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Life Articles
Me
by Nadia Gire
Introduction by Fred Cuellar
Someone once said, “The only way too know
yourself is to get to know someone else. Nadia Gire is one of those
someone’s you need to get to know. At all of seventeen
she asks a lot of the same questions we all do, “Who am I?,
where am I going?, why am I here?, what’s the point?”
Starting with her first published piece “Me”
you’ll get to know a lot about a young lady who takes us into
the world of teenagers and what they think.
In this first installment, we get to know Nadia
at the ripe old age of 14 and how one weekend, like one moment can
change your life forever.
They say there comes a time when you have to question everything
about yourself. I believe my time came before most. Allow me to
introduce myself. My name is Nadia Gire. I am seventeen years old,
a junior at Lee High School in Houston,TX. I was born in England
on January 9, 1986. I am all of 4’11” with brown hair
and eyes. I have two sisters, one older and one younger. Yes, I
am the middle child and you know what they say about middle children.
We’re the attention-getters, the rebels without causes, the
wild child of the family. But lurking behind that mask of impulsiveness,
I had a side to me that no one else knew, not even me. So, I departed
on a journey of self-discovery, one that would allow me to see my
reflection clearer than ever before. So this is me, no build-up,
no gloss, no hype just me—becoming.
My search for myself began way before I came to meet Fred, with
whom you will be introduced to later. Around my freshman year, I
was at that stage in my life when I began to wonder if everything
that I had dedicated myself to, labels I had gotten, nicknames I
had received, were correct or even partially true. I suppose this
annoyingly befuddling question led me into what most would label
as teen rebellion.
Picture this if you can; a group of fourteen year old freshman with
the keys to an empty house, credit cards and most importantly, the
car. It began during second period drama class; the planning, that
is. “I hate going out of town with my parents,” one of
my closest friends Avril was saying, “it makes me look like
one of those loser teenagers that hangs out with their parents on
the weekend. Plus, my lake house has one mall, and it consists of
a Walmart and a Krispy Kreme”. “That doesn’t sound
too bad,” I answered, but when I saw the glare, I corrected
myself, “Why don’t you just spend the night at my house?”.
She pondered it for a moment and I could see the gears in her head
grinding furiously as she said, “What if I said I was spending
the night at your place and I was actually at my own house?”.
My friend Andrea got in on the plan at that point in time, “And
we could say we’re all spending the night at your house.”
All this excess planning became what we cleverly titled “The
Weekend”.
“The Weekend” began with severe action taken by the hostess
Avril a.k.a. Avie.She pleaded with the parental unit to allow her
to spend the night at my house while myself and three others involved
in our radical clan did the same. With everyone’s parents ‘okay’,
we were ready to begin our journey. We were so prepared that if
a natural disaster struck, we would be the last to go down. We devised
a plan. It included an itinerary and rules. We had possible things
to do when we would get bored; people who could be invited over;
scapegoats we could use if our parents ever got suspicious and hookups
we had. We synchronized our cell phones, made copies of keys, and
developed emergency contacts. The only rules we had were ‘No
drugs’ and ‘Get out of the house by Sunday at five’.
Avie’s garage was stocked with food and drinks (we had even
bought a book named Drink Mixes for Dummies). We practically bought
out Blockbuster, with every CD that we thought we could use in the
car. I thought we were pretty set for a year, let alone the weekend.
Friday night’s cast included Avie, Desi, Andrea, myself and
Sarah. We began with dinner at Jillian’s where we all quickly
got a little bored and invited some guys to join us. Chris, Taylor
and Ryan were all really good friends of ours from the Strait J
football team. They acted like, well…guys and our dinner turned
into a heated debate over why a girl can be a slut when she sleeps
with a guy while a guy is a player. We continued on with a movie
that we made sure was one where we could all drool over the guys
in Boiler Room. However, our three guys had lost interest. We decided
to go home and it’s a good thing we did. There were cars lined
up and down Avie’s street. Teens sat on the hoods of their
cars and waved us on. Some people we knew; a few we didn’t.
Apparently news of the parentless house spread like wildfire and
by the time we had gotten to the door, there was a line of people,
like we were at a club and I was one of the bouncers. We took shifts
letting people through and by the time we were done, an estimated
200 people were jammed into Avie’s house. Although Avie’s
house is not small, I somehow got the feeling of a sardine crammed
into a tin. Two hours later, the place was barely recognizable.
Smoke filled the air, people had hauled in kegs and some guy kept
parading around naked with a beer helmet on his head and two straws
that connected it to his mouth until we convinced him that clothing
would make him more appealing to the girls he was attempting to
hit on. After a new crowd of people joined us, the music changed
to hard rock/ metal and was so loud that a nearby frame came smashing
down on the floor. Neighbors came over to complain and we all grew
nervous. People had made themselves comfortable in the hot tub and
then the last straw came when Andrea walked into Avril’s parents
bedroom and found a threesome doing something they obviously shouldn’t
have been doing. “Not on my parent’s bed,” Avie moaned
when she found out. We managed to kick them out and throw the sheets
in the wash. The place was a mess. The bathroom smelled like vomit
and somebody (a guy), missed the toilet completely. Beer cans littered
the floor, the kitchen cupboards were raided and all of our stored
food was taken and people lay passed out on tables covered in food.
Pizza was ordered and we had to pay for thirteen cheese pizzas.
We tried to cancel the order but it was no use, everyone had already
started eating. Now was the time to take action. Some of the people
that we actually knew began helping us clear out the place after
three in the morning. I guess we got to sleep around five, after
kicking out numerous amounts of people with crabby personalities
and slurred speech.
The next morning we were up bright and early, ready to begin a new
day with high hopes. Excitement ran high as we hopped into Avril’s
mother gold Acura SUV with Avie in the driver’s seat, myself
in the passenger’s seat and everyone else in the back. Avie
(carefully) drove us to the mall where we met up with a couple of
people. Our next move makes me wonder, even today. For no apparent
reason, we began discussing strange things to do, and Andrea started
raving on about what she called “the best piercing place with
the hottest guys”. So we drove to Montrose. For those of you
who do not know Houston very well, Montrose is one of those watch-your-back
kind of places. After parking in an extremely tight spot, we walked
into a tiny, jammed store. It looked strangely gothic, with black
paint slathered on the walls, dark concrete floor and shelves lined
with strange ornaments, like voodoo dolls and sex toys. This didn’t
look too good. But, behind the counter stood a gorgeous guy in his
early twenties. This was starting to look better. His muscle shirt
revealed numerous tattoos on his biceps and chains of silver jewelry
strung from his wrists. His head was shaven and he had the most
beautiful blue eyes I had ever seen. No wonder he works at a piercing
place, I was thinking, whenever he got bored, he got a new piercing.
This guy had everything from his tongue to his eyebrow to his whole
right ear pierced. We approached him nervously. “Hey, you girls
here for a tongue ring?” he asked. “That’s not exactly
what we had in mind,” I answered since the rest of my posse
was to busy drooling. But, I had no clue what we did have in mind
since I wasn’t there for a piercing. Andrea quickly regained
her balance and spoke up, “Well, how much are your belly piercings?”.
While the two of them bargained prices as if were at a flea market,
Avril turned to me and said, “Pick one”, pointing to the
display of dazzling rings. I apparently thought I was doing it for
fun so I chose a simple studded one and Avie chose a blue jeweled
ring. “Alright, whose first?”, the hot guy asked, whose
name we later discovered to be C.J. Everyone pointed to Andrea,
it was her damn idea. She was escorted into a room at the end of
the place where she emerged some ten minutes later with a tight
smile, or maybe it was a grimace. Avril was next and when she came
back, there was no mistaking the contorted scowl on her face. “It’s
your turn bitch”, she told me from the corner of her mouth
as I laughed hysterically. “My turn for what?,” I asked
as C.J already had my hand in his (and how could I refuse?) as he
led me into the back room. Then it hit me. These people actually
thought I was going to get a navel ring. In his other hand was the
simple but oh so painful ring which I had innocently chosen just
moments before. “I don’t want it,” I said as I tried
unsuccessfully to dart to the door, forgetting that a person was
in the way. “Don’t worry about it, you won’t feel
a thing. I promise.” As supporting and reassuring that his
handsome smile was, … no. I shook my head and then he said
it. “Your friends have already paid and I don’t give refunds.
Sorry.” I could not afford to lose my friends’ money,
nor did I have a death wish, so I sat down. While his back was turned
sterilizing his materials, I looked around at the clear white room.
Maybe that was a sign. Me, being the idiot I was, chose to ignore
it. I was laid down on a white folding bed where he began the procedure.
“I am deathly afraid of needles,” I told him nervously.
“Oh, I don’t use needles.” THAT LYING BASTARD. Then
maybe he could explain the rush of severe pain that I received only
two minutes later. “That was only the clamp,” he clarified
for me, “it cuts off some of the…”. I stopped listening.
If the clamp was this bad, then how awful would the real thing be?
I soon found out. He told me to take a deep breath and I thought
it was because he was trying to calm me down, but I was truly wrong.
I felt the worst pain I have ever felt. It was like someone jammed
a searing hot rod through my stomach. It could have been a method
used in the torture chamber so I have no clue as to why in God’s
name anyone would do this for fun. “There, that wasn’t
that bad right?” At that moment, I wanted to kick his ass to
hell and back. I lay on the folding bed for what seemed like a long
time and then he asked me to walk in a straight line. When I completed
that strenuous task, I walked out of the room with the same expression
that Avril had when she walked out. They, on the other hand, were
all smiles. We thanked him, well, they did and then we went to the
car. It seemed like there were so many more cars then before and
everything seemed white. As we strapped ourselves in the seats and
Avril was backing up, I passed out…
Alarmed, everyone began panicking and Avie accidentally stepped
on the accelerator. As I sleepily awoke, Avie finished hitting a
beautiful black Mercedes CLK. It was parked, so there was no owner
and not many people were around so we split up what little money
we had, stuck it in an envelope with a sloppy ‘sorry’
stamped to the front, slipped it onto the windshield and left in
a rushed frenzy. When we stopped the car at a further distance,
we examined the peeling paint on her mother’s car. Luckily,
I knew a friend of a friend (Jerry) who worked at a car place. Jerry
is the type of guy who goes to Astroworld and calculates the velocity
of The Viper. His normal outfit would be high waters, a plaid button-up
and hiking boots. I called him over and begged him to come take
a look. He said that if we gave him a couple of hours, he could
fix the blemishes. Of course he forgot to mention that he fixed
the problem after stealing the gold tint paint from the repair shop
where he worked. (Don’t worry, he got fired). After about three
nerve- wracking hours, the car pulled into the driveway looking
as if nothing had happened. Jerry did a great job, and he got paid
well. He told us he didn’t need money. His parents had enough
of that. What Jerry needed was some good loving. The poor guy was
desperate. He had never had a girlfriend and from what we heard,
he had an enormous crush on Sarah. The problem was, Sarah had a
boyfriend. The 6’2” running back for the Cardinal football
team would crush Jerry into pieces if he ever found out what was
going on. But at times like these, we were not thinking clearly
and had no choice. Also, we decided that since Sarah had none of
the torturous pain that we had to endure, she would have to agree.
“Look Jerry, what if we told you that we could get you to go
on a few dates with Sarah?”, Andrea, Avril and I asked him
while Desi distracted Sarah in the house. “Define few,”
he said. God he was a smartass. We finally decided on three. I recall
later that one date was a movie and dinner where he got a make-out
session and something extra and another was a party where she left
him standing by the keg. She was furious with us, but we were her
grateful friends in need.
We were bouncers, pimps and rebels all in one weekend. Saturday
night, we found a club that was perfect. Our counterfeit ID’s
got us in with no problem and the place was… interesting. We
walked in and examined the place. To the right of us was a bar with
people shouting orders and we had difficulty moving. The ceiling
was strung with Christmas lights from the past holiday. The dancing
looked straight from a Missy Elliot video; hip hop and R&B blared
from the wired speakers. The DJ looked like he was having a blast
and kept busting out with a break dancing move every couple of minutes.
Our shoes stuck to the sticky floor as we made our way up the rickety,
unstable winding staircases before grabbing drinks. After seeing
two guys make out next to us, we started to get a little suspicious.
Our suspicions proved to be correct soon after. We forgot about
it when Andrea found a guy to dance with. The rest of us were sitting
around discussing our brilliant mastermind plan until we noticed
we had company. A woman with short blonde hair had sat at our table.
Her make-up looked like it was done by a color-blind person and
her black go-go boots would be found out of place even at a rodeo.
She looked like the poster child for steroids. Her tight, bright,
red shirt showed off her muscles and her leather skirt was so short
that I wondered how she found a way to sit. Her voice was husky
and deep when she turned to Desi and said, “Can I light you
a smoke?”. The rest of us were trying in vain to keep from
laughing. “Umm…no thanks, I don’t smoke,” Desi
inched slowly away. “Well, I should have known you didn’t
need a light, you’re already on fire,” she said. Sarah
could not stop herself from snorting out her Cosmo and laughing
outright. Twenty minutes later, we left. We had no intention of
being jumped in the parking lot by the lady who got turned down
by Desi. We went to bed earlier than we had in a few days after
watching a couple of movies. The next day was Sunday and we played
clean up. I recall all five of us pulling on yellow rubber gloves
and scrubbing feverishly. All previous clutter was replaced with
a shining floor, washed windows, and clean carpets. The kitchen
was restocked and the car was washed. We finished sooner than we
had expected and I returned home around mid-afternoon.
“The plan was flawless. Nothing could have gone wrong now.
It was over,” that’s what I was thinking after I got home,
pleased to know that something had finally gone as planned. That
night I discovered just how mistaken I actually was. All the mothers
had gotten together to thank the other for keeping their child,
while we were never there. The mothers’ investigation completely
ruined our flawless planning and we were all grounded for a month.
I actually had some really bad luck because two weeks into that
grounding, the piercing was discovered and I got grounded for three
more months. Looking back at the scenario, I find it amusing.
Back then I didn’t. It was my first test in a series of many
more to come. I read somewhere that when you begin to test yourself,
your limits, your strengths, everything; you have landed smack in
the middle of an identity crisis. The battle to overcome this complex
ordeal led me into a conflict with myself that I was not yet ready
to fight. I discovered a long time ago that two heads are better
than one. And as I was not up for the challenge, I needed a little
bit of assistance. This is where you meet Fred.
by Nadia Gire
Introduction by Fred Cuellar the Diamond Guy®
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