White Horse Optional

Published in Greetings from Janeland

I can touch both walls of the airplane bathroom with my elbows. Turning around takes some negotiation. It smells like flowery air freshener and the many people who have been in here before me. A soggy strip of toilet paper is stuck to the floor. I feel something wet in my underwear and check the lock before pulling down my pants where, for the first time, I find a small puddle of blood. I am twelve years old.

My mother is not with us. My parents have recently split up and my younger brother and I are flying to Argentina with my father to visit my great-grandmother on her ninetieth birthday. Had my mother been there, I probably would still have turned to him. He was the one I trusted, he always knew what to do. He shrugged, “What do you want me to do about it?” before returning to his magazine.

Until that moment, it was easy to maneuver between genders. I actively refused to wear anything pink or frilly, I wore my hair in a spiky crewcut. Weekends were spent handing my father hammers and screwdrivers as we tackled the endless projects in the turn-of-the-century house he bought when I was eight. Together, we cleaned out gutters, chopped through decades of weeds, rewired. I carried twenty-five pound bags of dirt and scrubbed the hubcaps of his Jaguar E-type, which I referred to as the favorite child, with a toothbrush.

I remember telling my mother I wanted to be just like him. He was confident and driven, he could sand down walls, he won every negotiation he embarked on, he put to- gether Ikea furniture without the instructions. My father waited for no one, he asked no one for permission. To me, he was the strongest man in the world. My mother, on the other hand, did her best to be invisible. She asked if she could maybe possibly go to the bathroom. A decision as small as what to make for dinner was agonizing.

Rarely did the word “woman” come out of my father’s mouth without “stupid,” “idiotic” or “fucking” attached. Women were untrustworthy, intent on stealing his money. Women were governed by emotion — a four-letter word in our house — they were all terrible drivers and shouldn’t be allowed on the road. As far as I could tell, there were no redeeming qualities to being a woman.

I hadn’t ever connected my father’s opinions about women to my being one. But in the time it took us to fly to the Southern hemisphere, I went from being his sidekick to becoming “one of them.” Softness, femininity, anything that could be perceived as weakness were the enemy.

When we returned from Buenos Aires, Joseph, a neighbor and my father’s best friend, came to pick us up. Joseph burst through the security line and flung himself into my father’s arms. My father laughed uncomfortably. “Whoa,” he said, backing up slight- ly. A few months later, I discovered they were lovers.

When the secret came out at school, kids whispered and stared. “Your dad’s a fag,” they laughed.

School was hard, but home was harder. I tried, and failed, to engage my dad. I would have done anything to get him to love me again. Instead, he openly preferred my brother. Paul had been gifted the one thing I couldn’t change: he was a boy.

“Guess what happened this morning?” I bound into his office during my seventh grade lunch break. “The math teacher—“

My father sighs loudly but doesn’t look up from his desk. “Don’t you ever shut up?”

Deflated, I skulk to the kitchen to soothe myself with whatever I can find in the fridge.

It didn’t help that my body had its own agenda: although I did my best to hide my breasts under baggy t-shirts, they were unmistakable, my body was all roundness. I could not pass for a boy anymore; and even if I had wanted to be a traditional, diminu- tive woman, it was clear that I was not built to be one.

At school, instead of being quiet and unobtrusive, as I understood women should be, I did my best to be assertive and voice my opinions aggressively so as to come across as more masculine. I became a loud know-it-all. “Fuck you,” featured heavily in my lexicon. “Don’t fucking swear,” my father slapped me across the face when he heard me curse.

Because I was more like him, I wondered whether my father’s preference would pass on to me. The first time someone accused me of being a lesbian, I had to look the word up. I declared that I was attracted to people, not genders, an answer crafted both in self-defense as well as to remain loyal to my father. It made little sense: I hated being a woman, why would I want to be with one? Still, the question lodged itself in my mind like a sailor’s knot.

There was nobody to ask. I started exploring new parts of myself. I grew my hair out, attempted dresses and makeup. In the beginning, being a girl felt more like a Halloween costume than a part of me.

To add to my confusion, in the outside world I didn’t lack for male attention. Sex became my way of engaging. Their socks on the floor, the sound of their skin against the sheets, the smell of their sweat. I focused on details to keep the big picture blurry, hovering a safe distance above my life, as if watching it on a screen. Emotion, still a dirty word, was to be avoided at all costs.

“You’re all woman,” my lovers told me. I smiled at the irony. Being “all woman” was what I longed for. Secretly, I also still wanted to go back to being the little boy my father had once loved. By then, he had chosen to disappear from my life altogether. He didn’t want a daughter, the only thing I could be.

The schism inside me was deep, unbridgeable. When a man told me he loved me, first, anxiety would set in, then, I would go numb. I left before he could.

I was twenty-three when I met Cathy. Eight years older, she was everything I wasn’t: bold, fearless, comfortable in her skin. Cathy straddled her masculine and feminine gracefully, pulling on her heavy cowboy boots and fastening her large silver belt buckles with perfectly manicured fingers. She was meticulous about her long, blond hair. The rings on her fingers were chunky, mostly skeletons.

I had never met a woman like her. When she was sad, she cried. When she was angry, she ranted. When she was happy, she allowed herself to be. Cathy’s strength was masculine, her vulnerability, deeply feminine. She inspired me, she terrified me. I was attracted to her, her desire for me was intoxicating.

But the difference wasn’t only in her. With Cathy, I didn’t feel I had to pretend to be anyone else. I allowed myself to delve into my feminine and masculine sides, my fears, my tears.

Most nights after work, Cathy and I would meet at the bar where the woman she had a crush on waitressed. It wasn’t a pretty place, the carpet smelled like stale beer. But the guacamole was fantastic and the object of Cathy’s desires snuck us free drinks despite not reciprocating her feelings.

From the beginning, people assumed we were a couple. I was aware that all it would take was encouragement on my part. Neither of us said a word and nothing happened. Instead, I remained in the never-ending push-me-pull-me cycle of the commitment-phobic. I launched myself into every new relationship hoping this man would be “the one” only to flee as soon as things threatened to become serious.

With Cathy, I was home. Still, it was men whose beds I coveted.

Enter Ethan. He was reliable, he’d had the same friends since college, he was a regular guy whom I could trust to never stop loving me. In hindsight, I chose to marry Ethan because Ethan chose me.

On my wedding day, I fantasized about calling my father. “See, someone loves me!” I would tell him. He was not at my wedding. That doesn’t mean I didn’t feel his presence as strongly as if he’d been standing behind me telling me I looked ridiculous in my wedding dress.

Cathy joined Ethan and me for drinks at a bar in downtown Manhattan when we signed our official wedding papers. Lying naked together, years later, she teased me about what I told her in the ladies’ room that night: “Nothing can happen between us.

I’m married now.” I was too drunk to remember that conversation although I do remember how happy I was to have her there.

By then, Cathy and I had drifted apart. We rarely saw each other in person but kept abreast of the broad strokes in each other’s lives through social media.

I thought marrying Ethan would fill the empty part of me where my father’s love had once brimmed. Four years and one child in, however, my anchor had become my noose. Wrapped up in the latest must-have stroller and the search for the kindergarten that would guarantee my child entry to Yale, I had become the kind of person Cathy and I made fun of.

At dinner, Ethan and I sat on either side of our daughter. At night, she slept be- tween us. Our exchanges were brief and perfunctory. Every interaction was a minefield of passive aggression; even a request to pick up milk held the potential for an explosion.

I reverted to disengaging from my life, watching it from a distance, as I had in the past, only this time, I had committed to this movie until death do us part. “I know I must love you,” I told Ethan, “I just can’t feel a thing.”

The emotional dirty laundry piled up. I started to suffer from dizzy spells. I went from doctor to doctor in a quest to figure out what was wrong, spent hundreds of dollars on herbs and pills and potions. I signed up for cleanses and detoxes. For a while, I got better. Better never lasted.

Ethan and I attempted therapy but ultimately agreed that we spent more time talking about how to fix the relationship than being in it.

Our two-year-old daughter said “Mamma crying again.”

When she was born, I had promised myself I would offer her a better example than what I’d had as a child. Something had to change.

“What is it you want?” Ethan asked.

I had no answer.

Then I dreamed of Cathy every night for two weeks. It had been a few years since we’d spoken. She had moved to Philadelphia.

“Can I come see you?” I asked, too nervous to say anything else.

She laughed as if my question was a silly one.

A week later, she was waiting when my train pulled into the station. I saw her first and smiled for what felt like the first time in months. She hugged me tight. I dug my face into her neck, inhaling the scent that is hers alone. Being near her brought tears to my eyes. While the scene could easily have been in a movie, Cathy felt very very real. Un- like in the rest of my life, I was right there with my feet on the ground, feeling my arms around her, and hers around me.

She carried my bag to her car and held the door for me. We caught up on the drive back to her place: I’d had a child, she’d been in her usual plethora of messy entanglements. She’d traveled around the world, I’d moved continents a couple of times. She asked about Ethan.

“My life has become like an itchy wool sweater that’s shrunk in the wash,” I ad- mitted. “No matter how hard I wrestle to fit into it, it’s too uncomfortable.”

Cathy had watched many of her friends go through divorce. She was sympathetic but pragmatic. “You’ll get through it and you’ll move on.”

Cathy winked at me. She didn’t know this time was different. “Let me give you a tour,” she said when we arrived at her cottage.

I nodded, restraining myself from kissing her. The house was tiny, the walls and surfaces filled with mementos and photographs from Cathy’s adventures: snapshots with friends, artwork. She loved turquoise. Every piece had a story. The rug under my feet was thick and soft. “Tea?” she asked.

When we got to the kitchen, I pulled her to me. I kissed her, my hands reaching under her shirt. I wanted to feel every bit of her, which I did, later that night under the Christmas tree.

Returning to the apartment Ethan and I still shared at the end of the weekend was nearly impossible. I reminded myself that I was a mother first and foremost — I no longer had the luxury of fleeing. I turned the key in the lock, pushed the door open and confessed to my husband as quickly as I could.

Surprisingly, after my revelation about Cathy, Ethan quieted down. The way he saw it, if I was into women, there was nothing he could do. He also absolved me: it wasn’t my fault I was a lesbian, it was nature. In his mind, it was simple. Not so for me.

Loving Cathy was the strangest, most natural thing in the world. I knew her so well, yet everything about her was suddenly new. When she came to New York for a few days, she booked herself into a hotel in the Meatpacking district. The room was expensive and sparse. Cathy’s designer jeans and well-worn boots stood out against the minimalist decor. I pressed her against the floor-to-ceiling window overlooking the Highline. With Cathy, I was in charge. Afterwards, we got into a deep bath together, giggling at how pretty the square tub was — and how uncomfortable. “It has no curves,” I com- plained.

We explored the city as we had throughout our friendship. The difference was that now, instead of sharing lunch, we held hands and kissed.

Cathy came to my apartment with Ethan’s blessing while he was at work. She noticed that some of the light bulbs in the living room were burned out. With a matter-of- factness I found irresistible, Cathy climbed the stepladder and switched out the dead bulbs for working ones.

When Ethan came home later that day, he noticed the room was brighter. “What happened?” he asked, looking at the ceiling.

“Cathy changed the light bulbs.”

“Well, if that doesn’t kill the last shreds of my masculinity,” he said.

As my marriage was ending, so too were the dreams I’d had about what I thought

I wanted. I thought Ethan could save me from the wreckage of my childhood. Then, I pinned my hopes on Cathy to save me from my marriage. It mattered little whether it was Prince or Princess Charming, what I needed was to be saved (white horse optional).

Of course that wasn’t going to happen. Walking the five blocks from the subway to my apartment, passing the hodgepodge of old-world brownstones and modern con- struction sites, I went from exhilaration to anxiety, from despair to anticipation. My com- mitment to my child was the only thing that didn’t waver. She was, and remains, my compass. Still, everything was coated in a layer of guilt: blowing up my life was one thing — was I wrecking my daughter’s?

Ethan wanted to tell the world about his lesbian wife. He was intent on clearing himself of all responsibility in the demise of our marriage. Messages started pouring in: I’m envious of your ability to be true to yourself, one friend wrote. I wish I had your courage, someone texted. I didn’t know who or what I was, only that the label, lesbian, gave me the same shrunken, itchy sweater feeling as the label wife.

Loving Cathy became my panacea. Taking solace in her, I cautiously ventured out of my need to conform, reverting to my adolescent explorations. This time I reached way beyond femininity. What I was looking to do was get past any definition of gay or straight, female or male. I experimented with different clothing styles, got a new tattoo and splurged on a pair of delicate gold earrings. I wore the long skirts I had once covet- ed and regretted having gotten rid of my Doc Martens for the first time in years. I was as scared as I was liberated.

Between Ethan and Cathy, I feared I was losing my mind. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to be with Cathy, I wasn’t capable of being with anyone. As easily as my heart had flown open to embrace her, it slammed shut. “I need to figure out me before I can figure out we,” I tried to explain. She didn’t buy it.

We agreed to stay friends. Cathy did her best, replying to my texts and taking my calls. She was understandably angry. I was broken, I was relieved. I longed to see her and was grateful for the train ride that separated us. After a while, we reverted to “liking” each other’s pictures and posts on social media.

Ethan and I slowly separated. We moved to California and worked on building a healthy co-parenting friendship. I have yet to make peace with the fact that my father is out in the world choosing to pretend I don’t exist though his absence has served to make Ethan’s gifts as a kind, devoted Dad to our daughter all the more clear.

For a while, the break-up, the move and being a Mom were more than enough. When I thought about dating, the question that had sat in the back of my mind since age twelve was overwhelming: if I was to enter into a relationship, would I want it to be with a man or a woman?

One day, at the health food store, I met a man. He was soft-spoken with long hair. He wore sandals and socks. I missed Cathy. She and I would have shared a laugh about the chakra and energy talk Californians seem obsessed with.

“But you’re a lesbian!” Ethan exclaimed when I told him about the man. I reminded him that he had been the one to make that decision.

“The only thing I am is confused,” I said.

“So am I,” he admitted.

The relationship with the man didn’t last.

I joined a dating site. When given the option, I ticked the two boxes, indicating that I was open to meeting both men and women. I developed a crush on a woman but didn’t have the guts to tell her. I fell in love again. This time with a man.

“You’re all woman,” he said one day after making love.

I smiled. “I feel it.”

A few months ago, a white-haired stranger walked up to my daughter and I at the playground. The woman was dressed in blue silk. Even her glasses were blue. She bent down and asked my daughter: “do you want to be a princess when you grow up?”

My child stared back at the woman. “I want to be a paleontologist astronaut. And a wildlife photographer.”

The woman raised her eyebrows with a smile. Her eyes fell on me. “You are the person you’ve been looking for,” she waved her hands in my face. “You are your own savior.”

“I love you,” the woman cried out doing a shuffle-dance, “I love everyone!”

My daughter and I giggled.

My daughter wants to know if she can marry a woman or a man when she grows up. I tell her she can marry whomever she wants. In fact, I specify, she can choose not to get married at all.

I’m grateful that my daughter isn’t interested in princes and princesses. This year, she’s learning to ride a horse.