Unashamed (6 page)

“Aren’t
you?
” he said as he pulled out my iron from a wall locker and plugged it in.

“I like girls, yes.” We set up the board so he could press his uniform in my room and talk.

Steven instantly changed the pitch in his voice and began to swirl in my computer chair as he waited for the iron to heat. Suddenly the letter
S
became elongated and a snap of his fingers was added for emphasis to the main point.

“Girl, mossst people can’t tell, but I am tired of not being able to be myssself. *snaps* I haven’t been able to find anyone like me to chill with. These boys around here are slick. They play games and I am not down with that hiding bullshit; that’s why I am going back to civilian life so I can be myssself. It’s hard being me. *snaps*”

It was the beginning of a wonderful friendship. He welcomed my questions about coming out of the closet and going back in it for the military. His mother was very accepting, and he spoke very fondly of her. She was one of those quiet, passive women, sweet as apple pie when I met her. Steven cut out the super fag twists and turns as he talked to her. He became a typical adult man speaking to his mother without all the cursing and extensions of the letter
S
. Every now and then one would slip, but he tried amicably to respect his mother and held back the flaming characteristics I was used to seeing.

Annica already knew of his sexuality but didn’t say a word to me. Funny how a chatterbox could hold secrets like that; no wonder they were friends.

When Steven was comfortable enough, he invited Annica and myself to Jet Ski with his red-headed local Provost Marshal boyfriend. The boyfriend was not out and was very pissed off that Steven invited us; however, we went and had a blast. He was pleasant and seemingly had no problem showing affection around Annica and me, but weeks later, after much arguing, Steven confessed that it was the day their relationship went downhill.

“He is hiding, girl. I can’t be with a man who will make love to me at night and turn around and pretend he doesn’t know me in public. He’s just a ssscared little bitch is what he is” Then he asked who I was interested in, but I didn’t have a name to give him. Relationships with women were not my priority. Lynn knew of my bisexuality and always flirted, but there were too many boys on the weekends. Chasing women didn’t cross my mind and, besides, there wasn’t enough time outside of the one-night stand drama and screwing no-name privates.

Additionally, I had a steady something going with Franklin. He was my fuck buddy of seven months, and that’s literally all we did. He was twenty-five and nearly bald, weighing in at 140 pounds with three percent body fat. Hardly the guy anyone would suspect me of sleeping with, he was perfect.

We didn’t want anyone to know about our little setup, so we asked in code if the other wanted sex and tried to maintain secrecy. I’d walk to his room, where his roommate always answered the door in his tighty whities.

“Hey, is Franklin in? Could you ask him if he wants to play cards, please?” I’d peer into the room that they had painted a deep purple to see if he was, in fact, in. I could see his shirtless pink flesh sitting on his bed through the crack of the door in contrast to the purple paint. And that was it, the unbreakable code we made to boldly ask the other for sex—ingenious really. Sometimes we could yell it down the hallway through the loud music, and no one thought anything of it. Franklin didn’t even bother to get up from doing whatever he was doing on his bed.

He simply instructed his roommate. “Ask her if she wants me to bring my deck!” This was code for “do you have condoms or should I bring some?” We had it choreographed very well.

“Bring his deck; tell him I’ll be in my room and put some goddamn pants on.” I walked to my room, which was several doors down the hall, to wait for his knock in less than four minutes.

As soon as the door to my room shut behind him, we attacked each other as if we were lovers in an affair with limited time to share. The tension was high and no foreplay was needed; just take the clothes off, stick it in and pump, that’s the mission. It was always exciting and arousing to have desire like that, no matter where it came from, and the clothes never seemed to come off fast enough before he entered me. Sometimes he had the condom on already so it would be much less awkward.

He was a small man with a small penis. There is no polite way to put it, but he was my choice for a fuck buddy because a good poke before going to the club usually helped me leave the other boys alone. That’s also what it was, a poke. It took longer for us to rip each other’s clothes off than it did for him to orgasm. Poor Franklin was a two-pump chump; however, ladies and straight gentlemen, that’s what I liked about him. Our beneficial relationship worked because we gave each other what we needed, no strings attached. Get in, get out, and take the fucking deck with you when you leave.

Around the time of Franklin and his inability to last longer than three minutes, I was still bringing boys home on the weekends and crying about it to Annica. One particular weekend Annica gathered all of our friends up for a big night out, figuring the more people to socialize with, the less chances of a quick guilty hookup.

Everyone went and the plan to keep my vagina in my pants worked. Annica still had her infamous wingman make-out sessions. Lynn had some new recruit finger her in a dark corner. My neighbor, Rick, who looked like a living, breathing Ken doll, hung out with Lynn’s friend, Melanie, at the bar. Steven brought along a straight friend and played pool all night. We danced so long our blisters had blisters. Eventually the bartender announced it was last call, and the final hour was spent trying to convince each person to stay in one spot so we could leave as a group.

Barely sober enough to drive, we piled into my Geo Metro and made the three-block trek back to the barracks. Annica, by surrounding me with buddies, kept me away from the pussy-hungry boys. Now it was time to finish up the night with that last beer among friends.

We tried to use our best drunken whispers to talk in the hallways until we all filled into Rick’s room, where he played Prince CDs and cracked windows for the smoke to filter out. As far as we were all concerned, the after party had begun.

We joked and screamed at the girl getting laid in the other building. She was so loud that we could hear her through our music. This became our new form of entertainment. We all gathered at the windows, squirming for positions to get as many heads out of it as possible and loudly yelled out orgasmic sounds of our own. The chorus of the fake orgy drove the barracks guard outside to investigate and pissed him off enough to threaten us with calling our first sergeants. We settled a bit and it was a bunch of friends partying, very innocently, just soldiers relieving some stress—until somebody started kissing.

One of those goddamn horny soldiers started French kissing the other and eventually taunted me into the slobber frenzy. There was no thinking involved, just a psychedelic dance of mouths where tongues licked other random tongues in a four-way kissing freak show. Annica and the straight friend of Steven’s shared that face people get when the joke isn’t funny anymore. Lynn stood laughing and mocking Annika’s embarrassment. Soon the lighthearted shouts of initial shock turned into
yeah it’s time to leave
.

Then someone said,
No don’t leave, join us.
I thought it was Melanie, but it was my voice I heard. Putting her name on it gave me justification to continue, even though my actions gave me as much pleasure as an elbow rub. I was going through the drunken motions for absolutely no reason. The agreement to keep my vagina in my pants was in the back pocket of my jeans on the floor in less than two minutes.

During a separate kiss with Steven, I stopped to ask if what we were doing was turning him on. The shared feeling of boring straight sex had us giggling in each other’s faces as we pretended to engage in this debauchery. Steven composed himself long enough to explain his desires for Rick as we shielded our whispers from them. But, Steven added that he really had to leave because Rick wasn’t gay; it wasn’t going to happen for him and he was getting very uncomfortable.

I whispered back, “I’m staying to get to her,” and kissed him goodbye. My focus was on Melanie after Steven left. Even during sex with Rick, my intention was always to get back to her. It became my mechanical strategy, and, eventually, I pulled Melanie to the other twin bed across the room so we could be alone.

Why couldn’t Rick just watch like a good boy? He obviously wanted Melanie as much as I did because he followed us all over the room. Ultimately the chemistry between them overwhelmed the experience and I was left out, more than not. That was my cue to exit.

I put my shirt over my naked body and peeked out of the open doorway to check the hall. My intention was to hurl myself across to my own door and scurry through it to the safety of my bed. To my surprise, Franklin was blocking the doorway, and my head nearly smashed into his huge shining noggin. I jumped and tugged at my t-shirt to cover my naughty bits. He looked down at my hands pulling the bottom of my t-shirt, and, although I was covered, he knew I was panty-less. “Go put some pants on,” he demanded as he looked at me with disgust.

My eyes tried to adjust to the lights from the hall, but they burned from secondhand smoke and smeared makeup. “I’m just having fun. Relax, Frankie. You should join us,” I invited and tried to pull him into the room despite his protest.

“You are drunk.” He broke free from my grasp and rebalanced himself in the doorway as he crossed his arms.

“I’m not that drunk. I know what I am doing and I want you, so let’s do it.” I didn’t want him, per se. I wanted to feel like someone desired me, and he was my only option.

“I’m not going in. You know the door has been open this whole time?” He was right, but Rick had strategically placed his wall lockers just beyond the entrance so he could get some privacy should his roommate need to leave while he was changing. Sure, it was open, but unless you walked in and around the locker, you couldn’t see the shenanigans behind it.

In slurred speech I asked him if he had been watching as I giggled and reiterated how bad I wanted sex.

Truth was, I couldn’t handle his rejection, so I begged him a bit more before kissing him in the open doorway, caught between the light of the hallway and the darkness of the room. It was familiar and comforting. He pushed away and looked at me intently, even held my head still for a moment as he stared into my glazed eyes, almost romantically. It was the only time he ever looked into me and connected on a level beyond sex. The kiss was amazing, too; the passion behind it surprised me, and it allowed me to enjoy, for the first time, his thick smooth lips.

I wish I knew what he was thinking in the second before he unzipped his pants and fucked me where we stood. Before there was time to be appalled, he finished and tucked himself back into his jeans. He turned and walked straight to his room, never looking back as he yelled, “Go to bed, Emma.”

Chapter 5

The Sunday afternoon light beamed through my window just as Annica’s lighter flicked two or three times. She inhaled, exhaled, and looked over to see my discomfort from the interruption of sleep. The sun peeked around my blinds, misting the room with a cheerful afternoon glow, yet, somehow, managing an intensified stream of light over my eye, searing it right through the eyelid. I struggled to shift my head on the pillow to capture an inch of shade. My attempt was unsuccessful.

Annica hummed that infamous three-note wordless phrase: tsk-tsk-tsk. Almost everything that needs to be said about disappointment can be grunted or hummed in this way. It means “damn, dirty shame” or “no, you didn’t” without articulation. I looked over to her smoking in her twin bed without glasses, which had been slapped to the floor in an effort to find the pack of smokes and lighter on her nightstand.

I grimaced in disgust, moaned, and threw the covers over my head. Annica repeated those little notes, accompanied by a synchronized headshake. This was one of the few times where she didn’t need to say anything to be loud and clear. She simply inhaled, then exhaled, and tsked me with squinted eyes. I knew what the fuck it meant.

“I know! Shiiit!!” My voice, still scratchy and dry, popped as it tried to kickstart itself with the morning. I pulled the covers tighter over my head and faced the wall in shame. Annica laughed and puffed away until she was finished with the cigarette and lit a second one. She enjoyed it slowly as sleep overwhelmed me and carried me off into another dream. The plan for more people to lessen the chances of a guilty hookup was a bullshit strategy that worked about as well as a broken condom. Little attention was given to the rumors of an orgy in the barracks; in fact, I didn’t entertain the idea, I dismissed it all together when Steven and I talked of marriage. We just wanted to be ourselves on the most basic level, and we figured the only way to do that was to marry, yet lead our own separate gay lives. It made perfect sense to us.

The agreement was to marry sometime in December if I didn’t find anyone else more convincing as a straight man. We would be two gay roommates essentially, and none would be the wiser. The money would be better and the freedom, priceless. We hung out more and took lots of photos to portray a budding relationship. I listened to details of his life and noted the little things he did to deceive the masses. However, there were things he just couldn’t hide, like the curved shape his fingers made when he pressed on the volume button to listen to Erasure. Of course, my version of our story replaced the artist and omitted his squeals of excitement over the lyric “In the fields where poppies grow.” That was the plan. It was the summer of ’97, the supposed beginning of my hidden lesbian life.

Melanie held my affections after the sex fest in the barracks. I gave her attention, helped her pick out weekend outfits, bought her simple gifts, listened to her talk about Rick, and asked with genuine concern how her new diet was going, even though she was perfect. She always thanked me with a wink and a smile when I complimented her.

During this infatuation for Melanie, I remember my stepmom calling me and how, for the second time, I tried to come out of the closet. A cordless phone allowed me to walk and talk in the dayroom, which is a common entertainment area for soldiers to use. I passed Melanie’s room on my way there and noticed her door was ajar. She was inside laughing and joking with a friend. When she saw me, she slowly made her way to the door, curious as to what I was doing. Just before I turned into the dayroom, I stopped like she stopped outside of her room. We stared at each other at opposite ends of the hallway and smiled as hard as we both could smile. As I looked at her and she looked at me beyond her friend’s head, I threw a curve ball at my mother.

“Mom, I think I am gay. I like girls.” There were no feelings of nervousness or worry about how Mom would accept it. It fell out of my mouth, regardless of her potential reaction.

I waved hello to Melanie and she returned the gesture. It made her smile harder, and I noticed she had a difficult time resuming the conversation with her friend because she kept looking at me in flirtation.

Mom sighed like she was giving me tax advice. “Stop it. Geez, lots of women experiment. That doesn’t mean you are gay.”

“Well, I must be bisexual, then, because I like girls a lot. I mean, really like girls, Mom,” I said, still smiling. I was not paying attention to the words that slipped from my mouth into my mother’s ears. It all just flowed so easily. “What if I
am
gay?” I asked as I turned from the hallway to enter the dimly lit dayroom. There was no need for lights as I plopped myself on the couch.

“Stop saying that,” she demanded. “You’re not gay. You are having fun experimenting, but you better knock it off because it’s a lustful thing. Don’t worry about it. It’s just something yer goin’ through,” she added.

I laughed at her and rolled my eyes like most defiant children do. “Mom, it’s not a phase; I keep telling you that. It hasn’t gone away since eighth grade!” I shrieked like I did after hearing a good dirty joke. “But okay, Mom…” I rolled my eyes again.

After my laughing subdued, she didn’t know what to say, so for a moment she gave pause, then came up with some hard-hitting gospel. “You better start reading your Bible.”

This additional last-ditch effort to terminate the conversation and move on only made me throw my head back against the couch in minor frustration. “I know, Sodom and Gomorrah, I know.”

Her reaction to my reference was to educate me on the biblical truth. “
Yes!
God banished the homosexuals into two cities of sinners. One for the men and one for the women —”

I didn’t let her finish; I simply cut her off. “Oh my God, Mom, I
know!
” Then we both fell quiet because we were finished talking about this unholy subject. Mom ended the conversation with the childhood nickname mothers make up out of love; the name that doesn’t make any sense and makes their kid’s skin crawl when spoken. Only mine wasn’t made from love; it was made from some kind of inside joke that I will never be privy to. “Well, Fungus, I love you, but I’m going to go.”

“I love you too, Mom, but stop calling me Fungus.” And we pleasantly hung up the phone as if a typical conversation had just taken place. I walked back to my room and mumbled to myself,
Fungus. What the fuck does that mean anyway
?

Days later, when I felt the time was right, I talked to Melanie about dating me. I assured her no one would know. This was a bold move, yet, I was comfortable asking face to face. She actually surprised me in saying that she liked both Rick and me, but felt something serious was developing between the two of them. She apologized while touching my hair and told me how pretty I was at the same time.

For some reason, I didn’t take this as rejection. I was sincerely not wanted as much as someone else and it was okay with me. Internally, I knew that I couldn’t win them all, and really, the act of asking a girl to date me was accomplishing something far more than getting the wanted answer. It did, however, take awhile for me to stop thinking she would change her mind. It hurts when you are not the chosen one.

The first girl to express anger from
my
rejection came from my straight man-loving friend, Lynn. I had no clue she was even interested in me until the night she had a little too much to drink and asked me to talk to her in the bathroom. She was upset because she had been trying to show interest in me and just wanted to know if I found her attractive. When I gently explained that I only saw her as my friend, she became wild with anger. After calming down, she suddenly grabbed my head and pressed her face to mine as I tried to pull away. I tightened my lips, squeezed my eyes, and attempted to take a step back, which sent me flying into the wall behind the bathroom door. She called me a bitch and continued screaming obscenities at me as she jerked open the door to leave. As if the door nearly hitting my face wasn’t enough, her final dig was calling me a “fucking dyke,” as she took off her shoes and threw them down the hall toward her room. Her feet slowly slapped the tiles as she stumbled and sobbed. It hurt her not to be the chosen one.

I ran back to tell Annica about rejecting Lynn, and, in true Annie style, she tsked me while she smoked her cigarette.

Rejection from the same sex wasn’t the only kind I experienced in the early days of sexual discovery. It was apparent that Franklin and I didn’t really like each other outside of our little pokey-poke sessions. Matter of fact, he explicitly told me once that he was with me because he was waiting on “The One,” and, once she came along, I was going to be tossed aside like an old hat. Tired of being his cum rag, I made it seem like a tragic love tale as I told him to go fuck himself with pleasant, lovely words, of course. No more playing cards with Franklin’s small deck. Realistically, we didn’t respect each other enough to watch a movie in the dayroom, let alone share quality time on a date, so I lost no sleep over that rejection. In fact, I slept very well that night and even took a nap the next afternoon. I don’t know how long I was out before the phone rang and shot me out of bed so fast I became dizzy. I answered hello in that deep-just-woke-up-clearing-your-vocal-cords kind of way. The man on the other end said my name with question.

My head cocked to the side inquisitively as I rubbed the corner of my eye with my finger. It sounded so familiar, yet, I wasn’t fully awake so nothing triggered the identity of the man on the other end. For a split second I thought I knew who it was, but it couldn’t be.

“This is Robert.” As soon as he said it, the internal voice in my head screamed,
holy fuck, you were right
. Robert waited to speak again because he certainly knew his call would turn my life upside down. To this day there is just no other way to explain how I nearly shit a brick. Like physically managed to formulate a hard, heavy square concrete object in my colon and let it rip through my asshole before it dropped to the ground with a thud. Luckily, my butt hole puckered and I can only say I nearly shit a brick when my first love called me.

He finally broke the silence but spoke without proper sentence breaks to prevent me from interjecting. “I’m not with my daughter’s mother anymore, and I know this is totally out of the blue. Um, your mom gave me your number. I hope it’s okay. Anyway, I never stopped loving you. I still love you, and I just thought we could talk.”

I’ll admit I was very glad he called, despite everything. We caught up on the past two years and ended the call on a positive note. I actually had plans to return to my hometown for a wedding. “Do you remember Sunny from junior high? She’s getting married and I already bought the tickets so I could attend her wedding. If you want Robert, I would like to see you,” I said.

He answered back, “I’d like that.”

After my arrival in Ohio the summer of 1997, I became swept up in the circle of innocence surrounding my first love all over again. All the things I loved about him as a teenager were still the same with additional maturity and the drive to be a better man. He was working insane hours, taking care of his daughter during his visitation, and building a house on his own time. Yet he managed to squeeze me into his busy schedule and attend the wedding with me. I was convinced he was the man I could spend the rest of my life with and was willing to take on the role as a loving stepmother to his child.

I didn’t worry about Steven or our plans to be married so we could protect our lives as gay soldiers. I was in love with my high school sweetheart. I felt like the feeling had never left me and never would. Therefore, it was only right to begin our engagement on the week I was home. The plan was for him to move to Arizona with me and be married in December. Our only major concern was the decision he had to make about gaining full-time custody of his daughter or to give it up for our new life together.

Love-struck choices led him to give me an engagement chain he had worn since junior high. We figured the rings would come soon enough. He claimed he never took it off, not even to shower, and that it was now mine to symbolize our newly established status as a couple. I cried as he gently placed it around my neck before we made love for the first time. He was the missing piece in my heart. He was a worker, a protector, a best friend, and a wonderful father.

Robert accepted my underlying bisexuality, but we never talked about it in depth. The only time it was mentioned was when we dropped off his daughter at her mother’s apartment. I was overwhelmed with the way it had all worked out between Robert, his ex, and me. She got what she gave in full circle, and I was secretly gloating over how ironic a turn the love triangle had taken.

I wanted her to see me sitting next to her daughter in the truck with Robert by my side. She caused me so much anguish on my living room floor that it wasn’t necessary to say a word to her. I remained speechless as we drove into the complex to meet her outside.

She was initially shocked to see me. It hurt her in a way that only the situation could provide. To me, it was worth every second to let her sort out her anger and disgust right in front of my smiling face. I sat quietly as they talked through the window about times for the next visit and argued about losing pacifiers.

When a friend of hers began to approach the car, I shifted uneasily in my seat, thinking surely they would respect a child’s presence and avoid physical violence. But this was white trash I was dealing with. Who knew if this girl had premade a shank in her hand with my name on it?