Locked in Like Animals

Catherine: Oh hai. I know I promised you facebookers I’d have this story to you this past weekend, but guess what? JANA WAS IN TOWN so I didn’t have time to write because our lives were falling apart together for once. Nothing terribly disastrous happened, you’ll be sad to know. The nearest disaster was avoided so, mischief managed.

Anyways.

Last week I was on Lake Tahoe. More specifically, I was NOT on Lake Tahoe, but I was on Donner Lake. Of the Donner party, which you may recognize as the last known example of cannibalism in the United States. I’m not sure what that has to do with my story, other than it’s a pretty bad thing, and perhaps will help to set the stage as it were. Anyway, I was with a group of old friends, reunion-style, and we were staying at Donner Lake for a week to drink too much and get sunburns on the backs of our (my) legs.

We’re going to get into some sexy stuff, guys, so if you’re not up to it, OR IF YOU’RE MY MOTHER, stop reading.

We still here?

Mom, go away.

Ok.

I was at the supermarket in a little group trip to stock up on snacks and food for our mini army of 10 people. I very discreetly snuck away as we checked out as a group – “I forgot something! How SILLY of me!” And ugh, I hate this story. I hate telling it. Maybe you hate reading it.

But I needed to get like, UGH, condoms. UGH. SO ANYWAYS. I went to the aisle I had seen them in and reached up. But – they were locked up, like little sex prisoners. I was displeased. I went to the pharmacist stationed nearby and very meekly asked, “Uh, um” (dies inside) “How do I get … in there” (I point ashamedly in the general direction, I am not mature, not at all.) Without so much as giving two shits, the pharmacist calls over the intercom “Customer assistance, aisle 8.”

Me, carrying pickles, moments before the incident.

Not one minute later, the teenage boy with the Bieber cut who had been bagging my groceries saunters – like, really saunters – down the aisle. At the moment of impact (having arrived at the um, ‘penis covers’), ANOTHER employee, in her 50s, disgruntled, arrives.

“Whatdya need?”

“Hi, um, yeah, I needed some of the ………………. condoms.”

“Which ones?”

(Points, dies inside, teenage boy smirks)

The woman reaches up and retrieves them. Without so much as a key. No key needed. SPOILER ALERT: THEY WEREN’T LOCKED UP AT ALL. I AM JUST REALLY STUPID. I had not been able to get them down, not because they were locked up, but because I am terrible and not very bright.

The woman laughs, “They weren’t locked up.”

“Yeah, yeah, ok. I want to die, like, ok.”

“We’ll be talking about this in the breakroom later!”

“Oh, yeah? Cool…”

The teenage boy and I walk back towards the registers together because it’s a grocery store and there aren’t emergency exits for when you embarass yourself less for having sex than for being an idiot. As we pass the self check-out, I call to the boy, just behind me, “I’m just gonna do the self-checkout. I want to die right now.” (verbatim, guys.) He laughs at me, pointedly.

The self-checkout is packed, as it would be, but I spy an open register and throw the (cough) CONDOMS on the thingymajig JUST as the teenage boy saunters by (seriously, kid was a serial saunterer.) “Self-checkout, huh?” Cue him laughing, sauntering away. Cue him also probably thinking, “Does she know she has zits on her mouth right now? Like, 70? Poor girl.”

And scene.

Jana: This story makes me want to kill myself.

Here is a penis drawn on my leg LATER THAT DAY. I turned it into a cat.

A Friendship Without Benefit

Jana: As a kid, I did have some good friends – other kids who’d known me forever and didn’t even notice my dirty tapered jeans. But as a kid in new social situations, like musical theater-based summer camps, I didn’t make friends so easily. I WANTED to, of course, but I was terrified. What I’d usually do is find a girl I knew I wanted to be friends with, develop a crush-like obsession with her, and then be unable to speak in her presence. Sometimes, by the second-to-last day of camp, I’d have forged a mini friendship with her, which was incredibly elating! But then camp was over, and with it, the future I’d imagined for us.

There was one such situation, though, that stood out from the others because it LASTED past the usually depressing final day of camp. This was a friendship that, against all odds, went on for at least a couple of post-camp months. It was like this: I met Arianna at musical theater camp (ok fine, it was OPERA camp. I’ll get into it later). We discovered that we had the same birthday, which I was glad that she also recognized as being AMAZING and OH MY GOD! and a sign that we were destined for friendship. We started to hang out at camp, and then the day of the performance I remember being really nervous and excited because she had her mom talk to my mom and set up a play date! This was really going somewhere.

This is what I looked like on the day of the performance. Which offers no answers as to why I had any friends, anywhere. 

But then, we actually had to HAVE the play dates. My memory of these “dates” is that they were just really frightening. I lost all sense of what I might say when I was with her. When I did start to talk, I was so nervous that my throat would close up and I’d start coughing instead. I remember being in her room, awkwardly standing while she sat at her desk, deafening silence surrounding us as I racked my brain for something to say. I never thought of anything.

This friendship was also where I developed my deep fear of repeating a story I’d already told. One time, we were walking through the town center and passed a toy store. I had a thing to say! I told her, haltingly, that I really wanted a personal mini bubble gum machine (WHY did I want this? I DO NOT KNOW). But about halfway through this “story”, I realized that I had ALREADY told her about it! It was one of the things I’d coughed out in her room earlier! It was terrible. She smiled, but I knew I’d made a big mistake.

STILL, she wanted to keep hanging out. Again, WHY she wanted this, when I clearly could offer NOTHING of any value and was obsessed with useless objects, was always a mystery to me. But I kept dreading it and then going to hang out with her. I even went to her birthday party, where all of her friends danced to the Spice Girls and I stood in the corner, not dancing or talking to anyone, wearing a sweatshirt which was decorated with the words “I’m Not Listening” and a picture of a guy sticking his fingers in his ears (one of my staple outfits).

Eventually, the friendship must have faded, which was a huge relief. Recently, my mom and I re-hashed it over dinner. “I remember, I know, that was so weird,” she said. “Dad and I also couldn’t figure out why she kept wanting to hang out with you! But then when you were in high school – oh my god, yes! Now I remember. I read something about her in the paper – that she was advocating for the gay-straight alliance or something as an out lesbian at her school. It made so much sense to me when I read that – THAT was it, that’s definitely why she kept wanting you around. She thought you were gay too, because you looked like such a little lesbian!”

Ah. Mystery solved.

Catherine: I want us to come out with a book only so I can use the title I didn’t realize would be a best-seller till just now – Jana: The Little Lesbian. Bestseller. Stores won’t be able to keep it in stock. Little lesbians everywhere will be crushed when in chapter 13 you finally reveal you like boys, even though it is a complete mystery why they like you. I will play the winning sidekick, coaxing you away from that (actually really awesome) sweatshirt, taming those weird hairs of yours that always stick up. In the climatic final scene (set at the prom), a teacher will ask you to leave, assuming you are from the middle school. I will stick up for you and it will go alright at best, while someone  probably laughs at us and calls us fat before throwing a cake onto our pastel satin gowns. I don’t know. I’m still working out the ending.