Girls Who Like Boys Who Like Boys Read online

  Stu could be decisive about my life, but when it came to his own, he was paralyzed. I would buy something on a whim that I usually couldn’t afford, while Stu would spend months researching the best toaster oven, and then more months worrying that he got the wrong one. Stu always knew where his keys were; I never did. He never bought anything on credit; I used my Visa to pay off my MasterCard.

  When Stu’s big, life-altering decision arose, he couldn’t make it. He paced like a man possessed, agonizing between going to one of the top graduate schools in the country for a doctorate in psychopharmacology, which was the main reason he had moved to Los Angeles in the first place, or attending a community college to get an associate degree in animal training and wildlife education, an option he had only learned of the week before. He described the two places—one a lab filled with florescent lights, test rats, and competitive grad students, the other a sun-filled oasis of exotic animals from all around the world that he would actually get to work with, one on one. He put the decision in my hands. I knew I would be breaking his mother’s heart, but I made the choice.

  There would be no rat testing for Stu.

  The week after both of our two-year programs ended, we went hiking together in Lake Tahoe to celebrate. We followed a path that led deep into the woods to a clearing where people were setting up picnics. We sat on the ground, our backs against a big tree, staring at the food others had been smart enough to bring. Stu picked up a stone and began scraping the bark, trying to draw sap out of it.

  I asked, “Do you think that cloud looks like Homer Simpson?” and he replied, “I’m gay.”

  It took me a second to realize his response wasn’t referring to the Homer cloud. When it sunk in, I put my head in my hands and said, “Crap. I owe Aaron a hundred dollars.”

  To my relief, he laughed. He said I was the first and only person he’d told in his life, and that it was the hardest thing he’d ever done. As we sat there, watching the sap drip down the crevices of the bark, something changed between us. The last layer of an invisible wall came down. Never again would I have to defend our relationship to the guys I dated—or to my friends who said I was wasting my time on someone who I wasn’t going to wind up with. I gave him a long hug and could literally feel the tension drop from his shoulders.

  On the way home, Stu was so electrified from our conversation that he bounced in his seat like a helium balloon. As we wound up and down the mountain roads, he poured out the story of the one guy he had dated, back in college. I listened, rapt, so excited finally to hear him talking this way. Lost in his memories, he didn’t see the edge of the cliff that was rapidly approaching. He kept talking about how the guy was cute but immature; as he started reminiscing about their first kiss, I yelled, “Turn, turn, turn!” Surprised, he quickly yanked the wheel around to the right. The tires squealed and dirt flew. The side of the mountain loomed, the way it does in the movies when you know the car is going over. I learned that your life actually does pass before your eyes. We skidded to a stop about twenty feet away from the edge and he turned off the car.

  At first, we were too stunned to talk. Then with uncharacteristic seriousness, Stu said, “If we had died just then, it would have been okay because I finally told someone. Well, I would have felt bad for killing you, of course.”

  The rest of the drive was quieter, each of us lost in our own thoughts. Any selfish resentment that I might have felt that he hadn’t told me earlier disappeared. Hearing him say he could die now, finally having released this secret, was a big wake-up call. I couldn’t imagine what it must have been like for him. I wished he had unburdened himself sooner, but he explained that it was a question of him accepting it himself first. Who could argue with that?

  Not long after our trip, Stu started dating. At first he was tight on the details, but he gradually opened up more and more about the kinds of guys he was interested in and about gay culture in general. He now took pleasure in critiquing my boyfriends and telling me why they would never make it in the gay world, a world he complained was based too much on appearance. To fit in, Stu joined a gym, shed his chest hair, whitened his teeth, and started getting his hair cut in Beverly Hills instead of at Supercuts. I finally saw how much of himself he had kept hidden, and was so relieved he finally felt free to explore the missing part of his life.

  For the next few years, I was his only friend who knew. I took this responsibility very seriously. I never told our mutual friends, nor did I pay my ex-boyfriend the one hundred dollars. At twenty-seven, I moved to New York for a job in publishing, the first of many moves between us over the next decade. Wherever we were, it was usually three thousand miles apart. In that time, we have traveled together on buses, trains, subways, cars, trolleys, trams, ferries, planes, Jet Skis, ski lifts, and cruise ships to see each other. Some visits are weeks long; others are only hours.

  If Stu or I ever lose focus or get complacent, we kick each other back into gear. After we had both suffered particularly difficult breakups within a short period of time, he wrote me a letter that said, “Someday both of us will be exactly where we want to be, and it will only have been possible with all the unexpected twists and turns our lives have taken.”

  It was hard to see it then, but I held on to those words and one day, twelve long years after Stu and I met, it hit me: I was finally exactly where I wanted to be. I hadn’t given up writing for kids, and my books were now on bookstore shelves. I had met the man I was going to marry. I finally had real furniture. Stu, who was becoming well-known and sought after for his work in wildlife education, had bought a house, and was living his dream of working at Disney’s Animal Kingdom in Orlando. Ever since we wrote short stories together in the late hours of the night, we knew we made a good writing team. Working long distance, we sold a story idea to a popular television show, and coauthored a book about fantasy literature. In every novel I have written, Stu has provided key turning points when I got stuck. I connected him with an editor who was looking for an authority on animals, and he has since published twelve books on animals and the environment. Without each other, we wouldn’t have taken the paths that led us to where we are today.

  So when my mother slipped me the card of a rabbi to perform my wedding ceremony, I knew that wasn’t what I wanted. I wanted Stu up there with me and my fiancé, Mike, and not just as an usher. In ten minutes, Stu got ordained on the Internet and was legal to perform weddings and funerals in forty-six states.

  There we stood, Mike resplendent in his tux, me in the long white dress that made me feel like a Greek goddess, and Stu in the black robe that was actually a Matrix Halloween costume. After years of headlining shows at Disney, he was a seasoned public speaker who made us laugh and cry as he led us through the ceremony.

  My husband and I sometimes joke about whether or not we’re truly married, but it was perfect and apparently fooled a lot of the guests. To this day, some of my parents’ friends tsk-tsk about the rabbi who messed up the Hebrew blessing over the wine.

  The last time Stu and I saw each other was at The Cloisters in New York City. We took the guided tour through the medieval castle and gardens, but wound up whispering to each other the whole time. Whether the topic was the real possibility of time travel, the benefits of a high-fiber diet, a new book series we wanted to write together involving ancient books of magic, or the mystery of what keeps love alive, we could pause only long enough to briefly admire the ancient tapestries on the cool stone walls before one of us would think of something we couldn’t wait to share. Then Stu flew home to Florida, where he was to appear the next day on a Discovery Channel special, and I drove over the George Washington Bridge and back to my husband, twin babies, and impending book deadline. I knew, from years of experience, that the lump in my throat that came with each of our good-byes would last about an hour. Soon I’d be comforted that the universe would bring us together again, the way it always did, in ways I’d never have predicted.

  III

  A Fine Romance

>   “He’s gay, you know.”

  —from “Love in Other Lifetimes,” by Anna David

  EVERYTHING I ALWAYS WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT SEX (AND LIFE) I LEARNED FROM GAY MEN

  Stacey Ballis

  Ultimately, I have Judith Krantz to thank.

  When I was nine, I discovered in our family bookshelves a novel called Princess Daisy. The flap copy promised a tantalizing story of a real-life princess, stripped of title and money, making her way in the world alone under mysterious and tragic circumstances. Within minutes, I was hooked. The book had deposed Eastern European royalty marrying Hollywood ingenues, great beauties and handsome powerful men, and women who rise above the worst the world has to offer with grace and dignity. And sex. Lots and lots of sex. It made me all tingly in my prepubescent girl parts.

  By the time I hit seventh grade, my life had changed in three very important ways. First, I had become a compulsive overeater and was putting on weight more quickly than I was putting on height. Second, I had become completely boy-crazy, obsessed with the idea of having a boyfriend. I learned pretty quickly that the fat girl doesn’t get the boyfriend, at least not in junior high. Fortunately, I wasn’t a social pariah: I had plenty of friends, and the boys, even if they didn’t want to go steady with me, at least didn’t groan in disgust when the bottle spun my way.

  The third thing, one that was entirely the result of my reading endeavors, was that, at age thirteen, I was determined to get myself a gay friend. In so many of the sexy books I had been reading, the women had at least one very close, very fashionable, very witty gay male friend who gave them the hard truths and made perfect martinis. I was a few years away from needing a martini, but a gay friend seemed like just the thing. He would be a boy I could pal around with, a boy who would simultaneously understand my obsession with young men and have the sort of male insight to help me land one. Someone who would ensure that I wouldn’t face yet another Chicago winter without someone to snuggle with.

  Within two months of starting my high school career, I had found a wide circle of friends, but had not yet landed a relationship. Apparently the fat girl doesn’t get the high school guy, either. I had, however, met Jody. Jody was in several of my classes and played flute in the band with me. He was tall and porcelain-skinned, with green-blue eyes and strawberry-blond hair. He was much, much prettier than I was. He was experimenting with drag and had mastered applying foundation without getting that dreaded visible mask effect; he was doing this master makeup blending on a jawline with stubble! He wore a delicate rhinestone earring in his right ear, a subtle smear of sapphire blue eyeliner, and a perfectly tattered tweed trenchcoat. He was my age, and totally, completely out.

  Jody sat directly behind me in algebra. On the third day of class, I felt something slip into my hand. It was a note.

  I swear to God, this man is making my ass twitch, he’s so boring. At what point do you think he will realize we are all smarter than he is? X = Y are we wasting our time with fucking algebra. What are you doing for lunch? P.S. I LOVE LOVE LOVE your boots, so sassy! I just want to lick them.

  I had agonized over those boots, black leather with floral embroidery. They were right on the edge, either deliciously cool or totally dorky, and while I was convinced of the former in the store, I was equally convinced I had made a huge mistake as soon as I got them home. With that one compliment, I was his forever. We picked up hot dog lunches that day and sat on the mall in front of the school, eating and talking a blue streak about our common lack of current male companionship.

  “Babycakes, the way you work that hot dog…you’re going to make some boy very lucky indeed!” he said.

  This made me blush furiously, as I swelled up with pride. He laughed. “And you look good in red!”

  “Fuck you,” I laughed, punching him lightly on the shoulder.

  Jody sighed dramatically. “Oh, darling, wouldn’t that just be the simplest answer for both of us.”

  Thus began my official career as a fag hag. Jody took me shopping in Chicago’s bustling Boystown and helped me find my own perfectly tattered tweed trench. Jody took me to Berlin on Belmont Avenue for my first gay nightclub experience, teaching me that if I made really great faces while I was dancing and kept my upper body swaying to the beat, no one would be able to tell that my feet didn’t move too much. Jody introduced me to my first drag queen, and explained about the pull-and-tuck method of hiding her package so as to be able to pull off the skin-tight Lycra jumpsuit she was wearing.

  Jody became my tutor in all things male, as well as many things female; he wasn’t just prettier than me, he was in many ways a better girl than I was. He taught me how to put my makeup on properly; he taught me how to kiss. But I wasn’t longing for Jody to be my real boyfriend. While I thought he was beautiful, I wasn’t physically attracted to him. Mainly I loved how he made me feel. He told me I was wicked in a tone that implied that I was a film noir vixen of devastating sexual power. He said it in such a reverential voice that I knew he really believed it.

  If I had been profoundly wrong about most of my decisions where boys were concerned, I was dead-on in one respect: Getting a gay boyfriend enriches life immeasurably.

  I became better dressed. “Honey, those pants are ghastly. Come over here and look at these instead. See how this cut is going to make you look taller?”

  My vocabulary increased. “The taint? You never heard of the taint? It’s that little piece of deliciousness between the balls and the butthole. T’aint the package, t’aint the tushie…”

  I began to pepper conversation with witticisms. “He is from the Chinese province of DarLing!”

  I learned more about the penis than previously thought imaginable. “No, just lick underneath the rim of the head, that’s where the really sensitive part is.”

  Under Jody’s tutelage, in addition to the ever-growing list of naughty books I’d read—not to mention that I was sporting an awe-inspiring D-cup rack—I became the queen of party hookups. I never lacked for male attention, albeit drunken, at any of our weekend gatherings or after-school get-togethers. But no matter how charming my conversation, how deft my kissing, how readily I allowed access to second base, none of those encounters ever resulted in my party playmate pursuing anything further. Making out drunk or high at a party? No problem. Furtive gropings in the back of the bus on the way back from a band competition? I was always popular. Escorting me to the homecoming dance? Not so much.

  High school moved along at its petty pace as I stopped getting taller, continued getting wider, outgrew my awkward stage of glasses and braces and an unfortunate short haircut, and entered into an awkward stage of overmoussed hair and royal blue mascara. I had the requisite fake ID to get into clubs or buy beer at local liquor stores, and the tits to ensure no one ever actually asked to see it. I had a car named Bippy, a part-time job as a receptionist for my parents’ real estate business, and a large collection of rhinestone pins and Salvation Army jackets. I had lost my virginity by design to a good straight male friend, having lost patience waiting for a true love to show up and deflower me. Jody had come up with the idea; he said he would have done it himself, but he had looked pretty nauseated at the reality of it.

  Jody was the perfect playmate, and while we weren’t friends to the exclusion of others in a My So-Called Life kind of way, we spent a reasonable amount of time hanging out together. We went dancing at Medusa and the Mars Bar. We went shopping on Halsted and at the Water Tower. We ditched a whole day of school to watch a sneak preview of The Unbearable Lightness of Being at the Fine Arts Theater. We tried cruising for boys at the mall, but that never worked; straight boys always assumed we were a couple, and if Jody ever actually found another age-appropriate gay boy, I quickly became extraneous and bored.

  By senior year, Jody had been joined by Mikey, a less effeminate, less flamboyant (but no less gay) boy whom I’d bonded with while working on the literary magazine.

  Still, I had no boyfriend.

  I never saw m
y size as an imperfection, and neither did Jody or Mikey. We brashly viewed my weight as protecting me from shallow guys who wouldn’t be worth my time or energy. I pitied the skinny girls as much as I envied them. They might have an easier time with the cool clothes, and they never lacked for boyfriends, but could they ever know that those boys liked them for who they were inside? All three of us wanted what they had, those magical girls: the handholding, the never worrying about having someone to dance with, the ability to buy a pair of boots that went over the calf. The secret jokes and huge class rings from boyfriends that were made small enough to fit delicate fingers with layers of tape.

  Still, I believed I was both lovable and physically desirable, and Jody and Mikey believed it, too. As much as I longed for a real boyfriend in my life, for someone to devote myself to, for the romance I had been reading about for so long, I never thought losing weight was the way to get there. I just needed to meet a better quality of guy. While much of this confidence was acquired from a lifetime of loving support from my family, and some was a part of my natural personality, a great deal had to do with Jody and Mikey and their constant reaffirmation of my good qualities and desirable attributes.

  “You totally need a real man,” Jody would say. “These little boys just don’t get you. You’re too smart for them. You need someone mature.”

  “I know!” I would reply every time. “These children we go to school with are nice as friends and all, but I mean, really! They have no idea what a relationship is about! I just need to find someone more on my own intellectual level, you know? Someone who doesn’t care if there are only eight band uniforms after me, and six of them are being worn by football players.”