Me: still confused
You: the elusive chanteuse
You were the roommate of a friend of mine, and I can’t say it was ever a super active crush. Besides a pack of mutual friends, we really didn’t have much in common. It was more that any time we were together in a social situation, I would remember that I found you very attractive, and as the night wore on I would feel an increasing urge to put my face on your face.
It seemed at times that perhaps you felt similarly, but any time we were out somewhere and I felt a vibe, something would go hilariously wrong. One night a group of us were out at a bar and the eye contact felt very pointed and I just knew in my heart that the time was right and that we were definitely going to kiss before the night was through. At just the right moment, Cher’s “Believe” came on over the PA and an oblivious mutual friend barged in, raving, “I love this song!!!!! Don’t you guys love this song?!?!?!” The moment evaporated instantly.
A few months later, you and I were both invited to a weekend vacation in Rhode Island with a bunch of friends, primarily couples. This seemed promising! I was looking forward to hanging with our friends, but I was also keenly aware that there would certainly be a moment where both of us would be drunk and on the beach and everyone else would be wrapped up with their partners and we could definitely skip out and make out without anybody giving us shit. I looked forward to this trip all week, and when I showed up at the train station with my bag in hand I casually (SO CASUALLY) asked your roommate when you were meeting us. “Oh,” she told me,“she’s not coming! She felt really sick so she’s staying home.” As the color drained from my face, I resisted the urge to drop to my knees and shout “NOOOOOOO” at the heavens. The trip was fine, I third wheeled it all weekend like I knew I would, and this crush continued to evade me. Nothing piques my interest like an impossible situation!
From time to time, you would text me when you were out in the neighborhood where I worked, letting me know that you just happened to be a little bit tipsy at a bar down the street. At this point, it seemed pretty obvious that this was going to happen EVENTUALLY, but the circumstances never lined up and I was so busy playing it cool that I never bothered to try to plan anything. I figured if it was meant to happen, it’d happen.
Finally, one such night, I magically got out of work early and met you at a bar on Grand Street. You’d been texting me about pumpkin spice martinis, which I will never forget because they sounded disgusting. I’m not sure we even talked a whole lot when I got there, but we did make out on the sidewalk. It felt… triumphant. The stars had finally aligned to bring my dreams to fruition! All of a sudden, your roommate popped her head in to tell you she was taking off and you left with her; you guys did everything together and I didn’t take that part personally. We spoke about hanging out again before you hastily departed, and I went home a little starry-eyed.
I tried to text a few days later, checking in to make sure we were still buds and that things weren’t weird between us, leaving the door open to hopefully remain pals if you had any regrets. You left me on read. Actually, you never responded to a single message or talked to me in any capacity ever again. That made me feel… pretty terrible actually! I wasn’t mad necessarily, but was worried I’d made you uncomfortable somehow. It felt like a waste after months – possibly years? – of excellent Facebook banter and sly smirks at bars, to have it end in such a silly and awkward way. This crush has stuck out in my mind all these years later, mostly because it was so much build-up and such an immediate fizzle. What the heck was that?
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You: hot and confusing and a really decent person, hopefully thriving in 2021
Me: no longer a baby dyke but still occasionally thinking of what might have been in 2010
I’m sorry I chose going to the gym over letting you fuck me in my twin bed at the end of my senior year of college. That sentence sounds so ridiculous when I read it over now, more than ten years later, but let me explain!
I had only just realized I was queer and I was very attracted to you and I was also still dealing with a lot of internalized fatphobia that made going to the gym feel very important and I had signed up for sessions with a trainer as a graduation gift to myself and it just didn’t seem feasible to cancel with such short notice because when you came over to study for our gender studies final I really had no expectation of anything happening at all, because you’d made it clear you were in love with your RA who was cheating on her partner with you sometimes, and also because my best friend had overheard you talking with one of your friends about how desperate I seemed when I texted you too many times in a row while she waited in line for a mediocre omelette at our favorite dining hall, so obviously I had tried to release any hopes and dreams my fragile baby dyke heart had been holding that we may ever make out again like we did at the Gender Bender Ball a couple of months earlier when I complained that no one ever knew I was queer and you smirked and said, “how could they not know,” before pressing me against the wall and putting your mouth on mine, you know? I had been spending a lot of time lying on the floor and listening to Tegan and Sara’s “Call It Off”! I was trying to move on!!!
So when you texted me out of the blue to ask if I could help you study for our exam and suddenly you were in my apartment and my roommate wasn’t home and the light was streaming through the cheap sheer curtains I’d bought at Bed Bath & Beyond and we were sitting kind of close to each other on the uncomfortable lime green futon I’d bought from the knock-off-IKEA furniture store just a few blocks away, I wasn’t thinking, wow it’s a real bummer I have to be at the gym in just a couple of hours, that is NOT enough time to have sex with this girl who I am clearly hung up on, I was more thinking, should I tell her that thinking about her and the night we kissed while watching Sara wrap an array of colorful rainbow telephone calls around Tegan while singing the lyrics ‘Maybe you would have been something I’d be good at,’ is as much a part of my senior year college experience as staying up late to finish my thesis? and the answer seemed pretty clearly uh, no, do not say that you weirdo!!!
Imagine my surprise when, in the middle of studying, you asked to see my bookshelf, and then we were in my bedroom and I looked at the clock and said “wow, I should get ready for the gym,” and then you pushed me onto my bed and suddenly I was not rummaging in my drawers for a clean pair of black spandex leggings but rather I was lying on my back staring up at the super high ceiling, the one redeeming feature of that teeny tiny bedroom, and you were kneeling between my legs and moving my underwear to the side, asking if this was okay, pausing to kiss me hard, telling me to skip the gym.
But I couldn’t! Or I didn’t! I don’t know! I was 21 and very worried about the way my body looked and I liked you so much but maybe that was the problem, I don’t know. Or maybe I just made a dumb decision! Who can say! I made you stop though, that I know for sure, and you laughed and shook your head while I tried to collect myself and fasten my sports bra all at the same time, and then you walked me a few blocks away to my gym and I said, “I hope we can do that again sometime,” and you laughed and nodded, but then you didn’t respond to my texts and I saw on Facebook that you were officially dating your RA and I didn’t want to text you after that because I had some pride, just a little, and we never kissed again.
You messaged me later that summer to apologize for blowing me off and we made fantastical plans that never materialized; we went out for drinks a few years later when I was back in the city and drank too much tequila and flirted and flirted and flirted but we both had girlfriends and when I said, “do you think if we were single we’d be making out right now” you narrowed your eyes and cocked your head like you didn’t know if I was serious and then you said, “if we were single I would’ve taken you home two drinks ago.”
All of that was more than a decade ago. We both have partners now and we don’t really know each other anymore, if we ever did. When my dad died a few months ago you saw on Instagram and you messaged me to say you were sorry, then sent me money so I could buy myself dinner. If we lived in the same place I’d cook you a meal, you wrote. It was really fucking nice, a really decent thing to do. It’s not even that I want you to fuck me anymore — and I certainly don’t want anyone to fuck me on a twin bed ever again. But I wish I’d let it happen that sunny spring day my senior year when I was a baby dyke with a huge open heart and a terrible self image and all the hope and idealism and absurdity that can only live inside a newly out 21 year old queer. Maybe I would have been something you’d be good at.
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You: Sophomore, bought me a beer the night Obama was re-elected
Me: Freshman, about to have my first relationship with somebody else
I will never be as happy on an election night as I was November 6, 2012. A couple months into college, I’d yet to have the necessary cliché of my leftist political awakening. I believed Democrats were good and Republicans were bad and the fate of the world rested on whether Barack Obama was re-elected. I watched nervously from my dorm room as my bro roommates made fun of me for caring so much. I cared so much. And then he won.
My best friend from high school was a sophomore at NYU, but I’d been avoiding them in an attempt to start college anew. That night I didn’t care. I just wanted to celebrate. They told me to come meet them at Brad’s, the bar on 4th street that didn’t card at the door, and I hurriedly put on my shoes energized by the cheers I heard in the background. I ran the ten blocks filled with hope.
It was good that Obama won, because I really wasn’t in the mood for anything else in my life to go wrong — let alone something of national importance. See, two days earlier I’d had my first date with my Dream Girl. It had not gone well. In general my first months at NYU had not been the big change I’d hoped for in my love life. The first person I tried to date had an ex-girlfriend who kept threatening to kill herself every time we went out. And when I met this with an endless well of closeted queer understanding, she hooked up with my roommate apparently as the quickest way of ending things with me. I guess when you’re 18 sticking your tongue in a frat guy’s mouth is easier than articulating: My ex-girlfriend is abusive and I’m not ready to be in a relationship with the dykiest boy in our dorm.
But I didn’t care about her anymore! Because while that drama was wrapping up my Dream Girl had slid into my Facebook DMs. I hadn’t even considered the possibility that this older girl in my scholarship seminar might be into me. But here she was messaging me and flirting with me and asking me to hang out. She was shocked — shocked! — I hadn’t seen Garden State and she invited me over to watch it. After the movie, we talked until we felt comfortable drifting toward silence. I leaned in to kiss her. And she said no. I pulled away and kept talking like nothing had happened, but the end of the night she looked disappointed that I didn’t make another move. I was so confused!
So here I was two nights later at Brad’s barely thinking about her or the first girl, because Obama was re-elected and nothing else mattered. I squeezed through the crowded bar and met up with my best friend who was in your writing program. They introduced me to you and a few other people and bought me a beer with their fake and we all started chatting, buzzing with liberal elation. My friend asked me about the date and I recounted the whole story. You swooped in.
“This is why you can’t worry yourself with girls your age,” you said. “They don’t know what they want. Date someone older.”
It was a good line. Unfortunately, I said, “Oh she is older!”
You were unfazed and kept flirting. You bought me another beer with your fake — why didn’t I have my own fake?? — and we had such a nice time chatting. I left Brad’s filled with beer and hope fully intending to ask you out.
But then two days later Dream Girl and I kissed. When I asked about the other night she denied ever saying no. Apparently it was just an exhale and/or I was crazy and/or she was lying and I still don’t know what was going on. This person would become my first girlfriend.
A couple weeks after election night you messaged me: “How’s it going with the girls” and I informed you that unfortunately it was going great. We didn’t talk again for two years.
My girlfriend was studying abroad in Florence for the entirety of her junior year. We decided to break up and then we decided to get back together and then I decided to move up my own study abroad so we could travel together in the spring. By the time I arrived in Paris, our relationship was falling apart. She broke up with me via text message before we reunited.
I’d opted for the cheapest housing which placed me in a chambre de bonne — French for fun-sized studio apartment. I reflected on my first failed relationship filled with melancholy as I looked out my tiny balcony. It wasn’t my Paris fantasy. But it was a Paris fantasy. The only thing separating me and centuries of great artists was my toilet seat was pink and cushiony and said Spécial VIP on it.
I spent my first months in Paris jumping from crush to crush always slipping back to my ex. I wanted to move on but I just wasn’t ready to let go. Then I got a notification that you’d commented on an Instagram post of my balcony. Your name yanked me back in time to a moment when my ex was just Dream Girl and hardly that as you were taking over that title. A whole alternate history where my first girlfriend was a Taurus instead of a Scorpio.
Your comment said that the previous semester you had stayed in this very same chambre de bonne. According to my journal, at the time I called this a “literary coincidence.” You deleted your comment so I messaged you on Facebook underneath our two year old messages about how I was doing “with the girls.” You admitted to deleting your comment because you thought it might be weird. But you confirmed that this had in fact been where you lived. You were Spécial VIP.
I’d love to say that this conversation helped me get over my ex, that we started chatting, and when I got back to New York I asked you out. Unfortunately, once again, timing wasn’t on our side. Unfortunately, once again, my ex interrupted. Her much-delayed visit was finally happening the next day. I let our conversation fizzle to focus on the past.
I don’t know you so I don’t know what was lost by my choices. Maybe all we missed out on was a bad first date. Or maybe we missed out on so much more. I guess we’ll never know. Anyway, thanks for the beer. Obama 2012.
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You: The two women from my past who I judged too quickly during a chance brunch encounter
Me: The dyke who apparently projected her own hangups about middle school onto you
It’s 2017, and I’m picking up a to-go order from the neighborhood Mexican spot for my girlfriend and I. Our usual order: a chicken milanesa torta to split. On the short walk back home, I’ll also pick up two iced lattes. At home, I’ll fry an egg for our sandwich. We’ll eat on the couch she’ll soon win in the breakup. Things haven’t erupted between us yet, but there are cracks in the foundation quietly spreading, and it’s making me cling a little obsessively to routines like a torta and iced lattes and eggs sputtering in oil. By which I mean, things aren’t always what they seem.
Here I go, rambling about myself, which really was the whole problem with this chance encounter. My self-absorption. So back to you two. As I wait at the host stand for my order, I see you sitting at a high top having brunch. Two smiling, lanky blondes with instantly familiar faces from my middle school years. We’re 348 miles from that middle school, and you both look exactly the same as then, and perhaps it’s the collision of those two truths that briefly knocks me out of time and space. I feel dizzy. I feel like something is wrong.
It’s all so dramatic and stupid, this way I’m so suddenly affected by seeing you both again. We weren’t even exceptionally close throughout middle school, though one of you was in my brief but intensely bonded sixth grade girl gang made exclusively of girls with K names. You also came to my birthday sleepover that year when I made everyone watch Singin’ In The Rain. It’s you who looks at me, and I hold your gaze for a moment. I feel like you don’t recognize me at all. Eventually, I won’t be able to trust any of my perception of this interaction, which let’s be real, isn’t even an interaction at all, because I never approach you. I never give either of you a chance to be known or to know me.
I convince myself you don’t recognize me in that split second we lock eyes. I think about all the ways I’ve changed. I look different. I feel different. I am different. This is what I’ll say to my mother when she admonishes me for being rude by not saying hello, though it isn’t much of an explanation for my behavior. A friend will also ask why I didn’t say hi given the small worldness of our encounter, and I will think I’ve arrived at some wise truth when I explain to her I don’t know how to interact with people who knew me before I came out. I will explain I have a bizarre compulsion to scream I’M GAY NOW when I do.
I take my food, sign the receipt, and step back out onto a sunny and bustling Saturday sidewalk. It would have been so easy to walk up to you both, to point to myself and say, it’s me, Kayla, remember me? To awkwardly reminisce. To talk about what brought us to right here right now. It could have smoothed over the time ripple that made me so disoriented. It could have made me actually see you instead of just spying on you and then bolting.
But because I didn’t stop to say hi, remember me?, I become lost in my own brain spiral. I feel unhinged when I try to explain the encounter to others. No, you don’t get it, I insist, it was so weird because they looked exactly the same, they were exactly the same. They’re still best friends—isn’t that weird?
None of this was fair to you. Why was I so freaked out by your sustained best friendship? There shouldn’t be anything wrong with lifelong friendship, with staying close to the people you grow up with, but I was judgemental. I foolishly conflated it with a lack of growth, of expansion. I’m not the same person I was when you knew me. Seeing you together after all these years, I assumed you were unchanged.
Worse, my middle school baggage burst to the surface when I saw you. You two suddenly became a representation of every blonde white girl who made me feel like an other in those years, even though most of the specific examples I can recall weren’t things either of you did or said but merely things done and said by girls in your orbits. Conflating them with you, making you complicit in something in my mind, all of it has everything to do with me and my issues and nothing to do with you. I’m sorry.
Maybe it would have been annoying for me to interrupt your brunch by saying hello, but I do regret it. I regret not approaching you, and I even regret not making my big awkward I’M GAY NOW declaration. Because it turns out I was wrong about so many things about you two. Almost everything actually. Because thanks to another chance encounter, this time on social media, I eventually found out you’re not best friends anymore. You’re girlfriends. In all my tunnel vision, I saw your intimate body language over brunch and assumed friendship when really you had fully been dating for years by that point. Not only did I misjudge—I misjudged FELLOW GAYS.
Me. Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya. The person who famously thinks everyone is gay and has to often be reminded that heterosexuals do indeed exist. I’m the one who foisted this assumption upon you. I’m mortified by it. Who knows how things would have panned out if I hadn’t been such a hypocrite? Maybe we could have bonded over being closeted and queer at our Virginia public middle school where conformity was the law of the land. Maybe we had crushes on the same teachers. Maybe we could have formed an entirely new friendship that had nothing to do with the past. Or maybe I’m yet again offloading too much on you with these fantasies. Maybe it would have still been as simple as a brief and chance encounter, a little nod to the past, and then we all moved on.
Who knows what might have happened? But the fact that I didn’t allow for any of those possibilities was a mistake. I was so busy protecting myself from being known that I assumed I knew you, which couldn’t have been less true. The past doesn’t wholly define me, and it doesn’t wholly define you. I’m not the main fucking character of life, and I shouldn’t have acted like it.
I hope you two are happy. I hope you two sincerely don’t give a fuck what some selfish and short-sighted asshole you went to middle school thinks about anything. We all deserve to be at the helm of our own narratives, and I’m sorry I attempted to usurp yours.
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