The Harm in Asking: My Clumsy Encounters With the Human Race

by Sara Barron

  I am additionally grateful to Female Perversions because in more recent years, it has offered a compelling conversational entrée into certain social situations. Let’s say that I am at a cocktail party—this doesn’t happen much, but let’s just say—and I have run out of things to talk about. I will then turn to the woman who is closest to me, and I will ask a question on the subject of teen heartthrobs.

  Mind you, I’m never that interested in her answer. It’s just that I want the question asked of me.

  “So,” I will ask, “who was your favorite teen heartthrob?”

  And she will answer Luke Perry, Kirk Cameron, or some other similar type.

  And then I’ll answer, “Oh, really? That’s nice. For me, though, it was always Tilda Swinton. What? Yes. Her. I know, right? It’s like, ‘Why am I so weird?’!”

  TEN MONTHS LATER, what had been my Crown Books summer job was now my Crown Books weekend job. I worked all Saturdays and Sundays, and this included the Saturday of my senior prom. I had not been asked, and was therefore available to work from noon to nine p.m.

  The situation had put me in a bad mood. To snap myself out of it, I decided to treat myself to a new CD. I would use my 10 percent company discount. I would peruse the Crown Books CD section. I would pick myself out something nice.

  So there I was perusing. I’d been leaning toward “Tails” by Lisa Loeb when, for the first time in my life, I saw a k.d. lang CD. Its title was Drag, and k.d. lang appeared on its cover in a pinstripe suit jacket, silk cravat, and pinky ring.

  Is that a man … a wo-man? I thought.

  Indeed she was, and I found her incredibly attractive.

  I was wildly excited to be, well, wildly excited.

  After all this time, Tilda Swinton had some company. Finally, she did.

  K.D. LANG AND Tilda Swinton served the same overall purpose, but my mind approached them both in different ways. I would masturbate to Tilda Swinton, but only in the context of Female Perversions. I would recall my favorite scenes, and those alone would do the job.

  With k.d. lang, however, I would picture her and me together. No longer the voyeur, I was now a leading lady.

  My k.d. lang fantasies would always take place in a sophisticated bar. The conversation would always start with k.d. lang asking me if I was thirsty.

  “As a matter of fact, I am,” I’d say.

  Then our environment would shift to an altogether different room that, for one reason or another, was decorated in an African safari theme. Once there, k.d. lang and I would begin aggressively humping as a precursor to compassionate, unintimidating oral sex.

  Now, a lady simply does not masturbate to Tilda Swinton and k.d. lang without starting to wonder if perhaps there isn’t a bit of the lesbian about her after all. The fact of it felt significant. However, it also felt significant that I wasn’t attracted to any women I actually knew. Or met. Not ever. I had a particular taste for a particular type of dapper-butch lady and these types were not out wandering the streets of my Midwestern suburb. The lesbians I knew were Alison and Emily, who, while admirable in the aforementioned ways, were not to my physical taste. So too were there gentlewomen at my high school who I thought might be of a similar persuasion. But they were too … “granola” (I think is the word) for my liking. Where real life was concerned, I remained attracted exclusively to men. I’d outgrown my interest in the phallic vegetable, but a well-articulated male crotch was still the thing to turn my head.

  The situation was perplexing.

  AGE 4

  The Soldier

  In September of my eighteenth year, I moved to New York City for my freshman year of college. I brought with me a desire to dominate the Broadway stage, as well as a more latent interest in some real-life lesbian encounters. I hoped the city’s bustling streets and homosexual-friendly acting classes would present me with a bevy of dapper-butch options. A Tilda or k.d. doppelgänger. Someone equally manly. But not, you know, a man. I hoped to meet a woman of this description and to make of her a ladylove. For to begin my lesbian exploits while I was in college? While I was in New York?

  I could think of nothing more unique.

  The one hint of potential came from Leah, a young lady in my Level 1 Emotional Arcs class. She looked like a tiny Tony Danza, and the first time I saw her I thought, How ’bout you and I head to Meow Mix for a round of Shirley Temples? How ’bout we go figure out what’s what?

  The sad thing, though, was that in reality, I could not follow through.

  At the root of my k.d. lang fantasies was this idea that she’d come on to me. Ideally, in a sophisticated bar. I had no real interest or ability in initiating flirtation myself, be it in an acting class or dormitory cafeteria. So it was that Leah and I fell into the standard friendship of all college freshmen in New York: we discussed how the city had changed us.

  “The other day, I walked down Fifth Avenue, Leah. At night,” I might say. “That sort of thing changes a person.”

  Leah and I would sit together and talk at lunch, and then at night, or rather, once every few nights, I would masturbate to the idea of her in a pinstripe suit, seducing me.

  Where once were two, there were now three: Tilda. k.d. Leah.

  I SPENT THOSE first few months of college wondering if somehow, some way, something might actually happen between Leah and me. She was not a likely possibility, but she was at least a more likely possibility than either Tilda or k.d. I wanted to measure an actual lesbian experience against my various heterosexual carryings-on. For I did carry on, as it were, heterosexually. There weren’t a lot of opportunities, but there were some. I met a guy to whom I eventually lost my virginity. However, he had a penis so big, I feared I would die, and this, in turn, prompted me to limit all future hetero experiences to bases one through three. Not forever, of course. But for a while.

  On the subject of these experiences, I’d like to say that each one felt correct. That’s talking in terms of biology. However, they also felt mostly underwhelming, and this, too, fueled my lesbian curiosity. I’d held out hope that Leah might be the woman to help me work through these various issues, but then one afternoon she and I ran into each other on the street and hugged hello, and I felt the wider-than-a-mile straps of her brassiere beneath her shirt. And I thought, NOPE. I CANNOT DO THIS. I CAN’T BE TAKING OFF ANOTHER WOMAN’S BRA.

  It was all so confusing! If a woman masturbates to Tilda Swinton and company, isn’t she surely a lesbian? And yet, if she’s repelled by reminders of the breasts with which she’d engage, isn’t she most surely not?

  I decided to ask someone about it. I had a new friend, Glen, who, like Leah, I’d met in my Level 1 Emotional Arcs class. He too was homosexual, and thinking he might offer me some insight, I took him out for pizza.

  “I think I might be gay,” I said.

  Glen looked up.

  “You’re not,” he said. “You’re in New York; you wish you were gay. But you’re straight. Like, straight. I mean, if I saw a vagina, and then I saw a penis go into that vagina, that is your level of straightness.”

  “But I masturbate to Tilda Swinton,” I said.

  “I masturbated once to Diane Lane. And what am I? Not gay?” Glen raised his hands to draw attention to this pair of vintage day gloves he had on. “No. I am gay. I’m a gay man who, for one reason or another, decided to try something new.”

  “But I mean, like, a lot,” I said.

  Glen thought for a moment. “So it’s not that you have masturbated to Tilda Swinton, it’s that you masturbate. Presently.”

  “Yes.”

  “Exclusively to Tilda Swinton?”

  “Three times out of ten.”

  “And what about the other seven?”

  “It alternates between Leah from Level 1 Emotional Arcs, k.d. lang, and Tilda.”

  “And no men? Not ever?”

  “Not really. Maybe like once every few months John Stamos pops in. Or an anonymous set of broad shoulders.”

  “But have you ev
er munched box?” he asked.

  “No,” I said.

  “Kissed another woman?” he asked.

  “No,” I said.

  “And so, do you, like, want to?” he asked. “Do you genuinely want to?”

  I thought for a moment. I said, “I guess it’s more that I, like, want to want to.”

  Glen nodded.

  “Right,” he said. “You’re straight. As for the masturbation business, I think it’s just that you’re, like, connecting with female arousal. So it’s sort of like, you don’t want the box so much as you’re identifying with the box.”

  “That sounds … right,” I said.

  “Because it is,” he said.

  My conversation with Glen left me feeling disappointed. I would’ve liked to have had my lesbian streak confirmed as lesbian-ism. Or, better yet, to have been deemed that rarest, most magical of unicorns: the True and Genuine Bisexual. Alas. Now I had the sense that I was neither.

  TIME PASSED, AND I accepted the reality. I had infrequent, exclusively hetero engagements. I made a point of having full-on intercourse again. This second time and second partner made the experience, as a whole, seem less traumatic. It led to more times with more partners, each one of whom fell along a spectrum: from good-to-the-point-of-obsession-worthy to just-do-it-so-they’ll-go-away grotesque. Despite where along the spectrum each occasion fell, they did all feel … right. And that, again, is talking in terms of biology. It was not my dream scenario, but there wasn’t much that I could do about it. I rarely met a woman in person to whom I was genuinely attracted, and on the biennial occasions when it actually happened, the lady in question wouldn’t pay me any mind.

  Such was my real-life situation. As for my fantasy-life situation, Tilda, k.d., and Leah had, by this stage, all started feeling out of date. Ineffective. Stale. I let them drift further and further away until they reached the hinterlands, the Island of the Misfit Masturbation Fantasies, that sad but special place where out-of-use erotic dreams go to pass their final days. I replaced the old standbys with visuals and/or other fantasies that felt more current: Matt Damon as Jason Bourne. Some random stuff I’d seen on HBO’s Real Sex. The Real Sex stuff did involve women sometimes, but by now I knew better than to attach much significance to that. I had grieved the loss of my potential lesbianism, lowered my standards, and hoped for something new. Something less: one evening’s worth of experimentation at any point before I died. The prospect of lesbian experimentation was not as exciting to me as true, authentic lesbianism, for I was older now and out of college. I had absorbed the information that experimentation would never prove as attention-getting as lesbianism itself.

  A painful truth, yes, but not insurmountable. One just adjusts her expectations: If you cannot have the whole hog, well, then you take what you can get of her vagina. If only just once. If only for the night.

  AGE 5

  The Justice

  By the fall of my twenty-fourth year, I had graduated college and was in the midst of a three-month stint as a glorifled busboy at an upscale restaurant. I wore a bow tie while employed, and shouldered the primary responsibility of serving rolls to customers. This sounds easy enough, but in the spirit of upscale service, I was expected to serve these rolls with fork and spoon, and the challenge this posed to my physical dexterity was on par with serving a tray of tennis balls with a pair of chopsticks. In any given shift, I’d catapult two to three into the heads of paying customers.

  I was always being glared at by my coworkers, who seemed to think I’d been set down on this Earth for the sole purpose of cramping their fine-dining style.

  There was, however, one exception to this rule. The exception’s name was Janet.

  Janet was the pastry sous-chef. She ate cakes and tarts all day, and yet was tiny like a Kewpie doll: big features on a big head, atop a shapely but minuscule body.

  Janet and I were different insofar as Janet enjoyed a decent level of at-work popularity. She was not only tiny like a Kewpie doll, but also sexy like a kewpie doll; if you were into that doe-eyed, small-waisted sort of thing, then yes, you would have thought Janet was sexy. In addition to her winning physical appearance, Janet gave away scraps from her pastry department—misshapen cookies and so on—whenever her fellow staff was hungry.

  These factors made Janet a popular lady. She had no real reason to be sympathetic toward me. Nonetheless, the first time she saw me mishandling the dinner rolls, she said, “You need tongs for that, right? It looks really hard!”

  And I replied, “Yes! Thank you! It is really hard!”

  Janet was herself heterosexual, and she’d recently been broken up with by a guy who liked to skateboard. What Janet liked about me, I think, was that I was willing to listen as she obsessed about her breakup.

  So I would listen.

  And listen.

  And listen.

  In a different situation I might’ve had less patience, but as the incompetent roll-chucking busboy, I didn’t have much choice. I was desperate for a friend.

  Janet and I would go out for drinks after work, and I’d sit and listen as she discussed various self-help platitudes: how it’s good to take the road less traveled, how everything happens for a reason.

  My mood and energy level depending, I might try to get Janet off the subject of the guy who liked to skateboard, and onto the subject of how likable I was if only you took the time to get to know me. While I was occasionally successful, mostly I was not. Mostly, she’d ignore my attempts and stay on her own favored topics: how times of pain are times of growth, how it’s good to stay positive and be brave.

  Janet and I drank mostly at dive bars. One night we were at a spot of such description when she chose to read aloud a poem.

  “It’s called ‘Warning,’ ” she said, and unfolded the piece of paper onto which the poem had been transcribed. Then she started reading:

  “When I am an old woman, I shall wear purple.”

  The poem continued on in this vein, describing all the while the joie de vivre the author would embrace when she was older. The twist at the end was the valuable realization that maybe she, the author, could stand to implement some of that joie de vivre into her current life. Now. Do you get it? Before it was too late.

  The poem had the overall effect of forcing me to consider how I, too, might be entitled to just a bit of joie de vivre, to just little bit more fun.

  You are entitled, I thought. Sara Barron: You DESERVE it.

  That subtle pat to my own back felt really good, and prompted me to think I liked the poem.

  “Wow,” I said. “Thank you. That was … great.”

  “It was, right?”

  “It really was.”

  “I love how it teaches you to just, like, grab life by the balls, you know? I mean, here I am, young and single. It’s a wonderful adventure, in its way.”

  I’d spent plenty of time young and single, and while there were occasional fireworks unique to the experience—flushing once a day; un-judged excessive scratching—I’d found it mostly dull. The thing was, though, Janet had just read aloud a poem in a dive bar. A conversation in which I mentioned phrases like “sad reality” or “fundamental solitude” didn’t strike me as wise or worthwhile.

  “Being single is awesome,” I told her. “You’re going to love it. You’re going to grow.”

  “Totally!” she said. “I feel so, like, hungry for new experience.”

  I nodded along, mostly in rhythm to Dolly Parton’s “9 to 5,” which, for one reason or another, was blaring through the bar speakers.

  And that’s when it happened.

  Janet leaned in to kiss me.

  I flatter myself to think this part of the story could titillate. On the off chance it does, though, I’d like to point out that, prior to this kiss, I’d eaten a gyro sandwich that caused bloating to the extreme, and that my zipper had therefore created a breath-stopping indentation in the flesh between my navel and pubic bone. Let me also point out that my general vicinit
y stank of seasoned meat.

  Nonetheless, Janet told me I smelled “tasty.”

  “You smell tasty,” she’d said.

  “Really?” I said. “It’s that gyro sandwich, I guess. From Mamoun’s.”

  In terms of the actual kiss, the fulfillment of this longstanding dream, all I can say, really, is that it was … pleasant. I’m sorry! I am sorry and I do wish I could provide a more exciting version of events. But that’s just as it was. Pleasant. The all-white chicken of the kissing world. More interesting than viscerally satisfying, I guess, and rather plagued by the problem of high expectations. But I committed nonetheless, and that was thanks largely to our fellow bar-goers. If you yourself are a young woman, and you plan, at some stage, to allow another young woman to have at your bottom lip like it’s a pacifier, allow me to recommend doing so in a male-dominated dive bar. The gents in attendance will encourage you to carry on.

  “Oh, yeah,” they’ll say. “OOOOOOOOH, YEEEEE-AAAAAAH.”

  Never before had I been made to feel so alluring, so attractive. Granted, these guys focused mostly on Janet—“Look at the little one! Dude! Look at the little one!”—but in a scenario like this, one’s desirability has a spillover effect, and that was fine by me. I’m always of a mind to take what I can get.

  SEVERAL WEEKS PASSED during which Janet and I hung out and made out, mostly in dive bars. We were scared, I think, to test the true mettle of our physical attraction, to face what would be asked of us in private. Lady-wise—and despite Janet’s obvious attractiveness to the average, heterosexual male—I, personally, was not all that attracted to her. I certainly wasn’t repulsed. I wasn’t even uninterested. It’s just that I wasn’t compelled. How I felt about the actual, physical business with Janet, I’ve thought long and hard about how best to describe it, and the thing to say, I think, is that what I felt about Janet was similar to what I feel, currently, about olives.