Red Velvet Cupcakes

My husband gave me a night off last night. “Go do something for yourself,” he said and shooed me out the door. I got in the car and for a few minutes I felt free and played the radio really loud. But then I wondered: What do I do with myself? What do I even like to do?

Has it been so long since I had time to myself that I’ve forgotten what makes me happy? I mean, don’t get wrong, I love being with my little girl and husband and this makes me extraordinarily happy. But there was a time before these two, a lot of time, when I was deliriously happy without either. I had a packed schedule every night. What did I do with myself? And where is that woman now?

Driving down Sepulveda Blvd. on a Tuesday night, I pledged to dig deep and drive until I could think of things that make me happy and things I enjoy doing. And this is what came to me:

• A bargain
• Shopping for a bargain
• Design Magazines with photos of colorful kitchens
• Pretty plates
• Anthropologie
• Craft stores
• Craft fairs
• My sewing machine
• Learning how to use my sewing machine
• My baby girl
• Looking at baby clothes for my baby girl
• Shopping for overpriced baby toys from Europe
• Strolling through quirky gift shops
• Farmers markets
• Watching foreign language films
• Planning a trip
• Taking a trip
• Men with accents
• My husband
• Bookstores
• Strolling through bookstores with an overpriced coffee, collecting a pile of books, finding a corner and sitting down to read my pile
• Strong women with loud voices
• Coffee shops with friends
• Loyal and loving friends
• My sisters
• Family dinners
• Cooks Illustrated
• Making dinner from a recipe
• Baking red velvet cupcakes
• Wrapping Christmas gifts
• Making Christmas tags
• Decorating for Christmas
• Christmas morning at my parents house
• Rearranging the living room furniture
• Board games
• A good book
• A good movie with popcorn and Red Vines
• Comedy shows
• Improv
• Laughing
• A musical
• Dancing to eighties music
• Museums with things you can touch
• Disneyland
• A good story
• Storytelling
• Writing
• Having written
• Posting a new blog

I’m not sure why this list was so difficult to make. I can take care of my baby, my husband and my household, so why have I lapsed on nurturing my own creativity. Why is it so hard to remember what I like and like to do?

Mother Knows Best

When my firm called to tell me they were sending me to Philadelphia, I cried. I was on vacation with my mother at the Jersey Shore. She came out East after her double mastectomy to attend her brother’s wedding. It was a windy day, she clutched a straw hat over her freshly bald head and I huddled under the beach umbrella, cupping the receiver of my cell phone with my right hand. When I hung up, I did something I hadn’t done since I was a child. I placed my head in my mother’s lap and cried.

My sobs emoted frustration that I was leaving New York and anger that someone else got to make that decision for me. It wasn’t just that Manhattan moved at the pace of lightning, was a copious smorgasbord of options, limitlessly exciting and offered a never-ending supply of eclectic and interesting people. It was that after ten years roaming the world for a place to grow up, I thought I had finally found it and had already begun to plant the seeds of my future. And now I was being asked to uproot this foundation for a city I had never even wanted to visit.

“I hear it’s nice there,” My mother said, running her hands through my hair as if she were recalling what it felt like to have it.

“I don’t care if it’s nice. It’s not New York.”

“You could quit.” She suggested. And I considered it. In fact, for the next week I looked at job postings, updated my resume, and went on interviews.

When the move seemed inevitable, I recruited my glamorous New York model friend Janice to accompany me down on the Amtrak for a 4th of July scouting mission. We stepped off the train with our Lonely Planet guide, took in the Philly humidity, walked over the Schuylkill, down Market Street, past a sleazy strip club, past The Salvation Army and past the industrial high-rises. We turned right on 17th and stepped over a variety of homeless people laid out along our path like dead bodies on a battle field. The streets looked barren, entire blocks without people bustling by on their way to somewhere important. Stores were closed for the weekend. When we arrived in a vacant Rittenhouse Square, I was aghast at its small size. One quarter the size of Bryant park, 1/8th the size of Union Square where I lived in Manhattan. Janice tried to be positive.

“ Look at all the cute little shops,” she said.

“What? H&M? Zara? Anthro? Yipee. I pass two of each when I bring my laundry to the dry cleaners on 5th avenue,” I told her.

We went to Continental on Chestnut and all I could think about was how much fun we could be having in New York instead of swinging in these campy chairs at a TGIF knock-off. We tried to walk to Old City but eventually believed the locals claim that it was “too far to walk”. We went to get a room at the Raddison along Chestnut and there was an intoxicated shoeless woman arguing with the front desk staff through a bullet proof glass divider. As the confrontation escalated I let out the breath I had been holding in since the train station and asked Janice if we could just get the last train back to New York.

“Think we could make it back in time for Pomme Frites at Pastis?” she said.

I called my company the next day to tell them I couldn’t do it. They convinced me it would only be for three months. I convinced myself that it would pass quickly. I had been assigned an amazing client and would be promoted to running an entire campaign. This would be good for my career, and I could do anything for three months. Right?

It was a sweltering hot day in Philly when I unpacked my bags into a monthly rental house on Meredith Street in Fairmount. Coming from my tinsy NYC apartment, the idea of an entire house to myself was just decadent. I was amazed that for half the price of my NYC apartment, I was living in a furnished three story row house with original wood floors and beamed ceilings. Outside was a narrow cobblestone street carrying along the occasional dog walker. After I moved in all my bags and unpacked, I sat outside on a real Philly stoop like they did in all the movies I liked to watch when I was a kid growing up in Seattle. They don’t have stoops in Seattle.

I wandered down to Fairmount and found a place that sold hoagies like they ate on the Cosby Show. I devoured it, savoring the doughy bread. I wandered down a little further to an ice cream shop where I watched the girl in front of my order a water ice. I gleefully ate my first water ice while I walked back to the house. I can do anything for three months, right?

I began as a tourist. I started with the double-decker hop-on/hop-off bus. I went to the Philly Zoo, I ran up the Rocky steps, I attended First Friday’s, and bowled in Northern Liberties. I joined match.com, took service commitments at the local AA meetings, and had stuffed French Toast at Sabrina’s. I moved into a furnished room on 10th and Clinton. I participated in the Pat or Geno’s cheese steak debate, I went three months drinking only Fantes coffee. I bought t-shirts for my girlfriends on South Street, I took the ferry to Camden to see John Mayer, I attended a Teamster picnic at Penn’s landing. I went to the Philly Flower Show and attended The Franklin Institute Awards.I moved into a garden townhouse in Old City. I made friends with every shopkeeper on 3rd street. I did the Wednesday night dinner at Fork with Ellen. I began dating the bartender at Positano. I took a writing class at The University of the Arts and threw barbecues in my back yard. I ate at Franklin Fountain every night.

Around 10:00 PM, I would roll into the Franklin Fountain and chat it up with my favorite soda jerk. A few friends would meet me at the end of the counter and we would pull back the hidden seats, and dip pretzels in our ice cream while we laughed and traded stories.

Three months came and went and I stayed in Philadelphia. The job went, and I stayed in Philadelphia. Philadelphia had something New York would never be able to give me. Time. Time to get to know the people in my life. Time to enjoy and appreciate every moment. Time to develop the sort of relationships that are helping me to grow up.

I think of my mother, holding my head in her lap and scratching my back softly, saying, “Oh honey, it will be okay. It will work out. Everything happens for a reason.”

The Stuff That Makes You Cringe

Hi, remember me? I know, I know, it's been a while. Love can be very distracting. But I'm back. So many newsworthy moment, so many world events that merited a snarky remark, so many Britney Spears debacles that passed without my commentary. You know you have been away a while, when Brangelina adopts a new baby and Paris is sentenced to prison in your absence.

I want you to know that I thought about all these historic passings, and I even tried to write about them. But something totally out of my control happened. The keyboard just lay there under my fingers unwilling to take the notes being dictated in their direction.

It's true! I suffered from three months of finger paralysis. I thought at first that my fingers were just cold. But rigorously rubbing the hands together did nothing for my troubles. Hot baths only made me sleepy. And you can't wear gloves while you type. I wept over the computer, refusing to believe my predicament. I dropped to my knees and prayed to my HP, "God, why have you forsaken my blog."

Nothing. Just more useless thinking. And we bloggers know - our thinking means nothing without the sound of fingers furiously tapping across our keyboards.

I went to the doctor and begged for a prescription to give me back even the use of my thumb on the space bar. He told me to drink a cup of coffee every four hours until 6:00 in the evening. I rushed to my URL every morning to see if it worked, but nothing new would be posted.

I was ready to give up, throw in the towel, accept my fate as a nobody corporate zombie and then, a miracle.

Last night Chuck Palahniuk read a story to me as I sat sweetly smiling in the front row of the Philly Free Library auditorium. I twirled my pearls and straightened my skirt and thought about how lovely my life was in every way. But then he looked me in the eye, staring down from a podium carved out of an old Maple tree and everything changed.

"Everybody has a story to tell. Other writers tell stories about the every day man, but what about the other guy. Who is going to tell his story? Who is going to shed the light on the dark parts of mankind. Even the sickest and most twisted stories have a message for us. And it's our mission to gather up our guts and go out and tell those sick and twisted stories."

He said a lot of other good stuff and he told a lot of really cool stories too. Then he tied it all together and the 500 strong crowd felt as if the three hour wait in the rain to hear him speak was all worth it.

That's right, 500 people waited in line for him to read some fan mail, tell a few short stories and answer questions about his craft. 500 people! To hear an author!! He ended the event by dispersing a large box of fake severed body parts through the crowd. Sitting in the front row, I had my pick of appendages but decided I needed none of the bloody limbs to remind me of the experience.

Now I'm not sure if it was Chuck, the warmth of an auditorium filled with 500 twisted readers, or the coffee wthat as finally kicking in, but when I got home I could feel my fingers starting to tingle a little. I laid them out over some blank pages in my journal this morning and they were able to grip a pen. I wrote a short piece about how much work I had waiting for me in the office and how I needed to get my ass to work and stop pussy footing around at the kitchen table. Miraculous! Amazing!! Chuck heals! Coffee cures!

I decided right then and there, that one day, I wanted to be one of those writers to inspire 500 people to wear wedding dresses and veils through the crowded streets of a bustling city in the hopes I would autograph their book. I have too many nasty stories to tell, too many dating horror tales to lament, too many pop culture casualties to report, to be letting my pen have a rest.

So, I better get cracking. Oh yeah, and today on CBSnews.com, I got a little reminder that it is the most painful stuff to write about that makes the biggest impression on others. Check it out (printed below).

The year was 1987, the boy's name was Rob, and 13-year-old Ingrid Wiese had some pressing concerns.

"He kisses weird," she wrote in her diary. "I just hope it doesn't stick and I don't end up kissing like that forever."

Twenty years later, Wiese hauled the diary out of storage and read it to a bar full of strangers just for laughs.

"Cringe readings," these exercises are called, and they are growing in popularity around the country.

Groups in New York and elsewhere convene to relive what most would rather forget: the depths of their teenage angst. Participants get up on stage with their ragged, old diaries and are instructed to read only material embarrassing enough to make them cringe.

It turns out that embarrassing is also funny. When Wiese appeared at the reading, held monthly at a Brooklyn bar, the room was packed beyond capacity. The 33-year-old fundraiser may have been cringing, but her audience was cheering.

"When most people hear about it they think, 'Oh, God, that would be just absolutely humiliating, I would never do that,' " said Blaise Kearsley, another reader. "But I think there's something so universal about your adolescent diaries and your poems and your school assignments. It's just stuff that everyone can relate to."

Indeed, as readers spoke about zits and boys, sex and death, they heard plenty of knowing laughter.

Perhaps only teenagers or former teenagers could follow this diary entry, written by a 14-year-old Kearsley in 1987:

"When we got to the dance, Erin was depressed because she likes John and he spent the whole night dancing with Ada. But Ada was upset because at the end of the dance John frenched her. And number one: she likes him but she doesn't know if she likes him in THAT WAY. And number two: John is good friends with Dan, her ex, and she knows that Dan will have something to say to John about this."

Ah, young love.

The Brooklyn event was started by a local administrative assistant, Sarah Brown, who in a momentary, drunken lapse started reading her old diaries to friends — and discovered they had finally become more funny than painful.

The monthly cringe reading has since landed Brown a book deal and a pilot for cable television's TLC, allowing the 29-year-old to quit her day job. Similar events are happening around the country in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Milwaukee and Seattle.

"When you're a teenager, everything is the same level of intensity," Brown said. "They read about boys, or girls, or their parents, or their friends, or school, or something serious like, you know, a divorce — but ... there's no change of tone."

While the readers try to keep it light, plenty of the material in their diaries is dark, heart-wrenching stuff.

"Why? Why do you think someone could really love you?" a now-grown Ingrid Wiese reads to the crowd.

"You're fat, out of shape, covered with zits. You can just feel how your body is GOING. Your arms, your wrists, your calves. You're insecure, immature, and" — she lowers her voice to a whisper — "your grades reflect your intelligence."

The 33-year-old Wiese says it's enough to make her wish she could somehow give that insecure girl a hug.

"I just want to go back and tell that kid so many things, but mostly that 'you're just all right the way you are,' " Wiese said after the reading.

These days, Wiese's emotions are less heightened, and she carries herself confidently as she walks from the stage. Still, some things never change.

"Of course!" she says when asked if she still obsesses over boys. "And I write all about it on my blog."

Mardi Gras

“You know, you are adopted.”

My brother took wicked delight in taunting me as we watched television in the basement of my parents house on Edgewater drive.

“Why would you say that?”

He was seventeen to my my seven years old, and age is how he explained that he had rights to the entire corduroy couch to stretch out upon and I should sit quietly on the floor.

“Well, you are the only one with green eyes in the entire family. So that means you are adopted.”

“You really think so?”

“Yeah. I’m sure. And you know that means that you will always be less loved. You know, because you aren’t really part of the family.”

My green eyes narrowed.

“That’s mean Gunther. You are just trying to be mean.”

“Okay. You can think that. But until you are sure, you should be extra nice to me and I’ll try to include you a little more.”

“Gee. Thanks Gunther.”

“And you could start by giving me all the candy you have sitting there in your Easter Basket.”

“The candy that the Easter Bunny left for me?”

Gunther used the remote to flick through the channels on the TV.

“Yeah. About that. There really isn’t an Easter Bunny. It’s candy from Mom and Dad. Well, from my Mom and Dad.”

“Oh.”

“And I only want the black jelly beans, so pick those out for me. No green ones. The green ones are gross. The color green is gross. Gross.”

"I like Green"

"Well, you are weird. Nobody likes green."

"I guess I'm different."

"Well, I think we have established that."

The Cocktail Waitress

Some times I just wish I could go back to being a cocktail waitress. Life was so much easier as a cocktail waitress. Every night was a party and my biggest concerns were where to get brunch later, how many of the boys I gave my number to tonight would call me tomorrow, and was Molly Jean going to cover my shift next Saturday.

When I was a cocktail waitress, I was part of the hip crowd, I knew what music was 'out' and which hairstyles were 'in'. I wore trendy clothes, slept until noon, went to the gym every day and had glamorous friends that thought I was so funny.

When I was a cocktail waitress, I always had cash in my pocket. If I wanted a new pair of shoes, I worked hard that night and bought the shoes the next morning. I didn't need a fancy apartment or a fancy car or a new coffee machine because I was never at home. I went out every night with friends or a date.

When I was a cocktail waitress, I had all the time off I needed. I could take a few weeks and go to Europe. I travelled the world. When I ran out of money in Greece, I could pick up a tray and wait tables on the Agean.

When I was a cocktail waitress, I wasn't lonely. I got 'Club Courtesy' to all the hottest spots in town, bartenders knew my name and gave me free Diet Pepsi, I hung out behind the bar with the DJ and knew the name of all the bouncers. People in the industry knew who I was.

When I was a cocktail waitress, I was good at my job. I was always smiling, customers adored me, and my boss thought I was perfect. I knew people's drinks, I was fast, I made everyone in my section feel special. I made more tips than anyone else at the bar. I trained new staff and people enjoyed working with me.

When I was a cocktail waitress, I never had to deal with my character defects. No matter how screwed up my life was, someone else's life was always worse. Problems were discussed over the dishwasher and few stale cigarettes in the back kitchen. My co-workers were like a family and they always knew exactly what Led Zeppelin mix would make me drop my tray, dance on the table and instantly change my mood.

When I was a cocktail waitress, I went to school in the morning and attended lectures and book readings in the middle of the afternoon. I had time to sit in coffee shops reading Nietzsche and Plato. I believed that some day my work was going to change the world. Then I would smooth on my fishnets, step into a push-up bra, slide into a sexy cocktail dress, grab my tray and apron and join my friends at the club.

When I was a cocktail waitress, I didn't know how great I had it. I longed to be important. I dreamt about meetings, conference calls, and secretarys that got me coffee. Some day I would hand out business cards, write memos, wear a business suit, and have a higher purpose.

Life was just so much simpler as a cocktail waitress.

Nicole Ritchie

She was ten. Her tiny little girl legs dangled from the kitchen chair, occasionally kicking me under her mom’s Formica table. She rested her body on her elbows, a spoon in one hand and the other hovering over her Lucky Charms. She picked out the Marshmallows and popped them into the air so she could catch them in her mouth.

She was twelve. We swam together on the swim team. Her body was rounding through the belly and she was already taller than the rest of us. Despite her changing body she was the quickest swimmer. And the quickest to make me laugh. She swirled around me in the cool blue water, her blonde curls bobbing, her head falling back when she laughed. She dripped with sarcasm, bundled in her towel, licking her fingers and dipping them into a box of dry lime jell-o, waiting for our next event. We swam the relay together. We passed the time wagging our green tongues talking about the boys we thought were cute and what we would wear on the first day of school.

She was sixteen. Mom told me she had seen her out jogging along Gravelly Lake Drive. Mom said she had lost weight, that she wasn’t a chubby little girl anymore, that she looked great.

“I don’t remember her ever being chubby mom.”

“Well, she was fuller. Chunky. She had big cheeks. She was 'rounded'. But she has really slimmed down. She runs a lot you know. She looks fantastic.”

She was seventeen. Her sister and I worked together at The Taco Shop. Her sister told me that she dominated the track team and set new records for Cross Country. Her sister said that she was training for the Olympics and making their mother quite proud. Her sister also confided to me that their was concern about how thin she was getting.

She was twenty. Mom told me she had heard that she was sent away to a clinic because she wasn’t gaining weight. She said she saw her out running along Steilacoom Blvd. and she had looked like a ghost. She couldn’t believe those little legs were able to carry her frail frame.

“It was like seeing a corpse run. You could see all her veins, the blood pumping through her thin skin. She’s really sick.”

She was twenty-three. I saw her for a moment. She was walking behind her mother in a crowd. My boyfriend squeezed my leg under the table and raised his eyes towards the sickly figure. I didn’t recognize her. There was no smile and no laughter. Her thin skin caved in around her cheek bones, aging her severely. She looked tired. Her skin was pale. Her once bouncy blond curls had thinned and you could see her scalp behind the hair pulled back in a small pony tail. She didn’t see me. She didn’t see my look of horror. She just walked by quietly with her head lowered. It was only an instant.

She was twenty-nine. It was in passing that Mom mentioned she had died.

“Oh yes. Did you hear? She died. It’s so sad really. With all of us watching what we eat and worried about getting fat, can you believe someone could starve themselves to death? How dreadful for her mother. I can’t imagine standing by and watching my daughter die that way. I know she tried everything to help her.”

She would have been thirty. I try not to comment on the way my friends look, their weight or their appearance. Not when they look good, not when they look thin. I try to tell them how happy I am to see them. I try to get them away, from the clubs and the gym and the pressured existence of Manhattan ambition. I try to laugh at their jokes, tell them how funny they are, engage their souls, connect. I don’t allow the gym clothes to hide the reality that my friend is becoming too thin. So thin that I need to reinforce through my actions that boys, and party dresses and the pursuit of glamour, adoration and the thinnes reserved for the naturally petite is not what will make us feel full. I try not to read those magazines. I try not to stand in front of the mirror too long.

I am thirty-three. When I pass by the news stand on the corner of 14th and 6th Ave, I see the little girls in their knee high socks on their way to school, standing on their tippy toes to catch a glimpse of the fashion magazines behind the counter. The magazines display glossy covers brandishing glamorous Hollywood starlets who are “dying to be thin”. I see their tiny wrists. I see their thinning hair. I see their sunken cheeks and protruding clavicles. I see her, tiny, little girl legs, dangling off the chair in her mother’s kitchen.

You like me! You really like me!!

“Put this on. And hurry. The other girl is already ready to go.”

He tosses me a plastic Safeway bag and I pull out what looks like a child's tank top. I reach into the bag for the rest of the outfit, but the bag is empty.

“Wait, I think you forgot the bottoms.”

He laughs. “That’s it honey.”

“But you must be joking. Have you seen my ass?”

“Put it on. You will be fine. No one is looking at your ass.”

I stand perfectly still with my mouth open. Staring at him. He stubs out a Winston on the bar and reaches for his cell phone, clipped neatly to his belt. Staring down at the number on the 1996 Nokia he turns to head outside for better reception and yells over his shoulder.

“Hurry the fuck up.”

But I can’t move. A woman comes around the corner and pushes me into the bathroom. She’s 6’2” in her 4 inch white pumps and she is already wearing the white spandex dress that spells out Budweiser from her ample cleavage to about an inch below her pelvic bone, where she is pulling the dress down to keep it from rising up in the back over her perfect uncellulited ass. Any higher and there is no mystery as to whether or not she is wearing panties.

And for the record, she is not.

“I can’t put this on. He must be kidding.”

“He’s not kidding. Do you need some help? Because we need to get going.”

But I can’t really hear her. I’m going into the early stages of physical shock. I can’t believe that I am here and that I am about to do this. Me. The geeky girl that played the clarinet in the marching band and had braces until my Junior year. I'm about to slip on the white spandex dress that will transform me into a Budweiser girl. Every 21 year old boys fantasy.

My knees are shaking and the other girl sounds like she is speaking to me from the top of a tunnel. What makes me think I was good enough to be looked at? What makes me think I am thin enough or pretty enough to have men clamoring for a Polaroid photo of me in this dress. This dress. This tinsy, tiny, white spandex dress. However did I get here?

What makes a card carrying feminist don a white spandex dress and frolic flippantly in front of an audience of toothless men?

Attention.

For most of my life, I have sought it. Craved it. Built a lifetime of hypocritical moments to attain it.

Look at me! Talk to me! Tell me I’m beautiful. Important. Special. Validate me.

I grew up in the William Hung generation, where anyone can be famous. The myth of celebrity that if you are famous then you adored. You are loved. You aren’t lonely any more.

One only needs to see an interview with Teri Hatcher to know that isn’t true.

So what is it about being seen that is so alluring, so intoxicating that we are willing to be made a fool of just to have a taste?

Dolly Parton

My mother has just had a double masectomy and Dad has returned from the hospital for forty five minutes to take a shower. He doesn't expect to find me and Tigersmiles in his closet emptying out Moms bra drawers into green glad bags.

"What are you doing?"

Tiersmiles and I look at eachother and stop what we are doing.

"We didn't think she would want to see them when she got home."

He sighs and shakes his head.

"Good idea. I was going to do it. But I haven't had a chance."

"It's okay. I think we have it under control."

Dad just can't seem to stop watching.

"Really, we got it. We didn't want you to have to do it."

He's staring at the pile of La Perla and Victoria Secret. His eyes trace the outline of the beautiful lace, the delicate embroidery, the tiny details.

"You know. I bought her most of those."

Tigersmiles and I exchange a glance.

"I thought you were going to take a shower. Are you hungry?"

He is still staring. "No."

"Where are you taking them? She might want those later."

"I'm not going to throw them away Dad. I'm just going to hide them. So she doesn't have to look at them."

"Okay."

And he turns slowly and goes to the bed. And he lies down.

White

It is the summer of 2001 and I am somewhere in the Sahara dessert in the back of an old jeep with four men named Mohammed and an Egyptian bodyguard named Hosnik. Hosnik was assigned to watch over me by a government, ever protective of their tourism industry. I’m not sure how much money the government charged my friends for my protective custody. But judging by Hosnik’s 1945 British uniform and 1920’s rusty pistol, I am guessing that they are not paying him much.

When I met the four Mohammeds in Karnak I was assigned a security force of eight. Three rode in an open jeep behind me, three in a van in front and two in the car with me, one on either side. Those guards wore bullet proof vests and carried semi-automatics. But their uniforms still fell off their bodies like tissue in some spots. And their boots were covered in tiny holes.

It all looked very official from afar. But we all knew it was a big show.

When I had to stop the caravan for a bathroom break, four guards entered the restroom before me, came out and signaled I could enter. I entered a room with three inches of standing water, rolled up the bottom of my jeans and waded into the room to hover ridiculously over the spot where the Turkish toilet was buried under brackish water in the back corner.

This was Egypt. I had learned to expect challenged plumbing.

Whilst pulling my drawstring pants back up over my falafel filled ass, I turned back to see two distinct holes that had been punched in the wall behind my Turkish toilet. Three men stood on the other side giggling at the full viewing access of my western sized ass.

Cursing at my useless security guards I shook my Tevas out onto the sand, got back in the car and continued in silence until the lunch camp. It was here that we left the six guards with their fancy guns and chest plates. Apparently terrorists don’t venture this far into the dessert.

But we did.

The next leg of our journey is by jeep. So here I am bouncing around in the back of the car and trying not to bump into Hosnik for fear his ancient pistol will shoot my knee cap off and we will be 100 miles from the nearest hospital. I had been suckered into buying the travelers insurance from STA, but I don’t recall it covering air lift.

Hosnik is happy. He smiles a lot and chat’s easily with the four Mohammeds. Two of the Mohameds never look at me, Grumpy Mohammed doesn't look at me or speak with me, but Friendly Mohammed is patient with my broken Arabic. He seems to mildly enjoy my company. Or at least he doesn’t carry the same bitterness for my whiteness, typical of so many of those we meet along our journey.

Last night, before we left the city, he watched me struggling with my Hejab. For as hard as I tried to cover my white blonde hair and farmer bronzed fingers, I couldn’t cover my Western origins. In this crowd, I would always be white. I would always be a foreigner. And I wanted nothing more than to blend.

When I walked into a room, the mood shifted, the conversation lowered to slow whispers, people left.

It was as if Friendly Mohammed knew that I so desperately wanted to assimilate. To be one of them. When the waitress approached my table with a $30 Shisha, Friendly Mohammed shooed her away. I didn’t dare smoke in front of the others. Even if we were in a tourist joint where all the women dressed in vintage belly dancing gear because that's what the Westerners wanted to see. I am a woman, and that would be inappropriate. Because I am white, they would probably let it go. But then I would be drawing attention to my differences. So I declined. Friendly Mohammed darted his eyes to the back door, inviting me to meet him out back.

I did.

Out back were the waiters, their ties loosened, hookahs dangling off their lips. He sat me down and paid one of the waiters a few coins from his change purse. One waiter moved aside and let me sit and Friendly Mohammed placed the hookah in my hand. Because he knew I wanted to experience something that was typical of the Egyptian life. But there was nothing typical about me sitting in my Hejab, surrounded by unamused waiters, smoking apple tobacco in a cloud of dust rising up behind a touristed shanty.

"Shukran." Thank you. And I shot Friendly Mohamed a thankful smile.

Now today, we arrive at an oasis as the sun is beginning to set a yellow glow over the horizon. Desert sunsets are like that. Yellow. The oasis is a small but thriving town and I immediately notice the warmth of the people. It is a warmth I didn’t feel in the city.

I notice wealth, clean buildings, streets without garbage, and clear water running into basins in the center of town. The children here smile wide, they wear crisp white shirts over burgundy school uniforms. The girls sport headbands and knee high socks. I wander down where all the children are gathering after school and one of the girls pulls off my head scarf. Someone squeals and they fall into little girl giggles, swarming to touch my white hair. I ask them if I can take a photo.

"Minfadlik." Please. But I don't have to ask again because most of the girls aren’t shy.

“Hello…What is your name…How old you are…Thank you.”

They ramble off every English word they know. The girl with the ponytail is shy and she doesn’t want her photo taken. But the other girls convince her I am harmless. They touch my hand to show her that I don’t bite.

"Ma ismok?" What is your name.

"Fajr." She smiles and let's me take the photo.

"Ma'assalama." Goodbye. And she turns to join the others

"Fi aman allah." And I wave at them as they throw dust behind their thin legs, running back to their homes for dinner.

I explore the city, happy to escape the chaos of Luxor and Cairo. The oasis is clean, people are nice, they have proper toilets. I can walk the market without developing a crowd of salesman following behind.

"You are American? Follow me. I have an Uncle who sells carpets. I can make you a great deal. Come with me."

In the oasis, no one seems to look at me with pained glances. Out here I am not someone to resent. I am just a friendly visitor with funny skin, light eyes and white hair. I am only one tourist, not part of a pack of hungry, greedy tourists trying to rob them of their culture and poison them with my Capitalism.

I wander back to the jeep and find Hosnik and the Mohammeds behind the local restaurant smoking Shisha. They stand up when I come around the corner and I realize that I have not rewrapped my hair since the playground. But at this point it feels useless. No matter how much I try to cover my hair, bleached white after a month at the Red sea, I can never cover up that I am a Westerner. I will never be able to assimilate; I can never slump down in a corner and observe the culture playing out before me like a local. I will always be a white foreigner and my physicality will always deny me from the Arab privilege.

The next morning, we take jeeps into the White Desert. I try to contain my amazement at the world transforming outside my window. The lonely desert is turning into the moon. Once the bottom of the ocean about a million years ago, the White Desert is miles of limestone formations sprouting up from the earth like life size mushrooms down Alice and Wonderlands Rabbit Hole. Everything is White. Some stone formations are the size of buildings. One looks like the profile of George Washington in one of those shadow etchings you get at Disneyland.

I am at home in the whiteness and it makes me giddy.

We light a fire. Grumpy Mohammed lays out our sleeping bags. Hosnik and I go into our nightly ritual of charades. This is how he plans to increase my Arabic vocabulary. But so far, we just act out funny sounding animals. And at this point, I figure I know the arabic word for 50 or so Northern African creatures. Tonight, his 6'3" lanky body is framed by the light of the campfire as he slumps over and morphs into the form of a camel.

“Yella, Yella,” I sqeal. And we all laugh because this is what they told me to say to the camels when we were trekking into the Valley of the Kings.

“Yella, Yella.”

The four Mohammeds repeat with chuckles.

Maybe it was the Shisha, or maybe the long day, but Hosnik is laughing so hard now that he is falling over. And now all the Mohameds are laughing at Hosnik. And now I am laughing at the four Mohammeds. And I fall backward onto the white rock behind me.

That’s when I hear it.

The sound of air coming out of a tire. A slow, smooth, hiss.

“Hissssss.”

And I look to my left. There it is. Staring me cold in the eye. A hands length from my nose.

A snake. A white snake. A hooded white viper snake.

No larger than the garden variety we would find when weeding the yard back home. But a snake in the desert is never a good thing. She is in strike mode, her body raised up about a foot from the coil of her tail. And we are miles away from a venom. I don’t recall seeing a kit in the back of the car.

I slowly begin to move my body to the left. I don’t break my stare. I speak quietly in a whisper that only Friendly Mohamed could hear over the raucous laughter.

“Snake.”

It comes out like a prayer.

And then everything happens fast. I have pulled away a few more feet from the snake and the snake strikes. Friendly Mohammed is on his feet and has somewhere found a large rock. Hosnik pulls out his rusty gun. Friendly Mohammed brings down the rock on the snakes head in a swift blow that instantly decapitates. Hosnik begins shooting at the sand around the headless body. The other Mohammeds scramble to avoid the bullets ricocheting off the rock. And I am still half laughing at ‘Yella,Yella’, trying not to wet myself with confused delayed emotional response.

But no one else laughs. They are all cautiously staring down at the sand.

“Pack up. White Vipers travel with mates. Where there is one, you will always find another.”

I get it. Every word. Everyone snaps into motion. I help Grumpy Mohammed pack up the sleeping bags and we move to the top of one of the white rocks. As we lay out the bags on the stoney surface of the white mountain, the mood begins to lighten. The Mohammeds are alive with chatter about the scene around the fire. They are re-enacting my fall against the rock and my cool response. I zip myself into my bag as Grumpy Mohammed shoots me an amused look. In the eye. He says something in Arabic, very quickly and all the Mohammeds laugh.

"Lil'asaf, anaa ataHaddathfaqaT qaliil min aläarabiyya." Unfortunately, I only speak a little Arabic.

"Haadhaa Hasan," That's all right, "Anaa afhamuk." I understand you.

And I feel like I’m sleeping on the surface of the moon.

When we wake up, we travel back to the base camp. When the jeep stops in front of the oasis, the Mohammeds all scatter and I am left alone in the big tent with all of the Bedouin. I try to tell them the story of the snake which makes them begin hooting and hollering and laughing and slapping their knees. And then one asks me what kind of snake. I shrug my shoulders because I don't know. There is no google in the desert.

So I put my index fingers up over my head and flare out my other fingers to show the hood and they laugh some more.

“It was white.”

And the room goes silent. And no one laughs.

“Very dangerous. Not many out this way. I’ve never heard of one in this part of the desert. You are very lucky. Those are the bad ones.”

Jeans

Stacey Maxwell was the prettiest girl in school, the teacher’s favorite and the first to wear a pair of Normandy Rose jeans.

On the playground, a sea of girls stood on their tip toes to see over one another as Stacey jutted out her right hip and showed off the rose prominently displayed on her right butt cheek.

“Where did you get them?” Nanette asked.

Nanette was so cool. She didn’t wear plastic barrettes in her hair or her sisters hand-me-down corduroy pants. Nanette had her hair cut at a beauty salon. Her parents left her alone without a babysitter. She was allowed to have sleepovers and every year she had a sleepover birthday party and invited all the girls in the class. All the girls but me.

I wasn’t allowed to spend the night at people’s houses. I still had my birthday at McDonalds. Nanette got another cabbage patch kid last year for her birthday. I got another stuffed Ronald McDonald that smelled like a box of pampers.

Back on the playground, Stacey explained her good fortune.

“My mom got them at JC Penny.”

“J.C.Penny? That place is retarded. On my mom’s weekend, she buys my things at Nordstroms.”

Nanette was also the first girl in our class to have weekends at her moms and then weekends at her dads. My nine year old brain couldn’t wrap itself around the concept.

Stacey tried to explain it to me.

“It’s called divorce. It means your parents don’t like each other anymore. They can’t live together because they are mad and yell all the time. It means you get to have two houses and two beds and two sets of toys and things.”

“Two of everything? Two rooms? That’s so lucky.”

I relied on Stacey for all my adult knowledge. Stacey knew how grown ups acted.

Stacey was much more sophisticated than I. She had long straight brown hair that the other girls liked to braid at recess. I had hair so blonde and thin that the other girls would make fun of me because you could see my scalp. Their mocking squeals were not abated by the fact that my mom cut my hair herself by placing a Tupperware bowl over my head and cutting around it.

So of couse, when Stacey’s mom called my mom to ask if I could come over for a play date I was more than excited to impress her. I put on my knock off Normandy Rose’s with the big cherry on the back pocket and showed up to play with Stacey on a Saturday morning.

Thus began our friendship. Best friends because our parents loved the free babysitting opportunity. Bonded over the emblems that hugged our seven year frames.

I can’t remember when “it” started.

Stacey would tell me stories about her parents nocturnal habits and then we would act out their strange ritual of climbing naked onto one another, pumping, dismounting and then smoking candy cigarettes. Stacey coaxed me from one play date to the next to go a little further with our games.

“Kiss me there.” She would say, pointing to the area below her belly button.

“Why?“ I remember asking, careful not to reveal my naiveté.

“Because that is what grown-ups do.” She would say.

And as if that made perfect sense, I played these games in her closet with the lights out. I only knew we were doing something wrong when one day her mom wandered into the room and Stacey pressed her fingers to her lips signaling shhhh.

“You girls in here?”

Stacey’s usual ten inch grin was replaced with pinched eyes and pursed lips. She didn’t even breathe. When her mom left the room she tossed my clothes at me, dressed quickly, smoothed her hair in the mirror and skipped out of her door to surprise her mother with a little giggle.

“Where were you girls?”

“Hiding mom. Did we fool you?”

Shortly after Stacey and I began our closeted antics, I discovered my fathers Playboy magazines in the bedside table of my parent’s room. I tore out pages and brought them to Stacey like an offering. We tried out the new poses being displayed by Barbie Benton and Hef’s pin up girls. My curiosity was also piqued by the “Where did you come From?” Books, the movie Blue Lagoon, and the thirty seconds of porn you could catch between a smattering of snow during channel changes late at night on this new thing called cable.

As Kindergarten passed into First grade, I began to dread the visits to Stacey’s. I wanted to be her friend at school but I didn't want to make any more Saturday visits. I would sit down on my bed and cry and say I felt sick and couldn’t go.

"Did you two have a fight?" My mother would ask as she packed my Strawberry Shortcake dolls into my Jansport.

"No Mom." I felt the need to protect my mother from the truth about her daughter.

I knew what we were doing was wrong.

I was waiting until my CCD class made first confessions to tell on myself with God.

Bless me father, for I have sinned. I have never confessed before. I hate my little sister. I mushed my peas up last night and hid them under my placemat, I lied about a hundred and eighteen times. And oh yes, I’m a lesbo.

CCD

When the day came, I sat with the other ten year olds in the first pew of St. John Bosco Church, waiting for my name to be called. It was a cool October Wednesday night. It was only 6:30, but the sky was darker earlier now. Most of the church lights were off, except for those closest to the rectory door. And it was so quiet. It was a sharp contrast to the sunlight streaming through the stain glass Jesus windows and the out of tune energetic hymns of the choir on Sunday morning.

The other kids were busy discussing upcoming Halloween costumes. All the girls wanted to be Rainbow Bright. I wanted to be invisible. I wished my mom was sitting next to me, smoothing my hair with her long nails, like she did during Sunday mass. The view from my mothers lap was always the back of the pew, an old hymn book , tiny drawing pencils and a stack of envelopes that my dad would unfold so I could draw on the clean insides during the homily.

I tried not to think about what I was about to do.

I was scared. I was ashamed. I wanted to be outside of my own skin, hidden beneath the surface of my last bath water.

Confessions in the movies always had a tiny screen. The priest would slide it open a little crack and you had to lean down close to it and whisper your sins. The priest could only see the outline of your shadow behind the screen and maybe your lips if you sat close enough to the little slot. In the movies, you could always see their lips. The sinner spoke and then the priest channeled the almighty Father and told you your penance.

Bless me father for I have sinned. This will be my first confession.

I practiced the prayer with my eyes closed, gripping the pine wood of the church bench.

The rest of the little girls had moved on from Halloween costumes and were comparing make-your-own jewelry. The boys of Mrs. Ross CCD class sat behind us. They were up to their usual routine of pushing and shoving one another over a game of rock, paper scissors. I lay my blond pig tails back against the hard wood and stared up at the ceramic Jesus on the cross. What if God could not forgive me?

Bless me father for I have sinned. This will be my first confession.

“What are you so nervous about? It’s just confession. It’s not like your getting graded or anything.”

Krissy Stevenson was one of the ‘horse girls’. She and some of the other popular girls spent recess running around the playground tossing their hair back and making wild horse noises. I tried hanging around them and talking about horses. But they never let me in. I decided that was fine—I hated horses anyways.

“Yeah, thanks.”

She galloped off.

“Jane. You're up. Chop-chop. Let’s keep the line moving.” Mrs. Ross teased her hair and combed it into a beehive that sat at the top of her head. Her CCD students often discussed the possibility that the large mass of hair covered a shark fin or devil horns. Our predictions depended upon her Wednesday night mood. Tonight she wore a flowing skirts, lots of beads and a shirt she had macraméd at the community center where she was taking a class with my mom.

She bent over close to my ear. And placed a cool hand against my forehead.
“You okay honey?”

“Ready.” I hopped off the church pew, tucked my hands through the straps of my Osh Kosh’s and took one final look back at Mrs. Ross before I knocked on the church rectory door.

When I walked into the rectory I was surprised to see Father Jim sitting on a plastic green chair, an empty one beside him.

Panic.

“Where is the screen?”

“Oh honey, we don’t need a screen. Sit down. Let’s talk.”

He pat the little plastic chair beside him with his hand.

Father Jim had been my mother’s favorite drinking buddy since I was old enough to sit up at the alter on Christmas Eve when they read the story of Jesus to the kiddies. He was a fat man with rosy read cheeks that deepened after a few glasses of Red Wine. He was loud, out going and known to be a bit flamboyant. And there was no way in hell I could imagine telling him what I had to tell him.

“Have a seat dear and let’s get started. I have lots of children out there to see.”

“Okay.”

I took a seat next to Father Jim. My tiny legs were still too short not to dangle. I gripped the seat and could feel the sweat beginning to moisten my palms.

“Bless me father, for I have sinned.-”

He stopped me.

“Oh, we don’t need to do that honey. That’s the old way. You can just tell me what you got on your mind.”

He looked down at his watch.

“Oh well. Um. I’ve been really bad father.”

“Bad. What do you mean by bad? There are no bad little girls in this world. Just bad acts. Have you done some naughty acts?

"You could say that."

"Okay. What kinds of acts?"

I couldn’t speak.

He tried to help me.

"Fibs?"

I stared at him in silence. I wanted to tell him. Why couldn’t I find my words. I could feel moisture brimming around my eye lids.

“Yah. Some of those.”

"Okay, that’s a start."

“What else.”

I started to mumble, but nothing came out.

“Do you sometimes think mean things about your mom and dad? Sisters and brothers? Friends?”

He said it. Friends. The tears began to flow very gently down my cherub cheeks.

“Yeah. That too."

“Okay. What else? What has you so upset my dear?”

Oh Father Jim. If only I could tell you what happened in the dark closet at Stacey’s house. If only I could tell you what we did to each other. If I could just tell you then maybe God would forgive me. And if God could forgive me then maybe he could help me make it stop.

He looked down at his watch and sighed a big heavy sigh.

“Well. Whatever it is. God forgives you. You can just tell him yourself in your nightly prayers. Okay? Now let’s say an Our Father and when you go back out, I want you to say it two more times. Got it??”

“Okay.”

We said the Our Father. I tried not to cry, but by the end I was blabbering like a baby.

“Here is a Kleenex Jane. Now on your way out, please tell Mrs. Ross I’m ready for the next one. Okay?”

I hopped down off the chair. And started towards the door. But right before I reached it, I turned back.

“Father. I have to tell you something.”

I turned my face to the ground.

“Father. I’m a Lesbo.”

“I’m sorry Jane. I can’t hear you. Speak up.

“I’m a lesbo.”

“You’re a hobo? You lay around the house a lot?”

That was it. My best effort. I couldn’t stomach much more of a confession or I was going to pass out. I resolved that God was unwilling to hear my confession. That my sin was unconfessable and that I would likely be punished for a lifetime. Probably destined to be eaten by a snake. Never marry. Spend a lifetime in purgatory.

“Yeah. That’s it.”

“Well. Do the dishes tonight.”

“Okay. Thanks Father.”

And I joined the other kids to say my Our Fathers and pretend that I fit in. That I was just like them. Even though I wasn't.

Ellen

"Sometimes I just find myself more turned on by girl-on-girl porn than the regular kind."

"Me too. Sometimes you can catch some quality lesbian adventures in the 'Letters to Penthouse'. They really do the trick." She whispered so that her husband couldn't hear her in the next room.

Kay was like a surrogate through most of my formidable years. My sister navigated her way through life with the kind of certainty that accompanies people with integrity. She was the pinnacle of moral behavior that I attempted to model myself after when times were especially bad. When I was ten, I spilled a bottle of my mothers red nail polish on the rug of her bathroom. Kay found me on the floor of the bathroom, smearing the polish deeper into the lime green carpet. Without saying anything, she got down on the floor next to me with some nail polish remover and we worked together for the next hour removing the red stain. When we were done, she got up and brushed her hands against her brown corduroy pants.

"So are you going to tell Mom about this or would you like me to?"

"But it's clean now." I pleaded with her.

"But it's the right thing to do."

Without judging me, without shaming me, she simply let me know the difference between right and wrong. And she never let me believe that the actions that seemed instinctual to me meant that I was a bad person.

Because of this, I always equated Kay with a world I didn't live in. The kind of world where you always told the truth and did the right thing. If Kay was the family symbol of morality, I was the pin-up girl for the wrong side of the tracks. So imagine my shock when I discovered her becoming wise in areas where I thought we could never relate.

Me: "I cheated on my boyfriend and the guilt is killing me."

Kay: "Does he know? You don't have to tell him things that are going to hurt him. If you aren't going to do it again and he doesn't know then it's your problem. Don't make it his."

Me: "I flirted with my best friend's boyfriend."

Kay: "Don't say you're sorry. Just don't do it anymore. Show up different. That's how you demonstrate your remorse."

Me: "I think he knows. He read my e-mail."

Kay: "Don't lie about it. Tell him. But you don't have to tell him the details. Those will only hurt him more."

Somewhere in the years that passed between us, we were becoming more alike. I was cleaning up and Kay was branching out. We were evolving closer to one another.

So two years ago, when she told me about a woman in her class she had befriended, I sort of knew what was coming.

"I've made a new friend." She told me one night over the phone.

I was thrilled because my sister needed good friends. For ten years she had been married to a man that shared none of her interests. She likes to hike; He likes to watch television. He smokes; She doesn't even drink. She likes romance, flowers and erotic massages; He flinches if you stand too close. She wanted a baby; they got a cat.

For years my sister had shrugged off her situation, saying "Your partner is not meant to meet all your needs. That is what friends are for."

It was a template for which to build all my future relationships.

But slowly I saw less and less of Kay's husband Tracy. She took vacations alone, spent her weekends hiking alone, went to movies alone, ate at restaurants alone and held parties he never attended. So I was thrilled with Kay's new friend. Even if I knew from the start where it was headed.

"She's a lesbian and I think she has a little crush on me, but I absolutely love hanging out with her and have never met anyone with whom I have so much in common."

"That's cool." And I waited.

A year ago my sister phoned to say that she had left her husband and was exploring an open relationship with her new girlfriend, Jade.

Recently, she came to visit me in New York.

When she arrived, the first thing I noticed was the hair. Kay had always had romance novel long hair. When we were kids, she would get me and my sister Francine to brush it while we sat in front of the TV watching 'Love Boat' re-runs.

"Jesus Lord. What happened to you hair?"

"You like it? I love it. All that hair was holding me back. Now, I can just jump right out of the shower and go. I don't have to walk around all morning with that long, wet, messy hair flapping against my back."

Kay had always been a bit of a tomboy. She hated skirts and dresses and preferred kayaking and hiking in the rainforest to shopping at the mall. Kay owned three pairs of Birkenstocks, eight polar fleece jackets, and two pairs of breathable camping pants that you could zip the legs off to make into shorts.

"So I was thinking we could go to dinner and catch an artsy film tonight."

I made the suggestion because New York fell short in the area of outdoor activities.

"Sounds good. But actually, I passed by a bar on my walk today and I thought we could check that out too."

My sister didn't drink, and preferred a game of charades to social scenes that involved relating to strangers in alcohol induced environment. In fact, I had never known her to go to a bar in all my life.

"Uh, okay. What bar?"

"It's called Heaven. It's a gay bar."

"Uh, okay."

I squirmed a little in my seat. Not that I had never been to a gay bar. I love gay men. But this is my sister.

"To be honest Jane. I have never been to a gay bar before."

"Uh, okay."

"But I thought if I was going to do it, you would be the best one to do it with. Because you're social. And you're comfortable in bars. And frankly, I don't even like straight bars. So will you go with me? Will you teach me how to act, in a bar."

We looked awkwardly at each other. I remembered her kneeling next to me on the floor of my mother's bathroom.

"Absolutely Kay."

She raised the side of her mouth in a lopsided grin and stuffed her hands into her fleece.

"But let's start with the clothes."

"What's wrong with what I'm wearing?"

"It's a bar. Not a camp-out. Do you own jeans? How about a wife beater?" That is what all the lesbians I knew wore.

"Well, I still want to look like myself."

"You can look like 'you' on the second date. Tonight, you have to get some attention."

"I can make these pants into shorts?"

"Yeah, that's not really going to work."

I went into my bedroom and started pulling my designer jeans off a rack in the back of my closet.

"I'm short, but I have a few pairs that I wear with four inch heels."

I dug down deep into the back of my closet until I found a pair of faded thinning Diesel jeans I had worn on my tour through Italy last year.

"Try these."

She held them up, pinched her eyebrows and rolled her eyes.

"They look old."

"They are supposed to look like that. I paid an extra $100 to get the vintage wash."

"They look tight."

"Try them on. "

And she did.

Twenty minutes later, my sister was sporting fashion forward jeans and a crimson Puma t-shirt that hugged the figure she had been hiding under baggy sweats and jackets ever since I could remember.

"You look great."

"I look like you."

"Please. I would never wear sneakers with jeans. You look funky and cool. It will work."

We set out into the night to explore Kay's first gay bar.

But Heaven was inappropriately named. It was a butch dike hang out for the underage bridge and tunnel crowd. We paid fifteen dollars to get in the door and observe the culture sipping $10 cokes from the corner of the room.

When a 6'3" Samoan woman sporting a thin dark moustache eyed my sister from across the room, Kay looked over at me with pained eyes. "This isn't exactly what I thought."

I tried to find the scene entertaining. We both tried to make our $15 cover worthwhile, but when neither of us could take it anymore we escaped back to the safety of the street. My sister shook her head, shrugged her shoulders and thrust her hands deeper into her pockets.

I simply couldn't allow my sister to think that this is what gay bars were all about. I turned back towards the bar and pulled the bouncer aside.

"Listen, where can I take my sister to find some lipstick lesbians with 401 k plans."

"Try the Cubbyhole. It's a few blocks away. You can walk."

My sister hung her head on the corner.

"Let's just go home. This was a stupid idea. I don't know what I was thinking."

"No way are we going home. This is New York. I owe it to the gay community to show you that Heaven is not representative of the diverse offerings of hopping metropolis gay activity. We are not going home until you see some foxy lesbos."

I pushed her into a cab, we drove three minutes and got out in front of The Cubbyhole.

The Cubbyhole looked like your average friendly neighborhood bar. I could feel my sister relax a little. The bar was teeming with smiling women. A trail of fairy lights along the wall lead your eyes upward to the mobile figures and paper mache hanging from the ceiling. The bar had a warm glow that painted the women inside in their best light. We made an entrance. I walked up to the bar and ordered us a few more cokes. Within minutes, a woman named Gus had struck up a conversation with me. I pulled my sister to my side and we all chatted easily.

Gus eyed my sister. "How long you been out?"

"I really don't consider myself 'out' or even a 'lesbian'. Really, I'm just a heterosexual woman who has discovered I could also be attracted to lesbians. So I'm just exploring the idea now that my flirting and dating could be open to both men and lesbians."

"Uh, Okay." And Gus left my sister and I at the bar to flirt with a long-haired woman named Doris who was wearing a white wifebeater and baggy jeans.

My sister smiled a bit. It wasn't Marquee, but it was a start.

We left the bar at closing. My sister with her first lesbian bar experience behind her and I with three women's phone numbers stuffed into my very straight back pocket.

Kay: "I don't think bars are really my thing Jane. The whole experience reminds me that I don't really like women all that much."

Me: "Just wait before you judge, Kay. Be patient with this process. The first time you try something new it is always awkward. It will get easier. "

And just like that, the age gap that had separated us through adolescence closed. Kneeling beside her, I could help her pick up the pieces of her new life. And it felt good.

Let Go Go!

My ten year old body was too small for the adult life preserver hugging my frame as I bobbed in the chilly June water of Lake Steilacoom.

I struggled to keep the tips of my water skiis balanced on either side of the bright orange ski rope. My body tipped to the left, dipping one ear into the roar of boat engines bellowing through the water. Above water, my right ear registered the crisp staccato of my father yelling.

"Straighten up. Keep your tips out of the water. And don't let go of the rope."

It had to be my tenth attempt. Each time, I emerged from the water like a newborn fawn. My knees wobbled, my legs strained, I could barely feel my spindly young arms stretched across the length of my skiis. There would be no balance, just awkward jerky movements and embarassing bathing suit mishaps before I toppled back into the water.

Exhaustion. Failure.

I wanted to go back to the safety of the shore and the comfort of making fun of other waterskiiers. But that would risk disappointing my father.

"Ready?" He barked over the hum of the engine.

Bethy, my childhood best friend, fidgeted in the seat next to my father, a large orange flag raised in her hand to let the other boats know that a skier was in the water. Not that they could miss the enormous Styrofoam Golden Arches of my life jacket marking my place in the water like the grave of a recently mourned Chocolate Lab.

"Almost..."

I could see Beth getting anxious as my fathers patience waned. Even for a stranger, sitting with my father was like waiting for a job interview to begin.

He hung his head in frustration.

"This is it. We are going in after this."

I waved my hand furiously through the water to tread myself in position. Disappointing my father was simply not an option.

This was it.

I dug my fingernails into the foam forming a handle at the end of the ski rope.

"Hit it!" The magic words to set the circus in motion.

Dad pushed the gas lever all the way to the dash. I closed my eyes, steadied my legs and held on to the rope.

Water pushed in on all sides. I bent my legs, I used my strength to keep the ski tips steady.

Then it happened.

I felt my body begin to rise out of the water.

I'm doing it. I'm really doing it.

Frigid morning air slapped at my body. I awkwardly hung over my skiis, knees together, feet apart, bent at the waist as if I were leaning into the dishwasher to clean out the filter.

But I was doing it.

Bethy cast her innocent brown eyes up at my father from beneath her shaggy bangs, seeking approval to lower the flag. Dad shot a look over his back.

"Straighten Up!"

He raised his eyebrows towards Beth and she lowered the flag.

I shifted my weight and tried to erect my back. I slowly brought my back up and let my knees relax. Dad let the speed drop a little and I brought the skiis parallel.

I was hydroplaning across the water. Exhilarated, I smiled into the oncoming rush of lake spray and wind.

I could see my brothers and sisters on the dock. Erik and Katryn jumped up and down waving their towels, Kirsten looked up from the hammock. Although Maiken and the twins were too young to sense the enormity of the moment, they fed off the energy of their siblings and ran frantically back and forth on the dock.

We passed the Stuetsman house, the Klein's house and the house of the guy that sat in front of me in Spanish class. We surprised a family of unsuspecting Canadian Geese that squacked and tap danced across the water as we approached.

But just then, as we circled back towards the shore for my victory lap, the boat hit it's own wake, hit my left ski, separated my stance and sent me face down into the Lake.

I didn't let go of the rope.

My father's speed was steady and I opened my mouth to cry out but nothing came out. Instead water rushed in and through my body like a high powered colonic stuffed in the wrong orifice.

Lake water filled my nose, traveled down my throat, entered my stomach and began storing itself in my swollen toes. Somewhere back twenty feet I felt the skiis rip off my ankles

But I wasn't letting go of that rope.

I can only imagine now how I looked from the shore; my body dragging behind Dad's new speed boat at 30 mph.

I imagine a crowd of concerned neighbors cupping their hands over their eyes to try and focus on the commotion in the water. I see my mother sitting up from her lounge chair, holding up the straps of her bikini top, yelling to my father. Turn around.

Had he turned around, he would have seen his daughter dragging in the water, clinging to the ski rope, her head creating a wake that rose above the water like a Great White shark fin.

Don't let go. Hold on tight.

Eventually, Father did turn to see me. Beth waved the orange flag. Mom lay back down to take in the sun. My sisters returned to braiding one another's hair. My brother stopped roaring with laughter and refocused on trying to throw the dog in the water.

My father pulled the boat around and plucked my weakened body from the lake. We rode back to the dock in silence. Shivering and shaken, I crawled out of the boat and lay my stomach across the dock. My wet body imprinted the soft wood like the outline of body at a crime scene.

Peeking through the slats in the deck, I caught my breath while I watched a school of fish swim under my shadow.

I will never get back in the water again.

But I did.

Afternoons end found me bobbing up and down in an inner tube with Bethy while my brothers and sisters engaged in a game of Marco Polo.

I breathed the lake that summer and every following summer of my youth until I was 17. Mom joked that my toes were webbed and I was growing scales. But I was determined to tame the water that surrounded my childhood.

And it would take me many years, to finally let go.

Blue Easter

So there I sat on a lonely Easter holiday. Separated from my family. Separated from my Manhattan. The patterns of my previous relationships staring back at me.

It was my day to complete my fourth step. In AA's twleve steps, step four is taking a personal inventory. You make a list of all the people you resent, you write out why, you try to assign what part of your basic instincts that person triggered, and then you write your part. You try to focus on yourself and figure out what actions of your own set the wrecking ball in motion.

Sure, that guy yelled at me in the street. But, I did run over his dog when I was riding my bike on the sidewalk. It’s not okay for him to tell me I’m a nasty ho-bag who mustn’t have had a mama to teach me manners, but it’s not okay for me to be riding my bike on the sidewalk either.

You get the picture.

After this painful exercise in self reflection, you isolate resentments that relate to the men you’ve dated or slept with and you make a separate list of all the ways you harmed these men. It's called a sex inventory.

I call it 'dangerous'. An excuse to sit in self-pity and think you are the most horrible person in the world.

In black and white, I'm reminded of how I meet men, how I get into relationships with them, when and why I sleep with them, what I expect from them, and how I run away from them. It’s a sloppy collage of repeated patterns, insecurities, frivolous fears and utter self-centeredness.

At the end of this exercise, I’m left wondering: Have I have ever really loved a man?

Because to me, true love does not have expectations. And my patterns show me that I’ve rarely entered into a relationship with a man without a hundred pre-existing measuring sticks of how things should look, how I should feel, how they should feel and how they should express it.

An insurance company won’t pay for your pre-existing conditions. But I somehow think it is fair to ask a man to enter into a relationship with me based on pre-existing expectations.

I called my father.

We talked about the weather and then I asked him when he knew he was in love with my mother. If he was like me, it would be love at first sight. But what he said, surprised me.

“It must have been about two years after we started dating. ”

Two years? Two years?? I wouldn’t date a man for more than three months if he wasn’t ready to profess his love. Two years? Are you snorting mom's cancer meds?

“Well, keep in mind. We didn’t have sex on the third date back then.”

That made sense.

In my mind, sex almost always equals expectations. Sex, or even the highly sexualized act of flirting, signals that a friendship has passed into a new category and now has guidelines for behavior. Is it possible to date without sexpectations?

And in this modern dating scene, who can date without sending out sexual signals. Perhaps this was possible in High School, studying late at night with that boy that sat behind you in Spanish class for two years, when suddenly your friendship dissolveds into a clash of intertwined braces. Today, the mere act of ‘going on a date’, sitting at a table with another person, grabbing someone’s arm when you are walking down a cobblestone street, brushing up against one another in a bar, is all heavy with the anticipation of sex. It’s nearly impossible to get to know someone without the hint of sexual promise. I live in New York City, where competition dogs your every designer shoe step. If you don't throw it out there, you might lose them to the red head standing in line behind you.

“It took some time.”

In Manhattan, time is your most precious commodity. Who has time to stop and get to know someone? See past their immediate flaws. There are hundreds of eligible men in this town, ready to step in as soon as I pick one off for using the wrong shampoo. I don’t have to be patient when there is more than enough supply for my demand.

My father went on, “How could I have been in love with your mother any sooner. It took me two years just to get to know her. And how can you really be in love with someone that you hardly know?”

And how can you really get to know someone once you begin weighing them against a lifetime of built-up expectations? And where do these expectations come from?

"You love your brother, Jane. Now whether or not he constitutes a man, I don’t know."

I love my baby brother. Does that count? One day, I just knew. He was visiting me and were playing racquet ball and he had a grand mal seizure on the court. I called 9-1-1 and lay on the ground next to his strong 22 year old frame to hold it still. Lying on the ground with him, calming him as he came around to consciousness, I clung to the image of an eight year old boy with gangly arms, a bloated belly, red galoshes and Dad’s old army helmet. I remembered making him laugh in the car by making funny faces over the back seat. There are few pains that a back scratch and ill-tuned lullaby wouldn’t temporarily relieve. But while he struggled with his helplessness, his eyes betrayed fear and I saw a pain that I could not make better.

I couldn’t leave his side for the next 36 hours. I had the nurse bring a cot into his hospital room and bought him six different kinds of Ben’n’Jerry’s ice cream that I watched slowly melt on his bed side stand while he slept. I would have traded places with him and taken any and more pain just to save him the humility of his body’s weakness. After that day, he could scream obscenities at me, eat off my plate, talk with his mouthful, chew three pieces of Bubblicious at a time and blow bubbles in my face, show up three hours late to dinner and loan my favorite pair of shoes to his girlfriend without ever threatening my affections. That’s love.

Dad told me to put down my pen. He told me to go outside.

“You’re right, you’re right.”

“I have to fix lunch for your mother. Jesus, that woman never gets enough grilled cheese.”

“Thanks Dad. I appreciate this. Happy Easter. I Love you.”

“You too."

Balkan Wars

My first memory of Sarajevo was the drive between the airport and the hotel. The airport is surrounded by bombed buildings, separate entrances that divide the city between Serb and Bosniak, piles of rubble and a smattering of bullet holes in places you find your eye being led.

The center of a billboard with a half naked woman straddling a chair and advertising panty hose

My stay in Sarajevo was short. A driver picked me up and we drove five hours to Bijeljina, a small Serb town along the border. Sometime in September, I was chosen to monitor an election in Tuzla.

My first memory of Tuzla was Sherazada.

“My full name is Sherazada, but you can just call me Sher.”

She thrust her bony and thin hand across the table to meet mine half way. She looked 30 years old. But in the last few months, I had learned to take the age of a someone living in this region and subtract at least five years for the war. She was likely 25.

She quickly pulled her hand away and stuck it back into the warmth of the down vest that rode up around her ears as she hunched her shoulders and tucked her head into the lining. She fidgeted to stay warm and quell the creeping cold of the cool Tuzla, Bosnia September.

She popped her red nose up to tell me amongst clouds of frozen breath “I’ll be your translator.”

“You speak great English Sher. It’s almost American.”

Her body stopped bobbing for warmth; she looked me in the eye and raised one eyebrow. “I am American.”

I blushed.

“How culturally incorrect of me. I’m so sorry. I just assumed.”

“I was born here. But my father married an American woman during the war and now I have US citizenship. I live in Nebraska. You speak English well too. Where are you from?”

“I see, I’m so sorry.”

“Forget it.” She absolved my embarrassment by returning to her shivering.

“Jane. I’m from Seattle. Nice to meet you.”

I gave her my outstretched hand. And she took it.

There was nothing that physically distinguished Sher from the other local volunteers. She shared large eyes, teeth that needed fixing and a cool stare that hid horror stories. But Sher held her shoulders back more like the men in the group. She walked tall and always jutted out her jaw before she began a sentence. Sher looked people in the eye.

When she spoke, she enunciated all her sentences with careful pauses. Bosnian words flew out of her mouth like a woman scorning her child. I couldn’t understand a word that she spoke, but I felt lucky I wasn’t on the receiving end of what was coming out of her mouth.

When she spoke English she was confident but gentle, like the girl sitting next to me in History class. She understood every cultural pun, witty jab or complicated rambling sentence that I sent her direction.

Standing in the cold Tuzla morning air, I had no idea the adventure this woman's friendship was about to bring me or how she would change my life.

Dayton Agreement

"Do you have AIDS?"

“What?” I spit out an incredulous laugh and half a mouth full of Turkish coffee. I wasn't sure if I had heard him correctly through his thick Bosnian accent.

“Do – you -have, AIDS?”

These were hardly the first words I expected him to speak.

Kasmir carefully rolled his cigarette in the ash tray to bring the cherry tip to a pencil point. He looked up at me from behind a swirl of smoke.

He couldn’t look me in the eye for long. It would have been inappropriate, according to Sher. But according to Sher's rules, it was also inappropriate for him to be sitting alone in a room with me.

Sher had spent the previous evening lecturing me on the customs of rural Muslim farmers in Bosnia. She filled me with small town tales of gossip and girls who’s reputations had been forever tainted by being caught driving in a car alone with a man or speaking to him alone in a large gathering.

Despite his twenty-eight years and his boldness at that moment, Kasmir was still a child. His soft cheeks blushed easily and his chocolate brown eyes seemed only to be stealing glances before they were hidden by the tips of his long dark lashes.

Since most Bosnians look ten years older than their actual age, I attributed Kasmir's youthful glow to the age he was when he stopped growing emotionally.

Sher told me that at sixteen years of age, his home was the front line of the war being waged in the Bosnian country side. Early in the war, his father and many other young husbands left to fight elsewhere. This left Saptna to be defended by teenage boys and aging grandfathers. His mother harbored the neighbor boys who had already lost their families and homes, providing them food and shelter. When the fighting would reach a stretch of cease-fire, Kasmir would count the men returning for his mothers cooking and warm blankets. He would note with innocent disappointment that one of his new friends had not made it back.

“He’s dead.” His mother would tell him.

“Set the table lazy boy.”

Kasmir grew up in a culture of war. His mother wouldn’t allow him to leave the house, for fear he would never return. So his education about foreigners had been painted by coca-cola ads in foreign magazines and MTV videos.

Somewhere amongst this education was the idea that all American girls were running around studio 54 shooting heroin, having casual sex and contracting HIV.

"No Kasmir. I don't have AIDS."

Sher poked her head in from the kitchen. "Do you need me to translate?"

"No thanks Sher. I think I've got this one."

Sher was following me across Bosnia, translating my four hour seminars on 'finding employment in a developing economy'. She was assigned to me when I monitored my first election. But we got along so easily that I requested her again for the seminar series.

She had taken it upon herself to sponsor my arrival into the Saptna social scene.

After an eighteen hour night quarantined to OSCE headquarters because of a terrorist threat, she took me home with her. I met her boyfriend Almir and her cousin Kasmir in a bleary eyed daze. I fell asleep in the back of the car, despite the risky twists and turns of Kasmir's driving.

When I woke up, I was lying on a polyester couch. Sher and her boyfriend were making coffee in the next room and Kasmir was sitting across from me. Watching me sleep.

He got up and returned with a demi cup of Turkish coffee and three sugar cubes.

I picked up the coffee cup with one hand and tried to wipe the sleep out of my eye with the other. As I raised the glass for a giant swig of caffeine, he gently reached across the table that divided us and stopped my hand.

He shook his head, picked up a sugar cube, and placed it between his teeth. Demonstrating the proper way to drink, he slurped the coffee through the sugar cube, just a little, put the cup back down, moved the sugar cube to his cheek and lit a fake Winston cigarette.

I followed.

Nation Building

Somewhere in Sapna, off a dirt road near the Serb border, watching him buy gas that comes in a recycled sprite bottle. I look at him and I know.

I am falling for Kasmir. Even though he speaks not a word of English.

It is the careful way he opens the door for me. It is the willingness he has to wake at 6:00 AM to make me coffee before I go to work. It is the way he bucks Bosnian tradition by insisting upon washing all my dishes.

Last weekend, Kasmir drove five hours from a contract job he had in Sarajevo, just to touch my face, hold my hand, kiss me good night, turn around and drive back.

Kasmir sees me. He can't hear my fancy talk. My witty comebacks. My puns. I can't manipulate him with my words. He can't understand my complaints and mood swings. He just sees my actions.

And I see his.

I see the way he cares for his little brother. I see the way he respects the women in his house. I see the hard work and focus he brings to even the most minuscule of tasks. I realize how much more all his risks mean, considering where we are.

I saw his courage when he arrived in the all Serb City outside his village just to hear me lead an employment seminar.

He sat in the group as we went around introducing ourselves by name.

“My name is Milos, I’m 32 and I live here in Zvornik. I am here to try and learn how to get a job.”

“Thank you Milos. Thank you for coming.”

I saw him squirm as the circle closed in towards him. I didn’t understand. Sher told me later, "A name in Bosnia reveals your religion."

His eyes pleaded with me. But I didn’t know.

“I am Kasmir.”

That was all he could say. He hung his head. The circle moved on.

But now everyone knew he was a Muslim. A Muslim from the one Muslim village that broke the military line during the war. The Muslim village that the army couldn’t take. They held on. They fought back with rusty shotguns and pitchforks.

Kasmir was sixteen, too young too fight. But old enough to run food to the men on the front lines. Old enough to bury the dead. Old enough to recognize some of the faces in the group.

Sher translated the entire seminar. It was the first time he could understand my every word. Kasmir listened to my words flow out of Sher for five hours.

Now, I watch as he pays the man for the gas with a loaf of his mother’s bread, wrapped in a yellow paper napkin. The man places his left hand on Kasmir's shoulder. They exchange words and look back at me in the car. Then they shake hands and Kasmir heads back towards the car smiling.

He get’s in the car, turns to look at me and widens his already contagious grin.

"You!" He annouces to the roof of the car.

We look at each other and start laughing. He touches my hair. I start playing with the radio. Nothing but Bosnian folk music.

He takes my hand off the radio and turns off the music.

He turns his whole body to face me in the car and he takes my hands.

“Oh Lord. We are getting serious.”

He is giddy, he is happy. Like he wants to tell me something exciting, but he can't. He takes my hands in his. He looks down at them and rubs his thumbs over my fingers while he speaks.

“I must tell you… today… amazing… I hear you…” he pauses, “Volim Te.”

“Huh?”

“Volim Te.”

“Whoa cowboy. Did you just say that you love me?”

It’s barely audible through the thick accent, but he says it again. In English this time.

“I love you.”

“You barely know me.”

“I love you."

"Dear God. That's insane.”

“Jane. I love you.”

“I've known you for two months.”

He takes my hand and places it on his heart. I can feel how fast it is beating.

“I know.”

I just stare at him. I don’t know what to say. I know very little. I know that I am leaving this country in one month. I know that this would never work outside of this country. I know that once I am surrounded by people who speak my language I will be caught up in the sarcasm and wordplay and the games and I won't notice the little things anymore. I know that when my feet feel the ground of New York City I will not miss Cevapcici and Turkish coffee. I know that I will forget about Kasmir before the end of the year. I know I will date many more men in my lifetime. I know that none of them will ever try this hard, or be this happy to understand me. I know that none of them will wake up at 6:00 AM to make me coffee.