A Year Straight (4 page)

“First, we'll need to ensure your safety,” she said, opening the door to the neighborhood sex shop, Toys in Babeland. I was nervous entering the store. At Babeland, one could purchase a penis, a magazine, and self-heating massage oil, all in one fell swoop. At one time I was quite comfortable walking in there. I'd greet the cashier, whom I most likely knew, and was usually given a discount.

Megan, however, led me straight to the condoms, the area along the wall with the books and DVDs, where the shy people tended to linger. Now I was one of them. With trepidation, I pointed to different condoms for her to put in a basket, opting for ones with a feminine twist—the purple Venus, the pink-packaged Birds-n-Bees, and for fun some
Tuxedos, to find out what that meant. I was shaking, guilt written all over my face, convinced that if any of my friends were to walk in, they'd see it.

“Oh come on!” Megan urged, a little too loudly.

“Oh my God, don't look,” I said, putting my head down and shoving my hand into a condom bin to look busy.

“What?” Megan asked, turning around abruptly. “Lisa!” she yelled. Lisa was our coworker who everyone suspected was gay. She was married to a man but prone to conspicuous flirtations with the ladies (especially me). And there she was in the sex store with a woman, perusing the colorful array of insertables with names like Outlaw, G-Buddy, and Buck. Lisa's face turned red, like mine already was, as we greeted each other in the middle of the store, all of us empty-handed aside from Megan, who carried the basket of condoms. I laughed out loud. Laughing was the one thing that for some reason felt prohibited in Babeland. You could test out the bunny vibrators so they twirled around in your hand. You could try on harnesses in front of the mirror, but you were not supposed to laugh. To laugh would reveal thoughts of a sexually unhip woman—“Oh my God, you put that where?”

On our way back to Megan's house, we stopped every few blocks to gasp, “Can you believe we saw Lisa in there?” It wasn't too hard for me to believe, actually. There were plenty of people in closets of all kinds. I just never would have thought I'd be back in one.

From the bathroom at Megan's house, I heard the faint sound of moans and groans coming from a distant room. I assumed it was the neighbors. I opened her medicine cabinet, curious as to what I might find. An entire shelf was dedicated to scents. I had always thought a woman picked one perfume and wore it for the rest of her life, her signature scent, as I'd heard it referred to. But there on display were at least eight different bottles with names like Daisy, Elle, Blue Fields, and Woman. What does Woman smell like according to Calvin Klein? I sprayed it in the air and ran through it like my mom taught me to. I was a femme, but a hippie tomboyish one. I wore scented oils as perfume.

It turned out the moaning was coming from Megan's house. She had turned on a porn. I tiptoed toward the television, took a glance, and sat down with my hands covering my eyes.

“I don't think I'm ready for this,” I said, queasy at the sight of male flesh. Megan pulled my hands away.

“It's time to learn some tips.”

“Please don't use that word.” Just then there was an extreme close-up of an extremely erect penis.

“What word?
Tip?
Do you prefer
cock? Head? Shaft?
” Megan teased. She was not about to let me off the hook, so I decided to sit back, open my eyes, and watch the woman on the screen perform the title of the film,
Hand-Job Extra,
the “extra” part being that she also used her feet. No wonder Megan was always running out for a pedi.

That night and several of the following, I found myself browsing straight porn sites on my computer at home. There was one couple in particular I became attached to. They were French, which somehow helped me shed some of my inherent puritanical inhibition. Watching them together turned me on. They seemed to truly be in love, and I was still a sucker for romance. I marked their page as a “favorite.” I was proud of myself. I am a self-actualized woman! I can choose to have porn bookmarked on my computer if I want to! And then I removed it.

On the topic of removing things, it was time for my Brazilian, according to Guru Megan. Brazilian was short for Brazilian wax. I had gotten one a couple of years prior for the “I Heart Brooklyn Girls” calendar shoot, for which I had donned a
Baywatch
bathing suit—bright red and obscenely high cut. Megan dismissed that experience, explaining, “You may have had a Brazilian before, but you've never had “the Mariola.” The place she sent me for my wax was so fancy that I had to be buzzed in, as if anyone in dire straits would rob a women's spa in Soho.

Apparently, Mariola was in high demand, because they had double booked her. I was squished in between two beautiful, well-dressed, entitled, disgruntled customers on a very small bench in the waiting room. I considered offering up my appointment as I recalled segments of Megan's description: “She gets every single last hair, using tweezers if she has to.”

“Elena.”

Legs sprawled, one foot wedged against the wall, I kept reminding myself that Mariola had seen it all.

“Hold here!” she ordered in her thick Polish accent. I was scared of her, so I obeyed, spreading my butt cheeks for her and cringing inside all the while. I did not recall feeling that exposed during my last wax job, or during any pap smear for that matter. I lay on my side. I lay on my stomach. I performed poses Dante could only dream of. I screamed with every strip. I tried to do some deep yogic breathing and focus on a visualization of birch trees blowing in the breeze, but I was panting like an overheated dog. And then it was done. And then she took out the tweezers.

Having conquered condom shopping, “the Mariola,” and straight porn, Megan deemed me ready to go out and do some conquering of my own.

A
ny New Yorker will tell you, it's uncanny how often you bump into people you know in a city of eight million. It's bound to happen now and then, like when you're on the very street where they teach yoga. At the exact time they get out of class. So it wasn't my fault that I ran into Dante outside the health food store on his birthday.

In my defense, I had not slept a wink the night before, tossing and turning as I debated attending his birthday party. There is a famous quote, “Fear is born of fatigue and loneliness.” So is insanity, I have found. Deliriously overtired and sexually charged, I was ready to combust, like a lit round shot stuck in a faulty cannon. According to my astrology guru, Susan Miller, as a Leo, Dante was allegedly pioneering and impulsive—the perfect match for Miss Lez. Perhaps he just needed to be taken by surprise.

I recognized him from half a block away. There was no mistaking his gait. The slight bounce in his step, the gym pants, and the clincher, his yoga mat. He was unwrapping a protein bar, the snack of choice for a yoga teacher on the run.

“Dante!” He didn't hear me.

“Dante!” I picked up my pace. So did he. At that point in my position, a sane person would have stopped, turned around, and walked away. Me? I chased him.

The metal buckles on my backpack unfastened and started banging against the bottles of goddess salad dressing in my grocery bag. With my unzipped jacket whipping in the wind and my hair still wet from the morning's shower, I must have looked as crazy as I felt.

As I closed in on him, I noticed the white wires of headphones bobbing against his shoulders as he trotted toward the stoplight. To my surprise, and even more so to his, I watched myself as if I were in a slow-motion movie scene: I grabbed ahold of his backpack. And tugged. He turned around with the most horrified expression, assuming, as any city dweller would, that he was being mugged. He didn't seem relieved to discover it was me.

“I wasn't stalking you, I swear,” I said defensively, out of breath. “I decided to get a kombucha.” As soon as the words came out of my mouth, I wanted to dive into the nearest manhole and crawl my way back to Brooklyn. I felt like Baby in
Dirty Dancing,
swallowing her first words to
Patrick Swayze, “I carried a watermelon.” However, unlike watermelon, a sexy, refreshing summer treat, kombucha is a fermented mushroom tea. It is not pretty. Picture a translucent glass jar filled with urine-colored juice in which hazy clouds of mold float through stalactites of more mold. And then imagine someone threw up in it. Kombucha stakes claim to healing ingredients, such as naturally occurring probiotics, which are good when you have a yeast infection. Or diarrhea.

Dante hadn't said a word but rather just stood there silent and stunned. I didn't know how to redeem the situation, so I said the first thing that came to mind.

“Happy Birthday!”

“Thanks.”

The light changed and he crossed the street. I crossed my heart to give up on men forever and ever, amen, and went home to google new yoga studios.

I did manage to resist attending his birthday party, but my vow turned out to be like giving up drinking in the midst of a horrible hangover: “Dear God, if you make me stop puking, I'll never drink again.” The Dante detox lasted a whole of two weeks, until a mutual friend's dinner party e-vite displayed his RSVP as “attending.” With one last chance at winning him over, or at the very least redeeming a tidbit of my dignity, I dressed up for the big night. I slipped into a loose black satin blouse with a peephole to my cleavage, skinny jeans so tight
I had to lie down to get into them, and the “starter heels” Megan had lent me, insisting men prefer them to flats.

I was nervous ringing the doorbell.

“Elena?” My brother, also a friend of the host, eyed my outfit curiously, accustomed to my flouncy gypsy tops, leggings, and boots. I hobbled into the apartment after him. The shoes that were mildly uncomfortable when I'd first put them on by then felt like walking in ice skates.

I grabbed a glass of wine and sat down to catch him up. There was no way out of it. We were not only siblings but also neighbors and good friends. Our worlds were too intertwined for me to try to hide from him. I confessed that I'd dressed up for a guy. He was taken aback, having been grateful for a lesbian sister. When I shared with him my sudden rekindling of interest, he subtly tried to deter me. Though he's younger, my brother is prone to better decision-making, having been granted a more generous portion of judgment genes. I probably should have listened.

The first hour of the party dragged on. I sipped wine and willed Dante to arrive. He didn't. I sipped more.

As the night unfolded, I found myself flirting with the other guys there, practicing for the real thing. My poor brother steered clear of me, not fond of the new Elena. He was accustomed to the version with little tolerance for men. But I was finding it surprisingly easy to laugh at their dumb jokes.

“Why yes, you're right, the BlackBerry scroll ball is like
a little clit!” It was relatively painless to play along when I wanted something in return. And as it turned out, it wasn't just Dante I wanted. I was on a man mission. My curiosity had been piqued, and I had to put Megan's lessons to use, not to mention my hard-earned money. A Brazilian wax with Mariola is not cheap.

Three hours into the night, uninspired by the selection of single straight men on the party menu, I poked around the hors d'oeuvres and snagged the last piece of cake.

“You didn't,” said a voice from above. A sharply dressed man hovered over me as I swallowed the second half of the slice.

“I did.” I washed down the last of the cake with the last of my wine. “Where did you swoop down from?”

“I just got off work,” he said, reaching across the table too close to me and dutifully refilling my glass with shiraz. He was careful not to spill any on his crisp white shirt, which he'd unbuttoned at the top. Though I knew nothing about ties, a nice-looking one hung loosely from his neck. His sandy brown hair was mussed in just the right way; naturally, after a long day's work, as opposed to crafted with some overpriced pasty product with a name like Morning After. He had a little bit of the Joseph Gordon-Levitt baby-face thing going on. I wondered if he wished he looked older.

“What do you do that you get off at midnight?” I asked, nearly losing my balance. The sugar rush had set in.

“I'm a lawyer, a first year, which means I'm basically their bitch. I stay until my bosses leave and often much later.”

That was the point where my brother left the party, only after unsuccessfully urging me to pass up the lawyer for late-night sibling sundaes. He'd tried his best. But if ice cream couldn't stop me, nothing could. I hugged my brother goodbye, sending him off with the same famous last words I'd been saying his whole life: “Don't worry!”

The lawyer invited me to join him on the couch, where he promptly picked up my feet and started massaging them. After walking in those shoes, I was putty in his hands. It was a little embarrassing, flirting with him in front of everyone at the party. But I wasn't bothered enough to stop him, which is one of the great things about getting older. You care less and less what people think. When the party started to thin out, I excused myself to the bathroom.

Elena, you can do this.
I fixed my hair in the mirror.
You've come this far.
I was anxious, assuming I would have to take some initiative if I were to go home with the lawyer. With the women I'd been after in the past, I'd often offered the first signal of interest. There is nothing worse than hitting on a girl and having her say, “Sorry, I'm straight.” Since I was femme, I liked to help erase any ounce of doubt, for there is a complex dance performed at lesbian bars. Is she gay? Is she here with a guy? Is she here with her gay friends? Does she have a girlfriend? Has she dated my best friend?