A Woman Trapped in a Woman's Body (11 page)

Which meant he'd been searching for that turnoff since we left Los Angeles, eleven hours ago.

Years before, when David's wife was ill, Martha had told me that while Hannah had accepted the fact that she was going to die, the one thing she could never accept was that she was leaving her husband and her son. When I heard that, I'd had the strongest pang—a feeling of, “I'll take them. Give them to me.”

In the years immediately following, every time I ran into David I'd remember that pang and wish that I were closer friends with him and Jack. At that point, my thoughts weren't romantic, I simply longed to be a close friend of his. So if he ever felt too sad he could call me and hear about my life and feel better about himself. It was a gift I liked to give many of my beloved friends.

Standing in the motel parking lot, I felt like revealing this to him so he could know how much spending time with him truly meant to me. But it just seemed way too heavy—way too, “The Lord sent me ... please clear out a drawer. I'm moving in.”

 

 

The cabins were arranged in a tight semicircle overlooking what was either the ocean or a giant lake (I would have asked David which, but I didn't want to lose his attention to navigational concerns again). A few lights shone from inside the rooms, but it was mostly dark and quiet. The scene was set for either a cute little Mexican getaway or a horror movie. While I tried to decide which, a small dog that had been dyed pink and then gone for a roll in cow manure ran up to us. Soon after, another tiny, mangy dog came yapping forward. Both started sniffing and scratching at our bags.

Jay hadn't warned me that I'd need to practice Spanish for “Get your shit-covered dog out of my purse.” The sight of these odd little expatriate dogs—who had clearly come to Baja so they could “let go” and lose themselves to their manure-rolling addictions—made scary Mexican roadblocks seem like a mere fly in the salsa.

Finally the dogs' owner, a large drunk man with a huge taut belly, approached and showed us to our cabin. He, too, looked like he'd escaped America in order to roll around in shit (and tequila), free from America's stereotyping labels, like “mean-abusive drunkard.”

Our room looked like an Eastern Bloc hostel, circa 1976. It housed five single beds and nothing on the walls except smears of dirt down by the floor where it appeared the dogs enjoyed scratching their backs. I made a mental note to buy a four-cent sombrero and put it up, for a little splash. The bathroom looked like a jail bathroom—cement bricks and stark lighting and a used bar of soap stuck on the shower floor.

David apologized that it wasn't more posh.

We sat on the edge of one of the five beds in silence, not knowing what to do next. I felt too scared to make conversation. I might have post-traumatic stress disorder from the car ride.

After what seemed like forever, he said, “Lauren, I have to talk to you.”

My mind raced with all the things he might be about to tell me. “I've been paid by the reality TV show,
Nobody Loves a Fatty,
to date you, and here's the thing: I fell in love with you despite the odds. But I've already accepted the money for the show and need you to sign a release. Also, I'm gay, which I just realized at the ice cream stand.”

Or maybe he was going to confess I just wasn't his type. Years before, when I was still married, he'd told me that he liked Catherine Deneuve types. It had annoyed me at the time, partly because I didn't think it was particularly brave of him to go out on a limb and find the most beautiful woman in the world attractive, but also because it meant I had to take
myself off his consideration list. (Which I shouldn't have been on anyway, what with the husband and all.)

Later, when I'd asked him if he'd found his Catherine Deneuve yet, he denied that he'd ever said it.

“What? I'm not a huge Catherine Deneuve fan,” he said. “Where did you get that? Actually I don't like her at all.” He said it like he was ready to fight about it.

“Geez, you don't have to punch her in the face to prove your point,” I said. “I mean, come on, she's a human being, just like you and me—well, more you than me—doing the best she knows how at any given moment. Cut her some slack!”

We both had laughed. And while I was hee-hawing away, I remembered that sometimes I get a double chin when I laugh. So I turned my head to the side and immediately worried about his view of my Bucky Beaver overbite.

“I don't go for Catherine Deneuve types,” he continued. “Most of my girlfriends have been mixed race. My wife was half Korean. Mostly I like strong women.” He reached those hands of his (which at the time I thought of longingly as “Lauren's future breast warmers”) across the table and grabbed my biceps—my guns. He squeezed.

“Wow, yeah,” he said. “Look at those arms—you've got great, strong arms.”

I worried that he was one of those guys who just went for the arms. I wondered if I should have worn my sleeveless burqa.

“You know, I've always felt like I'm a black lesbian woman trapped in a straight white man's body,” he said, after releasing me.

I guess he was trying to let me know that just in case I was a strapping lesbian lady he could still be attracted to me. I'd take what I could get.

 

 

But in the Mexican cabin I realized I wanted much more. My heart was pounding and I couldn't get myself to look into David's teary brown eyes.

He started in. “The reason I didn't laugh at the story you told about the Internet hair-pulling guy was because I don't think it's funny. It's hard for me to hear those stories because since the moment I saw you in that coffee shop, I knew that I could fall very much in love with you. And I have.”

I couldn't think of any jokes, so I was forced to listen.

“When I hear some of your stories they make me sad,” he said. “Like you did things that you maybe didn't want to and are trying to make it into some hilarious anecdote now. But I can imagine that a lot of those situations were not exactly the highlights of your lifetime. I don't know. I just—like I said—I love you.”

I couldn't recall anyone ever showing me that kind of concern—not even my therapist, to whom I was paying good money. The trip itself had already been breaking me down and now it felt like my chest had been blasted open. Not in the gory war movie way, but more like a fully exposed, “I
feel so close to you ... oh my god, I've never felt so close to another human being ... I love you, but where the hell are we?” way.

After standing and hugging for what might have been an hour we left the room in search of burritos.

The restaurant the hotel owner recommended was run by another expatriate—a bloated alcoholic from Oregon. We were the only two customers in the place. He disappeared into the kitchen for long stretches of time, leaving David and me to sit and stare at each other.

I found myself thinking, “Now what? Another relationship?” It seemed so exciting, yet exhausting too. The look on David's face told me that he was perhaps having the exact same fears. I was going to make a joke to lighten the mood (“This will be great until one of us dies or goes crazy and drives off into the desert”), but I was interrupted by the sudden appearance of our swaying waiter, who had salsa stains down the front of his white T-shirt. He asked if we'd like dessert.

My assumption was that David would turn it down, since nothing could possibly beat the ice cream ecstasy from that afternoon. But I was wrong. He started bouncing like Bobo again.

“Yeah! I love the ice cream down here,” he said.

“But what if it's not the same kind,” I cautioned. “It might be not as good.”

I was trying to prepare him—I didn't want him to be disappointed—but David's faith was strong.

“Or it might be even better,” he said. He ordered a scoop of tamarind, which the waiter warned was the one flavor that most Americans couldn't handle.

“I want to try it. I'm not scared,” David told him.

I reached across the table and grabbed his hand. “Me too,” I said, suddenly feeling so swept away by the poetry of love that I was unashamed of likening our relationship to ice cream.

As the waiter walked into the kitchen he yelled over his shoulder, “Maybe you love it, maybe you throw up. You never know.”

It was a little grainy, but we didn't throw up. In fact, we declared it Baja's best-kept secret and ordered second scoops.

Friday, 9:05 a.m.:
I shaved my lady moustache (ladystache) off with Gay Jay's gay razor (it's a gay razor because it's his razor and he's gay), and now I have man-stubble on my upper lip. Then to make it just a tiny bit sexier, I broke out where I shaved. So now I have an acne moustache. I should have left it alone. Like I do with the beard. The Korean ladies at the nail place were right. “You too much hair. You do moustache and arms and chin and back and neck. Please. Too much hair, lady-man.”

 

 

Sunday, 10:00 a.m.:
I keep telling my new sexy boyfriend how disgusting I feel. I give him all the reasons why. It's like
when I used to stand and grab big handfuls of fat and show Mathew how gross I was. Then I'd cry and sob in the shower that I was too fat to live. I'd make jokes at parties about how I felt like a giant mattress that my ex would lie on. He'd just lie there on “mama” and I'd flip him over when he got tired of lying on his stomach. I'd also throw in a few jokes about trying to trick him into oral sex by pouring Jameson all over my crotch or getting a giant arrow tattooed on my stomach pointing down. Then we'd go home and I'd stand there—the monstrous mustachioed mattress—shaming him for not having sex with me.

I've learned some very hard lessons from the divorce. But I'm different now. I'm loving David—well. Better than I've ever loved someone before. I don't want to fuck this one up because he is the man of my dreams. I don't want to lose him.

 

 

Sunday, 3:45 p.m.:
I read David's journal. He keeps this journal of fears and resentments that he writes in all the time. Whenever he grabs that gray notebook and stomps off to the couch I know that he's got some fears and resentments ... perhaps about the joke I just made about being really good at blow jobs at the gym. I'm always telling him he doesn't get my sense of humor and he's always telling me it would help if my jokes were actually funny, not just ways of telling him how everyone—dogs, women, and children—wants to have sex with me the minute I'm not with him.

Anyway, all I had to do was look at his journal and I would get this huge adrenaline rush because I was sure it was full of entries like, “I have fear I'm gonna keep fucking that girl in my yoga class,” or, “I have fear that Lauren will keep getting fatter and I can't break up with her because she'll be devastated to learn that she really is too fat for me,” or, “I have fear that I'm dating Lauren because she is like a man and I what I really want is a man.”

I was on fire when I opened the journal, all shaky with reading something so personal. But it was a really good thing that I read it—there was something about his ex-girlfriend, and now I know not to fall too much in love with him. I know that he's still in love with someone else so I know not to trust him. That's good. Taking care of the old Laurita.

 

 

Monday, 6:30 p.m.:
I have this technique where I'll confess to someone how horribly I'm acting and they laugh at what a mess I am and we shake our heads at my antics and it's okay—it becomes just a quirky story. So I told Jay that I read D's journal and he was grossed out. He shamed me. He reminded me how I destroyed my last relationship. Then he berated his boyfriend for not caring enough about him to read his journals.

 

 

Wednesday, 12:00 p.m.:
I've been taking hits off the journal. That fucking gray journal. My crackpipe. If I'm not feeling
right or if I feel off, I open it up and read one quick thing and immediately I'm taken away. It alters me. I act like I suddenly have these amazing insights into him based on what I read in the journal. So, if I read, “I have fear that I don't connect with Lauren very well,” I wait a few minutes and then casually tell him, “I feel so connected to you.” It's a dream come true: direct access to his thoughts. What he's really thinking. I know when he says, “You look nice tonight,” I can run to the journal and read, “I have fear that I keep trying to please women and tell them what they want to hear.”

 

 

Friday, 11:20 p.m.:
We were fighting about something tonight and while he was out of the room I grabbed the pipe for a quick hit. I was hoping to read what I sometimes find—a nice pick-me-up like, “I have fear that I'm not worthy of Lauren.” Or better yet, “I have fear that I love Lauren more than she loves me.” Something that lets me know I have him right where I want him. But instead I read something like, “I have fear that I will act on my sexual fantasy about ...” I tried to recover before he came in the room but I didn't have enough time. As soon as I saw him I said, “This is so fucking insane. I don't know how to love anyone. I can't do this.”

 

 

Saturday, 1:45 p.m.:
This morning he wrote, “I have fear that Lauren tries to create drama out of nothing.” I keep waiting for the day it says, “I have fear Lauren is reading my journal.”
I had a little plastic Barbie journal when I was in third grade where I'd write about what the cats did and what I ate that day. (Nothing has changed.) I remember finding “Jamie was here” written on one of the pages in my neighbor's scratchy handwriting. I was so mad I told his mother on him.