In the end, though, I shouldn't have worried. The girl who was my lab partner in biochemistry invited me to her dorm room for a study session, and pretty soon we were spending all of our free time together. When I wasn't with her, I wanted to be. When a professor said something ridiculous or sexist or hilarious, she was the first one I wanted to tell. One Saturday at a football game we shivered in the stands underneath a wool tartan blanket, passing a thermos of hot cocoa laced with Baileys back and forth. The score was close, and during one really important fourth down, she grabbed on to my hand, and even after the touchdown, she didn't let go. The first time she kissed me, I truly thought I'd had an aneurysm--my pulse was thundering so loud and my senses were exploding. This, I remember thinking, the only word I could hold on to in a sea of feelings.
After that, I could look back with twenty-twenty vision and see that I never had boundaries with my female friends. I wanted to see their baby pictures and listen to their favorite songs and fix my hair the same way they fixed theirs. I would hang up the phone and think of one more thing I had to say. I wouldn't have defined it as a physical attraction--it was more of an emotional attachment. I could never quite get enough, but I never let myself ask what "enough" really was.
Believe me, being gay is not a choice. No one would choose to make life harder than it has to be, and no matter how confident and comfortable a gay person is, he or she can't control the thoughts of others. I've had people move out of my row in a movie theater if they see me holding hands with a woman--apparently disgusted by our public display of affection when, one row behind us, a teenage couple is practically undressing each other. I've had the word DYKE written on my car in spray paint. I've had parents request that their child be moved to a different school counselor's jurisdiction, parents who, when asked for a reason why, say that my "educational philosophy" doesn't match theirs.
You can argue that it's a different world now than the one when Matthew Shepard was killed, but there is a subtle difference between tolerance and acceptance. It's the distance between moving into the cul-de-sac and having your next-door neighbor trust you to keep an eye on her preschool daughter for a few minutes while she runs out to the post office. It's the chasm between being invited to a colleague's wedding with your same-sex partner and being able to slow-dance without the other guests whispering.
I remember my mother telling me that, when she was a little girl in Catholic school, the nuns used to hit her left hand every time she wrote with it. Nowadays, if a teacher did that, she'd probably be arrested for child abuse. The optimist in me wants to believe sexuality will eventually become like handwriting: there's no right way and wrong way to do it. We're all just wired differently.
It's also worth noting that, when you meet someone, you never bother to ask if he's right-or left-handed.
After all: Does it really matter to anyone other than the person holding the pen?
The longest relationship I've ever had with a woman is with Rajasi, my hairdresser. Every four weeks I go to her to get my roots dyed blond and my hair trimmed into its shaggy pixie cut. But today Rajasi is furious and punctuating her sentences with angry snips of the scissors. "Um," I say, squinting at my bangs in the mirror. "Isn't that a little short?"
"An arranged marriage!" Rajasi says. "Can you believe it? We came here from India twenty years ago. We're as American as it comes. My parents eat at McDonald's once a week, for God's sake."
"Maybe if you told them--"
A hunk of hair flies past my eyes. "They had my boyfriend over for dinner last Friday," Rajasi huffs. "Did they honestly think I'd ditch the guy I've been dating for three years because some decrepit old Punjabi is willing to give them a bunch of chickens for a dowry?"
"Chickens?" I say. "Really?"
"I don't know. That's not the point." She is still cutting, lost in her rant. "Is it or is it not 2011?" Rajasi says. "Shouldn't I be allowed to marry whomever I want?"
"Honey," I reply, "you are preaching to the choir."
I live in Rhode Island, one of the only states in New England to not have recognized same-sex marriage. For this reason, couples who want to get hitched cross the border into Fall River, Massachusetts. It seems simple enough, but it actually creates a thicket of issues. I have friends, two gay men, who tied the knot in Massachusetts and then, five years later, split up. Their property and assets were all in Rhode Island, where they lived. But because their marriage was never legal in the state, they couldn't actually get divorced.
Rajasi stops. "And?" she says.
"And what?"
"Here I am going on about my love life when you haven't mentioned a single thing about yours . . ."
I laugh. "Rajasi, I have a better chance of hooking up with your Punjabi than anyone else right now. I think my romantic pool has gone bone-dry."
"You make it sound like you're sixty," Rajasi says. "Like you're going to sit home all weekend crocheting with a hundred cats."
"Don't be silly. Cats are much better at cross-stitching. Besides, I have big plans for the weekend. I'm headed to Boston to see a ballet."
"Isn't it supposed to snow?"
"Not enough to stop us from going," I say.
"Us," Rajasi repeats. "Do tell . . ."
"She's just a friend. We're celebrating her anniversary."
"Without her husband?"
"It's a divorce thing," I say. "I'm trying to get her through a rough spot."
Zoe and I had become pretty good friends in the weeks since our encounter at the Y. I must have called her first, since I was the one who had her home number. I was going to be picking up a painting from a frame shop near her house, and did she want to meet for lunch? Over deli sandwiches, we talked about the research she was doing on depression and music therapy; I told her about broaching the topic with Lucy's parents. The next weekend, she won two tickets to a movie preview on a radio giveaway, and asked me if I wanted to go. We began spending time together, and in that bizarre exponential way that new friendships seem to snowball, it grew hard to imagine a time when I didn't know her.
We've talked about how she found out about music therapy (as a kid, she broke her arm and needed a pin put in surgically, and there was a music therapist in the pediatrics wing of the hospital). We've talked about her mother (who calls Zoe three times a day, often to discuss something completely unnecessary, like last night's Anderson Cooper report or what day Christmas falls on three years from now). We've talked about Max, his drinking, and the rumor mill that now puts him at the right hand of the pastor of the Eternal Glory Church.
Here's what I hadn't expected about Zoe: she was funny. She had a way of looking at the world that was just off-kilter enough to surprise me into laughing:
If someone with multiple personality disorder tries to kill himself, is it attempted homicide?
Isn't it a little upsetting that doctors call what they do "practice"?
Why are you in a movie but on TV?
Isn't a smoking section in a restaurant a little like a peeing section in a pool?
We had a lot in common. We'd grown up in households with single parents (her father deceased, mine running off with his secretary); we had always wanted to travel and never had enough money to do it; we both were freaked out by clowns. We had a secret fascination with reality TV. We loved the smell of gasoline, hated the smell of bleach, and wished we knew how to use fondant, like pastry chefs. We preferred white wine to red, extreme cold to extreme heat, and Goobers to Raisinets. We both had no problem using a men's room at a public venue if the line for the ladies' room was too long.
Tomorrow would have been her tenth wedding anniversary, and I could tell she was dreading it. Zoe's mom, Dara, was away in San Diego this weekend at a life coaching conference, so I suggested that we do something Max would never in a million years have wanted to do. Immediately, Zoe picked the ballet at the Wang Theatre in Boston. It was Romeo and Juliet, Prokofiev. Max, she had told me, never could handle classical dance. If he wasn't remarking on t
he men's tights, he was fast asleep.
"Maybe that's what I should do," Rajasi muses. "Take this fool my parents are flying in to a place he'll absolutely detest." She glances up. "What would a Brahmin hate the most?"
"All-you-can-eat barbecue?" I suggest.
"A heavy metal rave."
Then we look at each other. "NASCAR," we say at the same time.
"Well, I'd better go," I say. "I'm supposed to pick Zoe up in fifteen minutes."
Rajasi pivots the hairdressing chair toward the mirror again and winces.
When your hairdresser winces, it's never good. My hair is so short that it sticks up in small, grasslike clumps on the top of my head. Rajasi opens her mouth, and I shoot a dagger look in her direction. "Don't you dare tell me it'll grow out . . ."
"I was going to say the good news is that the military look is in this spring . . ."
I rub my hands through my hair, trying to mess it up a little, not that it helps. "I would kill you," I say, "but I actually think you'll suffer more by being alive to meet the Punjabi guy."
"See? You're already starting to like this look. If you didn't, you'd be too busy crying to make jokes." She takes the money I hold out to her. "Be careful driving," Rajasi warns. "It's already starting to snow."
"A dusting," I say, waving good-bye. "No worries."
Another thing, it turns out, that we have in common: Romeo and Juliet. "It's always been my favorite Shakespeare play," Zoe says, once the company has taken its bows and she rejoins me in the sumptuous renovated lobby of the Wang Theatre after a trip to the restroom. "I always wanted a guy to walk up to me and start a conversation that naturally became a sonnet."
"Max didn't do that?" I ask, smiling.
She snorts. "Max thought a sonnet was something you ask for in the plumbing section of Home Depot."
"I once told the head of the English department at school that I liked Romeo and Juliet the best," I say, "and she told me I was a philistine."
"What! Why?"
"Because it's not as complex as King Lear or Hamlet, I guess."
"But it's dreamier. It's everyone's fantasy, right?"
"To die with your lover?"
Zoe laughs. "No. To die before you start making lists of all the things about him that drive you crazy."
"Yeah, imagine the sequel, if it had ended differently," I reply. "Romeo and Juliet are disowned by their families and move into a trailer park. Romeo grows a mullet and becomes addicted to online poker while Juliet has an affair with Friar Lawrence."
"Who, it turns out," Zoe adds, "runs a meth lab in his basement."
"Totally. Why else would he have known what drug to give her in the first place?" I loop my scarf around my neck as we brace ourselves to walk into the cold.
"Now what?" Zoe asks. "You think it's too late to grab dinner some . . ." Her voice trails off as we step outside. In the three hours we have been in the theater, the storm has thickened into a blizzard. I cannot see even a foot in front of me, the snow is whirling that fiercely. I start to step into the street, and my shoe sinks into nearly eight inches of accumulation.
"Wow," I say. "This sort of sucks."
"Maybe we should wait it out before driving home," Zoe replies.
A limo driver who's leaning against his vehicle glances over at us. "Settle in for a nice long wait, then, ladies," he says. "AccuWeather says we're getting two feet before this is all over."
"Sleepover," Zoe announces. "There are plenty of hotels around--"
"Which cost a fortune--"
"Not if we split the cost of a room." She shrugs. "Besides. That's what credit cards are for." She links her arm through mine and drags me into the wild breath of the storm. On the other side of the street is a CVS. "Toothbrushes, toothpaste, and I need to get some tampons," she says, as the sliding doors close behind us. "We can get nail polish, too, and curlers, and make each other up and stay up late and talk about boys . . ."
Not gonna happen, I think. But she is right--to drive home in this would be stupid, reckless.
"I have two words for you," she says, cajoling. "Room service."
I hesitate. "I pick the pay-per-view movie?"
"Deal." Zoe holds out her hand to shake.
There is no real reason for me to fight an impromptu hotel stay. I can afford the luxury of a room for one night, or at least justify it to myself. But all the same, as we check in and carry our CVS bags upstairs, my heart is racing. It's not that I've been dishonest to Zoe by not talking about my sexual orientation, but it hasn't exactly been a topic of discussion, either. Had she asked, I would have told her the truth. And just because I am a lesbian doesn't mean that I will ravish any female in close proximity, in spite of what homophobes think. Yet there's an extra wrinkle here: it would be ludicrous to think that a straight woman would not be able to maintain a platonic friendship with a man . . . and yet, if she found herself in this situation, she probably wouldn't be sharing a room with that male buddy.
When I told my mother, finally, that I was gay, the first thing she said was "But you're so pretty!" as if the two were mutually exclusive. Then she got quiet and went into the kitchen. A few minutes later she came back into the living room and sat down across from me. "When you go to the Y," she asked, "do you still use the ladies' locker room?"
"Of course I do," I said, exasperated. "I'm not a transsexual, Ma."
"But Vanessa," she asked, "when you're in there . . . do you peek?"
The answer, by the way, is no. I change in a stall, and I spend most of my time in there staring down at the floor. In fact, I probably am more uncomfortable and hyperaware being in there than anyone else would be if she knew the woman in the purple Tyr suit was gay.
But it's just one more thing I have to worry about that most people never do.
"Oooh," Zoe says, when she steps into the room. "Swank-o-la!"
It is one of those hotels that is being redone to accommodate the metrosexual businessman, who apparently likes tweedy black comforters, chrome lighting, and margarita mix on the minibar. Zoe opens the curtains and looks down on the Boston Common. Then she takes off her boots and jumps on one of the beds. Finally, she reaches for the CVS bag. "Well," she says, "I guess I'll unpack." She holds out two toothbrushes, one blue and one purple. "Got a preference?"
"Zoe . . . you know I'm a lesbian, right?"
"I was talking about the toothbrushes," she says.
"I know." I run my hand through my ridiculous, spiky hair. "I just . . . I don't want you to think I'm hiding anything."
She sits down across from me on her own bed. "I'm a Pisces."
"What difference does that make?"
"What difference does it make to me if you're gay?" Zoe says.
I let out the breath I didn't realize I have been holding. "Thanks."
"For what?"
"For . . . I don't know. Being who you are, I guess."
She grins. "Yeah. We Pisces, we're a special breed." Rummaging in the pharmacy bag again, she comes out with the box of tampons. "Be right back."
"You all right?" I ask. "That's the fifth time you've gone to the bathroom this hour." I reach for the television remote while Zoe's in the bathroom. There are forty movies playing. "Listen up," I call out. "Here are our choices . . ." I recite each title while an Adam Sandler clip plays on endless loud repeat. "I need a comedy," I say. "Did you ever see the Jennifer Aniston one in theaters?"
Zoe doesn't answer. I can hear water running.
"Thoughts?" I yell. "Comments?" I flick through the titles again. "I'm going to make an executive decision . . ." I pause at the Purchase screen, because I don't want Zoe to miss the beginning of the film. While I wait, I pore through the room service menu. I could practically buy a small car for the cost of a T-bone, and I don't see why the ice cream is sold only in pints instead of scoops, but it looks decidedly more gourmet than what I might have cooked myself at home.
"Zoe! My stomach is starting to eat its own lining!" I glance at the clock. It's been
ten minutes since I paused the screen, fifteen since she went into the bathroom.
What if the things she said about me aren't really what she feels? If she's regretting staying over, if she's worried I'm going to crawl into her bed in the middle of the night. Getting up, I knock on the bathroom door. "Zoe?" I call out. "Are you okay?"
No answer.
"Zoe?"
Now, I'm getting nervous.
I rattle the knob and yell her name again and then throw all my weight against the door so that the lock pops open.
The faucet is running. The tampon box is unopened. And Zoe is lying unconscious on the floor, her jeans around her ankles, her panties completely drenched in blood.
I ride with Zoe on the short ambulance trip to Brigham and Women's Hospital. If there is a silver lining in any of this, it's that being stranded in Boston has put us in spitting distance of some of the best medical facilities in the world. The EMT asks me questions: Is she usually this pale? Has this happened before?
I don't really know the answer to either question.
By then Zoe has regained consciousness, even if she's so weak she can't sit up. "Don't worry . . . ," she murmurs. "Happens . . . a lot."
Just like that I realize that, no matter how much I think I already know about Zoe Baxter, there is a great deal more I don't.
While she is examined by a doctor and given a transfusion, I sit and wait. There's a television playing a Friends rerun, and the hospital is deathly quiet, almost like a ghost town. I wonder if the doctors have all been stranded here by the storm, like us. Finally, a nurse calls for me, and I go into the room where Zoe is lying on the bed with her eyes closed.
"Hey," I say softly. "How do you feel?"
She swivels her head toward me and glances up at the bag of blood hanging, the transfusion she's being given. "Vampiric."
"B positive," I answer, trying to make a joke, but neither of us smiles. "What did the doctor say?"