I Came Out for This? (2 page)

I know Terri thinks I'm in la-la land. She's one of these down-to-earth, practical people that would never let herself get carried away like I did. But she
liked
that I was in love with her, the wench. She
liked
that I wrote her love letters saying that her breasts were like ripe peaches, that I declared my love for her in this silly coming out piece I wrote for the local weekly paper, that I wanted to move in with her two weeks after we met. She just didn't count on my being so
persistent
about it, didn't know I would call her in DC and nag her to let me come and see her even though she told me she was dating another woman, and when the woman didn't work out and she broke down and invited me down there for the 4
^th
of July weekend I tumbled off the plane all ga-ga over her and she was freaked out and kept me at arm's length the whole time and told me it would never work out between us and I flew home all smashed up like roadkill.

After a couple weeks of sobbing I couldn't take it anymore, so I called her, and then she called me, and so it went, and when she came back here in the fall to visit her sick mother I was convinced she was here to visit
me
,
and I hung around her, mooning over her the whole time. And then her mother died and instead of being properly sobered I continued to act like I was on speed, running down to visit her all the time to clutch and comfort her and have drunken sex that was tremendously exciting to me but for her was just an outlet for her grief.

The last time I visited her, which was this last summer, she told me before I came that she wanted me to sleep on the couch and I went anyway, and she was all lit up over this other woman and treated me like a beat-up table she meant to get rid of. But I refuse to let her go because I can't accept that I have ruined what is probably my only opportunity for love by being so naïve and stupid. I keep calling her, and she calls me too and tells me awful things like she's dating some woman who runs an apothecary store, and now I may just have to move there already. The hell with what my friends think. They all would be perfectly thrilled to see me go back to being that robot that I was before I came out, that marched around spouting my little philosophies and getting over-involved in their lives like some meddling auntie, and writing short stories that no one could relate to, like the one about an elderly couple with a pet fly. I didn't know beans about anything people would want to read about like love and romance or even sex because I always just faked it with all the men that had the misfortune to go to bed with me (although I must say in my own defense that I gave a very mean T
OO
M
UCH
I
NFORMATION
!) all right, but my point is that I wasn't a total drip. But I sure as hell am a drip now, sitting here on this blue couch for months, not returning
phone calls and hardly ever working and being two months behind on my rent and thank God for Albert, my sweet old Cuban landlord, for not throwing me out of here. I can't stay here and I'm afraid to leave. I'm terrified to go to DC because what would I tell people? What would I tell
her
? I know you don't want me, but I'm moving there to be with you anyway, heh heh? I could
kill
her for ruining my life. Well, not ruining it but throwing a wrench in it. I was all set to move to DC and turn my life into an adventure again, which it has not been since I left New York City because I just stayed here like a slug instead of moving back there where I belong or at least becoming a war correspondent, but then Terri came along and I thought I was saved not only from a loveless life but from being stuck in the
antithesis
of a city that anyone wants to write about. And then she yanked away that string of goodies that she dangled before me— just pulled it back out of my reach and now I'm ruined. You can live with deprivation, but dashed expectations are a killer. It's not the desert that will do you in but the mirage. And fuck her anyway, lording it over my destiny, like the wizard spewing smoke and saying, “Take your broom and go away!” Or whatever it was he said, after poor Dorothy risked life and limb on that treacherous journey.

I miss my cat. I think I subconsciously let her die because I knew I couldn't leave Cleveland while I still had her. I bought some cheap carpet that only cost two hundred dollars, and the gases from it killed my cat. I should have gotten rid of the carpet as soon as I saw her never lying on it and always wanting to be outdoors after
I bought it. She got some kind of cancer and died, I'm assuming from being driven out of her home. I used to be a nice nurturing person and now I'm a selfish distracted child who can't even care for her own cat.

This wine is wearing off. What should I do now? I wonder if that egg salad is still any good.

November 1999

I'm being carried down the rapids. This idea that we are the captain of our fates is ridiculous because when you're in the rushing river what are you supposed to do— turn around? You can't. I gave Albert notice and I'm moving out of this apartment in two weeks. I've already started to pack, and you should see this place. It's disgusting. I'm wallowing in dust here; I'm in a diaphanous world of dust. I'm being carried down the rushing rapids and I'm in a diaphanous world of dust at the same time. How can you be two places at once when you're really nowhere at all? (Remember that line from
Firesign Theatre
?)

I'm going to put my stuff in storage and stay upstairs at Tommy's until I move to DC. Everyone is saying, “But Terri's in DC,” as though they were saying, “But that's where the cholera epidemic is.” Willi, who is kind of upset that she introduced me to Terri, especially because she used to be my therapist, said resignedly, “Well, maybe you have to put yourself in the lion's mouth.” But I'm already
in
the lion's mouth so I might as well be in the lion's mouth down
there
. The problem is, I have no money and no job and no place to live and nobody just
moves
to Washington, DC. They go down there after they get some
position
. But I'll figure it all out, because once I set my mind to something, I find a way to do it. Don't I? I think I do.

My younger sister Queen (a nickname; she calls me Peeps) is the one who nudged me into the rapids. I was visiting her in Toledo last week, and we were sitting in our favorite coffee shop, surrounded by leering paper pumpkins, and I was babbling about What should I do, what should I do? Finally she said, “You just need to go.” And that was it. That decided it.
I just need to go
. It's better to be in the rushing river than to sit and stare at the froth day after day. So here I am, being carried along, and I'm feeling all pumped up except when I remember that I haven't even told Terri yet. That's right, I've started to pack my things and I'm checking newspaper ads for storage facilities and places to stay in DC and I haven't told Terri I'm coming. She was on vacation for two weeks, so I couldn't call her, but she's been back for two days and I keep putting it off. But I am going to call her today. In fact, I'm going to call her now. I'm going to stop writing and call her.

The thing is, I don't know what to tell her. I feel as though I'm disrespecting her, like I don't believe her that she doesn't want a relationship with me. I used to hate it when men I had turned away continued to call me and would leave twenty messages a day on my machine, or banged on my door unannounced. It infuriated me, in
fact. It seemed so . . . so . . . presumptuous. And here I am, acting just like them. But it's not as though she's the only reason I'm moving there, I'm leaving for other reasons, and I should at least give myself a chance to be in the same city with her. We've never lived in the same city before, going about our daily business, without some melodrama occurring every second. I can't just stay here, poaching in my own juices while she cozies up to a woman who runs an apothecary store. Sometimes she exasperates me. She's so stodgy and unimaginative. She bases all her conclusions on cold, hard facts and fails to see
possibilities
. I always see possibilities. I can make champagne out of sour lemons. Terri would say, “You can only make sour lemonade from sour lemons,” but what does she know about alchemy? She is Dionysian, of the earth, and I am Apollonian, of the sky, and only I have the perspective to see that transformative place where earth and sky meet. She can't see it because she's down there stuck in the mud.

Oh please, Joanna. Stop your blithering and call her.

Well, now I feel kind of jerky. I essentially lied to her. I told her I've decided to move to DC because I'm in a rut and I need to be in a more cosmopolitan city and that Washington, DC is my second-favorite city after New York, all of which is true. But then I said that I've worked through my feelings for her and I've decided I can handle living in proximity to her and we can be friends. And while I was saying that, I felt like about a million miles
away from my own treacherous mouth. And then I went back into myself and said truthfully that I hoped she wasn't upset by this news and then
she
lied and said, “Not at all! It will be nice to have more ‘family' here.” So there we were, babbling on top of the real issues the way we always do because I don't face the facts and she tries to process everything mentally and ignore the turmoil inside of her. But I'm sure she's plenty discombobulated and is probably conveying my news in urgent tones to Tiny or Linda as we speak, and you can bet your bippy she'll have a nice juicy session with her therapist on Friday.

So here I am, hightailing off to the country's most bloodthirsty city to win the heart of a woman who has tossed me away like a supermarket mailer. My friend Tommy and I laugh hysterically at this image we've concocted of me suffering some final, devastating rejection by her and running naked and shrieking down Connecticut Avenue and ending up in a nuthouse or some cult for melt-down people. Like my mother would say in Yiddish, “Nitoh ver tsu lachn!”— “There's nobody to laugh.” Loosely translated, it means, It's not even funny.

It really isn't funny. I'm so scared. But you know what? Underneath my terror is the conviction that I'm doing the right thing. I suppose it's because I feel as though I'm doing something normal, for a change. Not that it's considered totally sane to run off to some city in pursuit of someone who has rejected you, but at least it's being crazy in a normal way, instead of being crazy in a crazy way like I've done all my life, setting trash fires and riding
a moped around Harlem at night and writing short stories about people with pet flies and eating mayonnaise from the jar and acting like an overall general weirdo that everyone thinks is so cute but is really just sick. This is the kind of crazy thing that lots of people do. And now I'm doing it too.

So after all is said and done, that's why I've decided to move to DC. Because it makes me feel like part of humanity.

There. I figured it all out.

December 1999

I love myself! I've never done anything like this before, the kind of thing that if someone else did it I would think it was so cool. Five hours ago, I jumped into my 15-year-old hoopty and tore out of Cleveland, leaving my whole draggy life back there. Tommy grumpily helped me pack the car with a bunch of clothes and my computer, and I hugged him good-bye and took off like a thief in the night. Nobody else even knows I'm gone except for my parents because you can't just not tell my mother something. So here I am in an EconoLodge in Breezewood, PA, a constellation of motels and eateries near the Maryland border, and I have the same current of excitement running through me as I had when I was 21 and moved to New York. It's partly because it was the same time of year as now; it was cold and the air was heavy and had that peppery, metallic smell.