(The Knife- Heartbeats)
I have always been really shy and tend to make the best of friends with outspoken girls. They seem to have the confidence and courage to do and say exactly what they want without thinking twice about who’s listening. They are usually very instinctual and don’t spend a lot of time planning, reflecting, or thinking about their actions. That’s what draws me to them.
In high school, one of my better friends was a girl named Kelly. She was a hot mess. Her dad was a cop and her mother was overbearing, which equated to her doing everything in her power to defy all of the rules they set for her. She’d leave her house in a turtleneck and pants, with a miniskirt and halter-top stowed in her purse.
She was a party girl. She loved attention from men, and with an ass like J.Lo, she got it. She was one of those girls with talon-like fake nails, glittery lip gloss, and a weakness for pink. Almost the complete opposite of myself. She was 100% confident. She had an amazing voice and would sing without provocation, she liked to turn on music when everyone was sitting around and try to start a dance party. I envied her girlishness. I felt stupid dancing alone to music with people watching, but she looked sexy.
So, we partied together often. I made her laugh and she fascinated me. Her overt sexuality usually put us in a lot of crazy situations, especially since we dated guys in pairs. And, it was because she verbalized whatever popped into her head that I had my first experience kissing a girl.
We were dating some faceless and nameless pair of guys who were driving us to a party one night, and I was sitting in the back of the car with Kelly. She was singing along to the radio when she suddenly stopped, leaned over to me, and whispered in my ear, “Have you ever thought about kissing a girl?”
The hair on the back of my neck stood up. Oh my God. Had I just done something really gay? Why was she asking me this? My mind started racing through every move I had made around her for the last day, week, then year. I’d suspected that I was at least partially gay for a long time- I had always been so infatuated with girls. Most of them were totally foreign to me: my mother had never been a fantastic role model of femininity. She liked to play Zelda and wasn’t the least bit sensual. I had never seen her wear a dress, make up, or jewelry. And, when I was little, my interpretation of “girly” was an erratic combination of puffy sleeves, ribbons and lace, paired with hiking boots and totally unkempt hair. I had no clear instincts in the matter, and thus found myself hypnotized by women who naturally demonstrated every little pink, glittery detail.
But there was no way in hell I would ever have just volunteered that information to anybody. I became hot and prickly all over, fearing it was some sort of set-up. I felt like if I said “Yes!” Kelly would scream “Haha! Lesbian!” and boot me out of the car. So, my voice box frozen, I just barely nodded my head.
She leaned back, looked at me, smiled, then moved in and kissed me. When she pulled away I had pink, sparkly, sticky lip gloss all over my lips and my head was spinning.
I melted.
After that, she found an excuse to announce to EVERY guy we partied with that she was bi-sexual, and I was her girlfriend.
For a while, I let it happen. I was so excited by the new world which had opened up to me that I didn’t particularly mind the boner-fied audience of guys who got to watch me make out with her. But, unlike Kelly, my aim wasn’t to turn on the boys; it was to be able to kiss her. I had the biggest crush ever on her. I would sometimes call her on the phone and have her sing me to sleep. She cooked breakfast the mornings after she stayed the night. I thought she was pretty much perfect.
But for her, making out with me was like foreplay with whatever guy she happened to be with. Because, after we’d kiss and play for a while, she’d get up and grab her man by the hand and lead him off to go fuck somewhere. And I’d be sitting there, not wanting to hook up with the leftover guy, making really awkward conversation.
Kelly wasn’t bi-sexual. She was attention-sexual. And, I got tired of it after a while.
I remember one time when we drunkenly made it back to my house after a wild night of partying ,we had just crawled into my bed, and I found the courage to ask her:
“You always say you are bi-sexual. Does that mean you, like, ever want to hook-up with girls when there aren’t boys watching?”
“Yeah, I think girls are soo hot..”
“Really?” My heart fluttered.
“Mmm hmmm…”
I took that as a cue to move in closer, and as I did, I heard her start snoring.
Read the next installment here
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