“You like Tina, why don’t you do something with her this weekend?” she’d say offhandedly, as if I didn’t know it wasn’t simply a casual, friendly question.
When high school began, she encouraged me to spend more time with the girls on my soccer team rather than my closest pals. She didn’t want me hanging with the kids who were dressed in all black with various colors of hair, purple, green-blue, poking out from under hoods and beanies. The freaks, the artists … let’s be real, the queers. At one point, suspecting it was a group of pot smokers (it was), she said I couldn’t be around them, despite being aware of the extreme drinking in the jock scene. We didn’t not drink, but nothing like the popular kids. Anytime I hear Joe Budden’s “Pump It Up” I’m transported to 2003, a living room in the South End, drowned in the stench of alcohol and sweat and horniness. Armpit stains taking shape on the American Eagle shirts, girls grinding their asses against the guys, like in the music videos on television. It was unusual when someone didn’t have to get their stomach pumped.
It always felt more about image than anything. Less about me going to hell and more about my mother’s ego. She wanted what the other soccer moms had, a daughter.
I didn’t talk to her about my sexuality again until I fell in love with Paula at twenty years old. Actually, I didn’t talk about my sexuality even then, I just said, “I’m in love with a woman and her name is Paula.”
At twenty-four I tried again. “I’m gay, Mom, you know that, right? I’m gay and I’m not going to end up with a man,” I finally said when a woman moved in with me.
I met my second girlfriend right around my twenty-fourth birthday at a surprise birthday party for Drew. It had been two years since Paula and I, unable to make the distance work anymore, had broken up. We immediately clicked, I didn’t want to leave her side the whole night, unabashedly following her around. She was so fucking funny, deadpan with a perfect dash of cynicism. Whenever she would disappear from view, I’d find myself searching. Enraptured by her eyes when she smiled, a sexy, almost mischievous smirk. The way she moved her body, an effortless cool. She was queer and confident, an actor whose movies I loved. That was the first time I exchanged numbers with someone.
The night ended in the wee hours of the morning as we closed out the bar. But I was too shy to text, to make a plan. I had yet in my adult life to reach out to a woman like that, to initiate. Time passed, but I could not stop thinking of her. Absent-minded, I’d hold Command and N to search her name in a new window, procrastinating from work to scroll and stare. It was close to a month later and I couldn’t muster the courage to simply ask, “Hi, want to grab a bite sometime?” Instead, I used the excuse of a movie premiere to invite her and her best friend, which made it feel less pressured, but just as obvious.
It was the premiere of Super, a film I made right after Inception. Rainn Wilson stars as a DIY superhero, and I played his “kid sidekick,” Libby. When the scene arrived with me in my superhero costume, standing in the doorway trying to get Rainn to fuck me, I cringed. My character stands, stroking her pussy under a little skirt while saying, “It’s all gushy,” before forcing herself on him. Fuck, I thought, regretting both the scene and inviting my crush. Somehow forgetting that this may not be the film you would want a crush to see. Her and her bestie still came to the after-party though. They were sweet and complimentary. I was shaking with nerves, whether they noticed or not, I am not sure.
The day after that we texted, my strategy had worked, albeit rather clumsily. We made a plan for a date but it would not be for a couple weeks, and I was impatient. In another inept move, I convinced Alia Shawkat to have a party for the sole purpose of inviting her. She walked in wearing black jeans, Converse, and a red flannel. The moment I saw her, I lifted, a feeling I hadn’t had since Paula. We all played running charades, laughing our asses off, I wanted to impress her so badly. I couldn’t screw this up. During a pause in the game, I stood with her in a short and small hallway, a perfect little nook. Our backs leaned against the wall, she moved in close, her shoulder touching mine. We both looked to the floor smiling and pressed the sides of our bodies together.
I fell in love fast and hard. We tried to pace out the dates but quickly were spending almost every night together and on our way to cliché. I lived in Beachwood Canyon at the time, she was in the Valley, a bit of a ride on the 101. My place didn’t have much inviting furniture. The living room had a broken futon against the wall with some pillows and two stiff chairs. I literally owned one mug, my fridge was more than likely empty—so we were typically at hers. She had a proper living room with comfortable furniture and a TV in the bedroom. A walk-in closet that was the kind of tidy and organized I could only dream of.
Being with her was the first time I was consistently around a queer group of friends. In high school, there were only whispers of us types, if that, and I was still very, very closeted. Other than the time with Paula at Reflections, and a nerve-racking experience at a bar in Paris with Alia (a story for another book), I had not stepped foot into a gay bar. I was not and had never been a part of a queer community, how to access such a thing was not just a mystery but an impossibility. The loss of which was sizable. Agony in isolation, the shame and pain that I thought was mine alone. My heart aches for my younger self. A tiny bug running to the rim of an upside-down juice glass. What a difference it would have been to sit with queer and trans pals and have them say, I feel that way, too. I felt that way, too. We don’t have to feel that way. You don’t have to feel that way. Not a magic eraser of shame, but it would have undoubtedly quickened things up.
Again, my degree of secrecy suffocated the relationship. It was hard on her, but I was wordless in my excuse other than these five—sorry, I can’t be out.
I dropped her off at a rehearsal one morning. Pulling up in my silver Mini Cooper, she climbed out onto the Hancock Park curb as I turned down PJ Harvey’s “Let England Shake.” Her black sunglasses protected her from the already searing sun.
“I love you,” she said.
“I love you, too,” I replied.
A coworker had witnessed me send her off from the Mini, but my face hadn’t been visible. She said it was private after he inquired about the relationship. He joked Minnie Driver was her secret girlfriend, and her coworkers referred to me as that going forward.
She slid her arm around me at a sit-down Bon Iver concert one evening. My body stiff as a board, head still and forward, my eyes danced around, as if they were the ones performing. It felt better to not ask for her arm’s removal in order to forgo a night of intense arguing and dramatic hand gestures. The first time I would let someone hold me at a concert wouldn’t be for more than three years.
I told my mom about her on the phone. She referenced something in regards to me liking men, or an ex, before I said I was dating a woman. Her “I know” came deflated, as if I couldn’t sense her disappointment. In the two years after Paula and I broke up, I had tried to be with dudes. Like in high school, I’d wanted to convince myself it was possible, that I could enjoy it or at least tolerate it. The closet was grueling, it suffocated me. Stewing in my shame, exhausted, lonely, and depressed, I wished to be the person so many wanted me to be. It felt like the only option.
While filming Inception, a friend of Leonardo DiCaprio’s visited set and we had a lovely connection. Peter was warm to everyone, eyes beaming with care. When I saw Leo next, I told him I liked his friend, to which he responded that his friend liked me, too. For our first date we went to Universal Studios with Leo and his mother. Peter and I sat close on the rides, our thighs just touching.
My mom was over the moon. Prayers answered!
But my affair with Peter didn’t last very long, a month, maybe two, like high school all over again.
My girlfriend and I moved in with each other too quickly. Well, sort of. She was selling her first house while I was looking to purchase my first house. The timing was absurd. Escrow closed on her place as I was to move in. So we figured—why not a temporary situation? See how it feels while she figures out her next steps? (Attempting to convince ourselves through subtext.) That’s not the same as U-Hauling.