Perfectly 1993 Guy Part Three

Other than the shoes, I don’t remember much of that first Great Adventure visit together. EXCEPT THIS: We went on The Enterprise (no relation), one of those Space Shuttle looking rides that rocks back and forth, higher and higher, until it finally flips over. LOVE an upside-down ride, especially with, thrill of thrills, Perfectly 1993 Guy locked in beside me.

 

And, he was… talk-singing.  I can’t overstate how low-key this guy was overall—even though he looked like a rock star, he was the quintessential nice boy. Except in this moment, when, inexplicably and delightfully, he decided to blurt out the entirety of “Killing in the Name” by Rage Against the Machine (Pause to Google “Zack De La Rocha problematic” and then remember I’m supposed to be typing…) As the ride started rocking its way up, he started with “Some of those that work forces/are the same that burn crosses” and got all the way to “Fuck you I won’t do what you tell me!” by the time the ride got to the upside down part and the rest of the riders were screaming. I was laughing my head off in eye-rolling disbelief. It was the perfect, most ridiculous love-moment for a sort-of-punk-rock eighteen-year-old girl in 1993. It made me so happy (and still does!) because it made all of the sense and none of it at once.

 

Aside from the ride/smitten tummy flips and cotton candy romantic nighttime amusement part colors (Us was so many, many year in the future. But also, things can be romantic and Jordan Peele-y at the same time…) nothing particularly sexy happened while we were at the park, just the spark of possibility and the THIS ONE IS FOR ME certainty that paradoxically made me believe I could never have him. (Wow I’m exactly the same forever.)

 

We left pretty late and made the hour’s drive back to First Bitchy Gay Guy’s apartment, (It was  a family extra, something having to do with divorce I think, pretty sure that’s why this just-out-of-high-school kid already had a pretty nice apartment…) stopping along the way to shoplift some Marlboro Reds from the Acme. I usually smoked Camel Lights but shoplifters can’t always be choosers. Sometimes I even resorted to ew/gasp menthols. All of it seems gross now but also dirty-nostalgic, like cigarettes are a fun old bad influence friend I’m glad to be rid of.

 

It was (Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!) decided that Perfectly 1993 Guy would share the foldout couch with me while FBGG would take the bedroom. The living room had the stereo (Pause to sigh over the existence of stereos that were actual physical things…) so I put on a mix I’d made for me and FBGG, a mix of the dance-y, dreamy, and the absurd, culminating for reasons I can’t quite explain in Billy Joel’s “Scenes from an Italian Restaurant” Kind of world-weary for where I was at in my life, but I found it romantic. Quick search—yep, I still do. Possibly I’ve always been an almost-46-year-old divorcee?

 

Anyway, INSOMNIA. The best kind, full of diner coffee and cigarettes, curiosity and happy, wholesome lust. He lay just outside my zone of touch at first, occasionally brushing my arm with a warm elbow. He smelled like sun and clean sweat and life. I was perfectly restless, almost holding my breath. What was I wearing, asked no one? I’ll tell you!

 

A coral slip I’d swiped during my BFF’s Thrifty Shopper job back home. It had a sheer frill of ruffle around the fitted top, soft coral lace along the bottom. I’m surprised I never just went ahead and wore it as a dress, I think I would, now! It was a little big on me, but skimmed my hips in a very satisfying way. The slip felt like silk to my naïve skin, but was most likely some flavor of polyester. Best of all, I don’t think I was wearing it to be seductive! That’s just what I slept in. Teenage me rules a lot of the time!

 

Sooooooooooooooooooooooooo gradually (a tape-flip, getting up to smoke a few times, always in sparky semi-silence) our bodies edged themselves closer. Softly, tentatively, he took my hand. Let’s let that last another lifetime, another frozen-in-amber moment to clone or treasure on the shelf.

 

“Are you SURE you’re a lesbian?” He finally (FINALLY, FINALLY!) asked.

 

“Actually I’m feeling pretty bi right now,” I sigh/said, and then we kissed. It was a soft, playful, hopeful kiss of people who are learning how. The Boy Who Sewed Me a Pillow helped me to learn that I kissed too hard and too thrustingly (Probably influenced by the bad, lazy teen boys of pre-BWSMAP days) and Perfectly 1993 Guy continued that lesson. He taught me to probe and play sweetly instead of just devouring his face the way instinct and experience told me to.

 

There must not have been much night left, but we kissed and cuddled through it. His soft, perfect hands caressed me with respectful, tentative curiosity. It was the first time I’d felt both wanted and honored, both horny-as-fuck and patient, both cared for and fully embodied. It’s hard to process the pace and tenderness of that first, sexy-nightgowned night, but there it was.

 

I started this No Contact High Fidelity project first and foremost to think about touch and give myself something low-stakes to work on during quarantine, but I think I’m learning stuff too, just like Girl Rob does in the vastly-vastly-superior-to-the-book new High Fidelity show. (On Hulu. Seriously the best writing friend a person could have.) Typing my way though this, I started to understand why my standards remain so (sometimes vexingly) high, why I’m willing to wait out so much time alone until the right person arrives: I’ve already experienced so many beautiful, ideal, fateful, hot romantic moments in my life. If no more come along, I’ve already been quite thorough. I feel so grateful right now to Perfectly 1993 Guy and almost all of the other Kitten Calendar characters.

 

Perfectly 1993 Guy, Part Two

 

Of course I found my 1993 Docs available online in my size when I Googled them for this picture. My birthday IS coming up! 

 

I’ve been realizing that this story has a LOT of me just being a terrible person, I’m sorry! Thinking about First Bitchy Gay Guy really opened a can of horrified-with-myself, not just because it’s when I first learned and applied the term “f** hag”. It’s also dawning on me that every relationship in this no-contact High Fidelity has more than two people involved, though not sexually—I guess that really shouldn’t be a surprise.

 

Anyway, the general bad-personing. In high school, I’d cultivated a shoplifting habit. Just little stuff: cigarettes, nail polish, a small mountain of Easter candy to support a VERY brief flirtation with bulimia, etc.

 

But with FBGG, things really escalated. I don’t really understand why he liked goading me into theft—he certainly didn’t want for anything. He and Perfectly 1993 Guy were the first rich friends I ever made, at least they seemed rich to me! Even so, remember when ATMs had envelopes for deposits? Using his bank card, we would make fake deposits and then withdraw as much cash as we could from each one—usually around 300$.

 

That’s how I afforded my first pair of Docs. Though I understand now that they are just kind of ordinary well-made shoes, they seemed like impossible treasures. We took the PATH train and the subway all the way from New Jersey to St. Mark’s Place to get them, a momentous experience I remember as vividly as any love scene. Those shoes were beautiful. (Just a heads-up, this story has a LOT of the word beautiful in it! It was my favorite word then and probably is now too.)

 

The ATMs at least have the air of the impersonal to them. BUT. Just once, FBGG and I dined and dashed. I think every hard waitressing day I ever had later on (There weren’t as many as I deserve, I was a TERRIBLE waitress but it was so much fun. But that’s another chapter.) was a repayment of Karmic debt. Even though I don’t believe in Karmic debt!

 

Maybe even worse, when we DID pay for our coffee and pie, I remember us leaving mere pennies as tips, justifying it as “Well, they already get paid.” !!!!!!!!!!! I should devote the rest of my life to One Fair Wage. One night, on a roadtrip to my hometown, the waitress asked if we had meant to leave just eleven cents and we said yes. She said that she would rather we leave nothing. I SWEAR TO GOD, years later, that waitress became my kind, wonderful, perfect-to-share-a-smoke-with boss at another diner. I truly do not deserve the blessings in my life.

 

Okay, enough confessing for now.

One more variation-on-a-theme though: I remember calling Favorite Aunt from a payphone to update her on my whirlwind friendship with FBGG. “He’s in love with you, just wait and see!” I guess she was taking a break from shipping me with The Boy Who Sewed Me A Pillow.

 

Although I’d resolved at the beginning of the summer to get more serious about being a lesbian (Doing my own bi-erasure but also just wanting to satisfy the urge…) My First Bitchy Gay Guy kept insisting I’d like his best friend. So, on my day off from the Six Flags, I got the two of them in for free.

 

If I  had invented a fictional boyfriend for myself, it would have been this guy. He had soft, curly brown hair that went past his shoulders Eddie Vedderishly. He was softly fit and had a rich-boy’s late summer tan. He had an adorably crooked nose and sweet brown eyes framed in beautiful fluffy eyelashes. He had on some band t-shirt and green Doc Martens. I made way too big a deal about how we all had Docs on: Everyone’s looking at us! No they’re not, he said, so blasé about the magic shoes.

 

I could NOT believe I was about to ride roller coasters with him! It seemed and seems impossibly romantic. The three of us went to get in line.

 

Perfectly 1993 Guy, Part One

 

 

OMG! I’ve been putting off the brain-treat of writing about requited love all summer! Time to set a timer and start.

 

The day after I graduated, I moved away from my suburban town to go live with Beach Aunt at the shore. She was renting me a room for some insanely cheap price: I think it was 170$ a month. I gave a way lots of my thrift store clothes and most of my high school (sometimes Jane’s Addiction related) art. I kept a lot of the ridiculous tchotchkes I’d looted from a friend’s Thrifty Shopper job: Lots of sincere-looking animal figurines in Seventies colors. It might be my overly poetic memory, but I think I carried a (Little) birdhouse (In My Soul) on my lap in Beach Aunt’s overstuffed-with-everything-I-owned compact car.

 

I left behind Bucky Fellini, the rabbit I’d purchased at the State Fair the summer before and named after a Dead Milkmen album. Don’t worry, we will eventually be reunited! And I think the Dead Milkmen are still together!

 

I had 300$ in graduation money, a dozen white roses from my mom, and a new set of oil paints I would (spoiler alert) never be unlazy enough to learn how to use properly. I had a tape from the coolest girl in the school: Mary’s Danish on one side, mix after the album ran out on the other. Push th’ Little Daisies by Ween. Sensitive Artist by King Missile. Nineties AF. I had candles and incense that had been too stinky to burn in mom’s house. I had a floral vintage suitcase filled with thrift store lingerie. I was ready for nothing.

 

The strongest emotion of living in Beach Aunt’s house was the feeling of WAITING FOR LETTERS TO COME. Come to think of it, that defined part of my California time too, and even now, a little bit.

 

There was a bus that carried workers from Beach Aunt’s town to Great Adventure, so she helped me to get a job there. Not ambitious enough to wait for a spot to open up in the old-time photo studio or something else nominally creative, I took the easiest job to get: Maintenance. They gave me Smurf-blue shorts, a bright yellow shirt, and a visor. Not exactly a look to look for love in.

(Serendipity side-note: The Mayor of Kittentown worked there that summer too! We never met, but I think I probably flirted with him on the ride he operated, which, after several enjoyable minutes of Googling, I’ve deduced was just prosaically called the Giant Drop. Love a big drop ride!)

 

Aside from some one-night concert friends I’d made at a Dead Milkmen show when I first got to the beach (“If you don’t have Ween, then we’re gonna raise a scene!” the band sang, paraphrasing an important plot point of Punk Rock Girl.) I was essentially friendless for the first month of the summer. On days off, I would either float on my own in the pretty blue waves or take the bus to the park to rise the roller coasters for free. It never got old!

 

During one particularly tedious shift clearing tables and sweeping up cigarette butts in the 1950’s-themed area of the park (They only had about 10 songs in rotation. One can only take so much “Leader of the Pack.”) I met My First Bitchy Gay Guy, my literal partner -in-crime for the rest of the summer. He would be the one to introduce me to the very most Nineties-dreamy guy in the universe, who would be my first sex-with-love around midnight between our two early-September birthdays. Oh swoon swoon swoon.

 

 

 

 

I Did Not Expect to Feel This Way When a Creepy Guy Invaded the Zoom!

 

These days, what even IS a body adventure? I know I should be working on my No-Contact High Fidelity proj and learning the knots on Thursdays, but the sense of hopelessness that’s pervaded my snuggle-outlook since Quarantine Crush is hard to shake. I think a lot about what quarantine-long lack of touch (Aside from some very special occasion exceptions (Like, say, friends are alive after being boxed in during a police-incited riot…) Sweetie and the cats are the only people I can hug or high-five. And the cats are TERRIBLE at high-fiving!) is doing to my brain and body. I’m not really sure what my psyche is up to, but I think it’s time to figure it out.

 

Yesterday, I was “at” my favorite Zoom book talk, sponsored by our local bookstore/coffeeshop. I like to go and mostly mute myself, hear what some local strangers are reading, occasionally unmuting to chime in about a book or invite everyone to a march. This week though: WHOA!

 

We were listening to a lady talk about the cool workbook that comes with Life Before Slavery when, OHNO! I looked up from my doodling to see: A naked, face-hidden white guy playing with his erect penis!

 

“It’s so small!” Exclaimed the lady who was trying to talk about her book. Though I’m resolutely against size-shaming, I so much admired her bravado and he definitely deserved worse! It was just kind of normal-sized, lovely even though it belonged to an invasive, rapey creep. They muted his video feed and we aimed to get back to books.

 

I felt awful for the moderator and for the rest of the group. After a little nervous laughter and dismay, we went back to our talk. I was a little more chatty than usual and was happy to make some new friends for the first time in a while and add some more books to my TBR.

 

What that guy did to our Zoom was evil, violent, hateful and invasive. I can’t believe anyone could be that callous, selfish and cruel to anyone, let alone a neighborhood bookstore!

 

Stepping back and looking at my own physical and emotional reaction, though, I am shocked, SHOCKED and a little alarmed. Though I guess a delayed reaction may come later, I felt no fear, no triggers, no jangled sense of helplessness. What my body felt about being subjected to this nonconsensual cam guy was:

 

…Yay?

 

It could be an adrenaline thing or a self-protective bravado, but I think my reaction is more base, if I can use that word in a non-judgmental way. What stayed in my body for the rest of the evening and a little bit still today was/is a clear, quiet physical happiness. It almost feels like…health.

 

Against all ethics and reason, I felt a sense of possibility and joy. Later, after the talk was done and I finished the dishes and played my phone games and caught up on the news, I had some very nice personal time, with a further-reaching, more hopeful imagination than I’d had in a long time.

 

There were some more sense-making things contributing to that healthy feeling, to be sure. An old friendship dragged itself up yesterday from the Bernie scrap-heap (Hi Pagan Boy! Welcome back if you’re reading!) and I spent a few hours at my own (not the same one) bookstore job for the first time since March. It was a generally good and progress-y day.

 

But. this invasive, creepy moment was the most personal sexual encounter I’d had since those nights taking Quarantine Crush’s songs the wrong way. It was the nearest I’d gotten to getting friendly with a penis since… when was Comedy Guy? Like a year ago at least! In spite of myself, something was fulfilled in me, a glowing little (yet regular-sized) puzzle piece of joy fitting neatly into my Sacral chakra. I have no excuse.

 

I think the take-away here is this: It’s time to stop neglecting my sex drive and my kink. As creative as I’ve gotten with working and socializing remotely, I think there’s a lot of room for improvement in my virtual sex life, which doesn’t currently exist beyond swiping through Bumble and Hinge. I want whatever I find to be consensual, private, and personal of course, but just as surprising and stimulating. I’ll let you know how it goes!