? I’d tell them that my parents were twice theirage, from Israel and Holland, and Ophira was an ancient Hebrew name; it just didn’t catch on like Rachel or Sara. They’d nod and put a little red x beside my name. I was definitely a kid that needed to be watched. By singling me out as special, they created a standard that I’d strive to live up to.
    Other than my odd name, which sounded more like a brand of contact lens solution than something you’d call a little girl, I had something else that distinguished me as “unusual” among my peers. At eight years old, I survived a terrible car crash that left me with a scarred body and a sense of urgency. Perhaps this is why I raced faster than my friends to conquer life’s benchmarks as soon as possible.
    While driving home after a day spent swimming at the Jewish Community Center, we were rammed into by a guy who’d run a red light. Unconscious and in critical condition, I was rushed into emergency surgery with a punctured lung and liver, a ruptured spleen, a head wound, broken ribs, and a medley of other broken bones. The doctors told my father I had a 50/50 chance of making it. Upon hearing this, I’m told, a gigantic smile spread across his face, and he started marching up and down the hospital halls, yelling, “Did you hear that? Fifty percent! She’s going to live! Fifty percent! She is going to make it!”
    I like to think that I heard him.
    Thankfully he was right. Not only did I make it, I walked out fully intact, with a souvenir scar in the shape of a slightly off-kilter Y that runs the length of my torso, from breastbone to pelvic bone, and across my midsection, from belly button to my right side. It’s big, and it looks pretty cool.
    In gym class, if we had to change, I could feel girls staring at my stomach. They had a right to be curious—I would have been too. As budding young women, we were fixated on one another’s bodies. Some of us were growing hips, some breasts, some crazy body hair, while others—i.e., me—had a little of each, plus a big pinkish scar. As puberty fully took hold, I, too, became self-conscious, worried that guys would freak out if they saw it (as it turns out, I should have been more concerned about the guys who would be really into it. Blech. ).
    After another uncomfortable health class filled with stifled laughter and awkward fidgeting over details about our impending hormonal future, I was walking home with my friends Tania and Megan, discussing important stuff—namely, who in our class would most likely become a stripper (for the record, it was a girl named Becca Dickerson). That’s when it hit me. I couldn’t even screw up my life and fall back on topless waitressing or stripping like other girls could. Due to my scar, I wasn’t even in the running. It was so unfair! What strange XXX club would have a girl taking off her clothes to reveal a large operation scar? Maybe a fetish club, but I didn’t know about those—yet (my future policy to never leave an unmarked basement door unopened would eventually lead me to one). I had no choice but to get my shit together.
    As kids, it hadn’t occurred to us that tragedies could happen to anyone we knew, let alone at our age. The fact that it happened to me meant that I was treated differently, and consequently I thought differently. After the accident, I grappled with the idea that random acts could throw everything off course. Bad things happened. Life wasn’tgoing to take care of me, and I had to agree with my mother that waiting for things to happen organically was an utter waste of precious time. You want a cupcake? Go buy one. They only have lime ones left? Guess what your new favorite flavor is. As I got older, this translated to: If I wanted a job, apply! A boyfriend? Ask him out! To lose my virginity? Make it happen!