I Came Out for This? (13 page)

August 2000

Terri said she and Dee have been “seeing each other” for a couple of weeks. Okay, fine. I'm perfectly okay with this. At least Dee is a worthy opponent. Most of the women Terri's dated since I've met her are total duds and I always think, Why on earth would she prefer
her
to
me
? She must consider me something that crawled out from under a rock. But Dee Williams is smart and attractive and classy and even someone
I
would date, so at least I'm not insulted that she's dating Dee even though I wish she were dating me instead.

Actually what bothers me most is that
I
had wanted to call Dee and hang out with her and now I can't because it will look as though I'm butting in.
I
was the one Dee was interested in originally. When we went out for drinks, we had a wonderful discussion about her child advocacy, and all Terri did was make little comments about the straps on her shoes and the way she ate olives. But now that I think about it, who's going to get the girl's attention, the one who expounds to her about intellectual matters or the one who leans over and murmurs, “You like to tease your olives before you swallow them, don't you?” I didn't
hear her say that, but Kimba did. She tried to warn me.

Maybe I should have listened to Kimba. But even if I did, what could I have done? Terri will always do what she wants to do. In fact, she will always most likely do the exact opposite of what I
want
her to do.

But I can't let it get to me. I just can't. Terri is probably just trying to make me jealous. Not that she doesn't like Dee. But how much can she like her? She doesn't even know her. She's just attracted to her at the moment. She's always attracted to the new and fresh. It's my fault for not acting soon enough. If I had called Dee, Terri would have stayed away. I'm so slow to act on things, and then I end up out in the cold while two people that
I
want to be with hook up with
each other
. Anyway, I want Terri to do as she pleases. I love her and I want her to be happy. Not that I want her to be happy with someone other than myself, but it's futile to go against the flow of things. This is all in the flow of things. So let it be, Joanna. Just let it be.

Maybe I should get some new shoes. That's what I need. I'm going to the mall right now. I'll go to PG Mall, because I can take the Metro and not have to change trains. I don't trust my driving right now. I feel kind of bummed out about this Dee thing. I said I wasn't, but I am. I'll feel better after I get some shoes. That's exactly what I need. These shoes are not sexy. They're clunky. Why didn't I notice it before? I hate these shoes. I can't believe I even bought them.

Next week is Terri's birthday, and I have planned a nice evening for us, at her place. We're going to order pizza and I'll bring a bottle of wonderful vintage wine that I bought when the two of us went to the Ohio Wine Festival years ago, which I've been saving for a special occasion. I bought her the most fetching glass figure of a woman holding a little torch. She can add it to her prized glass collection in her mother's china cabinet. We'll eat the pizza, drink the wine, and get cozy.

I'm assuming her thing with Dee isn't exactly going like gangbusters, or she would not have been so amenable to this plan when I proposed it. If she and Dee were still an item, wouldn't Terri want to spent her birthday with
her
? Kimba said that maybe Dee has a class that night, but I don't think that's the case. What
I
think is that Terri just wants to spend her birthday with me, and not with Dee. I'm going to use the occasion of her birthday to put my cards on the table. I'm going to tell her that I love her and that we could be very good together and that we should put all the craziness behind us and have a fresh start. I haven't actually done that
yet. I've just been whirling and whirling around her like a dervish. Or like a sputnik, as Tommy would say. I need to be an adult with her for once in my life. I
am
an adult, after all. Well, I used to be an adult. I don't know what the hell I am now. Try coming out when you're in your forties. It turns you into some kind of hybrid—part woman, part unrecognizable creature like one of those funny monsters that kids watch on TV that nobody can even identify because they've never seen anything like it.

September 2000

Terri's birthday celebration wasn't what I had hoped. In fact, it was dreadful beyond belief. I don't want to stop writing. I'm writing, writing, writing. I'm afraid of what will happen if I stop.

I wanted so badly to have a sweet, intimate evening with Terri on her birthday. I wanted it to be cathartic. Well, maybe it was cathartic, but it was cathartic the other way. When I was on my way to pick up the gourmet pizza, Terri called on my cell phone and said that she had “expanded” her birthday plans and invited Kimba, Linda, and Dee. (She didn't invite Bette, I think because she senses Bette's fierce protectiveness of me.) Terri sounded extremely nervous over the phone, I suppose thinking I would say, “Well then, fuck you, I'm not coming.” I was making my way through traffic, so I couldn't process the reality of what she was saying, which was that she didn't want to have an intimate evening with me because Dee was in her life. So instead of telling her what to do with these new birthday plans, I exclaimed, “That's great! We'll have fun!” I may as well have said, “Thank you, sir! May I have another?”

Dee hugged me gratefully when I walked into Terri's place, as though to say, “I so appreciate you're being a good sport about all this”. During the gathering Kimba, Linda, and I sat on Terri's living room floor, and Terri and Dee sat on the couch holding hands. The bitch obviously worked some kind of spell on Dee because she was glowing like one of those frisky, frolicking maidens in a museum painting. After a few minutes, Terri opened her presents—she's like a little kid with presents; she can't wait. When she opened my present, she pulled the glass figurine out of the box, looked at me and nodded, and said, “Thank you, Knadel.” When she opened Dee's present, which was a watch, she looked into Dee's eyes and kissed her. Kimba and Linda were sitting there the whole evening, looking uncomfortable and feeling sorry for me. I sat there like a statue the whole night except when I got up a couple of times to get pizza and go to the bathroom. I tried to be pleasant and in the spirit of a birthday party, but I drew the line at eating the chocolate cake Dee made with an orange happy face, which was making me sick just to look at it. I politely declined when Dee offered me a slice and Terri looked at me sharply; the woman doesn't miss a thing.

Around nine o'clock, Terri started making a big show of carting the dishes to the kitchen. Linda said, “Is this a hint for us to leave?” and Terri said emphatically, “It's about that time.” She was referring to all of us but Dee, who, when we were leaving, stood at the door next to Terri, kissing everyone goodbye like the lady of the house. I kissed her warmly like the fake that I am and I hugged Terri, who hugged me back stiffly. I walked to the Metro
with Kimba, who chattered away about the full moon and something about some of the planets being more visible than in the last million years; one thing about Kimba is that she never asks me if I'm upset. She waits for me to bring it up. But I didn't want to talk about it. I'm dealing with it on my own. I'm fine. I'm perfectly all right.

This thing with Dee won't last long. Terri's little relationships never last very long. Believe me, she won't be spending her next birthday with Dee. She'll be spending it with—well, maybe not me, but with someone else. I don't give a shit who she spends it with. I don't care if she ever has a birthday again.

That's a terrible thing to say. I didn't mean it. Well, I did mean it. I feel bad meaning it. I hate hating her. I hate hating anyone. I definitely don't hate Dee. I just feel like such a jackass, like I missed some kind of opportunity with her, even though I love stupid Terri. I feel like a ninny. Why couldn't I have called Dee the day after we met for drinks? Terri makes moves and I just sit on my ass and write in this pathetic diary that will probably end just as Tommy and I humorously predicted, with me running naked down Connecticut Avenue, tearing out my hair, and ending up on a loony ward.

I'm going to stop writing because I have to go to work. It's Saturday and I need to work because people will be home. I need to stop this moping and kick into my work mode. It's not as though someone died or anything. Do you hear me, Joanna? Nobody
died
.

I just got back from work. It was the worst day of work that I've ever had. I couldn't get anyone to talk to me. The whole time I was out there, I was feeling like a rabbit about to be devoured by a lion—weak and shaky and terrified and doomed. This is ridiculous. I will not allow it to continue. I have
always
been able to function! Always! No matter what is happening in my life, I work. I write. I talk. I survive. I do not lose control. Even when I was a kid setting fires, I did it with the specific purpose of getting sent away so I could be rescued and also to cultivate an identity as a crazy kid. It's not in my nature to completely lose control. Dee Williams or no Dee Williams, I need to pull myself together.

If anyone had seen me today out in the field, they would have thought I was a mental case out practicing her “life skills.” The nightmare started in the Northeast ghetto of Trinidad. I went to a little house with an American flag and a man with a 60s-style Afro came out and I started talking to him in a teeny-weeny little voice, and he said, “I don't know what you want, Miss, but you ain't gettin' any,” and he slammed the door in my face. At the next
house a grandmother was standing there with two little kids and I started to squeak something about the study and she said, “I don't want to get into all that mess,” and shut the door. At the third house a young woman saw me through the screen door and she came over and said “I don't have time,” and I whimpered that I only needed a few minutes, but she was already walking away. I started to go into a panic and left Trinidad and drove across town to Cleveland Park. The rich people were even meaner than the ghetto people, and I started to lose it. One woman said, “You shouldn't go knocking on people's doors,” and I yelled, “That's the way the study is
designed
,” and she shut the door on me. I went to another house and a college-aged boy was walking out the door and started to answer questions on his porch, and then he interrupted the interview and looked at me and said, “You should go home and get some sleep.” Then he trotted off down the street, leaving me standing on his porch like an idiot. At that point I should have gone home, but I dragged over to a house with a mezuzah on it and banged on the door until a middle-aged man answered and he looked at me as though I were Hermann Goering and said “
Vut do you vant
?” and I started to tell him and he said “I'm sorry,” and shut the door, and I banged on it again until he opened it, and I started yelling that he lived in his own little world and he should realize that he was part of a community—I think I said “goddam community,” and that it was no skin off his nose to give me a couple minutes of his time. He said he was going to call the police and shut the door again, and I was too furious to go home, so I drove to a fancy building on Columbia
Road that I got kicked out of last week by this desk guard that thinks she's an army sergeant, and I marched into the ornate lobby and told her that I needed to talk to these people and if she didn't let me through I would wait outside for them to come home. She said, “I can't allow that,” but I ignored her and went to my car and hauled a beach chair out of my trunk and parked it in front of the building and sat on it, and I admit I looked foolish sitting in front of this luxury building in my little yellow beach chair, and in ten minutes the police came and I explained my business there and they said too bad, I couldn't sit out there. I said if it was any building other than “The Fucking Wyoming” they wouldn't even have bothered to come and they told me if I didn't leave immediately I would be under arrest and I picked up my beach chair and started to fold it and squeezed my finger in it and said, “Goddam son of a bitch!” and one of the cops said, “Watch your language, Miss” and I muttered, “Fuck you” and left.

I can't stand this. I have to do something. I know what I'll do. Tomorrow I'll go to Terri's and try to talk some sense into her. I know that sounds crazy. But I love her. We had such a nice time that night when we had sex in her living room in all those positions and then went to sleep in each other's arms. Why wouldn't she want to do it again? Not take Ecstasy again, but just spend some time together, making love and eating and drinking mimosas and cuddling and laughing and talking. I don't understand why she doesn't want to do that with me.

I didn't eat again today. I know that's bad.

(
You know it's bad? Of course it's bad! You are going to drop over from hunger! Do you want to end up in the hospital?

—
Oh please, mother. Please. I don't have time for this
.

Never mind you don't have time for it! What kind of a person goes all day without eating? How much weight have you lost?

—
Twelve pounds
.

Twelve pounds? You are wasting away to nothing. Nothing!
)

I can't help it. I can't eat. I keep picturing that chocolate cake with the orange happy face on it and I go to the bathroom and retch into the toilet. It's already happened three times today.