Back the Night, and analyze the importance of lube. The women’s studies professor gives us impromptu talks about the fluidity of gender identity and desire, and it is all I can do to sit still next to the girl who looks like a boy.
It is the mid-nineties and multicultural everything is in. I have the books, the teachers, and the new friends to teach me that being queer is about as normal as me being a Latina at a predominantly white college. Sure, Latinas and queers are outnumbered, but now the laws are on our side, and we have a small but visible community.
The more I listen to Fanny talk about her life with a woman, the more comfortable I also feel. She knows about Audre Lorde and arroz con frijoles , and she throws a Spanish word into the conversation every now and then. She is close enough to remind me of home, the equivalent of my mother and aunties in one woman, with the lesbian and feminist parts added.
The worst part about trying to date women is that I don’t have my mother’s warnings. There is no indicator if I am doing it right or wrong. And so, my queer friends and the spoken-word artists in New York are my teachers, and they know the formula.
Sleep with your friend, sleep with her friend.
Break up and get back together again.
Write her a poem, show her the piers, pretend you want less than you do.
One-night stands, one-night nothing.
You’ll see her at Henrietta’s again and again.
My friend is Dominican, and she reminds me of Iris Chacón. When we make love, I can’t tell what’s more exciting: her large, naked breasts against my own B-cup–sized ones or the inversion afterwards of gender roles. I am now the one buying dinner, picking up the flowers, driving us upstate. Every time she mixes Spanish and English in the same sentence, a part of myself collapses into what I am sure is eternal love.
Within months, however, the relationship sours. So, I try dating another friend. She e-mails that she isn’t interested.
I go out with a Puerto Rican butch, who drinks about as many Coronas as my father. My mother and aunties would be horrified. I am too, after two months.
I meet another Dominican femme, but this one drives an SUV, has her hair straightened once a week, and keeps a butch lover in the Bronx. After three times in bed, I get tired of being on top.
Dating a transgender man, I get tired of being on the bottom.
I go back to what I know and try dating a Colombian woman. But she lives across the Hudson River and doesn’t have a phone with long distance.
I persevere though—drinking flat Diet Coke at lesbian bars and giving women my phone number—because I do not believe my mother. I have read the romance novels, seen the movies, and heard the songs. Love will work no matter what job I have, what nationality I claim, or what street I want to live on. It will work even if I kiss a woman.
And it does.
For a few months, I fall in love with a dark-haired woman who has a way of tilting her bony hip that gives her ownership of the room. Men hit on Lisette and she snaps, “I don’t think my girlfriend would appreciate that.” She is the most feminine woman I have dated (hours are spent dabbing eye shadow in multiple directions), but also the most masculine. She carries my bags, buys me overpriced jeans, leans in to kiss me. She talks to me about the films she will make one day and the books I will write. She follows me into the dressing room at Express and whispers that she wants to go down on me right there. “I like it when you scream,” she tells me in bed. “I need you to do it like this morning. Scratch my back when I’m fucking you.”
I had heard those lines before from men and from women, but it’s different this time. I am sure I will never date anyone else ever again.
When she breaks up with me (yes, by e-mail), I don’t know if I am crying over her or because I can’t talk about it with Mami and Tía Chuchi and Tía Dora and Tía Rosa, the first women I loved. Instead, I
It is the mid-nineties and multicultural everything is in. I have the books, the teachers, and the new friends to teach me that being queer is about as normal as me being a Latina at a predominantly white college. Sure, Latinas and queers are outnumbered, but now the laws are on our side, and we have a small but visible community.
The more I listen to Fanny talk about her life with a woman, the more comfortable I also feel. She knows about Audre Lorde and arroz con frijoles , and she throws a Spanish word into the conversation every now and then. She is close enough to remind me of home, the equivalent of my mother and aunties in one woman, with the lesbian and feminist parts added.
The worst part about trying to date women is that I don’t have my mother’s warnings. There is no indicator if I am doing it right or wrong. And so, my queer friends and the spoken-word artists in New York are my teachers, and they know the formula.
Sleep with your friend, sleep with her friend.
Break up and get back together again.
Write her a poem, show her the piers, pretend you want less than you do.
One-night stands, one-night nothing.
You’ll see her at Henrietta’s again and again.
My friend is Dominican, and she reminds me of Iris Chacón. When we make love, I can’t tell what’s more exciting: her large, naked breasts against my own B-cup–sized ones or the inversion afterwards of gender roles. I am now the one buying dinner, picking up the flowers, driving us upstate. Every time she mixes Spanish and English in the same sentence, a part of myself collapses into what I am sure is eternal love.
Within months, however, the relationship sours. So, I try dating another friend. She e-mails that she isn’t interested.
I go out with a Puerto Rican butch, who drinks about as many Coronas as my father. My mother and aunties would be horrified. I am too, after two months.
I meet another Dominican femme, but this one drives an SUV, has her hair straightened once a week, and keeps a butch lover in the Bronx. After three times in bed, I get tired of being on top.
Dating a transgender man, I get tired of being on the bottom.
I go back to what I know and try dating a Colombian woman. But she lives across the Hudson River and doesn’t have a phone with long distance.
I persevere though—drinking flat Diet Coke at lesbian bars and giving women my phone number—because I do not believe my mother. I have read the romance novels, seen the movies, and heard the songs. Love will work no matter what job I have, what nationality I claim, or what street I want to live on. It will work even if I kiss a woman.
And it does.
For a few months, I fall in love with a dark-haired woman who has a way of tilting her bony hip that gives her ownership of the room. Men hit on Lisette and she snaps, “I don’t think my girlfriend would appreciate that.” She is the most feminine woman I have dated (hours are spent dabbing eye shadow in multiple directions), but also the most masculine. She carries my bags, buys me overpriced jeans, leans in to kiss me. She talks to me about the films she will make one day and the books I will write. She follows me into the dressing room at Express and whispers that she wants to go down on me right there. “I like it when you scream,” she tells me in bed. “I need you to do it like this morning. Scratch my back when I’m fucking you.”
I had heard those lines before from men and from women, but it’s different this time. I am sure I will never date anyone else ever again.
When she breaks up with me (yes, by e-mail), I don’t know if I am crying over her or because I can’t talk about it with Mami and Tía Chuchi and Tía Dora and Tía Rosa, the first women I loved. Instead, I
Similar Books
