A Year Straight (3 page)

A few girls had skipped changing and were already in line. The girl that arrived after me hovered a little too close, so I turned around and cut her with my eyes, putting her back in her place: Behind Me. I bought his last two copies, claiming one was for my brother, and feigned interest in whatever it was about. We shared the elevator to the street and walked out together toward another studio, where he was to teach his next class. I took notice of the details in case I needed to stalk him someday. Tuesday. Eighteenth and Broadway. 8:41 a.m.. Our conversation carried us twelve blocks, along
which I learned intimate things about him, like that he was spiritual but not religious, grew up in the suburbs, and preferred walking to riding the train. Just like me! I listened with the attentiveness of an anthropologist; Jane Goodall in jeans. In my mind's eye I was wearing glasses and taking notes.
An interesting specimen, indeed.
We talked about yoga and the sacred practice of being present in the body. I wanted him to put his present in mine. At his destination, he flashed me one of his big smiles and said goodbye. I nearly died.

At work Megan cornered me in the kitchen. “What happened? Tell me everything,” she demanded, handing me a cup of tea—a sweet gesture, but she'd added sugar, which I never do. I sipped politely and flopped down on a stool.

“We walked out together,” I said.

“You did?” She was one decibel short of yelling. The room seemed to ripple before me like a long stretch of highway on a steamy summer day.

“I don't know,” I said wearily. “I think I'm just going to stop talking to him, ride it out for a bit.”

“Ride him! Isn't that the point?” she said sternly, locking eyes with me before turning around to head for her desk. I shook my head and poured out my tea.

The following day, I spent the better part of the afternoon sorting through a slew of emails from confused clients because our company had implemented a new billing system that left everyone in the dark. I enjoyed fielding customer
questions. It was the closest thing to helping people for a living since my six-month stint at counseling homeless youth. After half a year of staying up all night writing case studies and diffusing teenage temper tantrums, I'd left for a desk job at a nonprofit; still doing good, but on the safer, paper side. I'd later ended up in the corporate world when hit with the harsh reality of my student loan bills—loans I'd taken out to learn how to help people.

I nearly fell out of my ergonomic chair when I checked my personal email to find that Dante wanted to “be friends” on Facebook. That must mean he likes me! Facebook is much more personal than email! I perused his online photo albums; pictures from concerts, yoga retreats, Burning Man, and New Jersey, where he just had to live, as if being a man didn't make him foreign enough. I was leaning in close to my monitor to see if he was in fact wearing socks with sandals (a well-known lesbian trend) when the CEO startled me from behind.

“Who's that?” he asked.

I jumped and minimized the page, which made me look even guiltier.

“Oh, that's my brother's friend who asked him to deejay next week, but I'm not sure I can make it because I might go to Connecticut to see my mom, who just had knee surgery, and when I was five I stole a pack of gum from Woolworth's.” I stopped to catch my breath. The CEO, a childhood friend and soon to be millionaire (our company was on the brink of being
bought), was accustomed to my quirky ways. In middle school, I was curiously often “locked out of my house” and would walk up to his house to hang out. I was smitten, but he liked me “as a friend.” In high school, when I grew into my buckteeth, the roles reversed. But when he finally came around, I turned him down and dated a skater boy dropout instead. This tells you a little something about my taste in men.

He dropped an invoice on my desk and turned to leave. My heart pounded as though I'd been caught cooking the books.

I returned to my in-box to find another eye-catching email, a request for an interview.
Velvetpark
magazine was doing a story on the pageant and wanted to hear from the new Miss Lez. What did I have to say for myself ? Less than a month into my reign, I'd already shamed my people. My fantasies alone could have cost me the crown. Yet in a rainbow's myriad of ways, I couldn't have been gayer. I cat-sat, drank herbal tea, and in high school played field hockey. I'd been both vegan and vegetarian. I was a food co-op member. I drove a stick shift. As a kid I undressed Barbie and Skipper and made them kiss and touch boobs. I was even allergic to nuts.

I didn't want to want men. I didn't want to end up like those women I overheard in restaurants and bars, catching wind of phrases like “He always” and “He never,” their martinis teetering on active fault lines. Many of my friends had nothing but horrible luck with men, and there was no reason to assume I'd be spared.

After work I waited for TJ at Cowgirl, a lesbian-owned diner famed for its hot sauce and hot clientele. Perusing the restaurant, I smiled inside at the sight of butches in jeans and tees, femmes in vintage dresses and the five-inch heels I could never walk in, gay men in tight tapered pants and pastel polo shirts tucked in just so, and everyone in between. Becoming who you are is no easy task, and I cherished my community of cowbois and grrrls. As a lover of women, I was one of them, a rebel by default. The thought of sacrificing that crushed me.

When TJ arrived, I caught myself eyeing her as a potential mate, flailing for an anchor to my land. I cocked my head to the side to see her from another angle, desperate to distract myself from thoughts of Dante, who posed in downward dog across my menu as I tried to choose a meal.

“What are you doing, jackass ?” she asked when she caught me staring.

“Nothing. Did you cut your hair?”

 

 

ON THE TRAIN ride home, my book lay limply in my lap as I let my eyes wander over the crowd. Men were in suits, scrubs, basketball shorts, and jeans. They had short hair, shaggy hair, brown hair, gray hair; more hair on faces than heads since I'd last taken a look. They fiddled with their iPods and composed text messages to be sent later, from above ground. I wondered what they were writing and to whom. Perhaps they were planning the night with the rest of the guys, the
time and place to gather to meet girls. Maybe they were no different from my friends and me.

Crossing over the bridge to Brooklyn, a lone star managed to shine brighter than the city. Gazing up, I wondered if it might be Venus. Then I wondered something else. Tomorrow I have yoga.
What will I wear?

 

 

DANTE ADJUSTED ME twice during class the next day, which I credited to my new Lululemon pants. As I was rolling up my mat at the end, he handed me a postcard—an invitation to his birthday party, two weeks away. I smiled and set my hair free so that it fell down onto my shoulders from my yoga bun.
He wants me.
And then he passed the postcards out to the rest of the class.

I turned up the heat during the rest of the week, hoping for a date before his birthday. I didn't want to be yet another random girl lined up at his DJ booth vying for a chance to chat with him. I sent him a Facebook message, asking him about a performance artist he had mentioned during our walk. He wrote back almost instantly. I replied an hour later with a joke about the website he'd referred me to. He replied with a snarky remark. And we were off. Flirting with a guy seemed no different from flirting with a woman—not online at least.

Things seemed to be moving along at a satisfying pace over the course of the following week. We were emailing
several times a day and had even begun to text. I was cracking up in my cubicle every half hour or so as he made fun of the pictures on my Facebook account. The flirtation factor was in full effect—until I received a blank email from him out of the blue. There was no subject. No text. Only an attachment: a photo of me in my Miss Lez tiara and sash. I panicked. I wasn't sure what to make of his email, so I attempted to make light of it in hopes the issue would float away.

“Oh, I forgot that my Miss Lez contract prohibits me from fraternizing with your kind.”

He responded with a one-word email, one step up from the email with no text at all: “Goodbye.”

I sank back in my chair, deflated, and didn't send a reply.

On the bus ride home from a work picnic later that week, sunburned and bloated from beer, Megan convinced me to text him, asserting, “You're a hot woman with a lesbian past. Trust me. No single straight man can resist that.” I didn't quite trust her, but I sent a text anyway.

“I found a clause in my Miss Lez contract for professionals related to my well-being.” I invited him to join us for drinks when he was done teaching his last class. Which I shouldn't have known was at seven forty-five on Spring Street.

An hour later, downing margaritas at an outdoor bar with Megan and her friends, after having declined an invite to meet up with TJ, I received a text back from Dante. “I want to get horizontal like yesterday.” I squealed and passed
my phone around the table for the straight girls' translation, unsure of his intention.

“Elena,” Megan exclaimed. “Have you never heard that expression before? It means he wants to have
SEX
with you.” She spelled out the word with her finger in the air.

I jumped up and down with excitement.

“Oh my God, what should I do?”

“Write back!” They all said in unison.

My hands were shaky as I typed my reply: “That's what I've been telling you all along.”

“Telling me what?” he teased (or so I thought). My reply was bold, fueled by weeks of buildup and a generous amount of tequila.

“I'm in Union Square. Come here and I'll show you.” I pressed “send” before I could really register what I'd written. For all the debilitating overthinking I'd done in my life, that would have been the time to employ it. A few minutes passed that felt like a lifetime. Why wasn't he responding? The girls all assured me he'd hopped on a train to meet me. My phone finally lit up and rang the bell tower ring tone, usually calming, suddenly a startling sound.

“I meant I'm exhausted and going to sleep.”

I ducked under the table, trying to hide from myself and cursing out the girls as they consoled me.

“He's crazy. Who says that phrase and actually means sleep?”

“He's intimidated by your sexual past.”

“He wants to wait to ask you on a real date.”

“Maybe he smells bad from teaching all day.”

And my personal favorite: “I've heard all yogis are celibate.”

Excuses aside, there wasn't one single person at the table that did not find his message misleading. If the straight girls were confused, I was totally screwed (or not). I'd never understand men. I left, mortified, but secretly relieved, for it had occurred to me somewhere among messages that if he'd in fact shown up, I'd have had no clue what to do with him. I was on my way to throw my phone in the East River when it rang.

“Hello?”

“Hey baby-mama!” My childhood friend Keith makes Liberace look macho.

“Baby-daddy, oh thank God. I need you.”

“Is it time?” At nineteen we'd made a pact that he would father my children should we both end up alone, gray, and gay. He was on his way.

“Not yet, love, but I'm getting there. What's up?”

“I'm in town for the night before I head to Florida for work. Come to Splash, bi-atch.”

Perfect. Of all people, Keith would know how to deal with Dante. We'd been friends since we were ten, when my family descended upon his at an open house. My family bought the place, and his room became mine; the sky blue paint job replaced with pink flowered wallpaper, which he
probably would have preferred. We played house now and then, though he never tried to kiss me like my other “husbands” at the time. In fact, I think he played the wife. Eternally single, as he was rarely in one place for more than a month, Keith ran a catering company that always teetered on the edge of chaos. I was constantly bailing him out, and it was time he returned the favor.

Upon arrival at Splash, Keith's friends fawned over me.

“She looks just like Sandra Bullock!”

“No, it's Ali MacGraw!”

They swung me around to the beat of “Borderline” blaring from the speakers. I could never resist Madonna, so I allowed myself to get swept up in the sweaty urgency of the club. Gay men loved that I was Miss Lez. They showed me off to their friends, parading me around like a doll. If I pursued my interest in men, would I be disappointing my gay boys, too? It was too loud to talk to Keith about men, so I soaked up their essence instead, studying the way they courted one another, staring each other down at the bar.

A couple of hours later, Keith and I stumbled out of the club and headed home to his apartment, where we curled up in bed and I broke the news. We stayed up all night having girl talk about boys. Keith couldn't have been more elated, finally able to put his years of experience to good use. Informed by a lifetime of disastrous one-night stands, he provided tuition on the art of hand jobs and rejection, and he assigned me a
MANtra: “Don't fall in love with the dick.” He clarified, “A man and his penis are two separate things.”
What did that even mean?
I felt more lost than I had the day before. Tucked in on his couch, the phrase hovered over me.
Don't fall in love with the dick. Don't fall in love with the dick.

 

 

FRESH FROM A breakup with Jared again, Megan was depressed and in need of distraction. I was clearly in need of a complete overhaul when it came to relating to men, and I had to prepare for Dante's birthday party, which I was not yet deterred from attending. It takes more than humiliation to subdue me into submission, so Megan took me on as her protégé.