A Year Straight (2 page)

After wrangling my hair into a knotty, haphazard bun, I made my way to class. I was nearly trampled as perfectly
coiffed women scurried past me to the room. I calmly unrolled my mat in my favorite spot, back right corner by the window. On clear days, the sun would shine in on me during savasana. Also, I could look out the window rather than be distracted by the women around me, stretching, showing off their paper-thin Lululemon yoga pants. I'd seen them for sale in the gift shop and could have fed myself for a month on the cost of one pair. I preferred my black leggings and “I Heart NY” T-shirts. At five for $10 in Chinatown, I didn't worry about losing them somewhere between the gym, work, and home, which happened quite regularly.

In walked Dante, with his tattoos, Adidas pants, and freshly shaved head—a new age David Beckham. I stared at him along with the other women, but while they were imagining ungodly acts, I was admiring his goddess tattoos. Lakshmi wrapped around his left arm, pointing up to Shakti on tiptoe across his neck. He took his seat at the front of the room and placed his hands together in prayer. He flashed me a smile and I returned it, garnering the envy of several students in the room. Dante and I had become acquaintances when one day after class he had announced an event sponsored by my favorite chocolate company. There would be free chocolate. Naturally, I followed him out of the studio to get the details. He'd handed me his card, suggesting I email him for more information. And so we struck up a casual email correspondence, playful and perhaps a little flirtatious, but nothing for Miss
Lez to worry about. He was really funny, and I had fun being funny back. Generally speaking, I maintained a great rapport with men. Men made great friends, but I was not attracted to them. I had not so much as kissed a man in seven years, nor dated one in a decade, and had no expectation of doing either, barring a shift of tectonic plates.

“Ommmmm.” I closed my eyes and placed my hands together, trying to make peace with my overactive mind. “Ommmmm.”
Oh, I have to stop at New Morning for vitamin D after work.
“Ommmmm.”
And fetch my sweater from the dry cleaner before they give it away.
“Ommmmm.”
And call Sallie Mae to ask if I can lower my student loan payment.
“Ommmmm.” Once into the flow of the poses, it was a little easier to let go, for it took all the concentration I had to balance in triangle or to breathe while doing a headstand. Yoga was a reprieve from my ever-productive, overanalyzing Virgo disposition, though it did require constant self-reminders throughout class.
Elena, just be!

Halfway through class, while I was splayed out in pigeon pose, muttering a self-berating mantra at my tight hips, Dante approached me. I was equal parts enlightened and fed up. As the name implies, pigeon is an awkward pose, and it happens to be the most challenging for me. Sweating and silently swearing to myself, I felt him straddle the air around me and place his hands on my back. I surrendered to the weight of him pressing into me.
Okay, I can do this.
His warm breath
inches from my ear, I eased deeper into the pose. At first I felt nothing but the usual throbbing of my hamstring and the release of my breath, opening, as we are taught, “to the edge.” As the intensity increased, I stopped swearing to myself and cursed him out in my head instead. It's such a love-hate relationship with yoga teachers. I love them when they're draping a blanket over me at the end of class, but when they're pressing my arms backward as if in a vise, I have some unsettling thoughts. Leaning even more heavily into me, his heart beat against my back. My own heart, which was pounding at twice the rhythm of his, skipped a beat. Suddenly, I was acutely aware of his body touching mine, like I'd never been during any other yoga adjustment. Simultaneously suffocating and intrigued, I feared something might snap.

And then it did.

Out of a deep and dusty abyss stirred a strange sensation. I exhaled, which prompted Dante to press down even harder. I let out a whimper and he eased up. But the damage was done. I was drowning in a rush of desire. I couldn't tell which way was up, but I knew where he was, and it was on top of me. I wanted to turn around and tear into him, ripping his little yoga teacher tank top to shreds. I wanted to see
all
his tattoos. Oblivious that he had just pushed Miss Lez's libido button, he moved on to adjust the next pigeon. My arms were shaky as I lifted myself back up. I thought I might faint. I faked my way through the rest of class with sweaty
palms and a racing mind. I didn't even try to resist watching the clock.
Just let this be over already.

In a haze, I walked out into the heavy Manhattan air in the same clothes I'd worn to yoga. I was eager to get out of class, for fear of what other unanticipated adjustments might occur. The street provided no refuge, as there were men everywhere. My eyes darted left to right as man after man crossed my path. I ran to my office around the corner.
What's happening to me?

My coworker Megan walked into the kitchen as I was making tea.

“Uh, what are you doing?” she asked with a tone of urgency. Staring off into space, Dante on my mind, I'd been pulling the hot water lever down without a cup underneath. Megan grabbed a wad of paper towels and began to sop up the mess. I squatted down to help. She was no stranger to my clumsy ways, but she would never have guessed what was fueling them this time.

Megan and I had bonded instantly at our online advertising technology company. Neither of us knew what the hell we were doing, but we were both glad to be paid well to do it. We were artists, free spirits trapped in five-by-six cubicles. I'd replaced her as the bookkeeper when she was promoted to sales, and we shared nail polish remover, gum, and daily complaints. Megan vented about her on-again off-again office fling, Jared, and I lamented the monotony of
billing. Nowadays, you just punch in the numbers and the software does it all for you.

Tucked away in my cubicle, I toggled between Quick-Books and
People.com
's “Hollywood's Sexiest Men.” Pinned to the walls surrounding me were postcards for potlucks and art shows, and photos of my friends. All lesbians. I was haunted by their gazes as I explored my newfound man-lust.
What if I were truly attracted to men? Would I still have a place in my world? Could I betray the very people who cheered me on as Miss Lez ?
I was reluctant to forfeit the rewards of coming out in the first place.

À la
Melrose Place,
the first girl I fell for was my college boyfriend's best friend. As a freshman, I passed much of my time in the student union, snacking and napping in between classes. One day, this guy boldly pushed my bag over and sat down next to me on the couch. We talked politics, debated, and then dated. Five months into our relationship, following an all-day student rights protest, he and his best friend, TJ, ended up at my house. TJ, with her black leather jacket, chain-smoking, and relentless sarcasm, was both alluring and crass. She was like no one I'd met before. As I tossed her a blanket to crash on my couch, I nearly tossed myself onto her.

I cuddled up next to my boyfriend, who was already snoring. My mind wandered into playback mode as I reflected on the many other times I'd felt a similar stirring inside. Stroking Stephanie's arm to lull her to sleep, hugging Karina
goodbye when she moved to New Mexico, and dry humping my Mormon friend, Molly. Oh my God, I love girls! I fell asleep to the fantasy of a ride with TJ on her motorcycle. Too bad she had a girlfriend.

A few months later, my boyfriend and I broke up, and Karina came to visit. I hadn't seen her since she'd moved away, and I was smitten with her new bob haircut. It suited her. She'd always been more alternative than me and therefore seemingly open to things like kissing girls. She listened to bands like Patti Smith Group and The Wedding Present, and she usually wore only black. We passed the weekend roaming the streets of Northampton, eating ice cream and browsing thrift shops. On her last night, we got buzzed on bootleg beer at a party and raced each other back to my house. Giggling and out of breath, I said, “I've never kissed a girl, but if I had to pick one, it'd be you!” Then I dashed for my front porch.

“Does that mean I have to make the first move?” Karina yelled after me.

“Yep!” I ran up the stairs to my room, Karina close behind. And then we laughed, locked the door, and dove onto my bed, and she pinned me down and kissed me.

That first kiss led to others, with many other women. I became part of a tight-knit lesbian posse, and any short-lived relationships with men only further reinforced my interest in women. Upon graduation, I moved to San Francisco, where I fell madly in love with my first girlfriend, Amy. She was my
bass teacher, but we only made it through two lessons, jumping way ahead of one finger per fret. Shortly after we began dating, I came out to my dad, knowing that Amy and I were more than a fling. The rest of my family had been easy. My mom and I are close, so she had known for years that I was dating women. And my brother was thrilled not to worry about his big sister at the mercy of potentially mean men. But I was nervous to tell my conservative Italian father and rehearsed for weeks in advance. Back in Connecticut, on a wintry November day, we went for a walk at aptly named Dike's Point, a park on the lake in our town. (And yes, it really is called that.) Halfway down the wooded path toward the shore, I abandoned all my well-planned scripts and heard myself blurt out, “Dad, I'm in love with my bass teacher, and her name is Amy!” My words echoed through the trees as I awaited his response. I tried to ignore my inner montage of horror stories of parents disowning their kids. And then he hugged me.

Early into our four-year relationship, Amy and I moved in together. We cooked, walked arm in arm to rent movies, and hiked Bernal Hill to bask in the Bay Area sun. It was 2001. The world was at war. But I finally felt at peace.

A few years later, moving to New York seemed like a natural migration. Amy and I both missed the East Coast, and several of our friends had moved there already. Soon after moving, we broke up harmoniously, needing space from each
other to flourish in the next phases of our lives—she a focused musician; I a mess in the midst of my Saturn return. I had one other girlfriend after her and dated a handful of women here and there, but I otherwise kept busy exploring the city and hanging out with my family of friends. We had our bars, our parties, our picnics in the park, and our occasional trips upstate. Having built my whole world around women, the thought of dating men was absurd.

 

 

SCROLLING THROUGH THE pictures of celebrity men on my monitor, I was relieved to discover that they all looked the same, and I didn't find them all that attractive. That is, until I picked up right where I'd left off in high school, when I fell for the taut, just short of scrawny, skater and drug dealer types. Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Devendra Banhart.
Hmm. John Krasinski's kinda cute.
I googled my own secret male celebrity crush, Gael Garcia Bernal. He was hot in his gay sex scene in
Y Tu Mamá También.
Hey, a girl's gotta start somewhere. To take my mind off men, I actually did some work. I punched numbers into my Excel spreadsheet, relieved that no matter which way you turn them, two plus two equals four. But I still felt fidgety, so I strolled over to Megan's cubicle. She opened her desk drawer to hand me a mini Snickers. I popped it into my mouth, breaking the brand-new rule I'd set for myself of no sugar before noon.

“Meg, something weird happened this morning,” I
confessed. She shut her eye shadow case to grant me her full attention. As I relayed the yoga teacher incident, my voice echoed across the canyon between who I was and what I was saying. I felt truly disoriented. My vision blurred, and the floor grew too soft to hold me. I gripped her desk for balance.

“So what should I do?” I asked Megan at the end of my story, exasperated and desperate for advice. She flailed her freshly manicured hands in my face, excited.

“Go to another class!”

“
W
hat are you doing here ?” I reprimanded in a harsh whisper.

The following week, my curiosity got the best of me and I bravely returned to yoga. I, too, raced to the room to place my mat up front, only to find that Megan had already reserved a spot for me: dead center. Dante walked up to the front of the room and stood directly across from me. He smiled hello and I blushed and nodded in return, such a serious student, so dedicated to my practice. I was so nervous, I'd stopped breathing, but luckily he was there to remind me.

“Inhaling, bring your arms into prayer position. Exhale into a forward bend, grounding the balls of your feet into the earth.” Balls.
Ew.
I decided to focus on my practice like never before, perfecting my mating stance. Look at my right angle! I glanced around to check if Dante was looking. In downward
dog, I stuck my butt out a little bit higher than usual. When it came time for pigeon pose I displayed my sloppiest rendition, but Dante was busy helping another woman across the room. I spent the entire class willing him to come over and touch me. Yoga was stressing me out.

At the end of class, Dante announced that his new book,
Peculiar Neutrality,
was available for sale. It was first come, first served, as he had only a few copies on hand. Back in the ladies' changing room, I hastily made my way to my locker, trying not to look like I was rushing. But we all were. Elbows were flying in the race to buy his book first. Designer dresses were crammed into bags without the usual care. Manolos flew through the air. I dove over a bench for my bag as two girls fought over a hair dryer. Now's my chance, I thought. Because I didn't mind my bird's nest of hair ('twas the season of bohemian chic), I was the first one out, or so I thought.