literature

Closets are for Clothing

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When I met her, my first impression of Carrie wasn't particularly phenomenal. She was just another hyper older girl, like so many others I knew. Except that she wasn't. There was just something about her that made her different.

The difference was that I could, and willingly did, spend hours at a time with Carrie, or talking to Carrie, or just thinking about Carrie. She was my favorite of all my friends, new or old, and I had no idea why that was. It wasn't that there was anything special about her. She was just special; she was different.

My whole being seemed to revolve around exactly what she said and when, what she wanted at any given moment. I was fascinated by what she ate for breakfast. Not that I let anyone know my mind was always wandering toward the quirky young woman (although she never acted older than twelve). Thus, all the people I knew assumed I was being my usual, airy, distractible self.

It took me weeks, months, to realize why I was so fixated on her. Even when I did figure it out, I denied  the idea for as long as I possibly could. I knew I had a slight inclination toward an alternate sexuality, but it had never drastically affected my life. I'd never had it bad for my best friend before, not my female best friend, at least. Worst enemy, yes. Best friend, no.

It seemed like my whole world was crashing down upon me with that simple epiphany. Who could I tell? Not her, of course. Maybe Ellen? Or Erin? They might listen. Grace would laugh at me and tell me it was obvious and make me feel like an idiot for it, even accidentally. Harriot would tell her first off, and then I would be completely ostracized. Alice would probably tell Carrie in passing, but probably not on purpose, if I asked her not to tell.

I was so lost in thought the day I came to these conclusions that I literally crashed into walls, which simply led to more people making a mockery of my life. There were seriously people who would run into walls in front of me to make fun of me. Not that I noticed. It was just a decidedly clumsy day. (I figured it out later, but it didn't mean much even then.)

Keeping things bottled up never seemed to work for me, and I hated the repression that being “in the closet” forced me to live with. I needed to tell someone before I exploded. I just had to make the right decision as to who that person would be.

I spent days trying to work up the guts to tell Ellen, my junior high lab partner and only academy friend. Every time I was ready, the moment just wasn't right. People would walk past right when I was about to say something, or the bell would ring and we'd both have to take off running for class. Finally, I told her.

“Ellen...can I tell you something?”

She looked at me, slightly confused. “Of course. Why couldn't you?”

Why was always Ellen's favorite question. Before she said anything else, she asked why. I'm sure it had nothing to do with her mild paranoia issues. Mostly because, in this case, I didn't have a very good excuse as to why not.

“I...I think...” it was so difficult to say it out loud. It was going to sound so juvenile, I could already tell. “I think I like Carrie.” I said all in a rush. Yep, it sounded extremely juvenile. Just like a school girl with a crush. I was in total denial of the fact that that's exactly what I was. A school girl with a crush. The only thing I could think was Way to be different, May. Way to be different.

Ellen, being the ever-darling person that she is, took it so much in stride. “What are we going to do about it? She's straight, right?”

I swear, she knew. She must have known, all along, that I liked Carrie, for her to be so understanding. Ellen always seemed to know things that most people didn't and yet not to share any of the community's common knowledge.

In response to her question, I shrugged. Of course she was straight. Ninety percent of the time she was jabbering about men. “I don't know what we're going to do...” I didn't know what I was going to do. It was hard enough to do nothing. It would only be harder to do something about it, because there wasn't much I could do, besides avoid her. That was virtually impossible.

Fortunately for me, Ellen came to a solution of some sort at that moment, because she started bouncing up and down, yelling my name repeatedly. Ugh, I hated my name.

“May! May! I know!”

I was right. She had an idea. God, I hoped it was practical. It needed to be practical, or I would just burst into tears right then.

“My sister has a friend. Who's a lesbian! And she could help you?”

I blinked. Maybe that would help, but I was beginning to wonder if Ellen had actually understood the dilemma as well as I'd thought she had. It was worth a try, though. Maybe she knew how to convert a straight girl. Far cry from probable reality, but it was possible. “Sure, Ellie. Sounds lovely. Have her call me?”

And thus, I came out to the first person. It didn't get any easier after that. Of course, Ellen's sister's friend did call. In the middle of orchestra. There had been a substitute that day, thus making it an official waste of time. We couldn't go into the practice room, and we weren't going to play, so there was hardly a point in showing up for class.

I was twiddling my thumbs through the second lunch and laughing with Harriot and Carrie and Alice about something rather stupid and unmemorable when my phone went off. My phone went off in the middle of fifth period. That was something new. It had gone off during seventh before, when my mother was trying to call right after school and ended up calling right before the end. Never half-way through the school day.

Checking the number, I had no idea who it was. I had completely forgotten that Jamie's (Ellen's sister) friend even existed. Until I ducked around a corner from my friends (who were all anxious to find out who was calling but were somehow willing to give me privacy to talk) and stuck the cell to my ear.

“Hi! It's Jenna, Jamie's friend. She said you were just coming out and kind of confused.” A bright, almost perky voice spoke clearly out of the phone. The faint sounds of traffic could be heard from the background. It took me a moment to realize what she was talking about.

“Oh. Yeah. Hi.” I wasn't exactly sure what to say to her now that she'd called. Not that I'd had much of an idea before she'd called, but I suppose I'd had a better plan when I'd been expecting her to call.

She laughed a little through the phone. God, was she going to be one of those annoyingly bubbly people? Her next statement proved that at least slightly wrong. “You have no more of an idea why we're having this conversation than I do? Great.”

My reply was classic. It was sardonic. It was simple. It worked. “Yep.” I sighed. “Since we're talking, we might as well talk?” I made the statement into a question at the last second, leaving the idea open for debate. After all, I'd heard hearsay that the other local high school, of which Jenna just so happened to be a student, had exams that day.

I knew I was weird when I could hear her nod based on what she said. But I did. “We might as well. So you say you're bisexual?”

The fleeting curiosity of just how much Ellen had told her winged its way through my head, but I brushed it off. That would've been a fact that would've been shared as a part of the reasoning for arranging this conversation in the first place. I muttered some unintelligible grunt of agreement.

That must have been enough, because she kept talking like I'd said something with a lot more meaning than I had. Or, rather, interrogating me. “So is this girl the first chick you've ever liked?”

“Nope.” I was in the mood for monosyllabic answers today, apparently. “The first girl I liked...well, let's not talk about that.”

I really didn't want to talk about Casey. It was nauseating to think about. She was nauseating to think about. It's always kind of awkward when you want to jump the person you hate the most. I could write a book on how much I loathed Casey and still find her extremely attractive. It's my chivalrous streak. She's like a little lost puppy in need of someone to take care of her. I wanted to be the one to take care of her. And the one to get her foot stuck in a desk. It was an interesting internal conflict that I didn't feel like discussing with Jenna, who I'd just met that morning.

While I had been contemplating my desire to commit unspeakable crimes against Casey, Jenna had been talking about something. I wasn't quite sure what. I managed to try and pop back into the conversation right as she asked her next question. This one was a little more pertinent to my life at the moment, though. “You're not in the middle of an exam, right?”

If this was an exam, I wished all my exams were like this. Doing nothing would make for a nice exam. Unfortunately, it wasn't an exam. “Not last time I checked. We don't have exams right now. UMHS runs on a different schedule from you guys. I'm in the middle of fifth period.” Then it dawned on me. If they were having exams, why wasn't she taking one? “What happened to your exams?”

She gave me some garbage about senior exemptions, a concept so far in my future I hardly believed it could exist in the real world, and I bought into it. I had no reason not to, after all. After that, the extent of our speech was various forms of small talk and getting-to-know-you garbage. She was the second person I told.

I used that particular moment as an excuse to tell Carrie, Harriot, and Alice about my sexuality. Not who I liked. Just that I, you know, liked girls and all that fun stuff. The pretty much took it as I had expected they would.

“Yeah, I couldn't care less, May. Just don't hit on me or anything.”

I didn't let on that with those words, Carrie had effectively crushed me into a million tiny pieces of broken, useless glass. Not that the glass had been worth much anyway, obviously. It certainly broke easily, the first sign of dysfunction. I just nodded and went back to listening to them talk about guys, as usual.

Quite probably the most interesting reaction I got in regards to my proclamation belonged to Erin. She and Ellen had left me for a school trip that I held no interest in going on. It was in Salt Lake City, and I had enough of the Utahans living here at home. The pair of them were rooming together and calling me every three minutes to give me an update on the mundane details of their evening. In essence, rather than being bored out of their skulls at home, they were bored out of their skulls out of town.

In one such instance of these phone calls, Ellen and Erin were sitting in their hotel room. Their third roommate was out somewhere. For whatever reason, Ellen was in the mood to tell everyone everything about each other. She isn't usually as much of a gossip-whore as she sounds. In this case, she so was.

We skipped entirely the usual conventions (basic greetings, the weather, &c.) in favor of something that was more fun. More fun for Ellen anyway. For me, it was approaching the top of the awkward scale, and that's saying something. My awkward scale isn't exactly calibrated the same way as everyone else's. I picked up the phone to hear four words.

“Can I tell her? Can I tell her? Can I tell her?”

Four words repeated several times in a row for no obvious effect.

My first thought was...what? I honestly had not a clue what Ellen meant, and I got the feeling Erin had even less of a clue, because I heard her mutter something along the lines of “What?”

After a few moments of Ellen making vague hints that obviously meant absolutely nothing to Erin, I figured it out. She wanted to tell Erin that I batted for both teams. Great. I hadn't really thought about how Erin would react, but somehow, I wasn't sure it was going to be what I wanted it to. So I gave Ellen a simple no.

Too bad it wasn't simple enough, apparently. Because the next words that came from the ear piece of my phone were “Pleaseeeeeee, can I tell her?”

I had to roll my eyes at that one. Ellen was darling when she whined. She was like the puppy that everybody cuddled when it was in trouble instead of giving it the good swat it had earned. Her please always managed to melt my cold, brutal heart and get her whatever she desired. “Oh, all right. I suppose so,” I caved.

She literally squealed with joy and proceeded to jabber out every little detail of my mind that she knew. From beginning to end, Erin was silent, listening to Ellen's words without forcing herself in like she usually did. That alone carried a sense of foreboding. Until she spoke, that is. “So?”

I had to laugh at that. Leave it to Erin to sum up everything in one word and make me feel better using the sarcasm we both knew best. Her mild amusement, mixed with the slight disinterest she carried about her like a cape, made me feel so much better about myself than I had before. I'm not sure why that was except that she made it feel like such a commonplace declaration, that one was attracted to members of the same sex, and that feeling was comforting. Much more comforting than the reactions of the girl I wished would care the most, the friends I had hoped would support me in my turmoil rather than brushing it off as a joke and telling me to leave them alone about it.
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