I Came Out for This? Read online

  The two of us are so goofy. We were lying around getting drunk and she looked at me and said, “Knadel,” (she calls me Knadel) “you have a bug on your head.” And I said, “I do not! What are you talking about?” And she reached over and picked something out of my hair and it was a ladybug! In the middle of winter! And I said, “You put it there.” And she said. “Why would I put a bug on your head?” And I said, “Just to embarrass me.” And she said, “Honey, I don’t have to do anything to embarrass you. You do that well enough on your own.” And I said, “Give me that ladybug! I want it. A ladybug is good luck.” I grabbed her hand and she flicked off the ladybug and it flew away. I said, “I bet it’s your little pet.” And she said, “That’s right. It’s my magic bug.” And I said, “It’s my magic bug. It wanted to be in my hair.” And she said, “That’s because it misses being outside in the dirt.” And I slapped her and said, “My hair is very clean.” And so it went.

  But underneath all our banter was tension you could cut with a knife. It was the tension of two people who care about each other but have also driven each other nuts. It was floating there like a body that girls levitate at a sleep-over. You know, that game when you make someone lie on the floor and gather around her and chant that she’s getting lighter and lighter and suddenly you lift her way up and start screaming. So there I was with Terri and this levitated body was scarily floating there and we just ignored it and kept babbling at each other.

  Now I’m back home in my teeny little room and the wine is wearing off and the levitated body has drifted in here. It’s making me nervous. What if things don’t work out between us, now that I’ve gone and moved here? What will I do? But they have to. I can’t envision any other conclusion. I think my whole problem right now is that I haven’t eaten anything all day except for two of those appetizers that Terri made. I’m starting to feel weak and vulnerable. I can just hear my mother: “Shame on you! What kind of a person goes all day without eating? You’re just too lazy to get up off your fanny and walk to Benny’s Chili Bowl!” That’s what she calls Ben’s Chili Bowl, the famous eatery on U Street, which has served the likes of Bill Cosby and Denzel Washington. I think I do need to go to “Benny’s Chili Bowl” and get a chili dog. That will be like a tiger in my tank.

  I wonder if I’m hypoglycemic.

  Yesterday I decided to go to a monthly lesbian potluck that was advertised in the Blade. (Since I came out, I’ve gotten the impression that lesbians are obsessed with potlucks.) The potluck was on 17th Street, which is DC’s main gay strip, above a Greek restaurant. I walked over with my famous deviled eggs and the hostess, a stylish African-American woman named Dee, was sweetly enthusiastic when I presented them. Her place was impeccable, with tribal art on the walls, masks and small drums and primitive paintings, and her furniture was basic but nicely arranged and comfortable. The room, which contained fewer than a dozen women, was charged with that unnerving combination of anxiety and controlled lust/need that is more pronounced among women than among men and women. Lesbians are terrified to talk to one another, but when they do, they snap together like legos.

  The apartment was larger than it looked at first. When I walked into the kitchen, I noticed a cozy den off of it, and three women were in there, drinking and laughing loudly. Then I noticed this electric punch bowl on the kitchen counter with punch cascading into it. Lesbo functions are often BYOB or dry, but considering the demeanor of the three women, this punch was spiked. Charmed by our hostess’ generosity, I filled a class and shyly wandered into the den.

  An hour and three drinks later, the three laughing women were my best friends. I especially connected with Bette, a little busty blond firecracker who told us a hilarious coming-out story that involved her boyfriend discovering her and the family doctor in a compromised position on the doctor’s examining table. A tall, square-jawed Bostonian named Jean said she’d never been with a man and couldn’t even imagine it, and I said, “When I think of how many times I actually fucked them, I can’t even believe it,” and we were getting drunker and drunker and pretty soon we were screaming with laughter. A gorgeous brunette named Pia in her early thirties, whose sweetness seemed incongruous with her siren good looks, said that she had a girlfriend who went back to men and now she’s an Avon lady, and for some reason this struck us as funny too. Every once in a while, Dee came back and asked us if we needed anything, and even though we kept telling her we were fine with the vodka punch she brought in a plate of cheese and crackers and said, “Here, crazy ladies, try some solids,” and then she swished back out.

  After a while, Dee came back and said everyone else had left, and I suggested that we help clean up and she said, “Absolutely not. There’s not that much to do and I can deal with it tomorrow.” Then Bette suggested going down the street to a historic restaurant down the street that had a bar down in the cellar. Everyone including Dee was up for it, so the five of us traipsed down the street to this place and down some stone steps and burst into the bar like a street gang. Even Dee had a great time, although the rest of us were already loaded and she wasn’t, so she kind of exchanged looks with the bartender, as though to say, “I feel your pain.” We started ordering drinks and smoking Jean’s Virginia Slims, and we were yelling on top of one another and creating a commotion while the bald, macho-looking bartender served us with bartenderly forbearance. Bette insisted that we all go upstairs to see the stately old rooms (the restaurant was closed), and I imagined them filled with people in their 19th-century finery, the men in their vests and suspenders and the women in their dresses stiffened by petticoats, and I was ecstatic to be experiencing DC just as myself, Joanna Kane, who knows how to navigate through the world. I’ve always had friends. Even when I was a little kid that grown-ups didn’t like because I was a bit sullen, I got along with other kids, with whom I made up games like Wicked Spirits and Round the Mulberry Bush and tore through the neighborhood on a Murray bicycle. I even reluctantly conceded to playing “dolls” with my best friend Karen (who, incidentally, is still my best friend), and although I sneered that I hated dolls I got so involved in our play-acting that I would have to be torn away when Karen’s mom called us for dinner.

  Today Terri called and when I told her I’d been to

  the potluck, which she knew about but didn’t feel like going, she asked if I met anyone I would want to date. I was kind of hurt, and if I had any smarts I would have suggested that I had met someone, like the fetching Dee, for example. But I am a very bad liar, and in fact, I compulsively tell everybody everything. I used to be so close-mouthed and secretive, and then I came out and now I spew everything that pops into my head. But who cares that Terri knows what I did last night? It was still my thing, which had nothing to do with her. I feel as though my life in DC didn’t start when I went over to Terri’s. It started when I was sitting in that room drinking and laughing and just being me, the “me” that makes friends as easily as switching on a light. It’s always been that way. I may have been lonely over the years, but I’ve never been alone.

  I’ve been doing my field interviewing job for two weeks. I get paid to drive all over DC, blasting my radio and going to randomly selected addresses and interrogating people about their health. The supervisor, an obsessive middle-aged woman who thinks this health study is the salvation of humanity, is already singing my praises because I can slip into locked buildings with my charm and my unobtrusiveness and my middle-aged white femaleness, and I can get people to talk to me because I am a writer and know how to extract information from people, and I am a Jewish girl and don’t mind being kind of naggy about it.

  I drive around the city with emotions ripping through me, shifting constantly between excitement and nervousness and hope and embarrassment that I was such a damn fool to come here. This whole city reminds me of Terri— its power-tripping and preoccupation with “doing the right thing” and its political correctness overlying a kind of animal ruthlessness. And, like Terri, DC is physically impressive, although unlike her
, it is not sexy. DC is probably the least sexy city in the world. But I feel more sexually alive here than I have felt anywhere else. It’s ridiculous. Why couldn’t she have lived in New York or San Francisco or some more romantic city? Then this whole adventure might feel a little less bizarre.

  I only knew a sliver of DC before, the Northwest quadrant, where Terri and I live and which contains the white neighborhoods and the touristy areas like Dupont Circle and Georgetown and Embassy Row on Massachusetts Avenue. Tourists are led to believe that DC consists of Northwest DC and Capitol Hill, and the rest of the city is hidden away like a demented old aunt who might remove her bloomers in the middle of the book club meeting. But now that I’m a field worker I have gotten to know Northeast DC with its hodgepodge of shabby projects and duplex-lined streets and sprawling institutions that make it hard to navigate, and notorious Southeast DC with its gangs and guns and stately old homes, and Southwest DC on the riverfront with its blocky modern apartment buildings that make it look like Soviet Russia.

  I got mugged last night and it was all my fault. I was standing on Bladensburg Road in this Northeast slum called Trinidad, trying to figure out where this street was, and a derelict sauntered up to me and offered to help, and instead of losing him like a sensible person I started to blither at him about looking for this street, and all of a sudden he pointed a pocket knife at me and demanded my money. I gave him ninety dollars, which I had withdrawn from the bank and forgot to leave at home, and he staggered away. The funny thing was that I wasn’t really scared of the mugger, but I was scared afterwards, of Terri finding out about it. In my humiliation and upset, I was sure she would judge me as harshly as I judged myself, that she would think I was stupid for walking around a slum with ninety dollars and then talking to a derelict as though he were my Aunt Bessie. I was afraid she would consider me a burden and withdraw from me. Of course, this isn’t true— most likely she would be very sympathetic— but I’m not going to tell her anyway. I know it’s ridiculous to be more scared of some woman who makes tapas for you when you come to her house than of a mugger with a knife. But when you really think about it, who is really more dangerous, a scrawny little mugger or someone you’re in love with? I rest my case.

  Yesterday was Friday and Terri invited me to an evening movie at the Uptown Theater in Cleveland Park. It was the first time we ever went to the movies together and it felt so datey, and I wore my green sweater and my high black shiny boots. I walked to her place, and when I showed up at her door she looked at the boots and said, “Ooh, baby, put me on my knees!” That gave me a rush, although I tried to be cool. The movie was this silly Stuart Little that she wanted to see, about a mouse that’s adopted by a human family, and I prefer hard-edged movies about gun-toting street children, but I enjoyed it because it took place in my beloved New York and this mouse ends up having all kinds of funky, back-alley adventures. During the movie, I couldn’t resist running my hands through her soft woolly hair, and I know she liked it because her face softened and she sat real still.

  Afterwards we went to a Vietnamese restaurant that has the most delicious summer rolls, and I ate everything to please her— the summer rolls, the spicy eggplant, and the bean curd with ginger sauce. She takes food very seriously and I always let her order when we eat out. She complains that I eat like a bird, but it’s not true; it’s just that sometimes when I’m with her I’m too nervous to eat. I’m too nervous to do anything properly. For example, during our meal I remarked that my chopsticks looked strange and Terri looked at them and pointed out that I was holding them upside-down. She laughed uproariously and even though I laughed too I was really furious at myself because she already has this image of me as some bumbling space cadet, which I’m not.

  While we were eating, she told me that her brother in Ohio told her he thought it took “guts” for me to move here. She was implying that her brother admired me for moving here in defiance of everyone, including her. I think she was fishing for some indication of how I still felt about her. I could have said, “Yeah it took guts, and I’m not through yet,” or something to indicate that I’m still sweet on her. But I just smiled and said, “Oh, really?” I suppose she doesn’t know if I’m still in love with her, and it bothers her. I’m propelled by my intuition, but she’s propelled by knowledge; without knowing something, she loses her bearings. Even though she thinks she’s already decided that I’m not “The One,” she would still want to know if I still love her. And how can she know, when I haven’t told her? I have this old habit of assuming people know how I feel because my feelings are so potent, roiling around inside of me. But in reality I’m harder to read than most people.

  We took the train back to Dupont Circle and I walked with her to her apartment, but then she said she was tired and she hoped I didn’t mind this time if she didn’t invite me in. The tentacles of pain started reaching for me. But then she kissed me goodbye on the mouth and the garlic on her breath caressed me like the first soft gust of spring. She said jauntily, “I’m glad you’re here, Knadel!” Then she grinned and turned and sauntered into her building. I walked home and got undressed and got into bed and I realized I was horny as hell. I snatched up my vibrator and tried to summon up my prison warden fantasy, but then Terri burst in and before I could stop her she was fucking me with her “lady luck” dildo, whispering obscenities in my ear. I have resolved to keep her out of my fantasies until I can have her again in reality, but last night there was nothing I could do— she just swaggered into my S&M scene and took over, bumping aside my beloved prison warden.

  But today I’m a little depressed because Terri didn’t invite me in last night. I keep thinking it’s because I held my chopsticks upside-down. It’s so ridiculous, but I keep thinking about it, and then I think that Terri is right to not want such a silly ass who obsesses about chopsticks, and then I go right back to thinking about it. Do most people have such ridiculous thoughts when they’re almost fifty years old? I know people do have ridiculous thoughts when they’re in love. But I’m wondering if I’m being even more ridiculous and obsessive than most people who are in love. Isn’t this what children do when they’re about thirteen? I didn’t. When I was thirteen, I was a tough little customer. “But I was so much older then … I’m younger than that now.” Dylan said that.

  I feel a bit sheepish to admit this, but it turns out that my rooming house does have characteristics of a deviant flophouse. Even though physically it’s clean and well-kept, the residents are all wacko. Of course, I have become friends with all of them. Like Willi says, I have no boundaries.

  I’ve started to wonder if even I am too normal for this place. Today I was lying on my bed reading when Johnny, a DC native with an outdated “fade” hairstyle and pant legs the size of laundry sacks burst into my room to complain about his boyfriend, Guillermo, a sweet, pockmarked Bolivian kid. He said Guillermo had gotten mixed up with a bunch of neighborhood thugs, and not only was he fucking them but he was running around with them on thieving expeditions, ripping off stores and then returning the items using homemade receipts. A minute later Guillermo burst in, yelling, “Joanna, don’t listen to him! Everything he says is a lie!” And then he yelled at Johnny, “Why are you telling Joanna about the receipts and making me look bad? Anyway, who was with us yesterday when we bought the chicken wings with money we got from taking back the porcelain pig?” I couldn’t get a word in edgewise because they kept screaming at each other and eventually they left, continuing their fight all the way down the hall.

  People seem to have sticky fingers around here, I guess because they’re all poor. If you put a sandwich in the fridge, it’s gone an hour later. A few days ago I found these two druggie-looking queens, who live in a room in the basement, rooting through the mail. I wondered who the hell would send them mail, but I just took my mail and went back upstairs, and then I left my room to go to work and I ran into Jerome, a strapping, coal-black sex worker whom I’ve become friendly with. He asked me if I wanted to share a pizz
a, and I said I had to go to work, and at that moment the seedy queens, Ginger and Calliope, came marching up the stairs with a Pizza Hut box, followed by Donald, a rotund tenant who works in a men’s clothing store. Donald was screaming, “I know you stole my credit card from the mail to order that damn pizza. And y’all didn’t even have the decency to offer me any!” I just pushed past them and went downstairs.

  When I came home from work, I paid Jerome a visit and found him cooing at someone over the phone, in a buttery, Barry White voice, that he’s going to “split their tender peaches” and “curl their toes.” He smiled at me when I walked in and made his date and got off the phone. I said, “Did you all order pizza with Donald’s credit card that Ginger and Calliope stole from the mail?” Jerome waved my question away and said, “Don’t worry about that faggot. He owed me some money anyway. Trust me.” Jerome is always saying, “Trust me.” Then he said, “I gave him back his damn credit card.”

  This place is teaming with nut cases. There are a couple of respectable working men here, like Donald, and Tomas, a courteous Brazilian attaché who stays in his room all the time, but it seems I have gotten more involved with the crazies. My most normal friend here is Russell, the house manager, who comes over every day, acting like a cross between a maid and a resident advisor, vacuuming and cluttering around in the kitchen and gossiping with all the tenants, many of whom he knows, shall we say, intimately.

  Leave it to me to become a den mother to a houseful of delinquents while every other middle-aged lesbo in this town is living in some house or apartment by herself or with a girlfriend or nice tame roommate. I haven’t invited Terri over here yet, but I can’t put it off forever. God knows what she’ll think of my little haven. Maybe I can make everyone stay in their rooms when she comes. I’m just kidding. If she doesn’t like my new buddies, tough beans. It’s not as though she’s never done drugs or fucked her brains out or lived in a funky house. I’m sure she would say, “I’ve never stolen or smoked crack or prostituted myself,” in her snooty voice that I can’t stand. But then again, how can she not approve of an affordable rooming house for gay people?