I am a dork. This is part of the reason that Jenny and I work together so well. Unless you look like Portia DiRossi, being a lesbian is kind of uncool already, but Jenny and I take dorkiness to an entirely different level. We love musical theater. We live in Brooklyn but refuse to wear skinny jeans. We don’t belong to organic food co-ops. We tend not to want to leave the house after 10 pm, and we aren’t even 30 yet.
Like I said. Dorks.
As I am getting older, I find that I am easing into my dorkiness more and more. It’s just sort of who I am, and if people want to judge me for my 50 dollar boot-cut jeans, that is totally okay with me. However, there was a time in my life when I blamed all my dorkiness on my geographic location rather than my innate personality. I was an 18 year old kid living in Minnesota, and I knew-- just KNEW--- that I had a New York sophisticate inside of me waiting to get out. No more frigging hotdish, it was coffee and cigarettes for me!
This was, coincidentally, the same time I was coming out of the closet, and right when I met a girl. Who was from New York. (Oh, the dangers and joys of giving a closeted 18 year old unfettered access to the internet!)
Laura was 27, and she worked for a book publisher. She had just broken up with her girlfriend of 6 years, and she needed to be adored. I obliged by falling madly in love with her, and soon we started jetting back and forth across the country to see each other. Laura still LIVED with her ex, which was just gloriously complicated to me. Laura would take me out to all sorts of glamorous restaurants, where she would order bottle after bottle of wine, and we’d stumble back to her Upper West Side apartment (it was a converted two bedroom!) and have extraordinarily loud sex until morning. It was never quite as much fun for me when Laura came to Minneapolis, but I would take her around to all my college hangouts and I loved introducing her as my girlfriend from New York. (Somehow, I was never introduced to any of Laura’s friends.)
But I loved my sophisticated double life, and I tried very hard to emulate Laura in everything that she did. I learned to like Nine Inch Nails and Manic Street Preachers. I learned to order dim sum in Mandarin because Laura was Chinese and I wanted to be “culturally sensitive.” (Never mind that her family actually spoke Cantonese.) I got to the point where I never had an opinion about anything because I was so desperate to please her. And to make a long story short, I moved to New York to be near her and because I had yet to learn the meaning of “rebound relationship.”
Laura and I broke up four years ago, and we never spoke again. I have since learned that my midwestern dorkiness is probably a good thing. (Jenny seems to like it mighty fine.) I have grown a backbone, and I have actually worked on some of the Broadway productions that Laura and I went to see together.
I wish I could have one more conversation with her. Just one. I am curious what I would think of her now, especially with more life experience and a healthy, functioning relationship. I told Laura when we met that I had been with girls before, and I was lying through my teeth. (And now that I’ve actually been lied to the same way...I want to know how she didn’t realize she was with a virgin, because I was OBVIOUS.) A lot about me was obvious. And I feel like I should apologize to her in a way, because being my first love could not have been an easy thing.
But at the same time, leave it to me to go from good Baptist girl into a gay, interracial relationship with a woman 9 years my senior. (I have been accused of many things in life, but never of doing anything halfway.) I fell hard, and the knocks I got were just as hard, but if it hadn’t been for Laura, I wouldn’t be who I am today.
A happy, gay dork who is loved for exactly who she is. And you know what makes this gay dork extra happy? Being able to order her dim sum in cantonese. Because that is actually kind of cool. (And it impresses the ladies-- who knew?)
Like I said. Dorks.
As I am getting older, I find that I am easing into my dorkiness more and more. It’s just sort of who I am, and if people want to judge me for my 50 dollar boot-cut jeans, that is totally okay with me. However, there was a time in my life when I blamed all my dorkiness on my geographic location rather than my innate personality. I was an 18 year old kid living in Minnesota, and I knew-- just KNEW--- that I had a New York sophisticate inside of me waiting to get out. No more frigging hotdish, it was coffee and cigarettes for me!
This was, coincidentally, the same time I was coming out of the closet, and right when I met a girl. Who was from New York. (Oh, the dangers and joys of giving a closeted 18 year old unfettered access to the internet!)
Laura was 27, and she worked for a book publisher. She had just broken up with her girlfriend of 6 years, and she needed to be adored. I obliged by falling madly in love with her, and soon we started jetting back and forth across the country to see each other. Laura still LIVED with her ex, which was just gloriously complicated to me. Laura would take me out to all sorts of glamorous restaurants, where she would order bottle after bottle of wine, and we’d stumble back to her Upper West Side apartment (it was a converted two bedroom!) and have extraordinarily loud sex until morning. It was never quite as much fun for me when Laura came to Minneapolis, but I would take her around to all my college hangouts and I loved introducing her as my girlfriend from New York. (Somehow, I was never introduced to any of Laura’s friends.)
But I loved my sophisticated double life, and I tried very hard to emulate Laura in everything that she did. I learned to like Nine Inch Nails and Manic Street Preachers. I learned to order dim sum in Mandarin because Laura was Chinese and I wanted to be “culturally sensitive.” (Never mind that her family actually spoke Cantonese.) I got to the point where I never had an opinion about anything because I was so desperate to please her. And to make a long story short, I moved to New York to be near her and because I had yet to learn the meaning of “rebound relationship.”
Laura and I broke up four years ago, and we never spoke again. I have since learned that my midwestern dorkiness is probably a good thing. (Jenny seems to like it mighty fine.) I have grown a backbone, and I have actually worked on some of the Broadway productions that Laura and I went to see together.
I wish I could have one more conversation with her. Just one. I am curious what I would think of her now, especially with more life experience and a healthy, functioning relationship. I told Laura when we met that I had been with girls before, and I was lying through my teeth. (And now that I’ve actually been lied to the same way...I want to know how she didn’t realize she was with a virgin, because I was OBVIOUS.) A lot about me was obvious. And I feel like I should apologize to her in a way, because being my first love could not have been an easy thing.
But at the same time, leave it to me to go from good Baptist girl into a gay, interracial relationship with a woman 9 years my senior. (I have been accused of many things in life, but never of doing anything halfway.) I fell hard, and the knocks I got were just as hard, but if it hadn’t been for Laura, I wouldn’t be who I am today.
A happy, gay dork who is loved for exactly who she is. And you know what makes this gay dork extra happy? Being able to order her dim sum in cantonese. Because that is actually kind of cool. (And it impresses the ladies-- who knew?)
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Comments
ahem...
Well maybe a little...
OKAY! Maybe a lot if any of my neighbors ever see me walking out of the barn, after a workout, in my full Kendo armor...
but STILL!
;~)
Great post, Way to go. I'll even add the peripatetic, "you go, girl!" cause, yep, I mean it. ;-)
--just another smiling fan from the stands
(Um, how Do you order Dim Sum in Cantonese? And make sure the shrimp is fresh?)
Rated.
You really bring to life your younger self wanting to get out of Dodge and live the sophisticated life in NYC, and the oh-so-familiar characteristic of modelling yourself after someone else.
I'm not sure I agree that lesbians are uncool. I know quite a few I think are cool. But then I'm an unrepentant geek who giggles over things like essays on "Why a Zombie Epidemic Would Fail." So who am I to judge.
Wait a minute - you work IN THEATRE! That IS cool! Grueling, underpaid, overworked, but COOL!*
*Sister is a stage manager.
Okay, sorry...this was a wonderful story about loving who you were and appreciating the past helps to make you who you are now.
R
Lois
Also, I sometimes cringingly look back on old romantic tomfoolerly, but like you said, it all got me here. Thanks, ladies (and gents)!
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