The Harm in Asking: My Clumsy Encounters with the Human Race (10 page)

And I replied, “Yes! Thank you! It
is
really hard!”

Janet was herself heterosexual, and she’d recently been broken up with by a guy who liked to skateboard. What Janet liked about me, I think, was that I was willing to listen as she obsessed about her breakup.

So I would listen.

And listen.

And listen.

In a different situation I might’ve had less patience, but as the incompetent roll-chucking busboy, I didn’t have much choice. I was desperate for a friend.

Janet and I would go out for drinks after work, and I’d sit and listen as she discussed various self-help platitudes: how it’s good to take the road less traveled, how everything happens for a reason.

My mood and energy level depending, I might try to get Janet off the subject of the guy who liked to skateboard, and onto the subject of how likable I was if only you took the time to get to know me. While I was occasionally successful, mostly I was not. Mostly, she’d ignore my attempts and stay on her own favored topics: how times of pain are times of growth, how it’s good to stay positive and be brave.

Janet and I drank mostly at dive bars. One night we were at a spot of such description when she chose to read aloud a poem.

“It’s called ‘Warning,’ ” she said, and unfolded the piece of paper onto which the poem had been transcribed. Then she started reading:

“When I am an old woman, I shall wear purple.”

The poem continued on in this vein, describing all the while the joie de vivre the author would embrace when she was older. The twist at the end was the valuable realization that maybe she, the author, could stand to implement some of that joie de vivre into her
current
life.
Now
. Do you get it? Before it was too late.

The poem had the overall effect of forcing me to consider how I, too, might be entitled to just a bit of joie de vivre, to just little bit more fun.

You
are
entitled
, I thought.
Sara Barron: You DESERVE it
.

That subtle pat to my own back felt really good, and prompted me to think I liked the poem.

“Wow,” I said. “Thank you. That was … great.”

“It
was
, right?”

“It
really
was.”

“I love how it teaches you to just, like, grab life by the balls, you know? I mean, here I am, young and single. It’s a wonderful adventure, in its way.”

I’d spent plenty of time young and single, and while there
were
occasional fireworks unique to the experience—flushing once a day; un-judged excessive scratching—I’d found it mostly dull. The thing was, though, Janet had just read aloud a poem in a dive bar. A conversation in which I mentioned phrases like “sad reality” or “fundamental solitude” didn’t strike me as wise or worthwhile.

“Being single
is
awesome,” I told her. “You’re going to love it. You’re going to grow.”

“Totally!” she said. “I feel so, like, hungry for new experience.”

I nodded along, mostly in rhythm to Dolly Parton’s “9 to 5,” which, for one reason or another, was blaring through the bar speakers.

And that’s when it happened.

Janet leaned in to kiss me.

I flatter myself to think this part of the story could titillate. On the off chance it does, though, I’d like to point out that, prior to this kiss, I’d eaten a gyro sandwich that caused bloating to the extreme, and that my zipper had therefore created a breath-stopping indentation in the flesh between my navel and pubic bone. Let me also point out that my general vicinity stank of seasoned meat.

Nonetheless, Janet told me I smelled “tasty.”

“You smell
tasty
,” she’d said.

“Really?” I said. “It’s that gyro sandwich, I guess. From Mamoun’s.”

In terms of the actual kiss, the fulfillment of this longstanding dream, all I can say, really, is that it was … pleasant. I’m sorry! I
am
sorry and I
do
wish I could provide a more exciting version of events. But that’s just as it was. Pleasant. The all-white chicken of the kissing world. More interesting than viscerally satisfying, I guess, and rather plagued by the problem of high expectations. But I committed nonetheless, and that was thanks largely to our fellow bar-goers. If you yourself are a young woman, and you plan, at some stage, to allow another young woman to have at your bottom lip like it’s a pacifier, allow me to recommend doing so in a male-dominated dive bar. The gents in attendance
will
encourage you to carry on.

“Oh, yeah,” they’ll say. “OOOOOOOOH, YEEEEE-AAAAAAH.”

Never before had I been made to feel so alluring, so attractive. Granted, these guys focused mostly on Janet—“Look at the little one! Dude!
Look at the little one!
”—but
in a scenario like this, one’s desirability has a spillover effect, and that was fine by me. I’m always of a mind to take what I can get.

SEVERAL WEEKS PASSED
during which Janet and I hung out and made out, mostly in dive bars. We were scared, I think, to test the true mettle of our physical attraction, to face what would be asked of us in private. Lady-wise—and despite Janet’s obvious attractiveness to the average, heterosexual male—I, personally, was not all that attracted to her. I certainly wasn’t repulsed. I wasn’t even
uninterested
. It’s just that I wasn’t
compelled
. How I felt about the actual, physical business with Janet, I’ve thought long and hard about how best to describe it, and the thing to say, I think, is that what I felt about Janet was similar to what I feel, currently, about olives.

I have both ordered and eaten olives for the length of my adult life, and yet I lack a clear sense of whether I actually
like
them. They’re always there, olives, always on the menu.

Oooh. Yes, I think, Olives would be tasty.

So then I go ahead and order the olives, and then the olives arrive, and then I eat the olives, and
every
time I do I think, I don’t
not
like you, olives. But neither are you
as
delish as I always think you’ll be.

The mechanics of making out with Janet were similar, and the fact of this kept us stationed in public, in various Greenwich Village dive bars, for the length of our romantic courtship. It lasted one whole month. Lacking pure desire, we needed some other effective motivation, and I was of the opinion that the continued attention from surrounding male bar-goers did an excellent, substitute job.

I also liked having a secret. I didn’t keep
Janet
a secret.
On the contrary, I debated buying a pocket-sized foghorn so that I could adequately advertise the news: HEAR YE, HEAR YE! I HAVE MADE OUT WITH A WOMAN. WHAT’S THAT? YES. I AM OPEN AND I’M WILD.

Between us, however, Janet and I said nothing about it. There was no “So: What’s all
this
about? Why did
we
start making out?” No discussion of how inexperienced we both were in these, the Sapphic arts. Our conversations were as they had always been: Janet would discuss how she liked being single, how happy it made her. I’d opt
not
to point out that rambling on about how happy you are serves only to convince the world you’re repressed and depressed, both. I’d just nod in agreement, maybe mention the ways in which my service skills had markedly improved. Then at a certain point, we’d kiss.

I found it weird—I
find
it weird—the lack of conversation to address the thing between us. But the weirdness lent an air of mystery to the proceedings, and the air of mystery lent it an air of excitement.

Well, show me something exciting, and I’ll show you something that’s ready to break.

JANET AND I
had been at it for two weeks, maybe three, when I noticed our routine had already gotten boring. I felt it internally myself and I knew that Janet felt it too. She’d gotten into this habit where, in the last seconds before a make-out, she would sigh.

And this was not a sexual sigh. This was a rallying energy sigh.

Perhaps I should have been offended, but I was not. I understood on a visceral level where Janet was coming from. The pressure we felt to kiss in public was now akin to the pressure one associates with having to floss.

I really ought to do this. But I do not want to do this
.

We were mere days away from ending it. Whatever
it
was.

But then: we did not.

Because then: we got a big shot of adrenaline.

ON TUESDAY, JANET
heard through the grapevine that the guy who liked to skateboard had gone and got himself a girlfriend.

On Wednesday, Janet barreled toward me at the start of the Wednesday-night shift.

“Look,” she said. “I’ve been thinking about it, and I think tonight’s our night.”

“For …?” I asked.

I saw a tremor in her hand. Inadvertently, it shook the powdered sugar off the doughnut she was holding.

“Us,”
Janet answered, “to, you know, skip the bar. I mean, I was thinking … you could … just … comehomewithmeinstead.”

It’s a jarring shift, from tipsy French kissing to sober conversation about implicit nakedness and oral sex. But grief caused by an ex-boyfriend who’s moved on, this must be managed swiftly and with a strong hand.

I understood that, and obliged.

“Oh,” I said. “Okay.”

“Really?” said Janet.

“Yes,” I said.

“Great,” she said. “Well, then. Right. I guess I’ll just … buy us a bottle of wine. We’ll drink it, and … just … see. We’ll just … see … what happens.”

The Pantaloon

Spring of my twenty-fifth year, my friends, and here is exactly what happened: Janet and I ran the bases. WE
RAN THE BASES. Never in my whole entire life have the minutes passed so slowly; imagine sprinting on a treadmill with a backpack filled with dumbbells, for that is the speed at which time passed as I tried to please my girlfriend Janet. It went on for … gosh. I don’t even know how long. How long are the minutes before you shit yourself in public? How long the minutes before he
finally
texts you back? Things went on for ages, is my point, until finally Janet delivered unto me the most disheartening tap to my shoulder I hope ever to receive. So I stopped. I looked up.

“That’s fine,” she said. “That’s … plenty.”

“Oh,” I said. I sat up.

“Do you …” asked Janet, “… want me to …?”

“No,” I said. “I’m good.”

I lack the self-esteem to be sexually demanding. My feelings on the matter go something like
I don’t want it if we have to talk about it
. I mean, I like to talk, but just not about, (a) other people’s vacations, or (b) what’s about to be done to me sexually.

Key word “about.”

HERE, I MUST
stress: It’s not that the
experience
was awful, it’s that
I
was awful
at
the experience. These sorts of oral extravaganzas in which we humans engage are occasionally pleasurable, but always ridiculous, and that’s under the best circumstances. Experiment on a person for whom you’re not biologically programmed, and Godspeed. Because you’ll need it. There’s no hope of those aspects that do occasionally make it better: getting lost in the moment, getting told you’re adept. Nothing so fortifying will occur. You’ll only be trapped and alone, plagued with the backbreaking sense you’re doing something at which you’re really—like,
really
—inept.

The Second Childhood

It was fall, now, of my twenty-fifth year. And was I “good,” really? Was I satisfied in the way I claimed to be when Janet asked? Maybe I was, since, well, they say failure isn’t the absence of success so much as it is the absence of having tried, at least once, to eat pussy. So I’d tried. I’d run the bases and struck out.

It was difficult, afterward, for Janet and me to look each other in the eye. We did force ourselves to hang out a few more times, but with everything sexual having happened between us, the tension was gone. There wasn’t much
there
there. Work became awkward, as you might expect, so thank god I was somewhat briskly fired. It was two weeks after my final encounter with Janet, and I’d been assigned a tableside fish fillet. However, I wound up accidentally stabbing the customer for whom I was doing the fillet
with
the fillet knife. It was just a little nip in the shoulder, really. Nonetheless, I lost my job.

After that, and despite the occasional text, I never saw Janet again.

MY REAL-LIFE LESBIAN
encounter had been a failure insofar as it had neither confirmed me as a lesbian nor made me feel adept in the art of experimentation. But rather than let this lack of success motivate me to try harder and better a second time, I chose to let it close a door.

Good-bye, gay, I thought. You were fun, and you were wild, but you were sadly not for me.

The closure felt good, in its way, but it also created a hole.

What would make me cool if not my inauthentic gayness?

And, well, I don’t mean to sound too sexual about it, but this hole was a big hole. This was a hole I’d need to fill.

Prominently displayed on my parents’ living-room mantel is my fifth-grade school photo. It’s terribly unflattering, but my mother insists on keeping it up.

“It’s not that you look cute,” she says. “It’s just that you look happy.”

This much is true. My smile demonstrates the sort of enthusiasm commonly associated with Mormons or Down syndrome. The waistband of my jeans is visible because the way I wore them at the time made it more of a nipple-band, really, than anything relating to a waist. As for my cheeks, they look fat enough to sit on.

Throughout my adolescence, I saw this version of myself more than any other. It left me with the overarching sense that I could stand for some roughening up. I didn’t
want an authentically challenging experience; I wanted a
veneer
of coolness, a lick of the mysterious about me.