Maternity Leave

by Trish Felice Cohen

  After the race, Alyssa and I grabbed burritos from Chipotle. I ate half and drank two Nalgene bottles of water. I couldn’t stuff anything else in my mouth. I wrapped the other half of the burrito to eat after the massage. I had to eat at least five thousand calories a day to compensate for the calories burned during the race, a difficult task because I needed to eat food high in energy and nutrients, not just ice cream and brownies. It was also difficult because I was riding my bike through midday, so lunch generally consisted of a Clif Bar every hour for four to seven hours. Even though the bars are okay, it’s not the most enjoyable way to consume 1,000 to 1,500 calories.

  When we got back, Alyssa went to meet Danny for her massage, while I sat outside on the porch sipping water and rubbing Sonny’s belly. Brenda came out and with her usual tact said, “You and that dyke are really getting along, huh?”

  “Who?” I said.

  “Alyssa.”

  “She’s gay?” I said in disbelief.

  “You’re kidding right?” asked Brenda incredulously. “How could you not know?”

  “Because she looks completely feminine.”

  “Ever heard the term ‘lipstick lesbian’?”

  I had, but I thought they just looked feminine compared to the muscle-bound lesbians with spiked hair. I didn’t know they were actually feminine looking, let alone pretty. Besides, I had always assumed that any lesbian involved in sports was leaning towards the butch persuasion.

  In addition to being shocked by Alyssa’s sexuality, I was embarrassed that Brenda, who was clearly homophobic, had better gaydar than me. “Yes I’ve heard of lipstick lesbians,” I replied. “I just didn’t know Alyssa was one.”

  “You would have found out soon enough. She’ll probably hit on you,” Brenda said. “Fucking carpet muncher.”

  “I doubt she’ll hit on me,” I said. “I’ve told her enough dating horror stories for her to pick up on the fact that I’m straight.”

  Brenda left and few minutes later, Alyssa was standing across from me on the porch. She said, “Your turn.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “Hey, great race today,” I added, realizing I’d never said that at Chipotle.

  “I came in twenty-somethingth place,” Alyssa said, puzzled.

  “Well, it was nearly one hundred places better than me,” I said smiling and trying to think of something else to say, completely forgetting that it was my turn for a massage. It dawned on me while I was smiling at Alyssa and trying to think of something clever to say that I was flirting. I stared at Alyssa. Objectively, she was hot, even with her hair all greasy after her massage. But she was hot yesterday and I wasn’t flirting with her then. Hell, I’d been around hot women all my life and hadn’t flirted with them.

  Was I a lesbian? I had considered the possibility before, such as when I obsessed over various actresses, but I’d always dismissed the idea as crazy. I’d heard that everyone had that “what if” scenario in their head when looking at a gorgeous actress. Plus, I’d never been attracted to any of the lesbians I’ve met. Never mind that all of my friends are straight and, to my knowledge, I’d never actually met any lesbians other than some professors in college and the fat woman with the crew cut that worked at Blockbuster. I always assumed that as long as I was never attracted to a lesbian and didn’t have a desire to chop all of my hair off, bind my boobs and wear men’s clothing, that I was heterosexual. Now I was confused. Alyssa wasn’t an unattainable actress or a butch woman I wasn’t attracted to. She was, however, the first lesbian I’d ever met that I didn’t evaluate and say, phew, I’m not attracted to her so I’m not gay. Instead, she was a hot and interesting woman whom I didn’t realize I was attracted to until the second Brenda mentioned she was gay and therefore an option. If Alyssa looked feminine and was gay, I could be, too.

  I turned the thought over in my head. I was twenty-eight and had never had a relationship longer than a month, and most hadn’t lasted more than one date. Plus, I was a total tomboy, hated shopping and had an appreciation for sensible footwear. In fact, I avoided sensible footwear because I didn’t want to look like a lesbian. Oh my God, I was one of those self-hating lesbians! What was wrong with me? I looked at Alyssa, who was now next to me on the porch swing relaxing, and pondered whether to say something. As I was trying to decide what to say, Danny came out and said, “You’re up Jenna.”

  I got up and followed him towards the room. He stayed outside, while I stripped and got on the table. I yelled to him that I was covered and it was okay for him to come in and the second the door shut I said, “Did you know Alyssa is a lesbian?”

  “No. That’s pretty hot,” Danny replied.

  “You know, I would have bet my life you’d say that and you didn’t disappoint.”

  “I’m predictable,” he admitted.

  “Do you think I’m a lesbian?” I asked.

  Danny paused. My head was face down on the massage table so I couldn’t see his reaction. A few seconds passed, then Danny said, “Did I miss something? Did you have another bad date in the last few hours that finally converted you?”

  “No. I’m just feeling suddenly gay,” I replied. “Alyssa’s a feminine lesbian, maybe I am, too.”

  “You’re not feminine or a lesbian,” Danny said, ever helpful.

  “I am too feminine.”

  “No, you’re not. You look feminine, but the second you open that mouth of yours the femininity goes out the window.”

  “You’re right. Plus I probably only look feminine because my feminine mom shops for me. But that’s beside the point. Forget shopping, sports, and femininity. Am I gay?”

  “The answer is no,” Danny said with conviction.

  “How do you know? I loved Elizabeth Shue and Michelle Pfeiffer as a child and I still do, though my current obsessions are with Juliette Binoche and Salma Hayek.”

  “So what. You love George Clooney, too.”

  “So do you,” I offered.

  “True,” he said, “but that doesn’t make me gay. And you’re not gay either, regardless of what actresses you like, because you date and fuck men.”

  “Not often,” I said, “and that’s beside the point. Hear me out. It’s not that I’ve never thought of this before. But I’ve never been attracted to any of the lesbians that I’ve met.”

  “How many lesbians have you met?”

  “Maybe three that I know of, but Alyssa’s a prime example of me being oblivious to lesbians. All of the attractive women I know are either straight, or I assumed they were straight, so I never thought of them in that way. It’s like when you meet an attractive man with a ring on his finger, you just don’t flirt. Anyway, Alyssa is the first lesbian I’ve met in the flesh who’s hot and I’m attracted to, so that must mean something.” I noticed that my run-on sentence was getting ridiculous and shut up. Danny was so silent that if he wasn’t rubbing my calf, I would have thought he left the room. I was glad my head was in the massage table and I couldn’t see his face.

  “So, you’re saying you’ve been dating men for the last twenty years because you thought all lesbians in the entire world were ugly?” Danny said this in a very rude and sarcastic tone.

  “I don’t know, maybe. It’s like art. If I go to the Louvre, I browse and appreciate, but I can’t buy anything so I don’t really look. However, if I’m at a store where I can buy a piece of art and take it home, I’m more interested.”

  “You don’t like art or shopping.”

  “It was an analogy, and I’ve shopped for stuff for my house and gone to the Louvre.”

  “So you like Target better than the Louvre, great example.” Danny scoffed.

  “I want to go on a date with Alyssa to make sure I’m not gay.”

  “You just sounded like you want to be gay. Which is it?” Danny spat at me.

  “No I don’t want to be gay,” I said. “Who wants to be gay?”

  “Well you seemed pretty enthusiastic a second ago,” he pointed out.

  Danny and I had argued b
efore, but playfully, over irrelevant things like tire pressure. He was argumentative now, not playful.

  “Mother Fucker!” I said as Danny pressed into my hamstring.

  “Sorry.”

  “I’m not enthusiastic,” I said. “I’m freaking out a little and it’s making me sound excited.”

  “Why are you freaking out? What do you have against being gay?”

  “Nothing,” I said. “I just don’t want to be gay.”

  “Why? You’ve always been a supporter of them getting married. I thought you liked gay people. You love that one token gay guy of yours from law school.”

  “I support gay marriage because I’m not a bigoted asshole, not because I want to be gay. It’s like the bar. The Florida bar is a really hard test and I would never say that someone who fails it is stupid. However, if I failed it, I’d feel like a fucking idiot.”

  “You lost me,” Danny said. He was calmer now, but sounded a little exasperated.

  “I empathize with the oppressed and wish them the best, but that doesn’t mean I want to be in their shoes.”

  “Relax, you’re not gay. You hang out with guys all the time and most women annoy you.”

  “Same for you and you’re still sexually attracted to women.”

  “I can’t believe we’re having this conversation. You’re not gay. There’s no way you’re gay and didn’t notice it until you were twenty-eight.”

  “That happens to lots of women, older than me even, and who have been married with kids. Meredith Baxter, Kelly McGillis, that woman from Sex in the City, um, Wanda Sykes. There’s gotta be more.”

  “I have no idea who you’re talking about.”

  “You really should read People magazine, Danny. Family Ties, Top Gun, woman from Sex in the City, funny comedienne. Famous women, Danny.”

  “Are you attracted to any of them?”

  “In hindsight, I may have liked Top Gun and Cocktail more for Kelly McGillis and Elizabeth Shue than for Tom Cruise. Jodie Foster’s hot too. These are all movie stars though.”

  “So if you’d run into one of them on the street twenty years ago you could have avoided this late realization?”

  “No, they’re all movie stars. They don’t count. Alyssa counts.”

  Danny just stared at me.

  I continued, “This isn’t the first time I’ve thought about it. But when I read about a prominent politician throwing away his life to fuck a strange dude in a bathroom stall I thought, ‘Well the urge isn’t overwhelming me that much, I must not be gay.’ That’s probably not a normal thought.”

  I turned over from my stomach to my back at this point and saw Danny’s face. His jaw was clenched and his face was red. He resumed his rude tone and said, “You’re not exactly repressed. If you thought you were interested in women, you’d have dated a woman already.”

  “Not necessarily. I have no idea how to meet lesbians. I don’t even think I know any. What am I going to do, go to a gay bar or online and say I might be gay, let me experiment on you and we’ll see?”

  “That doesn’t sound so crazy,” Danny said.

  “I just told you I don’t want to be gay. Why would I go out of my way to go down that road? Right now, I can do it conveniently with little risk. I know Alyssa, she’s right here, I’m attracted to her and no one in Tampa will know about the experiment.”

  “You’re not gay,” Danny said again, more forcefully, clearly hoping repetition would make it more convincing. “You just think you are because you don’t think you’ve met the right man yet. The problem is you’ve just been dating assholes.”

  I pretended not to notice that he said “You don’t think you’ve met the right man” instead of “You haven’t met the right man,” presumably referring to himself as the right man. I responded, “That’s possible, but lesbianism is also a possibility.”

  Danny didn’t say anything.

  When the massage ended, Alyssa was asleep. It was only 8:30, but 112 miles in the saddle will knock you out. I guess my interrogation would have to wait for another day.

  Chapter Fifteen

  I tried talking to Alyssa during Stage 2 of the race, but it was impossible. Once again, the first hour was intense until a non-threatening trio escaped off the front. The pace settled down, but the course wasn’t flat enough to make conversation. While we didn’t cross mountains, the road was constantly undulating.

  The chase to reel in the three breakaway riders began in earnest with thirty miles remaining and the catch was made two miles before the finish. At that point, each team began setting up their sprinters. The sprinters for team Sunshine Cycling were Brenda and Alyssa. Alyssa had better top speed than Brenda, but was not quite as crafty when maneuvering through the pack. Then again, Brenda was five foot three and Alyssa five foot ten. Alyssa placed ninth and Brenda sixteenth on Stage 2. After I did my work moving Brenda and Alyssa to the front of the pack, I got out of the way and placed my customary last position in the field sprint.

  I immediately washed my hands and began downing a Clif Bar on the way to our new host house. My normally obsessive hygiene had reached a new level since I began racing full-time. Travel and extreme exercise were recipes for illness. As a result, my bathroom ritual now resembled Howard Hughes scrubbing in to perform surgery.

  The new host house had three guest showers, so it did not take long for all of us to clean up. Once we got settled, Alyssa and I took my car to grab some food. On the way, I made a subtle segue into discussing Alyssa’s homosexuality by saying, “I hear you’re a lesbian.”

  “Problem?” Alyssa asked.

  “Not at all. This is awkward, but I have a shitload of questions for you.”

  “Why?” Alyssa asked.

  “Because I’ve never met a cute lesbian before and I want to make sure I’m not one.”

  “How do you know you haven’t met a cute lesbian?” Alyssa asked. “You’ve been out and about for over twenty-five years, chances are you’ve encountered one.”

  This was not going well. She was right of course. “I could be wrong. Obviously my gaydar sucks since I had no clue about you. I just mean that I’ve thought I might be gay before, but I just ignored it. Now, after having met you, I’m rethinking that logic.”

  “Thanks, I think,” Alyssa said. Fortunately, she seemed more amused than offended. “So, what do you want to know?” she asked, humoring me.

  “Have you ever been with a guy?”

  “Yes. When I was eighteen. I wanted to see what all this heterosexual sex was about. A lot of lesbians are not gold star.”

  “Gold star?” I asked.

  “Lesbians that have never had sex with a man,” Alyssa explained.

  “Oh, good to know. If you lost your heterosexual virginity at eighteen, how old were you when you first slept with a girl?” I asked.

  She thought for a second and said, “Fifteen I think. Maybe sixteen.”

  “Shit,” I said, “you lost your virginity twice before I lost mine. How old was the girl?”

  “She was twenty-six. We dated for a few years.”

  I couldn’t help myself and started to laugh.

  “What’s so funny?” Alyssa asked, seeming slightly annoyed for the first time.

  “I’m trying to picture myself dating a fifteen-year-old two years ago, when I was twenty-six. It seems absurd. Where does a fifteen-year-old even meet a twenty-six-year-old lesbian?”

  “You’ve been racing a while. Haven’t you noticed any lesbians in their mid-twenties around here?”

  “Good point,” I said. “But isn’t that pedophilia?”

  Alyssa rolled her eyes a bit and said, “Technically, I guess. But trust me no one was twisting my arm. I was a grown up fifteen-year-old. All I did was race. I didn’t even know any other fifteen-year-olds. I was home schooled on the road for most of the year.”

  “That sounds way better than high school,” I said. “When did you come out?”

  “I don’t know that I was ever ‘in,’” Alyssa
responded. We were in the parking lot of a sandwich place I spotted from the road, but neither of us had gotten out of the car yet. Alyssa continued, “When I was fourteen, my parents sent me to a camp at Wesleyan University for a liberal summer program. We got to pick a different seminar every day and one day there was a seminar on homosexuality. I didn’t really think I was gay, but I went anyway because this hot girl Jessica was going.”

  I started laughing again. I really liked being with Alyssa and was relieved that she was answering my questions with amusement rather than offense. I exited the car and changed the topic to the race. My mental list of questions had run out and I was afraid to start asking them off the cuff, especially while hungry. The filter between my brain and mouth is not my strong suit and I needed time to think about my next move. In the meantime, the more I talked to Alyssa the more it became obvious that I was gay and had a crush on her.

  That night, my mind raced instead of going to sleep. I had no control over the random thoughts that popped into my head. I thought of all the guys I dumped for “acting gay,” such as dressing well, manscaping their body hair, wearing jewelry, gelling their hair or going to tanning salons. A bit hypocritical in hindsight. In addition to evaluating my sexuality, I focused on Alyssa. I really liked her. How crazy would it be after dating a hundred different men if I found the right woman for me on the first shot?

  * * *

  Despite my lack of sleep, I felt great during Stage 3. Nevertheless, a problem emerged. As in the previous stages, a small group of women broke away during the first hour or so of the race. Today, it was a break of seven, and my teammate Lynn was one of the lucky riders. I thought about escaping in one of these breaks, but wanted to see how I would do on the time trials and mountain stages before wasting my energy in the wind on a long breakaway that would most likely be caught before the finish. I planned to sit in the pack for the first week of the race, expending as little energy as possible, considering that we were riding over one hundred miles per day.