I Came Out for This? (17 page)

The two of us charged through the neighborhood, buying all kinds of stuff. I usually hate shopping, but Kimba is so excited about it that it's infectious. She had me darting around in these old ugly discount stores, yelling, “Look at this!” and “Look at that!” I bought some crazy socks for myself, and then I saw a horrible giant Santa Claus and told Kimba I was going to buy it for her yard, and she hit me on the head with a plastic Jesus. The Latina lady behind the counter saw and was not amused.

After we shopped, Kimba treated me to lunch at Polly's
on U Street to thank me for going with her. When we were waiting for our food, I looked at her and grinned, and she said, “What are you lookin' at?” and I said, “I'm lookin' at you.” The girl is adorable. But I'm “not going there,” to use the latest pop expression. I've been in too much trouble already.

I went to see Dr. Bobb today in a snow storm. Dr. Bobb is my Jamaican savior even though he's probably clinically insane.

I drove to Dr. Bobb's office in a Zoloft haze. Usually I love driving in a snowfall, but today the flying flakes just thickened the haze. Now that the Zoloft has done its job and I'm no longer hysterical, it's making me feel dead. Driving to Dr. Bobb's, nothing mattered—my friends, my job, my writing. I thought about Kimba and how much fun I have with her and that drew a blank too. Naturally the Howard University Hospital parking lot hadn't been plowed, and I cursed this city that's as incompetent with snow as it is with everything else. One thing about goofy Cleveland, when it snows, they're on it.

Dr. Bobb looked dapper in his winter-white suit and navy shirt and yellow and navy and red tie. He gave me a sunny Jamaican smile, and a little bit of the haze lifted, and I sat down and started screaming about my life. I told him I felt dead, dead, dead. I said that I had been dead my whole life and didn't even know it. I said straight people killed me and put me in deep-freeze, and that they
were ignoramuses, thick-skulled morons who think gay people choose to be gay, and that I never would have put up with that idiot Terri's crap if I had any idea how to get over someone, but I never learned because I was deprived of a romantic life because of straight society's sick homophobic tyranny. I continued to rant and Dr. Bobb listened with a little smile on his face.

“I realize now I was
normal
when they put me in a loony bin!” I shrieked. “There was nothing wrong with me. What else do you do when you're fourteen years old with raging hormones and the objects of your affection are
verboten
, except act nutty? Diane Anderson at camp was
verboten
! My cousin Deborah in New York was
verboten
! When I went to visit Deborah and my aunt and uncle in Queens during my summer vacation, my aunt Goldie tried to get me together with this loser next door named Barry Moscowitz that had no friends. His mother used to pick him up from school and take him out to lunch because he had nobody to eat with in the cafeteria. So I should go to the movies with this pathetic Barry Moscowitz instead of going out shopping with my gorgeous cousin, who was five years older and sophisticated and who I adored. I mean, Fuck that. And I did it! That's the kicker! I went to the movies with him and he had terrible B.O., and instead of saying I wanted to leave I sat there and breathed in his stench through the whole damn movie.
I
was protecting
him
! What was wrong with me? And then I didn't even say anything to anyone about his B.O. because I was too nice! Everything all my life was about everyone else but me. Nothing was ever about me!”

And Dr. Bobb said, “That's the god's truth, mon. Nothing is ever about you. In this life, the wolves eat the sheep. And when you're young and tender, the wolves can eat you alive.”

“But my aunt wasn't a wolf,” I said, feeling guilty for complaining about my dead aunt. “She was just trying to show me a good time. She thought it would be nice for me to go out with a boy, even if it was Barry Moscowitz.”

“Your aunt was also a sheep, doing the wolves' bidding,” said Dr. Bobb. “All those idiots who set the standards for how to live, the sick standards, they are the wolves. We do their bidding while they sit around us and howl.”

“Well, they can all go to hell,” I said. “They are so clueless. How dare they think that the way
they
are is the only way to be? How dare they rip out my essence and turn me into a sheep? You're right, Dr. Bobb! I was just like one of those wooden sheep in a carnival game, jumping over a fence.”

“I as well!” Dr. Bobb said, rearing up in his seat, flame shooting from his eyes. “I was forced to do everything I didn't want to do in Jamaica. I wanted to read, they made me play ball. I wanted to play chess, they made me sell vegetables. The children in my village beat me up every day of my life and my daddy said I deserved it because I was such a sissy. And I wasn't even gay! You know what they told me when I fell for the most beautiful girl in the city? My father and my uncles laughed and said it was like an orangutan trying to catch a butterfly. Well, I caught her all right. And then I was the one who could laugh. I laughed them right out of the deed to our property.”

“What are you talking about?” I said. “You took their land away?”

“That's right,” Dr. Bobb said with a mysterious smile.

“How did you do that?”

“I did it with the use of subterfuge and a very clever attorney. If you look hard enough, you can usually find a loophole to slip into.”

“But wasn't it wrong to take their land?” I said.

“No, it wasn't!” he said, slightly popping out of his seat. “You see, Joanna, this is what I try to teach you!” He pointed a finger at me like a charismatic preacher at a tent revival. “This is what I am trying to impress on you! In this life, you have to become a little bit of a wolf.”

I told Dr. Bobb the Zoloft had become ineffectual. He said to cut the dose in half and gradually wean myself off. “You're right,” he said. “It's better to kick the wall than let the wall kick you.”

Whatever the hell that means. I drove home scared out of my mind, realizing that my therapist was a maniac. But then something strange happened. I realized I no longer felt dead. Primal energy oozed through me and a metallic taste of blood eked into my mouth. I thought, “I'll be damned.” I howled, “Awooo!” over the steering wheel. And then I howled again. And again. All the way home. And when I walked into the house, I was laughing.

I'm crazier now than when I first came running to DC out of my mind over what's-her-name. I'm offending other lesbians and acting inappropriate with Kimba, and I'm sure the world hasn't seen the worst of it.

Yesterday the potluck group met for a holiday fete at an Adams-Morgan bar, and a few of us were sitting in a conversation nook around a pool table, watching Kimba and another woman play. A beefy, gray-haired woman mentioned that her friend was in Howard University Hospital because of an irregular heartbeat, and I said I had just been there because I had been rejected by this woman and was so upset that I crashed into a fireplug. The beefy woman said, “Well, it's standard procedure to keep you in the hospital after a suicide attempt.”

“It wasn't a suicide attempt,” I said irritably. “It was carelessness. I was just upset and shouldn't have been driving, and I swerved to avoid a pedestrian and ran into the pole.”

Another woman, with a hollow, sunken face, said, “Well, still, they needed to keep an eye on you for a while.”

“They needed to keep an eye on me because I had a
concussion
!” I said. “And
broken ribs
. That's why I was in the hospital. Because I had
physical injuries
.”

The two women gave each other knowing looks. I was starting to foam at the mouth but still trying to exercise control. “Why are you guys
looking at each other
like that?” I said. And the gray-haired one said, “We're not guys.”

“I am from up north, from the Midwest, and I say ‘guys,'” I said. “Where I'm from, ‘guys' does not mean ‘men.' It's like saying, ‘You all.'”

Bette jumped in. “She's right,” she said. “You shouldn't take offense at that. It's very hard for northerners to say ‘Y'all' or ‘you all' for the second person plural. It doesn't come naturally to them.

I said, “Really! What's wrong with ‘you guys'? Jesus!” I slammed my drink down on the table and went to the bathroom and kicked the wall, just like Dr. Bobb said I should do. Then I stalked back out and plopped back down on the couch. The hollow-faced woman jerked her eyes back and forth at me like I was a rabid dog and the gray-haired woman said, “Why are you so angry?”

“Why am I angry?” I shouted. “I have a right to be angry! I have recently discovered that my whole damn life has been a sham. I wasted forty years of my life trying to be what other people wanted me to be, and now I have
nothing
. I have no money, no career, no family, no life. The fucking bitch that I loved with my whole heart and soul hasn't the faintest interest in me and I
MOVED HERE
because of her. I'm going to murder her with an ax! And I happen to know that you two women have equally appalling
stories. All gay people do, especially gay people of our generation, because we grew up in a time when who we were, our very essence, was considered equivalent to puke and dirt and scum!” Then I lost my head of steam and got sheepish. I really don't like fighting with people. “Maybe I shouldn't have cut down on my Zoloft,” I said to Bette.

Kimba, who was playing pool, said over her shoulder, “No, maybe you shouldn't have.”

Bette said, “Oh, please. That's the problem with this whole community. We don't allow ourselves to feel our feelings. I'm sick of it. I grew up in a crazy WASP household with an alcoholic, abusive father and we weren't supposed to talk about it, ever. I spent my whole life learning to express myself honestly and to stop worrying about what everybody thinks. I think you're all being very unfair to Joanna.”

“Don't you guys—excuse me, you
all
—ever get pissed off about all the crap you took over being gay?” I asked Gray Hair.

“No,” she barked. “My life is my own responsibility and I don't blame other people for my problems.”

“Oh, really,” I said. “I'll bet you have irritable bowel syndrome.”

“Wrong,” she said.

“Well, what do you have?” I said. “You must have something.”

Kimba turned again after sinking a shot. “Put a lid on it!” she said.

“She needs to get it out,” said Bette.

“She needs to stop whining and carrying on,” said
Kimba. “This is a holiday party. No one wants to hear it.”

“I'll bet she's not as healthy as she claims,” I said, ignoring Kimba. “And
she
—” I said, pointing at the hollow-faced one “—
she
probably has—what's that thing everyone has now?” I turned to Bette.

“Fibromyalgia,” Bette said.

“Yeah,” I said. “Fibromyalgia,” I said. “From stuffing everything in.”

“You don't get fibromyalgia from that,” fumed the hollow-faced woman.

“But you have it, right?”

“Yes, I do have it, and it happens to be caused by environmental toxins.”

“Oh, God,” I said. I started looking at Kimba's ass as she leaned over the table. “Look at Kimba's ass,” I said. “It's cute as hell. Doesn't she have a cute ass, Bette?”

“She does,” Bette agreed. “It's adorable.”

“You have a cute ass too, honey,” I said. “Must be jelly, 'cause jam don't shake like that.”

“My mother used to say that!” Bette said.

“So did mine,” I said. “That's where I got it.”

My two tormenters left, and some other women came in, and before I had a chance to offend them Bette told me to go shoot pool with Kimba, who had taken over the table. Kimba said, “Are you going to behave?”

“I don't like behaving,” I said.

Of course, she wiped the table with me. I never shot pool until I became a lesbian and she's been doing it since she was twelve. But since I was drunk I shot a little better than usual. While we were playing, I heard Bette get into a discussion about how ridiculous the whole
lesbian community had become. “We used to be angry,” she said. “We were separatist. We were conscious of what had been done to us. Now we just eat and listen to Melissa Etheridge and shoot pool and talk about our cats and our mortgages and our stupid jobs. And we're all getting sick, stuffing back our feelings, forgetting what was done to us.”

“Oh, brother,” Kimba said.

“Look at Kimba's ass,” I said again.

I don't remember much of what happened after. Kimba drove me back home on her way home to Brookland and I do remember planting a lip lock on her before leaving the car. Today, when I woke up, I remembered the lip lock. I was kind of embarrassed because Kimba and I are just friends, but so what? I don't care what I do anymore. I'm a wild animal. It's better than being a robot, which is what I was back in the old days.

They think I'm made of money in this damn house.