I Came Out for This? (9 page)

The judge, an imposing brown woman with salt-and-pepper hair named Louise Holmes, looked at me and asked, “What in God's name is going on with you?” And I told her. I told her what happened, how I was eating my Subway sandwich and the cop pulled me and I was already extremely upset and I just lost control. Then I told her the woman I'm in love with is with someone else, and I'm out of my mind over it, and I moved here because of her, and I started to cry. Judge Holmes' eyes softened. Then she said in her deep voice, “Now you listen to me. You need to forget about this person who clearly does not love you. You cannot just keep beating a dead horse. Look at me!” I did, and she repeated what she'd said. “You need to move on with your life. And
that's just what you are going to do. If you continue to engage in the kind of behavior that brought you in here, defying police officers and lying around in the street like a derelict, I dread to think where you'll end up. Are you listening?” I said yes, and she said she was going to sentence me to three days in jail but would suspend the sentence. Then she said, “I am doing this with the stipulation that you pull yourself out of this rut you're in. You need to start meeting people who can help you forget about this woman who
clearly does not want you
.” I wished she would stop saying that, but I wasn't going to tell her. But then she completely astonished me. She said, “Have you heard about the monthly potlucks for lesbians here in DC?” I stared at her, thinking, now how the hell does
she
know about the lesbo potlucks? Then she asked the bailiff for a pen and piece of paper and she dashed off a phone number— from
memory
— and handed it to me. “Here,” she said. “Here's the number of the woman hosting the next event.” I looked at the paper and it said, “Cherry Hill,” with the number written beneath it. I was rather intrigued that this judge Holmes knows a dyke named Cherry Hill so well that she had memorized her phone number. I'm still intrigued, and I intend to call this Cherry Hill tomorrow. I had a good time at the last potluck at Dee's house, and I need to get back to having a social life.

I have to admit that I feel a little guilty about my encounter with the DC law. I know that, after all is said and done, the cops did give me special treatment,
in spite of not bringing me my quarter pounder with cheese. They got me in and out of jail real fast. Even the judge took me before all those black people that were sitting there on those benches. I'll bet my redheaded nemesis will be in the clink for the next six months. No wonder the black folks in this town have such an attitude.

Terri will never, ever know any of this. Fuck her anyway. I wish that judge had sent me away somewhere. I'm very tired.

April 2000

Considering what a mess I am, I would consider the potluck a success. I called Cherry Hill the day after court, as per instructed by the good judge, and she answered the phone and spoke to me in a loud, nasal, suburban, Jewish voice. I know that sounds awful, but how else am I going to describe it? She yelled (in her normal voice) that her women's potlucks were open to all lesbians, and she
commanded
me to come to the next potluck on Saturday afternoon. So on Saturday I went to the supermarket and bought some potato salad (I'm so inspired) and then I drove up to Cherry Hill's gorgeous stone house in Kalorama, one of the richest neighborhoods in DC.

Cherry Hill was a short, voluptuous woman with a trumpeting laugh to match her stentorian voice. She began spiriting me around her beautiful house with its stone floors and skylights and stunning rugs and paintings, introducing me to women gabbing over paper plates full of food. In one of three living rooms, I found my drinking buddies from the last potluck, Bette, Jean, and Pia. Bette enfolded me in a busty hug. I was disappointed
not to see Dee, but a tall, coltish-looking woman was sitting with them, and she had a nice, casual-butchy look, with her jeans and seersucker shirt and blond, surfer-boy hair.

Cherry went to answer the door and Bette cattily said, “Leave it to a lesbian to entertain with paper plates even though she's a millionaire. You know, this would never happen at a gay boys' party.” And I replied, “Well, gay boys wouldn't even
have
a potluck.” For some reason it didn't bother me to be all snide and teenager-ish with Bette. Maybe it's because she's not shallow. During the last potluck at Dee's, she shared fascinating chunks of information about everything from Georgetown etiquette to Scandinavian literature to the brain's limbic system. Not only is she well-read and intellectually curious, but underneath the cattiness is a whole lot of kindness.

I told the girls my whole jail adventure and they whooped and hollered. I was a little sheepish about revealing my lunacy to the new girl, Kimba Patterson, but she didn't seem to mind at all. In fact, she seemed to take a particular interest in me and I really took to her. She was understated, with a soft voice, but I could tell that she wasn't shy because her green eyes had a mischievous sparkle, the corners of her mouth kept flickering as though she wanted to laugh, and she had a casual way of speaking, not nervous at all. She told us she saw a rainbow the day before, and I teasingly scoffed at this, saying I'd never even seen a rainbow, and she said she saw them all the time. She mentioned that she had a twin sister who lived in Florida, and that she grew up in a small
town outside of Kent, Ohio, and when I said I was from Cleveland her eyes lit up. She confided in me that she doesn't like DC, with its stiffness and workaholism. She has two master's degrees and a high-level job at NASA, but she's still a down-home country girl at heart. I said I hoped she didn't go back to Ohio anytime soon, and she said she didn't plan on it, and she invited me to an Orioles–Indians game at Camden Yard.

While I was talking to Kimba, Cherry Hill breezed up behind me and said, “Where did you get that sexy shirt?” I told her I got it at Chico's, and she gave me a big smile and said, “You should always shop at Chico's.” Then Kimba left to go country-western dancing, and I went to the food table, and before I had a chance to rejoin my friends Cherry got hold of me and started interviewing me. She asked me if Kane was a Jewish name, and I said in my case it was, and she got a gleam in her eye and I thought, “Uh, oh.” I said her name reminded me of one of my favorite songs, “Cherry Hill Park,” and she said she kept her ex-husband's name rather than going back to being Cheryl Lipschutz. She asked me if I belong to the Jewish gay congregation that meets at the Jewish Community Center, and I said I did not because I was raised by socialist heathens and I'm a socialist heathen myself, and she said that was fantastic and that when she was growing up there were socialists living right next door. I asked her what she did for a living and she said she got “some money” from her divorce, so she doesn't have to work; she just has potlucks and serves on committees, which means for a hyper-extrovert like her that she hobnobs around town schmoozing with everyone and probably
not getting anything done. (I wanted to ask her how she knew Judge Holmes but didn't want to bring up how
I
knew Judge Holmes, so I let it go for the time being.) Then, wasting no time, Cherry asked me if I wanted to meet her at Rosemary Thyme on 18
^th
Street for lunch, say, on Wednesday. And I said yes.

I don't know exactly why I made a date with Cherry Hill. She has that foghorn voice and we don't seem to have much in common. But I need any distraction I can find from the ache that I get up with and go to bed with and walk with all day because I miss that stupid whore Terri. I know I shouldn't call her a stupid whore. It's not nice. Maybe that's why she doesn't want me. Because I call her a stupid whore. Actually she likes when I call her “whore.” She laughs. But she wouldn't want me to call her stupid. She would say it simply wasn't true. “But I'm not stupid,” she would say. Like I meant it literally. She's so
literal
about everything.

All things considered, I'm glad I went to the potluck and that I'm going out with Cherry Hill. I had a more rip-roarin' good time at Dee's potluck. But I was young and innocent back then, and now I'm a tarnished, broken-hearted jailbird, and I need to take whatever scraps of pleasure are offered me.

My date with Cherry Hill turned out to be very good. It was very, very good. If you catch my drift. Picture me standing here with a Mick Jagger leer (which should not be difficult because I still look a little bit like Mick). Not that I would presume to be as sexy as he is, but we all have our little moments, and yesterday was one of mine. So why do I feel so deflated about the whole thing today?

It all started because I couldn't wait to get out of the restaurant with her. As soon as we sat down, she started to embarrass me. She kept asking mundane questions, like, how old was I when I came out and what kind of woman is my type, and every time I answered she erupted with her trumpeting laugh. I was just answering honestly, but for some reason she found everything I said deliciously funny. Finally I told my jail story, which elicited a resounding screech that put all the others to shame. She did solve the mystery of Judge Holmes; she and “Louise,” as she calls her, had never been intimate, they just served on a committee together. Upon hearing that disappointing news, I suggested that we walk over to my place since I had a couple hours to kill before work. (The whole time
we were eating, I had been concentrating on her plump breasts to avoid looking at the other diners.)

We walked over to my house and went upstairs to my little room, which she thought was the most adorable thing she'd ever seen and said she wished she lived there instead of in her 18-room mansion because she is sick of all the upkeep. I decided to shut her up before the conversation got any more ludicrous, so I closed the door and we proceeded to have wild sex. I have a package of latex gloves that I bought to play sex games with Terri, and I haven't had that opportunity, but I put those gloves to good use with Cherry Hill. I pretended to be the nursing supervisor on a psychiatric unit and I ordered her to undress completely and lie on the bed. She asked me what she did and I said, “You know
exactly
what you did, Miss. You have been running through the ward like a crazy girl, and are upsetting the other patients. We're going to help you regain control over yourself.” She kept protesting, saying, “No, no, please, I'll be good,” and I said, “You have had plenty of opportunities to be good. Now just do as I say,” so she took off her clothes and lay on my bed and I donned the gloves and said, “Spread your legs,” and she did, and I inserted a finger into her and said, “This will relax you,” and she started to laugh and I informed her that she would not be able to return to the unit until she cooperated. Of course, this made her laugh even harder— between gasps, because I was fucking her really good with practically my whole hand— and I told her the longer she kept that up, the longer she would have to submit to the treatment. Finally I withdrew my fingers and said, “It appears that you require
more intensive treat-ment today.” I stripped off my clothes and ordered her under the covers and got under there with her. I said, “As soon as you stop fighting me this will all be over.” I put my leg between hers and re-inserted my fingers and fucked her harder than ever and she literally started screaming— it was a good thing everyone on my floor was out because they would have thought I was killing her. When she got that otherworldly look, I said, “All right, relax,” and she came like Mt. St. Helens and I came too, just from sheer excitement.

It was the best sex I ever had, including with Terri. I was so relieved to finally bust loose that I told everyone I knew. Jerome was ecstatic and said Cherry should be my woman. My friends in Cleveland were shouting “Hurrah!” because I hadn't done the wild thing in such a long time. Even my mom voiced her quiet approval. She said, “That's very nice.” (No, I did not give her the colorful details.)

The only problem with my tryst with Cherry is that it was a fleeting pleasure, like doing a snootful of cocaine. The woman is so annoying that I don't really want to see her again. She sounds like a high school orchestra tuning up every time she opens her mouth. She already called today to ask me what I was doing tomorrow evening, and thank god I could tell her I'm going to the ball game with Kimba. But she'll probably call me again and I'll have to tell her it was a one-shot deal. I did that a million times with men, having sex with them one time to prove something to myself and then running away from them. It's just such a crappy thing to do. If I had sex with these people because of uncontrollable passion, that would be
one thing. But it's all about my ego, not my libido— I'm trying to prove my womanhood. And it ends up having the opposite effect. I end up feeling less of a woman than ever.

Kimba and I went to see the Indians play the Orioles at Camden Yards. Kimba is so much fun. I hope she didn't find me boring. I'm sure she did. She was so lively and charming and I was— I was
trying
. That's about all I could say for myself.

Kimba is a more suitable partner for me than Cherry Hill, but she's in love with a heart-breaker of a girl who is more of a female Lothario than Terri. Kimba had been with a fine woman for eight years, but the relationship lacked passion, and then Kimba got breast cancer, went through the whole mastectomy-chemo-hair-falling-out ordeal, and decided she wanted to live her life to the fullest, so she left her partner and ran off with this seductress, who was as elusive as her partner was loyal. They broke up a couple months ago, but in typical lesbian fashion they are still “friends,” and Kimba still loves her and is furious with her at the same time.