The Comfortable Shoe Diaries

by Renée J. Lukas

  “Thanks.” I looked down at my shoes.

  “Wanna get out of here?”

  She wasn’t much for talking. I’d never known anyone who moved so quickly. But I thought of my blog and decided to get out of my comfort zone.

  We came through her apartment door, kissing. And even though it had been ages since it mattered what kind of underwear I was wearing, something didn’t feel right.

  “This isn’t right,” I said in between kisses.

  “It feels right to me.” Her eyes were now heavy-lidded and glazed. Was she drunk?

  “No,” I protested. “We should go for long walks in the park…get to know each other better.” I pulled back. “We should have done that before our first kiss.”

  She looked at me and laughed. She thought I was joking.

  “I’m serious,” I said. “All I know is your name is Carrie, and you can’t find gay bars in Glastonbury.”

  “You are so damn cute.” She lunged at me again, and I’m not sure what she was trying to do to my bottom lip. I think she thought it was a piece of gum.

  “I’m not into biting.” I pulled away and headed for the door. “If you really want to get to know me, you’ve got my number.” Then I left.

  Of course I never heard from Carrie again.

  Then there was Alissa, who, after one dinner date, had planned for us to buy a vacation home together in the south of France. Over dinner, she’d given me a résumé of herself.

  “I’m a successful psychiatrist,” she began. “I drive a Porsche, and I have houses all over. The right girl could travel the world with me.”

  She had long blond hair and intense green eyes. A little too intense. At first I thought it was just intensity. Then I realized it was psychosis. After dinner, she wanted me to go back to her place, but I declined, remembering the last time I’d done that with Carrie. By the time I’d returned to the apartment I still shared with Penny, I had six voice mail messages on my cell phone and two on our answering machine.

  “Who is she?” Penny asked, looking up from her computer.

  “A nutball,” I answered simply and took my anxiety pills. “Why are women either aloof or stalkers?” I splashed my face with cold water. “There’s no in-between.”

  “You got a stalker?” Penny raised an eyebrow.

  “She seemed normal over the appetizers. Then it kind of went downhill.”

  “Dang,” she sighed. “I wish I had a stalker.”

  “You did once. Remember?”

  “It’s better than bein’ ignored.”

  I fired up my laptop and blogged my heart out. I blogged about the insanity of being gay, how it feels like you’re going the opposite direction in rush hour traffic. I blogged about how hard it is to be a woman socialized to let a man call her but how you need to be more assertive if you ever hope to meet another woman. I blogged about how to tell if another woman is or isn’t. Then I asked readers to explain to me the difference between a hard butch and soft butch. Of course, this made me think of hard-boiled eggs, and I was suddenly hungry for an omelet.

  Little did I know, I had an audience. People were reading my observations on this varied topic—and not only lesbians. I was getting emails from straight women who said they found it fascinating and funny. Imagine that. I was proud again. It was the first time since I’d lost my job when I felt like I was contributing something useful to society. Was I finally writing that thing? I didn’t know.

  Night after night, I tossed and turned and dreamed of the woman I could never find. On the one hand, I was craving carnal pleasures. But when faced with a carnal situation up close, it never seemed right. I was used to the wooing and getting-to-know-you-over-dinner phase. I had to face it. I wasn’t a one-night stand kind of woman. I had to know more than Carrie’s name. Sure she was pretty. Sure she had the best body I’d ever seen in real life. Sure her body was even better than Val’s. The more I thought about it, I felt like an idiot. Why did I turn her down?

  “Who are you being loyal to?” Maddie asked.

  We sat in the hospital cafeteria on her lunch break.

  “No one,” I answered.

  “You’re a vibrant forty-year-old woman,” Maddie reminded me. “You have every right to hit the sheets if you want to. You don’t have to answer to anyone.”

  “Hitting the sheets sounds so dirty.”

  “That Catholic girl inside just won’t let you be happy, will she?”

  On Saturday we strolled through the mall and complained about the rising hemline on girls’ shorts, noting that boys’ shorts were getting longer. Every article of clothing in the women’s department looked like it had been made from really ugly curtains. As we walked, my eyes floated over every attractive woman. Tight jeans. Perfectly round posteriors. Or a curvy chest straining beneath a clingy sweater. So close I could almost touch it. And eventually I did…touch something. A topless mannequin.

  Maddie shook her head, stifling a full-throttle laugh. “You really need to get laid.”

  Chapter Eight

  “Penny from Heaven”

  Driving back from another bad date, windshield wipers swiping at the pouring rain, I saw nothing but black ahead of me. Darkness for miles. I wondered when I’d see the end of the tunnel.

  My phone rang.

  “Why are you out driving in the rain?” Mom demanded on the other end.

  “How do you know it’s raining?”

  “I hear it.”

  I turned around to make sure she wasn’t in the backseat.

  “I’m watching you on the Weather Channel,” she cried. “There’s a big red blob coming straight toward you!”

  “I believe it,” I sighed.

  “Rain, wind, hail, flash flooding…”

  Mom’s favorite channel was the Weather Channel. Even if there was snow in Nebraska, where she knew no one, she’d be fascinated, staring at the map for hours. It used to drive Dad crazy. He’d yell, “Who the hell do we know in Nebraska?”

  “Why don’t you come back to Florida?” She blurted it out, like something she’d been thinking about for a long time.

  “Don’t,” I pleaded.

  Parts of the Merritt Parkway flashed in between blinding rain in the darkness.

  “Come back home. What have you got up there? No home. No job. No one to take care of you.”

  “I can take care of myself!” My protest was volcanic, filled with molten hot rage and possibly completely untrue. Suddenly I remembered I needed to refill my anxiety medication.

  “Are you sure it’s really over with Val?” she asked timidly.

  “Not again!”

  “She had a good job, dear. She was a lawyer. You could have gotten that house with a second bathroom.”

  “I can’t believe you!” I was wailing like a wounded squirrel.

  “You’re in a one-bath apartment with a friend you said you’re not attracted to. So see? That’s not going anywhere.”

  “I can’t do this right now, Mom.” I pulled into the driveway.

  “Do what? Face reality? You never liked hearing the truth.”

  I had to end the call before her words sank in. But it was too late.

  Mom’s words echoed, as I threw my jacket on the couch that wasn’t mine, turned on the lamp that wasn’t mine and glanced at the one bathroom at the end of the hall. With my Irritable Bowel Syndrome, I was like that woman in the commercial who’s always looking for a bathroom. She can’t live her life because she’s stuck in a bathroom. My mom also had IBS, and she used to count bathrooms wherever we went when I was a child. I was becoming Mom.

  I went into the kitchen and looked over Penny’s shoulder at the site she was visiting. It was called Venus Meet. Penny had a code name, but her photograph was prominently displayed.

  “Don’t you worry that some psycho is lusting over your photo?” I asked.

  “I sure hope so.”

  She’d typed a list of things she was looking for in a woman. I read the criteria: “single, belief in
God, employed…”

  “That one leaves me out,” I joked.

  “You should do a profile,” she suggested.

  “No way.” I laughed all the way to the living room. Then I turned on my laptop to write my blog. Tonight’s entry was all about the meat market of online dating. Even though I hadn’t tried it, I used my platform to condemn the practice as a cheap, embarrassing way to get a date.

  When Penny came out to get ready for bed, she spied over my shoulder. “You know you’re getting really popular.”

  “You mean my pseudonym is.”

  “Whatever. I tell my co-workers ‘I know her,’ and now I’m kind of a celebrity.” She was beaming. Then she got a peek at what I was writing.

  “That is so unfair!” she erupted.

  “Everyone’s entitled to their opinion!”

  “Yeah, but…” Her eyebrows crinkled together. “You’re makin’ it sound like everyone who does it is desperate or something. I’m not desperate.”

  “I didn’t say you were.”

  She pointed to my screen. “Take it back.”

  “Okay,” I conceded. “I’ll say it’s just not for me.”

  “You know what you should do? You should try it. Then you’d have something worth sayin’.”

  It was a good idea. I hated that.

  “I could share my experience,” I thought aloud. “But why do I have to go through meeting all the psychos to talk about it? I already know I’ll meet psychos.”

  “You should try it,” she repeated like a wise, Southern Yoda. “Readers would rather hear your own story than you just goin’ off about how dumb it is.”

  After she went to bed and everything was quiet, I decided to set up a profile. The whole time I felt stupid, describing my interests, likes and dislikes. It reminded me of grade school when a potential suitor passes you a survey to fill out. “Do you like me? What’s your favorite color?” Everyone always said blue. I said it too, even though I secretly preferred red. On Venus Meet, they wanted to know stuff like that, as well as your favorite flower. I didn’t know much about flowers. A rose would sound too common. I wasn’t sure that daisies weren’t weeds. My mind raced. Aha! I liked those tall flowers with the small red buds. I thought they were carnations, so that’s what I typed.

  Even though it felt silly and totally against everything I believed in, I did the entire profile on Venus Meet. The hardest part was choosing a photograph. It couldn’t look too recent; I’d gained some weight, rationalizing that cookies were a natural part of the depression process. It couldn’t be too old a photo with big eighties hair, because then everyone would assume I looked like Jabba the Hutt now. I chose a photo a friend took at a New Year’s party a couple of years ago. It still looked like me, and I wasn’t too drunk at the time. I clicked the “post” button and swallowed hard.

  The next morning, I had five rainbows next to my name.

  “What does this mean?” I asked.

  Penny came over to look at my screen. She was impressed.

  “Five already? You just started!” Maybe she was a little jealous.

  “What does a rainbow mean?” I repeated.

  “Someone’s interested in you. They’ll send you a miniature rainbow. Isn’t it cute?”

  “Yeah,” I said, still feeling stupid.

  “You just click on the rainbow, and it takes you to the profile page of the person who likes you.”

  So I did. I went to each profile page. There was only one rainbow who was attractive in her photos. I felt guilty for deleting the other rainbows. It seemed so mean. It was all about judging people based on how they looked on a screen. What if they took a bad picture? What if I’d gotten to know one of the deleted rainbows and realized I was eventually attracted to her and even found her to be my soul mate?

  “It seems so superficial,” I commented.

  “Quit that right now,” Penny snapped, sliding the remainder of her eggs onto my plate. “Isn’t that whatcha do every time you go to a bar? You don’t know how anybody likes their grits. All that catches your eye is how they look.”

  She had this sort of rare, down-home wisdom, like Dolly Parton.

  “Okay, I’ll give it two weeks. Then I’m getting off.” That should be long enough to have something to share on my blog.

  “Two weeks?” she retorted. “That’s not enough time.”

  “What’s enough time?”

  “Two years.”

  I nearly choked on my eggs. “No way. I’m not selling myself online for two years. That just looks desperate.”

  The moment the offending words left my mouth, I wished I could take them back.

  “I didn’t mean you,” I corrected. But the silence stretched out for an uncomfortably long time.

  There’s nothing worse than hurting a friend, one who’s been so nice to you, taking you in when you had no place to go. I hung my head in shame.

  “I’m not desperate,” she finally said softly. “I just believe something will work out. I have faith.”

  Later that day, I sat out on the deck, soaking up the summer sun, scanning job boards and listening to birds chirp. I envied them for not having to get jobs. As I scrolled through the same old positions from places that hadn’t gotten back to me or had just sent me form notices that they’d “keep me on file,” I thought about Penny. She had faith. What was so bad about that?

  Once upon a time, I used to have faith too. I had faith I would become a successful writer. I believed I’d find my soul mate, and we’d be planning our home renovations and adding a Jacuzzi to our backyard deck someday. I had dreams of traveling to Paris and exotic countries I’d only read about. But now, at forty, my faith was flickering off and on like when you start to lose power in a storm. Maybe I was at that age when if you didn’t make it, you weren’t going to. And if you had no one to cuddle with at night, you’d probably never find her.

  I scrolled through jobs that I knew I wouldn’t be considered for. I was in that clichéd “rock and a hard place” place, with too much experience to get even a crappy job and not enough experience to completely change my career and get something in an industry that needed people. It was like being in a room with two doors that were each bolted shut. Either way, I was resigned to getting a job I hated just to limp along. I envisioned myself doing something that required me to say, “You want fries with that?” And as more time passed, I thought I’d be lucky to land a job like that.

  I stared at my little unsexy car in the driveway. I prayed it would stay in one piece as long as possible. I couldn’t afford to have one thing go wrong in the engine. I couldn’t afford to have Cookie get sick. I couldn’t afford to fill a cavity at the dentist. I couldn’t even afford a visit to the dentist.

  After hours of searching, I looked up at the afternoon light streaming through the trees. It might not have been my home state, but Connecticut was pretty. It was like a Thomas Kinkaid painting—except for the parts of town that had run-down factories with the windows crumbling and boarded up. Except for those.

  Then I had a vision. In the movie The Perfect Storm, the men in their little boat look up and see a towering black wave rising above them, ready to pound down on them with no mercy. When they push through it, they feel like they’ve beaten it. They’re celebrating, all except for the captain, whose face is strangely somber as the sky above seems to clear, casting a yellowish light on them. Then he says something like, “She’s not going to let us out.” It’s because he realizes they’re in the eye, the calmest part of the storm, but they still have the other edge of it to get through. And those waves are going to be twice as bad as the first ones. Then comes the final giant wave that tips the boat over.

  In keeping with my family’s tradition of melodrama, I saw myself as facing that final black wave, the one that wasn’t going to let me out. I saw no easy way through or around the storm.

  Sure my blog was doing well. But I couldn’t live on it. I was going to keep my subscription to Venus Meet for just two weeks.
That was all I could afford. But maybe it was going to be just long enough. I had to keep my faith in something.

  Chapter Nine

  “Lesbians Aren’t from Venus”

  The following week, I landed my first interview. It was at a small, boutique ad agency that would require me to move closer to the traffic-infested area where all the industry was in Connecticut—Norwalk and Stamford.

  Apparently, I’d done well. The interviewer, Constance McElroy, laughed several times, which I thought was a good sign in an interview. She was fiftyish with short and stylish gray hair and bold, dangling earrings like a high school French teacher.

  “I’ll be honest with you,” she said and sat back in her important-looking office chair.

  Here it comes. I have too much experience.

  “You have a lot of experience,” she continued. “And that’s what we’re looking for.”

  I smiled and nodded, a little surprised. Could this finally be a crack of light in my endless tunnel toward hell?

  “But…” she sighed heavily. “We don’t do much direct mail anymore. We need more of a web focus.”

  “I’ve done a lot of web marketing,” I interrupted. I couldn’t let this one get away. I just couldn’t. My heart raced. The desperation oozed from my forehead. I hoped my bangs would cover up the beads of sweat.

  “Yes, I see that.” She picked up my résumé. “But to be honest, it’s between you and another candidate who’s done a little more with web and social media platforms.”

  Heat spread up my spine. The air grew thinner. My chest tightened. I needed the perfect response, and I needed it now.

  “I understand,” I replied. “But before you make your decision, please take a look at the samples I’m leaving. See the results I got from these.” I heard myself sound like a desperate child, fighting for the last cookie on a plate.

  She smiled warmly, but it was a hard-to-read smile. It could have meant “I like you” or “you pushy pain in the ass.” I wasn’t sure.

  Did I sound argumentative? My stomach churned. Everything else was a blur until I shook her hand and dove for the elevator.

  A few days later, I received a beautiful letter on beautiful company letterhead with Constance’s lovely cursive signature below—a letter politely thanking me for wasting my time because they went with the other candidate.