I Came Out for This? (6 page)

I was mortified. Even if Terri hadn't been there, it would have bothered me to see my friends eating at a mission for homeless people. It gave me a kind of instant snapshot of my life, a middle-aged woman with normal ambitions living in a house with bums. And then I was ashamed for feeling embarrassed. I am a devout egalitarian. Every untouchable in India is my brother or sister. Why should I give a shit that my financially challenged buddies took advantage of some free food? But I was thinking, please don't come up here for seconds. I was so
unnerved that I put a slice of cake on top of somebody's ham. Terri started laughing, then she looked at me and said, “What's the matter with you?” I said, “Nothing,” but then I saw the boys striding up to us with big grins, and Guillermo was yelling, “Joanna Banana! Joanna Banana!” There was a fourth guy with them, who looked like a prison escapee. I pulled myself together and thought, Come on, Joanna, these are your buddies. So I introduced them to Terri, and Jerome gave me a suggestive look and said, “Oh, so this is Terri,” and I jumped in brightly, “So what are you guys doing here?” and Jerome said, “We're having lunch. You should try the ham. It's as good as my aunt's.” And Guillermo said, “She doesn't eat ham, you dummy. She's Jewish.” I assured them that I did eat ham, but that I wasn't hungry. Terri said, “She eats like a bird,” and the guys went back to their table to gorge on cake.

After they left, Terri said, “So why are your friends eating at a mission?” That's how she is. She doesn't have an ounce of tact. I said, “I don't know.” And I really didn't. I didn't know if they were there because they were taking advantage of free food, or if they really didn't have enough money for groceries. I suppose it was a little bit of both. Terri said to me, “Doesn't Jerome work in a men's clothing store?” And I said, “No, that's Donald. Jerome is, uh, a sex worker.” She got that expressionless look that I hate, and I was afraid she was going to ask me next what Johnny and Guillermo did for a living. “Oh, they go on burglary raids.” But at least she spared me that. I wouldn't have told her that anyway. I would have said Johnny was a bartender and Guillermo worked at
Toys R Us, which is what they actually did do before they both got fired.

On our way out of the mission, Terri bumped into another volunteer, a woman she knew from her diversity training gigs, and she started gabbing with her. I didn't want to hang around waiting for her, so I said good-bye and left. And of course that nice mood I was in this morning when I woke up with the sun streaming through the windows is all shot to hell. I just can't seem to connect with Terri lately. Something always happens to screw it up. I know that if I had an ounce of self-confidence I would not be fazed by her going out with some drippy woman or seeing my house mates eating at a mission. I could handle it with my normal aplomb. But when I'm around Terri, I have no aplomb. That's the whole problem with my being in love. I just can't carry it off.

I called Terri today to see if she would exhibit an attitude after she learned that I lived with a bunch of street people, and my fears were realized when she used
that
voice with me. She has two voices, the super-interested one and the preoccupied one. She was using the preoccupied one. I could have told her that I was just diagnosed with terminal cancer and she would have used the same tone, asking me what treatment had been prescribed and how long I had to live. She just goes through the motions of the conversation. I timidly asked her if she wanted to go out for sushi with me tonight, and she said she had “plans.” I said, “With whom? With that woman who doesn't know if she's a lesbian?”

“That's the one,” Terri said.

“Are you going to try to help her with her little problem?” I asked.

“I don't know,” Terri said.

“What do you mean, you don't know?” I said loudly. “She sounds like an idiot.”

Terri got pissed. “She's not an idiot,” she said. “You didn't come out until you were forty-five. Were you an idiot?”

“Yes, I was,” I said. “I was a total idiot. I curse every goddam day I didn't come out. If this woman is hiding the fact that she's gay, she is an idiot. She's destroying her whole life so that people will like her.”

“You don't know anything about her,” Terri said. “You're just projecting.”

“I am not,” I said. I couldn't believe how infantile I was being.

Terri steered the conversation to a less volatile subject and started telling me about getting her furnace serviced and how the guy did something to it and then she had to have some other guy come and fix it, but her conversational maneuver had the effect of pissing me off more because it seemed as though she cared more about her stupid-ass furnace than she cared about me. When she noticed that I wasn't responding to anything she was saying, she stopped talking and we said goodbye to each other and hung up.

And now I've spent the past six hours since our conversation hating myself for losing my composure over the phone and obsessing over whether or not Terri will try to help what's-her-name decide whether or not she's gay. I'm lying in bed, twisting it around in my mind, over and over. If I
had
been diagnosed with terminal cancer, at least I wouldn't feel
stupid
about being so obsessed. For God's sake, doesn't Terri have a right to go out with someone other than myself? It's not as though she's even had sex with her. Maybe she never will. She doesn't fuck every damn woman she has dinner with. She went out with that one woman who, she said, had breath that smelled “vaguely radioactive” and she never fucked her.

I have to stop writing. I have to throw up. It's because of that leftover samosa I ate after I talked to Terri. I should never eat samosas when I'm upset, especially from greasy-spoon Pakistani carry-outs. Very smart, Joanna.

Terri called today and invited me to dinner, and I drove over there with my bottle of wine, all frisky and full of hope. It's been a week since that creepy phone conversation, and I figured she'd probably gotten bored with what's-her-name and had decided that being with me was a lot more fun. I wore my black jeans, a green silk shirt, and some short leather boots, and Terri answered the door in baggy jeans, an old tee shirt that said “Caribbean cool,” and slippers. But she somewhat compensated for her attire by serving a fantastic meal of grilled salmon, mixed vegetables, and wild rice from scratch. She even made the dessert, two little coconut tarts, and she opened a nice bottle of French wine. She's a fabulous cook. During dinner, we steered clear of sensitive subjects and talked about Willi, our mutual friend from Cleveland who had introduced us to each other, and then Terri told me about her landscaping plans for her backyard.

After we polished off the wine, I thought it would be nice to cozy up on the couch, but instead Terri ushered me into her office and fired up her computer and started
telling me about all the women she was meeting in this chat room called the “pink palace.” At first, I thought, “Well, she must not be all that excited about the publicity agent if she's going online to meet women,” but then she started showing me photographs of these women she was meeting and I started getting depressed. I tried to be polite about the photos and said, “Oh, she's cute” about the first one and “Pretty hot” about the second one, but when she showed me a third one of some redhead I snapped, “She is dreadful. I don't know how you can even look at her.” The woman really wasn't that bad, but I was so furious that it just slipped out. Terri got rid of her, but then, not taking the hint that I wasn't exactly having the time of my life, she started telling me about this Montana housewife named “Darla” that she was having cyber sex with. For God's sake. But did I have the good sense to say, “You know what? I really don't want to do this.” No! I just stood there and pretended to be interested. (When I went home, I called Karen in Cleveland and she said, “You should have just gone home at that point.” Duh.)

It gets worse. Terri sat me down in her chair and logged onto this other chat room and instructed me to join the conversation. I hate chat rooms and had no interest in doing this, especially since I was with
her
, but I went along with it. I wrote in “Werm” as an alias, which is Tommy's nickname for me, and Terri said “Knadel, do you really want ‘Werm' to be the name you use to meet girls?” I didn't want to use Knadel, so I settled for “Peeps,” my younger sister's name for me. Terri told me how to jump into a conversation, and I inserted myself
into some puerile conversation about toenail polish (they must all have been femmes), and I started getting bored, having nothing to say about toenail polish, but then Terri said, “If you want to talk to any of them individually, you can arrange a private conversation,” so I selected a woman called BonBon, who was the only one of the group who said she didn't wear toenail polish, and asked her if she wanted to talk privately. She said okay, and we went into the private room and I tried to flirt with her, but my flirting went over like a lead balloon, and after about one minute she wrote, “Uh, Peeps? I'm really not into continuing this.” And then she left. Fortunately, Terri was in the bathroom at that moment and was not a witness to my rejection by BonBon.

When I was getting ready to go home, I said to Terri, “So how is that— uh—
person
you were going out with?” Terri smirked and said, “If you're talking about Sandra, we're going to a movie on Sunday.” I said, “Oh, how nice,” and Terri said reassuringly, “I haven't slept with her yet.” But then, when I tried to kiss her good-bye on the lips, she turned her lips away and gave me her cheek. Fuck her.

I was so distraught after I left that I started to walk home before remembering that I had taken my car. The evening started so nicely and ended up with a big thud. She hasn't slept with her “yet”? That's a big fat comfort. I love the bitch but I really have to start meeting other women. The message of this evening is clear, even to me.

Jerome lit a match under me today. I was lying in bed this afternoon, staring at the ceiling, and he strolled into my room, asking to borrow ten bucks and a winter scarf. (The sky dumped a couple feet of snow on the city over the weekend.) I told him to stay awhile and he lounged across my little bed with his big back against the wall and his big feet on the floor and I told him about my aggravating night with Terri, and he said, “I keep tellin' you, she's a player. It's time to toss this one out and shop for a fresh head of cabbage.” I burst out laughing and said, “I wouldn't even know what to do with a fresh head of cabbage,” and Jerome replied in his Barry White baritone, “I'll tell you what you do with it. You nibble it leaf by leaf until you get to the meat and then you plunge in for the kill.”

After Jerome left with my scarf and 10 bucks (neither of which I will get back), I snatched the
Washington Blade
up off the floor and started looking through the personal ads. Lesbian personal ads infuriate me. I wish that just one of these bitches would run an ad that says, “Come with your drama,” “Baggage welcome,” and “Me:
a fucked-up neurotic mess. You: Not ready for relationship because you're still all hung-up on your last one.” Instead they all say, “No drama,” “No baggage,” and that kind of stuff. It's okay for
them
to have baggage and drama, but you can't. Fortunately there were a few ads that sounded okay, and I answered them using the 900 number.

I don't know if I'm ready to go out with other women. I'll probably just end up being
friends
with them. It's typical of me, to end up as everyone's good buddy. That's even what Terri wants me to be. Fuck all that. I'm
sick and tired
of being everyone's buddy and having nobody to rock my boat at night. What do I look like, one of those Sesame Street fuzzballs? I have a libido too, for God's sake. Friends are not the staples of your life, like meat and potatoes and vegetables. They're more like cereal. If you try to subsist on Cheerios and Raisin Bran and Special K all day long, year after year, eventually you start to feel hollow and empty, and everyone keeps telling you how
lucky
you are to have all these different cereals, and how
good
you are at keeping yourself stocked in cereals, and one day you realize that you're completely malnourished while they're sitting around fat and happy from dining on prime rib every night or, as Jerome would have it, stuffed cabbage.

But it was my fault. I took the path of least resistance. I'm good with friendships. My favorite thing to do is get together with my friends and talk for hours. I always want to know what's going on with them and I'm a fantastic listener. On the other hand, I was never able to succeed at romance, for obvious reasons. I went on all these dates
with men and I couldn't figure out why I never looked forward to them. I hated opening my closet and trying to decide what to wear. I didn't give a shit what I wore. I always wished I could just get into bed and forget the whole thing.

I'll never forget looking in my closet to decide what to wear for my first date with Terri. I could live in that moment forever.

I am utterly hopeless.

I made a date with a woman who ran one of the ads. We didn't talk long, but I liked her lush, gentle, African-American voice, and she liked that I was a writer and I liked that she was an advocate for troubled kids, and we arranged to meet at the Persian restaurant on 18
^th
Street. The next evening, I walked over there at our agreed-upon time and found Dee Williams, the hostess of our potluck, sitting at a candle-lit table. This is an example of what gay women are always talking about. It's a small community. (Actually, they always say it's an “incestuous” community, but I haven't experienced that, as yet.)