My blogmomma and I conducted a lengthy e-mail conversation several days ago; in this innuendo-laden and semi-Joycean thread she and I managed to solve most of the world’s problems, cuss out all our acquaintance, and just generally lay down the law. As a final note, we remarked on the similarity of our turns of mind in a self-congratulatory sort of way, and I think my blogmother said something like, “too bad you and I could never get past that whole ick factor for being with another girl, otherwise, we’d be set for life!”
This brought to mind a story, and an uncomfortable pause in the flow of bits between her house and my luxurious Price-Is-Right theme-party double-wide ensued. After clearing my digital throat and relating just a piece of the narrative, Key demanded a Rugmunching Story. She being my blogmother, I feel obliged to oblige, although I fear that this particular yarn isn't all she's hoping.
There came a point in my life at which I would have given my right arm to be a lesbian. I was twenty years old, a mere sophomore in college, but living halcyon days, people. I worked in a popular nightclub, was earning excellent grades, and was in love, love, love, with Gluck, who went to another college some 70 miles away. We kept the roads (largely rural and mountainous) hot on the weekends, running back and forth between his school and mine. I’d been dating this Gluck boy since my senior year in high school, and I just knew we were destined for one another, meant to be, the Ultimate Item. Unfortunately, on Christmas Eve of that same sophomore year, kid Gluck decided to reveal to me that he’d been humping this acid-dealer chick that went to his school for three months, the same acid-dealer chick who had stolen some of my checks, cleaned out my bank account, and given both of us chlamydia. It was Gluck's express intention to pursue a relationship with this girl – who, incidentally, looked just like the female in the Muppet Show Band - regardless of the fact that she was a thief and a spreader of disease. He preferred her to me. We broke up with great tearing of hair and gnashing of teeth; my love story was shattered. World, rocked. Self-esteem, temporarily non-existent.
My misery knew no bounds. I would never, ever get over Gluck. I would never trust another man in the same room with my heart or my twat. I sealed up, like a clam – no pun intended – and just went celibate. Oh, I remember weeks of depression, dragging around campus with unwashed hair and rumpled clothes that probably reeked of reefer, weeks in which I could not so much as look a man in the face without feeling a rush of hatred; “yeah, you, asshole. I know you a dog!”
Now around this same time I became very active in a University Women’s Society; being the little naïf that I was, I did not realize that ”Women’s Union” was pre-metrosexualite code for Hotbed of Lesbulldaggas. I sashayed up in there flaunting lipstick, pearls, and a crushed ego – so much fresh meat for these tough, smart-mouthed, and self-assured ladies. I was ripe for it, really, once I realized the name of the game, because I really believed that I could just decide to walk the other side of the street - become a lesbian - and give up men altogether. Nasty little problem, solved. Right? Right??
I began scoping the women, trying to assess whom I might be attracted to if, you know, I decided to switch-hit. There was this one petite blonde named Sue that I really liked; I mean, she and I were compatible as friends, she was cute and she did herself well, and I believed that if the mood struck, I could be persuaded. Additionally, Sue professed to be bisexual, and something about the fact that she had been with guys as well as other women made me comfortable enough to say yes when she eventually asked me out.
We had a real live date. Sue and I drove to an intimate little Italian place on the square downtown, and gorged on breadsticks and huge salads and calzones. We washed down this conspicuous display of consumption with two bottles of el-cheapo chianti, switching over to longneck buds once the tab ran high. When the restaurant closed down, we stumbled down the street, arm in arm, to a sports bar, to watch the Braves play the Dodgers and drink more beer. Now, around this time your Queenie started to feeling just a touch woozy, so I ordered a large plate of cheese nachos with extra jalapenos, with the misguided hope that more food would give me a firmer base upon which to continue guzzling alcohol.
After about three more beers, Sue and I got in her car – buckle up for safety! – and drove back to her place. I think I knocked every picture in the house askew as I went through the place; I could barely walk straight and had a trajectory like a pinball’s. With no thought to anything remotely sexual, I started peeling off clothes and heading for the couch. I was trashed, and just assumed I'd crash on the couch.
“Where are you goin’?” Sue smiled at me, backlit by her bedroom light, golden hair standing out like a fuzzy aureole around her face. “You don’t have to pass out on the couch. Come on in here where it’s comfortable. I have a Queen,” she said, referring to the size of her mattress, and I, three sheets to it, distinctly remember trying to figure out what kind of Queenie joke she was making.
I pulled myself up off the plush depths of the couch and made my way into her room. I slid into bed with all the violence of a runner sliding home; it was all I could do to hit the downy target. As Sue turned off the light and slipped between the sheets next to me, I noted, in passing, that she was naked. I remember thinking, "surely she doesn't think we're going to screw. I can barely see," to myself, as she snuggled right up to me and began to caress my face and hair.
At this point I should say that we started making out, but I honestly can’t remember if I was enthusiastic or indifferent. All I can remember is a constant refrain of "I'm fixin' to do a chick...I'm fixin' to do a chick..." running through my head. Eyes closed, her mouth on mine, my breast to her breast, her hand sliding between my legs, the room spinning, and spinning, and spinning...and suddenly, Queenie doesn’t feel so good.
I sat bolt upright in bed. “What’s wrong?” asked Sue. I could not for the life of me have answered her; I had to keep my jaw deadbolted to stem the flow of gorge attempting to exit my stomach by way of my mouth. The alcohol, the nachos…everything was coming back on me – a full-reverse of the digestive tract. I stood up and out of her bed just in time to hit the wall across the room with a projectile stream, a cuvee of jalapeño bits, marinara sauce, and body-temperature Budweiser.
I lurched towards the bathroom, spewing chunks as I went. Around the corner and into the paradise of cool aqua tile – and braaaack! – I shot a gout of vomit into the bathtub. Finally, I reached the toilet. I went down, and there I clung for life, a buoy in the puke-ocean I’d created. Every time I closed my eyes I threw up. This went on for hours, and hours, and hours. Sue, meantime, passed out alone.
I spent the night on that tile floor. I spent the morning with a big bottle of Lysol, a mop, and my shame. Needless to say, Sue never asked me out again, and the Women’s Union was marked off – in big red Sharpie – as a bad place to troll for dates, since I probably had a rep there. Later, I reluctantly admitted to myself that making it with girls was not, for me, a viable long-term sexual solution; I went back to my self-righteously miserable celibacy.
My dating life went on for years, as hetero and vanilla as ever you please – but there was one other time, many years later, when I was living in Los Angeles, that I was to again find myself on the receiving end of some really bastard shit from a man and looking to get tail from a lady, to cure all my ills. After all, it wasn't Sue that made me vomit that fateful night, it was the liquor talking. Maybe I could be a lesbian, after all...
That, though, is another story for another night. What? You know it ended badly. Shame on you for reveling in my pain, you schadenfreude perv.
An addendum? There is one hidden irony in this short tale; remember the acid-dealer chick that Gluck dumped me for? She dumped him, years later, for a woman. After her release from a Women's Correctional Institution for possession with intent, she now manages a Johnny Rockets not twenty miles from here. Her partner is a welder. Gluck is working on his third marriage, this fourth child, and a commensurate number of child support and alimony payments.
Sometimes living well is the best revenge.
Posted by Queenie at December 3, 2004 11:45 PM