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According to my Psych book, shrinks sometimes tell patients who have been traumatized to convince themselves that the heinous event never happened. Apparently, if the delusion lasts long enough, you’ll trick yourself into really believing that it did not occur. So I decided to remove the name of He Who Shall Remain Nameless from my vocabulary until I forget him entirely. At that point He’ll still be nameless, but I won’t be excruciatingly aware of it anymore.

It’s been seven months and my carefully selective amnesia hasn’t kicked in yet.

But I wasn’t about to write about Him. Nope. Just like I’m not going to think about Him now. Instead I will think about Mac. And I will think about Mac out of his boxer briefs. . . .

the tenth

Well, after a week of endless introductions, it’s official: I can’t revel in my relative obscurity anymore. Until six months ago, Pineville was fairly anonymous, even to fellow New Jerseyans. If Pineville High was known at all, it was only for its proximity to other notorious high schools.

Heightstown High School, for example, the upscale enclave for Wall Street commuters’ kids that saw its hoity-toity reputation plummet when it was revealed that one-third of the graduating class of 1996 had contracted syphilis at one of several Senior Class Orgies organized by the student-body president in the attempt to “boost school spirit.” (“Go SCO!” was a popular motto among those in the know.)

Or perhaps you recall hearing about PHS’s archrival, Eastland High School, aka the Prom Mom’s alma mater. Back in 1999, she left the dance floor and dropped a six-pound, two-ounce bundle of joy in the backseat of the rented limousine. Prom Mom left him screeching and covered with amniotic slime while she headed back inside and asked the deejay to play “Boom Boom Boom (Let Me Hear You Say Way-Oh).” Psychologists scratched their heads over interpreting the symbolic meaning of the song choice, oblivious to the obvious explanation, which was, simply, that she was a Hoochie Mama. (Ha. In more ways than one.)

These tabloid stories occurred at high schools less than a half hour from home, thereby providing an amusing way to pinpoint Pineville’s location when introducing myself to strangers, i.e., “Oh, Pineville? It’s fifteen minutes from Prom Mom.” I appreciated the relative anonymity, as it spared me the embarrassment of apologizing about my origins with a reflexive, “Yeah, I know. I live in the stankiest, hairiest crook within the armpit of the nation.”

Here at SPECIAL, my fears have been confirmed. Pineville is now as well known as its neighbors for not one but two different claims to fame: (1) The inspiration behind Miss Hyacinth Anastasia Wallace’s book and motion picture. (2) The birthplace of gangsta “pap” trailblazer Kayjay Johnson and the video bitch who broke his heart.

I refuse to waste ink on the former because it’s only going to get worse in the coming months, a thought that makes me want to pull out my teeth one by one with a medieval dental instrument as my SPECIAL classmates cheer me on.

I have avoided writing about the latter because I keep hoping that he will cross over into “Where are they now?” oblivion. But it’s clear that neither is going to happen anytime soon. I’m known throughout the dorm as “the girl from Pineville who knows the other girl from Pineville who went with Kayjay Johnson!” So much for me wanting to establish an identity completely separate from Bridget’s.

Karl Joseph Johnson is a shoulda-been graduate of PHS Class of 1999. He was sent to juvie after the top-notch Pineville police department discovered that he was stealing his neighbors’ lawn mowers and selling them for crack money. (The giveaway? The Johnsons were the only family in the Bay Gate section of town whose lawn wasn’t a weedy, overgrown mess.) But unlike every one of Pineville’s juvenile delinquents before him, Johnson parlayed his petty criminal status into a full-time career when he was rechristened Kayjay, one of the five demi-himbos in the “baaaaaad” boy band Hum-V.

Because it is doubtful