Always Too Much and Never Enough

by Jasmin Singer

  At night, I would lie awake and wonder why I was always so repulsed when men would reach orgasm. I realize how obvious all this sounds in retrospect, but when I was living through it, the dots never once connected. My plan was to get married to a man and have children. I was madly in love with Timmy and felt lucky to have discovered true love so early. Being a lesbian was something I was so, so far from ready for that I didn’t even let my mind go there.

  Until, that is, my mind went there.

  —

  When I started college, the Internet was just beginning to seep its way into mainstream culture. My first roommate had e-mail—I did not yet—and when she wasn’t home, I would take the opportunity to jump on her computer and read Broadway forums; I created a screen name (“JazzPatti”) and weighed in on how outraged I was that Patti LuPone did not get a Tony (embarrassingly, this is still Googleable). By the time I transferred to Pace University, I had my very own monster-sized computer, complete with my own e-mail address, courtesy of America Online. AOL was like a whole new world. Not only could I search for endless facts about Patti LuPone for hours on end, but, lit by the late-night glimmer of the computer screen, and put at ease by the newfound anonymity that the Internet effortlessly provided, I could dip my toe into lesbianism simply by clicking “women seeking women.”

  And that was how I met Natalie—a twenty-nine-year-old actress who lived in Queens—by a simple click click click.

  “I’ve never done this before,” I told her when we met for coffee at a tiny Chelsea café, which, itself, could have used a bit more anonymity. I noticed that my hand was shaking, and I don’t think it was the caffeine.

  “I’ve done enough for both of us,” she said, with a wink, and no shaking whatsoever. With that, I was on the N train beside her, heading to Astoria, Queens, with nothing more than a MetroCard and a relentless curiosity.

  Natalie was obese—much heavier than I was—and I found an odd (and inappropriate) solace in my relative size to her. I was the small one. Our proportionality also made me feel she was easier to reach than, say, Clara, who was so thin, and clearly wouldn’t be interested in someone my size.

  At Natalie’s apartment, which she shared with two other aspiring actors, we held hands and then leaned in for a kiss—my first with a woman, aside from the time I had to kiss one in my scene study class, which always caused me to break down laughing just before our faces met. I was truly shocked by how soft Natalie’s lips were, as compared to the rough kisses and scruffy chins of the men I’d been with. Something about the kiss felt right (making me momentarily wonder, had all my previous kisses been wrong?) and managed to fall into place perfectly, like a puzzle with all the pieces that effortlessly gets finished.

  I was so intrigued by sex with her—mostly because she was a her—but the truth is the sex itself was awkward and, much to my disappointment, unsatisfying. She was indeed “well-spoken” in the sex area, but we didn’t fit as I had hoped we would. Perhaps my initial intrigue had more to do with her gender, and the inherently titillating nature of vaguely anonymous Internet sex, than with Natalie herself. I fumbled around with her, and she was charmingly patient. Of course, I’m sure many sexually active twenty-year-olds find that kind of intimacy awkward. I had spent so many years either ignoring, loathing, or abusing my body, how could I possibly share it in full with a veritable stranger? It’s completely unsurprising, therefore, that I was just not feeling the sex with Natalie, even though I wanted so badly to see fireworks.

  Unfortunately, that colossal disappointment subsequently kept me from following my urges to sleep with another woman again for many years. Naturally, it made me question my initial foray into lesbianism, and kept me from going back there—in full—for a long time. Throughout those years, I did indeed fool around with quite a few women anyway—but with our clothes (mostly) on. When it came to making out with them, I always managed to stop things just before they switched into full gear—afraid I wouldn’t like it again, or maybe afraid I’d like it too much.

  —

  The person who finally did me in—the last remaining ingredient in my embracing my lesbianism—was Denise, a butch woman eighteen years older than me, and about as wonderfully feminist as you can get. I was instantly enamored with her. Hearkening back to my relationship with Timmy, and, really, to my adolescent relationship with Burger King, my crush quickly became obsession. She was a professor, a writer, a brainy academic, and a brooding artist. She was also vegan, a committed animal activist, and my newest fanatical focus.

  Everything I did became colored by what I thought Denise would think. I wanted to embody her passionate dedication to living ethically—I was in love with her commitment and, I thought, in love with her as well. As a result, I forgot myself somewhere.

  After spending months communicating through phone calls that ostensibly regarded an article I was interviewing her for—calls that often expanded into discussions about life and all its meanings—it didn’t take long for me to get over my fear of sex when we finally met in person for the first time. Specifically, it took about two hours from when we met. And even though I was enamored with her brain, it was sex with Denise that truly blew my mind. With men, I had constantly been self-conscious—always leaving my shirt on so that they couldn’t see my enormous stomach, which I was certain would make them run away, midthrust. But Denise not only didn’t mind my curves, she celebrated them. Sex with her was the first time I ever knew what it meant to surrender completely to the natural rhythms of your own body, and your partner’s. It was after one of these lusty encounters that Denise looked at me, half smiled, and quietly proclaimed with her raspy, deep voice, “I totally think you’re a lesbian.”

  And that was that.

  As part of my intense longing for her (all things Denise, all the time), I began to notice the way she ate, and—seeing everything she did as emblematic of her fierce feminism—I tried to replicate that, too.

  One day, as she sat in her study working, I decided to make lunch. Pretty much the only things in her fridge were white bread, vegan mayo, and vegan bologna. I stared at the bologna and I was eight years old again, in the bathroom stall during lunch, shutting out the sadness and escaping into the familiar reassurance of my food.

  Usually, that would have been the moment when I would have fought with myself about whether it would be a wise move to eat that sandwich. I would hem and haw, ruminating and rationalizing—and eventually would wind up eating it anyway, though with immense regret.

  But, hold on—Denise did it. She ate white bread with vegan bologna and didn’t even feel bad about it. So surely the feminist thing to do would be to eat the bologna sandwich, and stop with this asinine desire to please other people by conforming my body to what society thought it should look like.

  Illuminated by both the fridge light and the simple, but startling revelation that feverishly exploded inside of me, I decided then and there to not give a damn anymore about getting fat(ter). I decided to try life sans the self-imposed guilt, and with a heaping side of vegan mayo. I would devour that dazzling sandwich.

  Sadly, Denise got over me almost as quickly as she got her gold star for bringing me out of the closet in full. My heart was shattered—so much of my identity had inexplicably (and inappropriately) been wrapped up in her.

  I was living in Washington Heights at the time, in the northernmost part of Manhattan. After our breakup (though I’d venture to guess Denise didn’t see it as a breakup, since she probably never considered it a relationship in the first place), a friend of mine, Sara, insisted on taking me out for a drink. We sat there eating fries and drinking red wine. “I just don’t know who I am anymore,” I told Sara. “I don’t know what I like.”

  Sara thought about this, then offered, “You like purple eye shadow, Jazz. Why don’t you start with that?”

  It sounds so minor—beginning the process of reclaiming yourself with the simple power of
eye makeup. And yet Sara’s suggestion touched me, and stuck with me. I had allowed Denise’s presence to replace my identity, my purple eye shadow. I had indeed lost my color. Only when I began to reapply it did I start to reapply myself to my life.

  —

  “I am giving you an ultimatum,” I said to Mariann, who had made the bold and adorable choice to wear overalls. We were sitting at House of Vegetarian in Chinatown—the only two people in the restaurant. Outside, a midafternoon summertime thunderstorm blanketed the city. The sky was a grayish pink and dotted with bright flecks of lightning.

  We had, as usual, ordered enough food for all of lower Manhattan to feast on. Embarrassingly, the waiter pushed together two more small tables so that we could easily reach our dim sum selections, including her favorite and mine: fried turnip cakes.

  “You’re huh?” asked Mariann, as she stole a steamed dumpling with her chopsticks.

  “I’m presenting you with an ultimatum,” I repeated, nervously fiddling with the letter I’d written her earlier that day—the letter proclaiming that if we couldn’t be more than friends, then I couldn’t continue to know her.

  Suddenly channeling my inner seventh grader, I quickly handed Mariann my note and awkwardly excused myself to go to the bathroom.

  Ever since my friend Marisa had married Mariann’s friend David the previous May (not the tuna-eating David from the park), she and I had spoken every day. Somewhere around our third dance at the wedding reception, I had officially become smitten with her, and I was intent on not letting her get away. Our friendship quickly became powerful and intimate, consisting of shared watermelon slices and tearful confessions about the pain we’d each felt as outsiders looking in.

  Always deeply sensitive—not to mention a grade-A introvert—Mariann had simply been one of those people who never felt she quite belonged, despite the world treating her as if she did. She was, I later found out, a closeted outsider, playing the part as best she could so that no one would notice. Mariann had also been single for most of her life, choosing to spend the majority of her time with her dogs as opposed to with lovers. Her propensity toward being unpartnered in a society that celebrates coupledom and inexplicably looks down at the single life, combined with her long-time veganism (she was vegan long before veganism was ever a headline in the New York Times), had sufficiently acclimated her to the feeling of going up the down staircase. Perhaps life was most efficiently tackled when alone—or, rather, with the help of trusted canines and their unconditional love. The fact that she began to let me in, when so few others had been allowed there, was flattering, but also it allowed me the great privilege of loving the parts of her that made her the most special, unique, and insightful human being I had ever known. Lucky, lucky me.

  By the time we connected, we also had each recently been involved in a nasty breakup—one of Mariann’s few, and her first with a woman. (She describes herself as a “late-breaking lesbian.”) So, in addition to a shared worldview, the two of us bonded over our broken hearts and our popped bubbles. Mariann was patient, empathic, and encouraging—traits I had longed for in a partner. She was also deeply sexy—the kind of “buttoned-up professor” that I loved to unbutton.

  Prior to that day in Chinatown, I had already known that I loved Mariann intensely, and yet—as I stood in the bathroom stall counting to a hundred—I was well aware that when I returned to the table, she would immediately bring up the eight-hundred-pound gorilla as the reason we couldn’t be more than friends. And for once, it wasn’t my size.

  Mariann is twenty-nine and a half years older than me. I was not yet twenty-eight, and she was fifty-seven.

  I remember talking to a therapist once about my fascination with older women—teacher types, mostly—wondering aloud if it was a personality flaw, a weird fetish in which I should not indulge. He looked at me, shrugged, and in one simple sentence he let me off the hook. “Maybe . . . that’s just your type?” I digested that distinct possibility—which I’d never before considered—and returned his nonchalant shrug.

  It’s astonishing how easily we sometimes classify our personality traits as flaws, obsessing about them unnecessarily—and it’s just as amazing how even just the tiniest validation and perspective can bring us back to earth. (Two points for therapy.)

  Still in the bathroom at Vegetarian Dim Sum, I kept counting, willing away my butterflies. Forty-nine . . . fifty . . . fifty-one . . . Maybe she’ll surprise me . . .

  I glanced at myself in the mirror. It occurred to me that since Mariann had entered my life, I somehow saw myself differently. I was, you might argue, just a little bit lovely looking—if you cocked your head just right. And squinted your eyes.

  Ninety . . . ninety-one . . . ninety-two . . .

  Wait—did I really just look at myself and think lovely? What was this otherworldly power that this woman—this truly beautiful woman—had over my attitude? Was she seriously dismantling my cynical, jaded exterior? How was it that, after a lifetime of feeling less than—and of being treated as such—I was finally beginning to feel grounded, even just a little bit?

  Surely Mariann must love me back.

  Sadly, my hunch that she’d be a tough sell was correct. Returning to the table, I noticed—despite the flyaway bangs that partially covered her gigantic blue eyes—that she was teary. “This is the nicest thing anyone has ever given to me,” she told me, as I sank further and further into my chair and into my longing. “But if you force me to choose, I’m going to say no. It’s not that I don’t care. You know I do. In many ways I feel closer to you than I’ve ever felt to anyone. But I can’t handle the age difference. It just doesn’t work.”

  And just at that moment, the lightning outside struck my heart and I was both scared and scheming, trying desperately hard to get out of this pickle I’d gotten myself into—because, my God, I could not live my life without this woman.

  So I reneged, telling her that by ultimatum I really meant possibility, and, sure, let’s still be friends. Let’s still hang out and listen to old records together. Let’s make important life decisions two by two, as chums. Let’s call each other when our cats die or our nieces are born. Or, hell, let’s just call each other every night. But let’s pretty please not be out of each other’s lives.

  The rain was unrelenting, and twenty minutes after I accepted my Olympic medal for backpedaling, and as we walked toward her tiny apartment in Soho, we let it soak through our clothes and our spirits. On Prince Street near West Broadway, I suddenly stopped walking, and then Mariann did, too. I pulled her into me, and we stood like that for ten minutes, crying along with the sky.

  Two weeks later, as we stood on another street corner—this time in Midtown, where I was heading off to rehearse for a play—Mariann kissed me. It was only half on the mouth, but it was a clear and conscious proclamation. We will love each other differently now, the kiss said, and we did just that.

  Our age difference became a nonissue, and our shared worldview became our bottom line. We loved together, laughed together, and ate together. We plotted together, created together, and healed together. We held each other when we couldn’t sleep, and held on to each other when the world became too much.

  And when I would weep because I wanted to rip my body off of myself—they were, after all, two separate entities, my body and my self—Mariann would call me beautiful. When I would grab my stomach by the fistful and scream, Mariann would call me luscious. And when the world treated me unfairly, Mariann would see in me not the lost soul I felt I was at that moment, but the extraordinary person who, against all my expectations, she was sure that I was, and would continue to become.

  Many years before, as I sat on the stage in my high school, in the bright and unforgiving spotlight, and I heard the laughter in the audience—when my scene partner coldly looked away, afraid my fatness could possibly be contagious—I remember firmly believing that my life would very likely be live
d alone. I had spent years since then trying to prove myself wrong; trying by way of my ultimately unsuccessful relationship with Timmy, then with subsequent fleeting and failed dalliances with many other women and men. Each and every time, those very flings left me feeling lonelier than I had before them, and the gaping hole in my heart constantly became deeper. But when Mariann adamantly kept her gaze on me, refusing to look away—even when I tested her by showing her my ugliest parts—I finally relented. I decided to trust in the reflection I saw when I looked at myself through her eyes. Mariann loved me. I was lovable. I was loved.

  And so why not love myself a little, too?

  We were in it together, she and I. We were connected in ways we didn’t—and might never—fully understand.

  And so Mariann and I became a couple, fused at the hip and at the heartstrings. I moved into that tiny apartment in Soho, and her gorgeous pit bull Rose became my sweet dog, too. I settled gracefully into my new life in lower Manhattan, with my dog and my partner beside me, and my heart swollen with goodness inside me.

  And yet, despite the serenity I finally found, food remained firmly my enemy. Even though my heart was finally full, my stomach refused to be. I ate more and more food, more feverishly than I had before, and I got bigger as Mariann got bigger, too—right alongside me, where she always was.

  Habit is perhaps the strongest force there is—stronger sometimes than resolve, stronger often than knowledge. Even the greatest love cannot override the most deeply instilled habit. Even the sweet reflection of yourself as seen through your doting partner’s eyes cannot stand a chance next to the sweetness of a cupcake, when that cupcake is all you have ever known.

  And then, one day, that very habit formed a tiny but unmistakable crack down the middle. In the wake of a fateful falafel-filled night in San Francisco, Mariann and I made a simple, but somehow intrepid decision to start a juice fast together. And our world became an ultimatum: Either live truthfully, and reclaim our health, or fail, knowing that we did our best, and our best just wasn’t enough.