Unashamed (7 page)

I never caught the girl’s name, but I remember her stares and accusations vividly. Without hesitation she walked over to my window and glared at me very mechanically and without emotion. She lingered in the moment, making it more uncomfortable than if she would have just punched me in the tit, causing me to gasp for air and ensuring a future fifteen minutes of fame on
Jerry Springer
.

She looked to Robert’s baby mama through the open windows in the vehicle. “Is this the bitch you talked to on the phone?” she asked, referring to a quick conversation gone wrong the day before.

“That’s fucking her,” the ex said as she stood at the driver’s side window.

“She’s not even cute.” Her face turned quizzical as she spoke to the ex on the other side like my presence was nonexistent. “Are you a dyke? I heard you were a dyke.” She finally directed her comment right at me.

All attention was diverted to my response. The ex stopped to listen; Robert looked over to me while the baby sucked on her sippy cup. The friend crossed her arms as I said, “No,” smiling in embarrassment, shock, and amazement at anyone knowing anything about my life in Arizona or Angel. The look on my face, I’m sure, was priceless. The rest of the shitty time spent in judgmental hillbilly hell was just as unpleasant. When we finally left, there wasn’t much to say to each other.

The ex must have relished in the moment as her friend waved to us on our way out. “See you later, ya fuckin’ dyke!”

When we didn’t see them in the side mirrors anymore, I nervously said, “What was that all about? God. Did you say anything to her about me?”

“I was with her a long time. I told her things.” He wasn’t exactly sorry, but he felt bad for it coming up when it was never meant to go beyond the ex’s ears.

“Jesus, Robert, that’s my business!” I said with a passive, hurt, betrayed exclamation point at the end of the sentence.

“Don’t worry about it. She knows about my experiments with that guy from work and tells everyone I am a fag. Everyone experiments. I’m not gay. No one believes anything she says anyway,” he assured me as he looked to me with his brilliant blue eyes then back to the road.

I began talking to him and to myself as we passed cornfields that created a distinct, yet indefinable smell. I didn’t look at him; rather, I mesmerized myself with the rows and rows of corn that were still too young to be harvested. “I can’t believe it. Did you hear that? How she just said it? A dyke.” I contemplated that thought and that word as it replayed in my head. Seems I’d been called that a lot lately. Was I?

I let the neatly lined rows of corn pass before my eyes as I visually blended it all together, making a green haze. I sat there swirling it all in my mind and, for a second, I thought,
I don’t want to marry him, I’m gay
.

Within the first week of my return to Arizona military life, I talked to Robert about the people we were seeing before our decision to be married. We agreed that, in the months before our anticipated wedding, we would be free to have sexual relationships with others to get it out of our systems. We understood our young bodies couldn’t place sex on hold. States divided us, but never our love. My heart knew where it belonged and where it had been since the day of his earth-shattering lie in my living room. I was ready to commit myself to him for the rest of my life, and together we joked about our last few months of getting it on with those who would never know the depth of our devotion.

I was boastful of my renewed love for Robert and showed anyone who would take interest my engagement chain. Steven accepted his future bride-to-be was just another bisexual girl returning to the security of a normal heterosexual world. He was happy for me, but I noticed we did not hang out like we used to after my announcement. I pushed everyone out who didn’t understand my decision.

Steven faded from my life, but I barely noticed.

Chapter 6

My new roommate, a Jamaican girl born in California, insisted on telling me how nuts I was about the whole thing. She didn’t know my sexuality like Annica did. In her mind, the barracks ho was suddenly getting married but still sleeping around. No wonder Tenesa kept her distance.

She didn’t say anything when I brought home this quiet virgin boy and, two nights later, slept with his squad leader, who’d I known from basic training. She never asked me about the tall, dark, handsome guy from the chow hall or the French Tori Amos fan. She let my business be my business and never intervened until the evergreen incident when the drunken French guy came into our room while she was sleeping. He shook her awake to ask if he could sleep in my bed. She knew I was down the hall with the freckle-faced boy and his amazing red hair.

Tenesa asked me never to put her in that situation again as she explained how Frenchie begged her in the dark to stay. He apparently showed her the scratches and green skid marks on his body from earlier in the night when he tried to climb an evergreen tree outside of my window to reach me and fell to the rocks.

Tenesa, in a California version of her Jamaican accent, reported, “Dis boy was cryin’ so hard. He totally smelled like beer and eva-green fuckin’ bush or some shit, girl.” We laughed at the stupidity of the story as we got ready to go clubbing and listened to the messages he left on my machine. Sober at first, just saying hello, then progressing through his drunkenness into anger and tears. It was sadly hysterical, this poor guy was love-struck over me, and I had plans to marry.

Tenesa kept her judgments to herself and never made any mention of how I was living my life. But it’s always the quiet ones who have the most to say. She would have given me an earful if she was sure I would listen, but, to her, I was a lost cause, and she was focused on her night classes at the local college. The last thing on her mind was trying to save me from myself.

The second time she brought up my promiscuity was when she had plans to drive with this boy from her class to California in search of a new car. It certainly wasn’t out of concern with my behavior; it was more for her sanity and safety when she returned. Another Frenchie midnight wakeup call was not going to be tolerated again. As she neatly packed a bag on the opposite side of the barracks room, she casually asked and told me at the same time to give it a rest. “Listen, girl, I’m driving with dis white boy to California and bringing back a car. So I’ll be on leave for two weeks. Could you get out all ya fuckin’ before I get back?”

I dismissed the idea with a wave of my hand and told her I was done sleeping around because I was getting married. As if it was actually that simple. She didn’t believe a fucking word I said.

While she was gone, I put my hands up in the air and backed away from my struggles with sexual orientation so I could focus on my upcoming unity with Robert. We talked every day on the phone about our future and how exciting it was to rekindle our childhood romance. We discussed his daughter and finances and practical things that go along with moving and procedures for getting married. I felt our love was so transcending that I sat through a painful session in a local tattoo parlor to get his initials permanently etched into my skin.

And then, the next morning while happily checking and washing my new ink, I was hit with the reality of bumps on my genitals. Sexual flamboyancy is a time bomb ticking away, and one day, boom, you explode with a disease. All you can do is hope and pray that it’s not something that lasts a lifetime or worse. If anything kicks a person in the teeth to the realities of promiscuity, it’s a venereal disease. Additionally, mine appeared right after the decision was made to stop my shenanigans. I almost made it without getting burned. The following morning the doctor immediately diagnosed me with genital warts. The first few days I was disgusted with myself, but I knocked on Josh’s door, telling him to come to my room as soon as possible. He had to be told.

He came in; I shut the door and didn’t hesitate springing the news for fear that I would lose my nerve. We were alone, but the subject matter was so serious that I spoke at the lowest volume possible, yet I was very matter-of-fact. “Look, I went to the doctor, and the last person I was with was you, so I think you should get checked out because I have genital warts. I wanted to tell you because I think you gave them to me.”

There we stood in the middle of my room, staring at each other, blinking, not knowing what to do or say. I hadn’t realized how unattractive he truly was until that moment. Freckles, which were cute in the beginning, covered his entire body, but, under the circumstances, they just made his skin look dirty. His teeth were yellow and coated in what appeared to be a thick layer of plaque. The t-shirt he wore was stretched out and slightly grey. I’m not sure if he showered regularly, but he sprayed enough cologne on to choke a horse. I wondered how I could overlook those things and engage in sex with this animal. This was definitely an eye-opener to the standards I had been setting for myself.

After he stared at me with deer-in-the-headlight glare, he shook his freckled face in disbelief, then squinted as if to shoot daggers at me with those green beady eyes. “You didn’t get them from me,” he said bluntly. “I know you sleep around.”

Let me tell you how wonderful it feels to have a freckle-faced, bumpy-dick, motherfucker tell you that you are the virus-carrying slut. Not so much. Yet, I was trying to be the bigger person, so I remained calm and explained the situation before I could panic and slap the red out of his hair. “The last guy I was with was a week before you, and the doctor says it takes three days for it to appear, which means it’s
you
because
you
were the last one I was with three days ago. And really, that’s not the fucking point. Just go get checked out before you spread it around. I’m trying to set aside my embarrassment by telling you and doing you a favor, okay?” By the end, my anger had escalated, but my restraint was impeccable.

When he left, I felt relieved that I’d done my good deed for the week, even if it meant undue shame. And so began my pills and weekly visits to a military doctor for topical treatments; to say the least, it definitely aided in my transition to becoming a little less sexual.

When Tenesa came back, she was sporting super tight braids and a renewed Jamaican accent that was heavier than when she left. After unpacking, Tenesa cried in pain as she tried to lay her head on her pillow and was unable to do so. Her hair was so tight she had to sit against the wall to finish her story about the white boy who accompanied her and how funny he was the whole trip. Tenesa spoke of his glasses and how nerdy he was as she prepared to sleep seated in that position. The funny part was Tenesa said she had to sleep like that before due to some “tight Jamaican bray-den.” She assured me she would be able to sleep normally in a few days.

Every comment of hers was a shot of happy energy to my sad soul. I wanted to listen to everything that happened on her trip, even though we had never really had much of a conversation before. I could tell that my enthusiastic demeanor over her stories served as intangible shots of happy energy for her, too.

Between laughing at her tales of woe and the agony of her “Jamaican bray-den,” I teased that she must really like this guy because she couldn’t stop talking about him. Tenesa insisted that she was not into white boys, but if she was, this kid would interest her. We cracked jokes about black and white love, making references to all possible clichés. For once, the weird hostility between us relaxed. It could have been the pain that subdued her, but it was nice to chat and make her laugh even if it snapped her head back to the only comfortable position she could find. Her misery as she gently placed her hand on her braids was amusing to me because she winced every time, yet she kept doing it. After awhile it wasn’t funny anymore because, as she pointed out, it was so tight that each hair on her head was about to pop out of the embedded root of her scalp. She was very serious as she sat upright and still on her mattress to catch a fleeting pain free moment. Very slowly she articulated, “The only other time…my head felt dis way was…when…some nigglett ripped out a braid…he left a bald throbbin’ empty square patch.”

With my hand over my mouth, I tried not to laugh, but I exploded and cackled so loud and hard that I sprayed the inside of my hand with spit before my face turned three shades of purple. Thank God she laughed too—well, she tried not to. I believe this was the first time Tenesa and I had a good conversation; it was therapeutic, really. We talked for quite some time about the white boy, her family, my tattoo, and how her boyfriend got mad when she broke things off with him for some guy she met in the army. The boyfriend’s quote was, “Who this nigga Nees-a? I’ll knock his blackness back to Aff-ree-ka.” This last comment and delivery of it threw us into hysterics before I tuckered out and fell to sleep.

The shame that accompanied pills and weekly visits to the doctor became a burden I couldn’t bare. I had four bumps that refused to go away. It was enough to drive me to into a self-loathing cleaning frenzy; one shower after physical training, one at lunch, another after work, and my last one just before bed. All were attempts to decontaminate my skin and rid my mind of the terrible infliction. I was trapped within my revolting body.

So, on my last visit to the doctor, I begged the attendant to give me the damn chemical so I could burn the fucking things off myself. That is how I asked for it, too.

I explained my excessive cleaning routine and how it was becoming painful (not to mention the most horrible experience) to see a new person every clinical visit. The soldier, who must have been my age, left the room and came back minutes later with a new bottle. It was tucked into his sleeve like we were doing a drug deal, trying not to get busted by the pigs. He told me to use it once every other day to speed up the process of removal.

When I left the clinic, I was practically skipping with joy. That little vial in the bottom of the brown paper bag was my new savior. I ran down the hall to take a shower and put the chemical on myself in the toilet stall when I was sure no one was around. Nothing could have made me happier than the wart remover in my possession.

I decided that the pain was worth getting me back to normal again, so I exceeded the attendant’s advice and used the chemical three times a day, holding my fists against the stall walls to cope with the burning, not making a sound. With each application I broke a sweat when the chemical absorbed into delicate skin unaffected by any disease. I would come out of the stall in pain, in tears, and drained from enduring what I was doing to rid my body of this problem.

Sex was a distant disgusting memory with either gender. I didn’t go anywhere or see anybody or make phone calls to Robert. No one knew what I was going through physically, and surely no one but another person who has been through a venereal disease can understand what it does mentally. All day, every day, I was tortured by how disgusted I was with myself or how embarrassing it was being stuck in my afflicted body.

Every shower or bathroom visit became my own purgatory. I was reminded visually and tactically that the bumps were still there. It was all I could think about for over a month each time I shifted in my chair at work. It became my small insanity, and eventually I couldn’t handle them being there anymore.

So I pulled and cut off two remaining warts with fingernail clippers.

I had prepared the clippers with rubbing alcohol and burned the clipping edge with my lighter for more sterilization, hoping it would make a cleaner cut. My nerves had me shaking uncontrollably, but I managed to hold in a scream that would have shattered the mirrors above the sinks. My fists pressed so hard against the stall partitions my knuckles drained white. When I couldn’t hover over the toilet anymore, I leaned forward, holding my weight with my head against the door, and let loose with my emotions, and cried so hard I could barely breathe. Still I remained quiet, and, when I somewhat composed myself, I walked with numbed agony to my room and went to bed.

This was truly punishment for my behavior and that I should thank God for the simple discomfort I felt rather than a devastating disease I could have earned. After cutting myself off, no pun intended, from men, I focused on healing.

I rested even when Lynn and Annica were knocking on my door, asking me to go dancing at the Ozone. I became a hermit of sorts, watching Tenesa fix her braids in preparation for a night at the club while I made up some lie to keep me inside. Everyone noticed the change in me, but nobody pried.

It was during one of these party weekends when I finally met the white boy. While everyone went out, Tenesa opted to stay in so she could prepare for an exam. I was already tucked into my bed, enjoying a smoke and reading a magazine when, at the last minute, Tenesa announced that the white boy was coming over to help her study for psychology. However, I didn’t even have time to put a bra on before his knock. We both shouted in unison that it was okay to enter. The door partially opened, and a guy poked his head in. From the angle of my bed to the door I saw thick dark hair and big chocolate brown eyes. I immediately pulled the covers up a little to cover my nipples, which anyone could see through the nightshirt. When the guy walked in, his six-foot-two stature surprised me, as well as his thick and wavy Spanish hair that was kept short, and his Greek god smile. My first thought was,
Holy fuck he is hot,
which immediately preceded,
He is not fucking white
.