My grandma Dottie is this kind of woman. At ninety-five, she still gets her hair done twice weekly, is always armed with a tube of coral lipstick, and offers advice for the lovelorn (“You have to be positive and just talk with your eyes”). She’s been teeny tiny her entire life, and once, at a military dance in the late ’30s, a soldier told her, “I could eat peanuts off your head,” which she took as a massive compliment.
The modern version of this is my friend Deb, who loves trying new exercise classes and is able to write for the same four hours every day in the same coffee shop, unconflicted about the creative process. She had a revolving door of casual dinner dates when she was single, before she met her husband and fell in love with him, never once accusing him of not understanding “what it feels like to be me.” Deb plans regular weekend getaways to “sexy, delightful” places like Palm Springs and Tulum and is a master at the logistics of dinner parties and doctor’s visits. She doesn’t seem to worry that she has lupus or cancer. It would be easy for me to jealously dismiss Deb as flighty or superficial, unaware of what’s really going on in the world. But Deb’s smart and, I told you, I am jealous.
The other type of woman that gets me crazy with envy is the beautiful depressive. I know it’s not good to glamorize depression, but I am speaking here of a more low-grade melancholy that would be a massive bummer in your supermarket checkout guy but works pretty well for a certain kind of long-limbed, lank-haired aspiring actress-poet. One Sunday I was walking around Brooklyn, looking for rice pudding, when I ran into the girlfriend of a close male friend of mine. She was jogging, milky legs extending for miles from her retro track shorts.
“How are you doing, Leanne?” I asked.
She looked at me all sleepy eyed and, with a Victorian sigh, said: “Shitty.” I was so impressed! Who answers that question honestly? Let’s say I was on my way to buy a gun with which to kill myself and I ran into a casual acquaintance who works in PR for H&M:
CASUAL ACQUAINTANCE: Hey, what’s up?
LENA: Oh, not much. Just going to buy something weird. [Giggles.]
CASUAL ACQUAINTANCE: Long time, no see. How ya been?
LENA: Oh, ya know. Así así! Life is such a WEIRD thing, ya know? It’s like OFF THE WALL! I mean, we should get coffee sometime. I’m literally free anytime.
As I watched Leanne slo-mo jog home, I thought of how effective that routine must be. Leanne is so beautiful and sad. Her boyfriend will spend years going on midnight errands for her, just trying to make her smile. I used to think guys liked it when you’re cheerful, adaptable, and quippy. In fact, pouting in front of a Nature Channel show and forcing them to wonder what you’re thinking after sex is, in most cases, far more effective.
I have been envious of male characteristics, if not the men themselves. I’m jealous of the ease with which they seem to inhabit their professional pursuits: the lack of apologizing, of bending over backward to make sure the people around them are comfortable with what they’re trying to do. The fact that they are so often free of the people-pleasing instincts I have considered to be a curse of my female existence. I have watched men order at dinner, ask for shitty wine and extra bread with a confidence I could never muster, and thought, What a treat that must be. But I also consider being female such a unique gift, such a sacred joy, in ways that run so deep I can’t articulate them. It’s a special kind of privilege to be born into the body you wanted, to embrace the essence of your gender even as you recognize what you are up against. Even as you seek to redefine it.
I know that when I am dying, looking back, it will be women that I regret having argued with, women I sought to impress, to understand, was tortured by. Women I wish to see again, to see them smile and laugh and say, It was all as it should have been.
In eighth grade, my class took a field trip to Washington, D.C. This is a tradition for eighth grades around the country, the premise being that you will see the monuments, learn about the various branches of government, and enjoy some well-deserved time at Johnny Rockets. The reality is that the day is just a way to get to the night, when the curtains are pulled back to reveal a circus of debauchery that every chaperone wisely chooses to “sleep” through. Students run from room to room of some airport Marriott, their wildest selves unleashed, screaming to be heard over the TVs and rap music and running showers with nobody in them. Sometimes there’s booze in a shampoo bottle; sometimes people kiss in a bathroom.
It was on the second night of the trip, as we watched a Drew Barrymore movie on basic cable, that every girl in my suite—Jessica, Maggie, even Stephanie, who had a SERIOUS BOYFRIEND—decided to go totally gay. It started with some light kissing on the bed, then Jessica was topless and shaking her tits, clutching her own nipples and waggling them mercilessly in our faces.
I was a shelter dog, frozen with fear. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to join in. I sort of did. But what if I liked it? What if I started and I never stopped? How could I turn back? I had no issue with gay people. I just didn’t want to be one. I was fourteen. I didn’t want to be anything yet. I curled up and, like our math teacher in the room next door, pretended to sleep.