Naked

The best age to get a septum piercing is 13. If you wait any longer, other people might have them and it won’t be unique, and if you get it earlier, you could just be going through a phase and it could be a big mistake. I told my mom that I really wanted one once I turned 13 and that I would pay for it with my own money, but she said no. That wasn’t fair because it’s my body, my choice.

It’s really great having your own money, but it is also kind of weird. Maybe it wouldn’t be as weird if we didn’t have the pandemic and bad luck. When the pandemic started, we all moved from Brooklyn to Vermont. My great aunt had a huge old house there that no one lived in, and when it started getting really scary at home because of everyone dying, mom asked if we could move into that house. By that point, mom only left our apartment on rainy days when there weren’t people out on the sidewalk. I didn’t want to leave Brooklyn. Back then, I was still meeting my friend Lily in the park sometimes after remote school. I didn’t want to move to the middle of nowhere, but I didn’t have any say in it.

My great aunt’s house was mostly empty. No one had lived in it for 7 years and it was for sale. Most of the furniture had already been sold. No one would buy it because it was expensive and because thousands of lady bugs ran like crazy all over the windows in the spring, which is when people look for houses. My great aunt had moved into a nicer house so the old one just sat abandoned. When we arrived, it was as if we had gone back in time by a month. In Brooklyn, the bulbs were popping up in all the tree beds, but in Vermont there wasn’t anything green and it was freezing. We didn’t know anyone or have anywhere to go, and my great aunt didn’t want to see us because she might catch something, so we were on our own. I had a big bedroom but had to sleep on an air mattress. It sunk down little by little during the night until my tush touched the ground. The next morning, I would blow it back up again. My little brother Isaac was in the room with a real bed, but it had a big glass window looking in, and since I have some pubic hair, it was better that I was in the room with real walls.

My parents said they wanted us to go outside and experience nature. The first day they forced me and Isaac to go out in the yard. We sat on a rock in the middle of the yard for a long time, I think 20 minutes. When I came inside, I saw something on my leg. Mom said it was a tick and freaked out. She burned it with a match until it came off. Then she spent an hour calling hotlines to see if I needed shots in my stomach. She figured I didn’t. After that Isaac and I didn’t leave the house again at all.

There were a few things we discovered in various drawers in the house, but the best things were an old creepy doll baby and a black moleskin notebook. I was the one who found the notebook. I stuck it in under a pile of clothes on my floor before Isaac could swipe it. We found the doll together and spent the next few weeks hiding it in different spots in the house to scare each other. Then we accidentally broke it in half, so we hid both halves in strange spots around the house to scare each other even more. We also found a bag of butterscotch hard candy. We didn’t tell anyone about that, and it’s gone now anyhow.

My mom tried to find stuff we could do online. We already had school online, but she signed up for a fashion design class, a boring history class and ukulele lessons. No one really wants to be on a computer after spending the day in online school, but since there was absolutely nothing else going on, I went along with it.

The best online activity was probably the Tuesday and Friday night drawing sessions. See, if you want to go to a good high school in New York City, you have to apply to get in. And I really wanted to get into a visual arts high school because if I didn’t, I would probably stay in my same school I am in now, and it’s a loser school. My mom had this idea that I could do these drawing sessions where they have a nude model pose and people draw the model over Zoom. That way I’d get good enough at figure drawing to get into a good art high school.

Tuesday and Friday nights, mom would log into Zoom where these adults would pose naked for hours in their apartments, and a bunch of people would draw or paint them. It was really weird, but the other people on the call acted like it was normal. I could see the other people drawing the model, but they couldn’t see me because my mom turned off our camera. The other people were old and sometimes strange looking – lots of horrible bald spots and the kind of eyeglasses old people wear to seem young. Their Zoom user names were things like “Fran’s iPhone” and they couldn’t figure out how to mute themselves. Many of them had cats and the models did too. I would sometimes draw the artists while they were drawing the models, or I drew everyone’s cats. Other times I would draw the model, but I didn’t like all the fat roles or the dramatic poses, so I would add poufy skirts, sunglasses, rabbit ears, platform boots and anything else that made them more interesting. I started out drawing in the moleskin notebook, and later I took photos of my drawings and used my iPad app to add patterns and colors. The process was like putting a happy filter on a photo of a lonely person in a sad apartment.

We were in Vermont for a month before my dad lost his job. My mom didn’t have a job either and they both freaked out. We had been ordering everything we didn’t have on Amazon and getting it delivered to the big empty house. The house didn’t have a toaster, so we ordered a toaster. We needed a tea kettle, curtains, sheets and a printer, so we ordered all of that. Once dad lost his job, Amazon stopped sending us stuff. And mom didn’t sign up for anymore online classes for me or Isaac. All I had left were the naked model sessions, because other than a Venmo tip, they were free. And I don’t think mom tipped.

I started to get sick of remote school and I missed a lot of the classes because our internet would go out at random times. But I got really good at drawing naked people and at using that iPad app. I started going on the app all the time, except during meals when screens weren’t allowed. All the other hours of the day, I was sitting on my saggy air mattress, messing around with my app. One day, I started combining some drawings I had done of half of that creepy doll baby with one of my naked models. I redrew it in my own style, adding some patterns. At the Zoom drawing session that night, they announced there was an art contest sponsored by a drug that helped you to not wet yourself (?!!) and artists in our group and in a bunch of other artist leagues could submit their drawings.

There was a good prize. My mom said I could submit one of my drawings and say it was hers since I was too young to enter. She liked one of my first pencil drawings which looked just like the model, but I convinced her to use my baby-doll-woman-bunny drawing instead.

It’s funny, but I knew I was going to win. Well, technically mom won, but she told me if the drawing won, I would get the prize and I did. She opened a bank account for me with $20,000 and a debit card. I got to pick the PIN but I can’t tell you what it is.

It’s funny how my parents worry about buying health insurance and paying our mortgage, while I have a fortune. My mom applied for SNAP, which is a nicer name for food stamps, and took an online class so she can find work as a contact tracer. Dad says there are no jobs for him anywhere, and he’s too old for anyone to want him. Sometimes I think about offering to pay the mortgage with my money, but I think the mortgage costs more than I’ve got. I don’t really love our Brooklyn apartment anyhow. My room is the size of a postage stamp.

On Amazon, I bought a blue wig that I’m going to cut and style to look like one of my favorite characters. I also got elf ears that fit over my regular ears, and five orders of Pony beads so I can make kandi, which is jewelry that I could trade if I was ever around anyone else that also had kandi. And I bought an iPhone 11 Pro and a hoverboard. I’ve sent my friends frog rings, and eye shadow by a YouTuber we follow. I haven’t seen my friends in a long time, but now they won’t forget me.

My dad isn’t really talking to me much these days and he calls me “Moneybags Maisie”, but he was already grumpy even before he lost his job. It usually doesn’t bother me, but if it does, I can find something on Amazon that lifts my spirits.

I know what I want to get next, which is an Asuna Yuuki ankle tattoo and a septum piercing. Mom says no to both, but I’m pretty sure that once we move back to Brooklyn, I will get them. Just because my parents aren’t spending money doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t. And besides, it is my money, and also only I get to make decisions about my body.