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(This is the fourth and final part in a four-part series I unveiled in honor of my 100th blog post. Click here for the first post in the series, here for the second and here for the third. If you like me, pass me on! Share me with your friends. Post me to your Facebook page. And, as always, thanks for reading!)
In my senior year in college, after I came out to my mom, Tiffany was the second person I told I was gay. We were sitting in a Dunkin’ Donuts near Boston's theater district, waiting to go into a flamenco show.
“What if I kissed a girl?” I began, blowing into my hot chocolate.
I hadn’t kissed a girl yet, but I was ready to.
She looked at me.
“So what?” she said. “You’d have kissed a girl.”
“What if,” I continued. “I wanted to keep kissing girls?”
“Then you keep kissing girls,” she said, like it was the easiest thing in the world.
It turned out it wasn’t. A few months later, when Tiffany came out and we got up the courage to kiss each other, I was shaking like a leaf.
This is the part in our story where Tiffany says I was playing hard to get. Actually, I was terrified we might lose our friendship. I was so scared that I wasn’t willing to risk another kiss, even with a potential pay-off like love, which, of course, I’d never experienced. I refused to consider dating Tiffany and began to “play the field” after I moved to New York.
By playing the field, I mean I attended several gay and lesbian social events, including one humiliating evening of speed-dating, or, as it was called in New York, “date-bait.” Here’s how it worked:
A bunch of women crowded into a rented conference room with Costco cheeses and crackers. Everyone was assigned a number. You had two minutes to talk to a woman before the organizer blew a whistle and then you had to move on to the next woman. At the end of the night, you wrote down the number of the women with whom you wanted to exchange contact information. If you each wrote down each other’s number, you got contact information. If you wrote down someone’s number, but she didn’t write down yours, you got cheese and crackers.
The system broke down around number 16, a very attractive woman who knew she was very attractive and began to accumulate an audience as women refused to rotate from her vicinity. I, meanwhile, was stuck in front of a woman who looked to be at least 65 years old. She asked me if I liked theater.
“Yes,” I said politely. “I love it.”
“Well, I’m writing a play,” she said. “I have 20 cats, so it’s about cats.”
“I think I saw that one,” I said, trying to make a joke.
She didn’t laugh.
My field included bars too, even though I don’t drink. I took whichever friends I could drag with me, including Tiffany when she was in town. Once we were dancing and a girl turned around and bumped into me:
“BLEH,” she said, pretending to throw up on me.
I stared at her.
“I’m just kidding,” she yelled. “I’m not really going to throw up on you. Hi, I’m ___. Want to dance?”
“I can’t hear you!” I shouted, pulling Tiffany away to the other end of the dance floor.
After a few months, I realized there wasn’t anybody on the field even half as beautiful or real as Tiffany. One night we went out together and called it a date.
We haven’t looked back since.
And now you’re reading my blog.*
*And I hope you keep reading it! Just because the series is over, doesn't mean the blog is! Regular, random posts will continue, right here.
Rebequita, you were very lucky cause you ended with the sweetest and kindest person in the whole wild world. But Tiffanita was also very lucky, I think you are a very beautiful and intelligent girl. You are made for each other!
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