The U-Haul Diary

by K. B. Draper

  “Sure. Is she a suspect in a case you’re working on?” she asked.

  “Not a case exactly, but I am working on something and we’ll just say she’s definitely a key participant.”

  As part of Maggie’s new employee orientation, Louise informed her that we get paid every other Friday, she’d be eligible for health and retirement benefits after ninety days of employment, the jail cook always made too many meals for the inmates so employees could eat extras if they wanted but she should stay away from the goulash and anything covered in gravy, she’d be off all major holidays, oh and I was a lesbian. Despite Louise’s little declaration of my sexual preference, Maggie and I quickly became friends. Like any good friend, after she listened to the story of my girlfriend’s betrayal with the backstabbing friend, she concluded I was completely innocent of all wrongdoings and I was just the poor victim of Stacy and my lesbian nemesis’ evil plot. In continued acts of friendship, she would make catty remarks about them, ignore them in the hallway, and alert me to any and all overweight, smelly, hairy female felon suspects in dire need of being arrested.

  Maggie decided one day she wanted to go shopping. Though straight girls and lesbians never have the same shopping habits, I was in the fifth stage of the “after a lesbian breakup” grievance process. The process is very similar to Kulber-Ross’ five stages of grief; however, the breakup stages are as follows:

  Stage one: Denial. During this stage, the dumped lesbian can’t accept the fact she has actually been dumped by her girlfriend because said girlfriend was “the one.”

  Stage two: Anger. In this stage the dumped lesbian becomes angry when she finds out the dumper has moved on to being someone else’s “the one.”

  Stage three: Bargaining. This is when the dumper and the dumpee negotiate who gets the pets, which are equivalent to promise rings in straight relationships.

  Stage four: Depression. This is the stage where the dumped mourns her dog and favorite sweatshirt, which she somehow lost custody of during the bargaining stage, despite the fact that she bought the sweatshirt three years prior to meeting the now ex-girlfriend.

  Stage five: Acceptance. In this stage the dumped lesbian accepts the fact she has been dumped and vows to start working out, gets a cool new haircut, and then goes shopping for new clothes and a new look. That way, when she runs into ex-girlfriend, the ex-girlfriend will think she is way hotter than when the two of them were together and the ex-girlfriend will have to accept that she made a huge mistake leaving such a buff, hot, cool person.

  Added bonus stage: Revenge (or a.k.a. ha ha ha, bitch), get a new girlfriend who is hotter than the ex-girlfriend.

  Though I hadn’t started working out yet or found any prospective hotter girlfriends, I decided I could start shopping for my new “hot look” so I agreed to go with Maggie to the outlet mall.

  Though Maggie and I had gotten rather close, we hadn’t had the inevitable conversation that all straight women have when they find their first lesbian friend; the “I don’t get it” conversation. The hour drive to the mall gave her ample opportunity to start her questioning, which always plays out the same way. It begins with the “Have you ever been with a guy?” question, to be followed by “And you didn’t like it? Does one of you act like the guy and one a girl? Do you use toys?” and then finally the “I don’t get how it works …” question. Because I have several straight friends, I’ve answered these questions many times. I gave her my standard responses: “Yes, I’ve been with a guy. Do you? Yes, one tends to always end up driving and the other tends to bitch more. They’re not required, but can be thrown in for a change of pace.” And “Use your imagination, and when doing so, imagine the things you actually like about sex. Then imagine them a hundred times better and lasting for four hours versus four minutes.”

  She stared at me for a few minutes, smiled, and sat quietly for the remainder of the drive.

  We shopped together for exactly five minutes before we decided we needed to split up and meet back in an hour. I went to Nike, Adidas, Gap, J. Crew, the bookstore, the music store, Sunglass Hut, Fossil, and Auntie Anne’s Soft Pretzels while Maggie went to Kitchen-n-Things and some girlie dress store.

  On the drive back she picked up our previous conversation. “So you don’t have any desire …” she began.

  “No, I do not have any desire to be with a guy.”

  “So why did you go out with Jeff a few weeks ago?” Maggie questioned.

  “Temporary insanity.”

  “You guys do anything?”

  “Yeah, we played pool and ate dinner.”

  “Whatever. You know what I mean.”

  I did know what she meant but I was really trying to suppress the whole incident by putting it nicely away behind all the other little memories I didn’t want to readily recall. I filed it right behind the incident in high school when I’d elected to wear my new pair of MC Hammer pants on a hayride where I hadn’t foreseen the potential need to climb a barbed wire fence. Needless to say, it took three guys and tin snips to untangle my ultra-cool, ultra-low-hanging crotch pants from the top wire of the fence.

  “Yes, I know what you mean. We didn’t do anything. He took me back to my house and kissed me good night.” This was true. However, I left out that he kissed me for a painfully long five minutes. And while I had to physically entertain his tongue to be nice, I used the time to mentally create my grocery list. When he decided to move from kissing to groping, I ended the little encounter and added disinfectant to my list.

  “That’s it? Really?”

  “That’s it,” I replied simply.

  We drove for several miles in silence when Maggie finally broke in with, “So, I have a question.”

  Relatively sure we’d already covered most of the straight girl conversations I replied, “What?”

  “If you had to make out with someone in the sheriff’s department, who would it be?”

  “Hmm …” I did a mental roll call. Stacy? No, been there, done that. Christen? She’s very attractive, but a little, ummm … feisty. So, no. I’d be afraid of the scars she’d leave from the wounds she’d undoubtedly inflict. Jason, Christen’s boyfriend? No. Again, because of Christen’s wounding potential. Keith? No, too short. I’m perfectly okay with kissing women who are shorter, but shorter men? Definitely no. Sheriff? Undersheriff? Jail Administrator? Louise? BIG NO. My lesbian nemesis? Hmm … very attractive, but there was that whole SLEEPING WITH MY GIRLFRIEND thing that I might still be a tad bit bitter about, so NO. Dan? Since I had the sneaking suspicion he was the Silly String peeing bandit, no. Jeff? He was cute, and I’d found I could multi-task during our interactions.

  “Jeff,” I replied.

  “Jeff, really?” she said with a hint of what I thought was disappointment.

  “You said if I had to …”

  “Yeah,” Maggie replied with a definite sigh.

  “Okay. Then you tell me, if you weren’t married, who would you want to kiss?”

  “You,” she said without hesitation.

  The tires of the car veered off the side of the road to the warning track, jarring me back onto the road and out of my temporary shock.

  I glanced at her, expecting a smile or a hint that she was just giving me shit. Nothing.

  Well, that was an option I hadn’t really considered. I sat in silence for the remainder of the trip, attempting not to imagine … ANYTHING, while I kept repeating Maggie is married. Maggie is married. Maggie is married. Maggie is married … and has amazing lips. Oh God, stop. We’re friends and I know her husband. Her husband is a good guy. She was just saying that. She didn’t reeeaaallly want to kiss me. And we did limit our options to sheriff’s department personnel. I mean those are very limited choices.

  I looked over at her. “How about the town?”

  “The town?”

  “Who would you kiss in the whole town?”

  “Still you.”

  “Good to know.” Maggie is married. Maggie is married. Maggie is married.
“Okay, seriously. I’m talking the whole entire town, and even the outlying suburbs are an option. Surely there’s a hot pizza delivery guy, sanitation worker, the guy that works the counter at Mighty Melt? I mean, he might smell like mustard and salami but he has cute dimples and you’d get free sandwiches …”

  She replied with soft seductive eyes, a slightly raised eyebrow, and a slight curl to one edge of her lip. Okay, maybe not.

  I took a quick inventory of the contents of my car—no brown bag; no heart defibrillator; no Zoloft, Xanax, or Prozac; and no Star Trek transporter thing. I’m so not prepared for this. God, why did I quit the Girl Scouts? Oh right, because of that little sewing incident where I thought it would save me time if I just sewed my badge on my sash while still wearing it. I’d thought the tactic would’ve earned me a proficiency badge as well, but I failed to realize the likelihood of sewing it to my chest. I didn’t get the badge but several of my fellow Girl Scouts did earn their first-aid badges that day.

  A long thirty minutes later, we pulled into my driveway. I dropped my bag of clothes on the coffee table and headed to the kitchen to add some distance between us. She followed. My heart started to pound, and I started to think I was being ridiculous; she’d been in my kitchen a hundred times. I’ve got to get a grip. We’re friends. It was just a fun little game to pass the time. She’s married. She’s straight. She didn’t mean anything by it. I felt her move behind me and when I turned to face her she put her arms around me, leaned into me, smiled slightly, and then kissed me. Okay so … maybe she meant something by it.

  I pulled away after a few seconds, trying to listen to my voice of reason, which weirdly always sounds like Dolly Parton. “You don’t want to do this, darlin’. I mean, I know she’s sweeter than a honeycomb dipped in sugar, but she’s married.”

  Little Richard’s voice, the voice that has talked me into everything bad I’ve ever done, interrupted. “Girl … oOOo … That kiss was pathetic. She obviously wants to know what a girl kisses like and that’s what you give her. She’s definitely staying straight now … ooOOoo.”

  Okay maybe one kiss wouldn’t hurt. Then she’d go home and the question of what it feels like to kiss a girl wouldn’t plague her marriage.

  “Sugar, don’t do it. Kissing her is gonna be as messy as trying to nail Jell-O to a tree,” Dolly piped back in.

  “Now there’s an idea, Jelll-000-ahhh. I do like Jell-O, especially with marshmallows,” Little Richard retorted.

  And on that thought I kissed her back.

  For the next several weeks Maggie and I attempted to steal a few hours together here and there, when she could find a good excuse to be out of her house. It was exciting and fun, which made things more tantalizing. Along with her excellent office skills, Maggie was a dancer and a gymnast so she was also amazingly flexible and bendy. This was discovered after we moved our relationship into the bedroom. I showed her the fine art of lesbian lovemaking, and she showed me that pages forty-seven, sixty-nine, and 104 of the Kama Sutra were not physical impossibilities.

  For the first time, the pain and anger of Stacy and my lesbian nemesis’s betrayal began to fade. I could walk into the sheriff’s department and see my lesbian nemesis’s ass propped on the dispatch desk with Stacy looking all giggly-stupid and I didn’t want to vomit or walk straight in and punch my lesbian nemesis in the face. Okay, maybe that wasn’t exactly true. I didn’t want to vomit only because there was a possibility of stealing a kiss from Maggie, but the punch to my lesbian nemesis’s face had been downgraded to a mere bitch slap. It’s amazing how good bendy sex can heal one’s heart.

  A month into our little affair, Maggie’s husband stopped by to see her at work. Fortunately, he came thirty seconds after a little flirtatious exchange. As I watched him enter my office, I saw the smile that developed when he saw his wife. I knew it was the same smile that I was probably reflecting when I saw her. He walked over and kissed her, shattering my heart and the illusion of our “non” relationship. The reality of what I was doing came into clear focus. Guilt and heartache washed over me instantly.

  I couldn’t get the guilt to leave me, except for short periods when Maggie was naked in my bed. I seemed to be able to put it aside for a bit but when she’d go home, home to her husband, I felt horrible. I’d become exactly what I hated. I was the other woman. I was the mistress. I was the dirty little secret. I’m … oh, God … I’m my lesbian nemesis. A tidal wave of self-loathing crashed over me. I had to end this.

  “Told you, pudd’n. I knew this would get messier than holding a pogo stick jumping contest in a mud puddle,” Dolly inserted.

  “Mud. Isn’t that a dirty, sexy idea … oooOOOoo,” Little Richard added.

  Nice. I’m an adulterer and have a pervert as a subconscious. I spent the next week figuring out exactly how I was going to break it off with Maggie. It seemed like every time I went to do so we’d end up in bed.

  After one particularly flexible encounter, Maggie announced, “We’re getting a divorce.”

  Disbelief and concern must have shown on my face because she immediately said, “I thought you’d be happy?”

  “I am …” I think … “I’m just in shock, I guess.”

  Two weeks after the big announcement, I’d shoved my guilt to the furthest reaches of my mind, which probably had something to do with Maggie sleeping in my bed every night. Also, during the same two weeks, Maggie got a new job. I thought this best, considering that prior to the divorce announcement her husband had also started working at the sheriff’s department.

  Maggie called from her new job. I could tell by the tone in her voice something was wrong. “You okay?”

  “No. I was just back in the break room having lunch with the other ladies, and they were all talking about a woman here that everyone thinks is gay. They went on and on about it, saying how gross it was and making jokes …”

  Thinking this was an “I’m sorry your new job has you working with a bunch of shallow, close-minded bitches” pep talk, I said, “Babe, they just don’t have anything else in their lives to talk about, so they talk about others to build themselves up. Just ignore them.”

  “I don’t think I can do this.”

  Again, naively thinking she meant the new job and working with these particular women, I answered, “Well, okay then. We’ll just look for another job for you.”

  “I don’t mean this job. I mean me and you and this whole gay thing.”

  “You want to break up because of some close-minded women who were gossiping about another woman, not you, but another woman that they think might be gay?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can we talk about this a little more when you come over tonight?”

  “I don’t think it’s a good idea for me to come over. I’ll call you when you get home.”

  Though I had two hours left in my shift, I decided I needed some fresh air. I stopped by the dispatch window to tell them I’d be out on patrol when I saw, of course, my lesbian nemesis sitting on the dispatch console. I was immediately back to the idea of punching her in the face. I left the office begging for an overweight, hairy, smelly jaywalker to cut in front of my patrol car.

  Maggie called like she said and we talked in circles for twenty minutes about our feelings and how it shouldn’t matter, but there was no changing her mind. She didn’t want to be “talked about in a break room.”

  “Okay then, I guess that’s it. There’s nothing else to be said.” I was angry and anxious to get off the phone.

  “I had a great time. It was fun and I really enjoyed our time together, but I want to get back to my normal life. I’m sorry. Good-bye.”

  “Well, thank you for affording me the opportunity of being your tour guide during your little GAY-CATION!” I yelled.

  Dead air.

  If you love someone, let them go. If they return, they are yours forever.

  If they don’t, they’re a lesbian …

  Loren December 1994–March 1995

  I’
d taken only two steps inside the lobby when Stacy began frantically waving me into dispatch. I hesitated before entering, cautious, in case her hand gestures were the international sign for “if you come in this glass office, you’re agreeing to give me your puppy and the remainder of the comfortable T-shirts you own, which I forgot to steal when packing to move in with my new girlfriend. Have you met her? Oh yeah, she was your best friend.”

  Reluctantly, I stepped inside the glass enclosure to the hum of computers, an unrelenting beeping of the Dictaphone, and the radio request of the day shift deputy saying, “Dispatch, I’m going to need the on-duty detective out here.”

  Was that a laugh at the end of his transmission? This was so going to be a bad day.

  “10-4, 872 is en route,” Stacy replied as an evil grin spread across her face.

  “What?” I asked.

  Apparently, by the time I’d walked in the doors of the sheriff’s department that morning, dispatch had already received six calls from an irate female. Eleven minutes later, I arrived to see a rather portly lady in teal spandex pants, a Cincinnati Bengals jersey, and one black cowboy boot, running circles and zigzags in her front yard while waving a seven-inch butcher knife. I walked over to Deputy Thomas who was sitting on the hood of his patrol car watching her diligently. Yep, this was going to be an extremely bad day.

  “What exactly is going on here?” I asked as I watched the woman run random yard patterns.

  “Well, I got sent out because Ms. Laura here called 911 six times this morning wanting to know when the president of the United States was going to be arriving to pick up her children because they were going to be late for school. When I arrived, I discovered her running circles and screaming.”