No Church in the Wild Read online

  “Ha. My poor mother. I mean, there was a point where I sort of got settled with my sexual ‘orientation’…or lack thereof,” I grinned, “but at that point I wasn’t really in a relationship with a woman anymore, just crushes on friends, things like that.” She nodded. “Then last year something sort of… er… developed, with a friend of a friend. At that point I felt like it was unfair to her that I didn’t acknowledge what was happening to my family. So I told them – of course taking extra special care to explain that I wasn’t telling them I wanted to be with women exclusively, just that I was with them sometimes. And my mom was just super quiet until she eventually said ‘well I just want you to be happy’ – then I just did us both a favor and changed the subject.”

  She laughed, letting her jaw fall backward on her neck, eyes lighting with her smile. “I’m the same way, I mean, I date men, and I hadn’t really dated women ever – just sort of hooked up – until my last girlfriend that I left in DC. But of course, that had issues of its own…” she trailed off, and I balked at the ambiguity.

  “What, dating women?”

  “No, not… well she had no interest in men. She knew I did, or had, and she would always ask me, like ‘well if we break up would you keep dating women?’”

  “Ugh, that’s so unfair.”

  “I know!”

  “Like you can possibly know who’s going to attract you after. Except, of course, when you’re like me – well like us, I suppose – girls always feel like they fell short if they didn’t jerk you the rest of the way out of the closet.”

  “Exactly! I would always say, ‘I can’t tell you that. I don’t know that.’ And she would be hurt about it, like it meant something about her or how I felt about her. I could never explain to her that I wanted her and was with her because I wanted her, regardless of the fact that I still find men attractive. It was a serious problem, really. If I hadn’t moved, it might have kept us from working out.”

  At the time, I was so intoxicated by the fact that she identified with my sexuality that I didn’t bother to ponder the admission in her last statement. Instead, I proceeded to pour out every frustration I’d had with being “confused,” though of course I wasn’t confused at all, not anymore:

  “That’s the albatross of bisexuality. Straight people assume you’re really gay or you’re just in some sort of college experimentation loop you forgot to jump out of. Lesbians hate you because you like dick. We have no one to identify with. Well, except each other. I’m at the point where I really am only willing to get into something with a girl if she’s bi, cause otherwise it seems clear a chick will never understand me. I actually am cringing here having to use the word ‘bi,’ because I don’t really even believe in it. I’m more in the spectrum camp.”

  I braced myself for the long explanation of my historically-supported Grand Theory of Sexuality, in which there was no “straight” or “gay” or “bi” but only a set of pre-existing carnal attractions that we ignore or embrace according to our environment, with the necessary acknowledgement that she might grow bored with my preaching. I didn’t get to start.

  “I am too, it’s just… a Kinsey thing.”

  I think then I must have just stared blankly at her for a moment. Whatever we’d found we had in common before we hit this topic, it was a totally different feeling to have someone finish the sentence you were starting. Especially when you’d never had anyone do that before. Especially when that someone was smoking fucking hot. Slowly, I was wrapping my head around the possibility that someone would actually get it, get me, and be okay with it once she did. Someone smoking fucking hot.

  I stared silently for so long, I suppose, that she started to explain to me what the Kinsey scale was. I stopped her, laughing.

  “No, I… I’m familiar. I could probably rewrite his book and fill in blanks Kinsey himself wondered about. I preach the fucking Kinsey scale so much I think my friends are prepared to slap me in the face if they hear the word ‘Kinsey’ one more time.”

  She said “oh” in a manner that adequately communicated what she meant: “Then why exactly were you staring dumbfounded at me?”

  I answered as best I could, making an instantaneous decision to lay myself bare in this thing, whatever it was. I disliked vulnerability and refrained from sharing my real feelings most of the time. But, suddenly, I felt like this was actually, magically workable. I let the voices of friends, mentors, therapists, nightmares, and other nags ring anew in my head, telling me to open it up.

  “Honestly… I’m just a little taken aback. I’m not accustomed to meeting people who understand me, much less people who think the same way…” I looked down, already afraid of creating the opening, and began a retreat into a mumble, “I’m just trying to adjust.”

  “Do you wanna get out of here?”

  My eyes widened. That was more agreement than I was expecting.

  “I mean... ha… I mean do you wanna go somewhere and get a drink where we can sit and talk? It’s kinda cluttered in here…”

  Well, there’s something I don’t really hear straight men say. “Sure.”

  “I mean we don’t have to…”

  “No, I’m happy to, if you like…”

  When we stepped outside, she said, “I can’t believe that was so easy. I was thinking all day about how I was going to tell you I wasn’t straight.”

  “Talk about good news.”

  And so, we walked, picking up our conversation anew, trading stories about stalkers, weather, bicoastal moves, roommates and best friends, until we happened across a restaurant with a reasonably-sized, near-empty bar. We sat down and immediately found two bartenders attending to us. I ordered a Sazerac, she ordered a gimlet, but not for a while, because it was as though everytime we started to talk to each other there was more to say. Books, plays, exercise. I welcomed her to this City of tolerance, of freedom, of people who didn’t nudge up in one’s business… well, except in matters of collecting and expending taxes. She explained that she’d been kicked out of a cab on the East Coast because she and her ex were talking about their relationship. I laughed and explained that I knew several girls, myself among them, who had occasion once or twice to make out in a cab with another chick in San Francisco without consequence. She bemoaned that, after that incident, she had no hope of making out in a cab with the ex, and she hoped someone would help her give it a shot someday.

  “I’m sure you’ll get the chance. I, for one, would be thrilled to make out with you in a cab...”

  We sat turned mostly toward one another on the barstools, occasionally looking back toward one of the bartenders, who interjected relatively frequently, along with random dudes eager to compliment her jewelry, her shoes, her dress. A waiter approached us with a plate of the nightly special appetizer, which we started to turn down, only to see the bartender motion the waitress to confirm that he’d ordered it for us. We both said a quick “wow, thanks.” She turned back to me to find me smiling.

  “What?” she asked.

  I smiled in response to the realization that the entire bar had begun revolving around us as though I’d brought in Hollywood’s latest starlet. Our attempt to restart conversation was cut off again when the bartender placed two martini glasses full of an icy, minty-smelling concoction in front of us, gratis.

  I reached out to toast thinking here’s to celebrity. I’d been approached in a bar, sure, I’d even had a free drink thrown at me a time or two, but there was no part of me that doubted she was solely responsible for the parade of admirers that had suddenly picked up its pace. I found it most remarkable that the dismissed suitors looked thrilled to have conversed with her at all. Her short interludes with the bartender had him cackling like a hyena.

  I worked at charm, certainly. This was not the first bartender I’d made idle conversation with in order to acquire favors. But now I felt like a high school track athlete racing with an Olympian. I found myself growing more and more quiet as others broke into our conversation, letting h
er do the talking, listening carefully and studying her as she played them like violins.

  Nonetheless, she managed to pay enough attention to me that I felt like the most important person there, as I’m sure in hindsight all the other suitors had. And our conversation flowed more fluidly than our myriad refills of the minty magic.

  It must have been suddenly, though it did not seem abrupt, when she said, “There’s something else I have to tell you.”

  “Shoot.”

  “That night I met you, I also met this guy – he owns the bar, I think, and we’ve sort of been seeing each other these last couple of weeks. I mean, it’s not serious, and I don’t know if it’s gonna work out, but – well when I came to meet you I was thinking there were two things I absolutely had to disclose: that I was bi and this. But, I mean, even he’s like ‘uh are you sure you don’t need to, you know, experiment a little?’ Ha!”

  I digested that for a moment. Not ideal, certainly. Then again, as much fun as I was having, I’d only just met her. Before today I wasn’t sure I’d ever hear from her again. I’d handed my phone number to a boy a little more than a week ago on a dare from my friends, and had been exchanging flirty texts with him too, though admittedly not so much today. We’d been out twice already, and he was a perfectly nice boy who was admittedly hot, very hard and strong and classicly handsome, with lovely blue eyes and a thick build I was craving. But, still in college. Unfortunately, we didn’t have much to talk about. I had begun to suspect he was dating me for free history tutoring, and the second date had felt like work. I’d been debating what to do about that situation for a couple of days now. I told her all of this, unfiltered: “I understand… honestly, I’ve been seeing this guy recently...”

  Sitting there, four drinks in, I rationalized that it would be insane to go out with someone for the first time, not knowing whether she was even sexually attracted to you, having made yourself 100% available for a monogamous relationship. I wasn’t really even sold on monogamy. I noted my own excitement at the prospect of going out with her and leveraging her unintentional celebrity to score ourselves a hot threesome. Perhaps the best way to ease into this was to avoid exclusivity for a while, in any event. After all, I did fear the U-Haul.

  Old joke: What do lesbians bring on the second date? A U-Haul. Every gay, lesbian or bisexual in America’s probably heard it. “U-Haul” had become a shorthand for “the tendency among lesbians to rush headlong into a serious, committed relationship very soon after they begin dating someone.” I appeared to lack this tendency, consistently shying away from commitment. It appears I don’t have to fear she’ll become a lesbian stalker at all.

  While my mind spun in on itself my lips kept talking, “… I mean, he’s very sweet and a very good guy and very good looking but, well, I don’t think we’re getting married or anything.”

  She laughed, and I explained why. She explained the issues with hers, but pointed out that one of the issues was not the inability to get free drinks at his bar. Did I want to go? I realized sort of passively that an invite had come in among the texts she occasionally fielded. I ignored the fact that we were drinking free here, and said I’d go.

  It was not until things went downhill that it occurred to me that I had only recalled this conversation as a positive thing, as removing my obligation to commit, and entirely ignored the plain facts of what had just happened: if we were on a date, which the progress of the second half of the evening had suggested was the case, she had just suggested we continue our date by going to see the guy she was dating. At the time, I was simply having too much fun, becoming too intoxicated on free but nuclear cocktails and buoyant charm, to even perceive that that had happened.

  I was also too intoxicated to actually process that, as we went to this next location, my “date” was ending. I might have grown mopey over the revelation, adjusting to the fact that, to my chagrin, she wasn’t really trying to start something with me. Then, as we walked outside the restaurant, she whipped her arm behind me and slapped my ass, grabbing a handful when she made contact, and I couldn’t help but smile and laugh.

  “Whoa.”

  We both turned around to find the bartender, dumbfounded, standing behind us.

  “Uh… you… you uh, left your card. Inside.”

  “Oh, thanks!” she smiled at him, taking the card from his hand and brushing her arm against him, flirting relatively openly.

  A sheepish grin grew over his face. “Anytime.”

  And off we swayed, in search of cab. My memory fuzzes over this part of the evening, except I recall that during the ride in our cab she reached over and planted a kiss on me, not lingering long, but grabbing my hand and pushing it into her breast in the process. I remember drinking more free cocktails, plural, when we arrived at this guy’s bar, and having the same easy conversation we’d managed all night. I remember her asking if I wanted to get a ride home with her guy. I remember asking her whether that meant I didn’t get to make out with her again, and her saying yes, but me agreeing to the ride anyway. I remember him driving us home, me in the backseat reaching around the passenger side of the car to make contact with her arm.

  Then I remember waking up the next day with a bitch of a hangover, calling in sick to work, and languishing in bed until noon, again, struggling to handle work from a laptop in bed, talking myself out of sending the first text.

  She texted first, but getting together proved difficult as we rattled off our respective commitments for the week. Yet she was so responsive, almost adamant, that we meet up again. I got text message pictures of her in a hot dress, and I started to wonder if maybe, just maybe, there was something out there that would work for me. We settled upon a date certain over a week in advance, with a tentative date the day before. But, the day before, she responded to my texts without disclosing her location, until finally I just went home and learned from my phone that she had too. Oh well, we do have plans tomorrow. It was actually a little forward of me to try to go out the day before we’re supposed to go out. Chill out, Bacchus.

  The next afternoon, I texted to see when I should pick her up. We’d planned strip poker and a drinking location for the evening over the course of the week. It took over an hour for her to reply, and I read that she had a friend in town who’d just been through an awful breakup. They were going to have dinner. Can we meet up later? Nine/nine-thirty? Sure, no problem. Just let me know when you’re done.

  That gave me plenty of time to primp. I redid my eyeliner a couple of times, spent an hour on my hair, moisturized heavily. But I was ready at 8:50, just in case.

  The clock struck ten, and I tried to decide what to write. Should I scrap it and go out with my friend, reschedule with her? Should I wait? I’m already fancy, dumb to sit at home. At 10:20, she relieved me of the decision: She’s “so sorry” but this was uber-dramatic. She’d text in 20 minutes. At 11:30, I asked, “no go?”. At 11:50, she said, “I’m SO SORRY, this is taking forever, tell you about it tomorrow.”

  “So, we’re off?” Silence.

  I gambled, hoping it was not what it now seemed, and texted again, “I hope your friend is okay.”

  “Yeah, I’m really sorry. Talk to you tomorrow.”

  After midnight I’d finally begun to suspect what I should have suspected that afternoon. I tested her with another text:

  “Okay… but hopefully you know that if you’re not into it, you can just say that…” We are adults, after all. If she had cancelled earlier I could have had a big night with my peeps and maybe even used my made-up-ass-self for the greater good of my libido. Good lord, we’d been out once. Innuendo aside, there was no relationship at stake here, merely the potential for a relationship. And I felt consciousness jerking at my sleeve.

  “Aaaaaaargh. No it’s not that at all! Call you tomorrow.” Jerk, jerk, jerk.

  I only waited until five o’clock the next afternoon, with no word, before I admitted defeat. When Jackson came over unexpectedly at 6:30 to check on me, having learned via t
ext that I’d been stood up, I’d had two Bourbon and Ginger Ales, a beer, and a hefty joint. I didn’t know how to explain to him – or to myself – that her rejection was particularly poignant because I had to infer it from terms of endearment. I also didn’t know to explain to myself that she was merely Rosalind.

  Nothing makes one so vain as being told that one is a sinner.

  Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

  Oh, Foucault.

  I spent the next three weeks drinking six nights a week, stumbling around the City, trying desperately not to talk to anyone. This wasn’t normal, though my profession certainly motivated alcoholism. I felt a sudden imperative to disappear to another place, away from my fundamentally disappointing reality: what I wanted was an at once totally open and totally secure human, including security with respect to my sexuality, and such a person did not exist. I certainly was not totally open, nor totally secure. But I’d no idea what else I should be looking for, nor whether I was deserving of such an ideal. So I found every opportunity I could to drink heavily and neglect to think about it, although I could not avoid a full time workload to juggle with all the drinking so I still had to be a somewhat functional alcoholic.

  The bank had been setting up a deal in San Diego, a rather innocuous asset purchase for which the counterparty needed to be entertained. I’d volunteered, even though as deals went it wasn’t the most exhilarating, because I had a friend in San Diego I rather liked to see, and because I felt like being somewhere else, and because this world holds one very reliable, if temporary, source of comfort: the friend with benefits.

  In San Diego I knew I would find Jamal, stretched inches over six feet tall with Nordic angles stretching under Onyx skin, soft eyes, heavy muscles. I found myself especially attracted to such men, especially likely to pursue them. I found Jamal’s curiously apprehensive persona oddly endearing. We’d once done a school project together and in the process found ourselves enjoying copious dinners and conversations that ran far too deep for my comfort. He’d had a girlfriend, and I felt myself falling for him a little, and so I beat it back with all I had until all I saw when I looked at him was raw sex. Or so I told myself. When our project was finished we’d stayed friends, but the visits trailed off and eventually he was simply one of many of my classmates to find work outside the Bay Area, in an admittedly warmer climate.