The Comfortable Shoe Diaries

by Renée J. Lukas

  I’d been knocked down once. Now I’d been kicked in the gut.

  I called Debra Lansing. Even though I’d vowed to stay away from numbers for the rest of my life, she had a lot of professional friends. Surely all of them couldn’t be in the financial industry. I was an idiot to burn a bridge at this time. I was in full sucking-up mode. I had no other choice.

  “I’m sorry I was so dramatic when I left,” I said.

  “No, you were right. I should’ve told Kurt to deal with it.”

  “Forget it.” I really wouldn’t forget it for another ten years or so. “Are we friends again?”

  “Yeah.” She seemed distracted. She was at her office, probably doing something with a calculator. I didn’t want to know.

  “Maybe we can have lunch sometime?” I ventured. After all, I couldn’t be too obvious. She’d think I was only making nice to get a job, which of course I was.

  “Sure, that would be great. I’ll give you a call. Same phone?”

  “Yeah, my cell.”

  “How’s it working out with Penny?” she asked.

  “It’s great. She’s great.”

  “You guys aren’t…” She stumbled awkwardly.

  I couldn’t tell what she was getting at.

  “Aren’t what?” I asked.

  “You know.”

  “What? Penny? Me and Penny? Oh no. We’re friends. Good friends.”

  “Oh, I just thought since you’re gay and she’s gay…” Debra was serious.

  “Like Arnie is straight and you’re straight?” I asked. She’d described her office mate, Arnie Duggart, as a slovenly mess of a man, who always had crumbs on his desk and who smelled like Fritos.

  “I get your point. I just thought Penny was sort of cute.”

  “She is, but I think of her like a sister,” I said. With Debra, I always felt like I had to explain things. Maybe it was because she believed every stereotype she’d heard. I could only imagine what she and her straight friends must have said behind my back. She was one of those people I wanted to trust but didn’t. I wasn’t sure why. Maybe it was her way of blowing in whatever direction the wind was going at the time.

  That night, I turned on my computer to read the top headlines. One jumped out at me: “Anxiety Can Shorten Lifespan.” Oh, great. I ran to the bathroom to take my anxiety medication. I hadn’t noticed until I returned that Penny was at the kitchen table, holding her head and staring at her computer with glistening eyes.

  “What is it, Pen?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “No, you’ll just make fun. You think this is all stupid anyway.”

  “No, tell me. I promise I won’t make fun. Hey, I joined that Venus Meet for you, remember?”

  She looked at me suspiciously, then softened a little. “Okay,” she began. “I met someone I really, really like. But she’s all about her farm in Kentucky. She breeds horses and has all this land. She’d need me to move to Kentucky.”

  Penny sat back and slowly raised her eyes to me. The world as she knew it was over.

  “Penny,” I said. “Are you that serious with her? I mean, so serious you’re already talking about where you’d move?”

  “That’s what happens!” She burst into tears. “We’ve talked about everything! We get along so well. So naturally, it’s gonna come up. You can’t keep talkin’ if you know it’s goin’ nowhere.”

  “I hate it when the other person expects you to move for her,” I commented. “Like you don’t have a life where you are, you know?” But then I remembered Penny was from Tennessee. “Would it be out of the question?”

  She was surprised; she stopped dabbing her eyes for a moment.

  “Whaddaya mean?” she thundered. “Give up my work? I’m the top sales associate. I have a reputation here! I’d have to go back to square one. I can’t. No, I won’t. What do I know about Kentucky anyway?”

  “There’s a derby,” I quietly offered. That was pretty much all I knew.

  “Yeah, I’m from the South, but that doesn’t mean I like horses or cattle. We didn’t live on a farm. We lived in a neighborhood. The closest I got to wildlife was the Nashville Zoo.”

  I smiled.

  “What’s so funny?” she demanded.

  “I love that.” I couldn’t explain it. “I think it’s cool you don’t like horses. I never met anyone who didn’t.”

  She smiled weakly in between tears. I could tell from the pink blobs all over her face that she’d been crying a long time. And I’d been too self-absorbed to notice.

  “So did you break up?” I asked.

  She nodded. “I don’t have a choice. She said she won’t come to Connecticut.”

  “Then she’s not the one,” I answered simply. “It’s not meant to be.”

  Penny liked to believe in fate. I used to believe in it, until nothing turned out as I’d planned. I was leaning now toward the theory that everything is random and you’ll pay for every stupid decision you make. But I wasn’t going to tell her that. What I’d said appeared to give her comfort.

  So Penny went to bed early, and I was left with my computer quietly humming on the couch. After the job rejection, I really wasn’t in the mood to see if my one rainbow I’d saved had written me back. I couldn’t take more than one rejection a day. But my fingers betrayed me, and before I knew it, I was back on Venus Meet.

  Sure enough, the rainbow at least had the decency to tell me she’d hooked up with another rainbow. That was better than just ignoring me, I figured.

  Then I noticed in the right column that Venus Meet suggested potential matches based on my interests. They flashed a few photos and profile teasers about people I might want to send a rainbow to.

  Each one had dark hair, dark eyes and looked mysterious. I was attracted to every one of them. But they were also a little too young looking. Some of their expressions were vacant behind their perfect features. Then came a photo that stopped me. She had long blond hair with blue eyes like mine and a genuinely happy smile. She was in her late forties, with super-cute, well-defined features, giving her that depth of beauty only mature women can have. She was the opposite of my usual dark and brooding type, which never seemed to make me happy anyway. So I took a risk. I sent her a rainbow.

  I shut off the computer and tried to fall asleep. But the darkness was where my worries hung out, waiting to pounce on me the moment I shut off the light. My car was going to die after six years. It would probably gasp its last breath in the middle of a busy intersection. How was I going to get a car loan with my credit rating? The good girl who thought she’d done everything right, whose face turned red if she didn’t know the answer in school, now had a bankruptcy and foreclosure on her record. It might as well have said I was a serial killer too. I was going to be treated like one. I was going to be avoided like someone in medieval England with the plague. What was going to give me the strength to keep getting up and getting dressed each day?

  Every morning, I’d turn on the local news and see commercials about depression. The commercials had begun to depress me even more—watching people who can’t get out of bed, who can’t smile at a birthday party or the woman who just stares at her dog while he holds a tennis ball in his mouth. Sad.

  That weekend I would not think about my unanswered rainbow, just floating out there in the dark cyberspace all alone… I would go out to a loud club where I couldn’t hear anyone and have fun, dammit.

  So Saturday night, I met Maddie and Penny at Flo’s. We sat at a high-top table and vented about the week’s misfortunes.

  “I’m thinking of changing careers,” Maddie announced.

  “You? Why?” I sipped my beer from the bottle, the lesbian way.

  “Eh, I’m so sick of everyone whining.”

  Penny cleared her throat. “Uh, they’re patients. They’re sick. You’re supposed to take care of ’em.”

  “Then you do it! You don’t know what it’s like. I’m burned out. I’m tired of hearing, ‘Ow, the blood pressure cuff is too tight’ wh
en it’s not. They’re all such babies.” She took a swig from her bottle, as Penny and I glanced at each other. “No,” Maddie continued. “It’s everything. The dumbasses I work with don’t put things in the chart, like what the patient is allergic to. I think they want to get me fired.”

  “Are you this warm and fuzzy at work?” I teased.

  “I’m wonderful to work with!” she fumed. “But I’m thinking of going back to teaching.”

  “No,” I spat before having a chance to think. “Don’t do it.”

  “Yeah,” Penny agreed. “Remember how parents called and said their kids were crying?”

  “And that was my fault?” Maddie sipped her beer.

  It was her fault. She’d asked a class of fifth graders who had discovered America. One boy raised his hand and said, “Christopher Columbus?”

  “No!” Maddie had shouted. “He came here accidentally. But he was really a greedy bastard who was looking for treasure. Only idiots think he discovered America!”

  There was a reason for Maddie’s bitterness. And it wasn’t Holly, the ill-fated love affair. It was something else. But she never told any of us what it was.

  “That girl winked at me!” Penny was excited. She hopped off her chair and made her way over to a very tall blonde at the bar.

  “Wow, she has guts,” I marveled.

  “She could play a little hard to get. Geez.” Then Maddie turned her attention to me. “So what’s your deal?” she asked. “Still looking around?”

  “Still like you,” I joked, knowing she’d get huffy.

  “You want to know what happened with Holly?” Maddie said. “You want to know the real reason I’m not getting out there again?”

  I nodded slowly. This was like being given the map to the Holy Grail. I listened carefully.

  “You already know she cheated,” Maddie continued. “But you don’t know how I found out. She sent me out for some things for our cookout. And when I came back, I found her in bed with the laundry chick I didn’t know. And it wasn’t just that they were having sex. I could see the other woman’s bare back and Holly’s hands gliding up and down it. But it wasn’t that. It was the way she looked at that woman. I’ll never forget that look, like she was in love with her. I knew I could never make it work with Holly, knowing she’d never look at me like that.”

  “What did you do?” I asked.

  “The only thing I could,” Maddie answered. “I was holding this cookout set in my hands, and I tried to beat her over the head with the spatula. If I had to do it all over again, I would have used the big fork.”

  I patted her back, touched that she shared this with me, this secret she’d kept stuffed inside. Maybe one day I’d learn her other secret too. She’d always alluded to something else but refused to talk about it.

  “Holly was an idiot,” I said.

  “So was Văldemort.”

  “I told you it was mutual.”

  “It’s never mutual.” Maddie drank more of her beer, when Penny rushed back to the table, a little shaken.

  “I didn’t know,” Penny kept repeating.

  “What?” I leaned in and took her hand. “What happened?”

  “I’m sure he’s, I mean she, is really nice,” Penny said.

  “She’s transgender?” I was surprised. You couldn’t really tell from a distance. And she looked very cute.

  Maddie squinted her eyes to study the woman. “You didn’t notice her giant Adam’s apple?”

  I leaned across the table to get a closer look. “She doesn’t have a giant—”

  Penny’s eyes filled with tears. “Am I a horrible person?”

  “Yes,” Maddie replied. “I’m joking! No, of course not.”

  “It may have hurt her feelings,” I said.

  They both looked at me like I was crazy.

  “It’s a matter of taste,” Maddie argued. “She doesn’t have to date anyone she doesn’t want to.”

  “True,” I said. “But running away like that can hurt a person’s feelings. Someone did that to me on the dance floor.”

  “It was your dancing,” Maddie joked.

  I shoved her. “Bite me.”

  When I returned home that night, I found a reply to my rainbow. Her name was Ellie. What she wrote didn’t sound like anyone I’d met before. I was immediately interested. Adding to the intrigue was her comment about signing up for only two weeks, just like me.

  Chapter Ten

  “When Sydney Met Ellie”

  I had a girlfriend a long time ago, Justine. She always wanted to put on porn to get in the mood. Now I’m sorry, but whenever there was a scene with two women, say at the beach, oiling up each other’s bodies, sometimes topless, rubbing oil over their curves, the whole thing would get ruined when a man came over to join in. Inevitably, they welcomed his presence. I’d get so mad I couldn’t watch it anymore.

  Justine would argue, “It’s just a stupid movie! You gotta admit it’s hot!”

  And I would reply, “It reinforces the stereotype that all lesbians would like a guy to join in. After all, how can we possibly do anything without a penis?”

  “You’re too political!” she’d yell, like it was a bad thing.

  “Sot least I think about the world I’m living in!”

  “You’re always pissed about something!” She’d slam the door and nobody would be having sex that night, except the actors in a very bad, grainy porn film called Busty Babes at the Beach or something equally dumb.

  After we broke up, I’d often wonder if I was too political, too angry, too whatever. Aside from Ellen DeGeneres, lesbians had kind of a reputation for being pissed off, as reflected in angry acoustic music about getting screwed over by straight women. But I knew, at least among my friends, that we had the best sense of humor of anyone. We had to. We were living in a world that didn’t exactly cater to us much at all.

  Just watching an Old Spice commercial with a shirtless man telling ladies how to get their man to be like him—it’s funny, but I couldn’t help but notice how many commercials are not aimed at me. I’m not a demographic any company cares about, except maybe Subaru. Have you ever seen a woman holding a box of Tide and hear an announcer say something like, “Use Tide detergent, so you and your girlfriend can snuggle together in a soft, clean blanket?” Mmm. Sounds good, but it’s never going to happen. Or in an ad when your legs get a nice silky shave, there has to be a man touching your legs at the end of the commercial to show you how wonderful your straight life will be with this product. I’d like to see another woman touching her legs. Now that would be worth seeing.

  I wonder how much more interesting the world would have been for me growing up if I’d seen more images that reflected how I felt.

  That was the first conversation Ellie and I had. The “conversation” was through email, but it seemed loud and intense, like we were discussing the media representation of lesbians at length at the corner table of a noisy coffeehouse or restaurant. She felt the same way. And she didn’t think I was too political. Imagine that. I’d always tried to tone it down for people who needed to wear earplugs around my intensity. But not Ellie Hundersson. She liked what I had to say, and she had just as much to say. There wouldn’t be enough time to talk about everything we had to say. Could this be my ideal woman?

  At the same time, I didn’t want to be a spokesperson for the lesbian community, which I worried my blog was becoming. I was many things, a person with hopes and worries, not only a woman who is attracted to certain other women. So I was a mixture of conflicting feelings—political but not wanting to be a mouthpiece. The two, however, didn’t seem to go together. I could share these worries with Ellie too.

  Most of all, I didn’t want to get carried away like Penny. I saw the heartbreak a few emails could cause. I saw her get dumped at the airport just because the other woman saw her in person. Chemistry can’t be predicted until you meet face-to-face. I learned that. I had to remember it. So I was cautious but wildly excited. I was almost exci
ted enough to forget about the bills I had to pay.

  Cookie would curl up next to me on the couch when I did my nightly ritual of responding to one of Ellie’s letters. They were emails, but they read like letters. I also loved how she didn’t try to say any of the same things all the other women said—how they loved hiking and camping, poetry and art museums, long walks at sunset. She said the opposite and didn’t seem to worry how it sounded. I guess, like me, she figured if she was herself and that was okay, then she was talking to the right person.

  In one of her first emails, she’d said: “I’m a little overweight, and I’d tell you I’m working on it. But I’ve been too busy at work to exercise. I’m not that active. I love food, all kinds. I make a wonderfully tangy and crunchy tomato-basil bruschetta. And I love strawberry cheesecake ice cream with the graham cracker bits left in. I hate the cheap kind that skimps on the graham crackers.”

  I smiled and laughed out loud—literally—when I read that. I imagined her body would be curvaceous, like an Italian painting. I could picture my fingers tracing her ivory curves under a cool, silky sheet. I had to slap myself out of my daydreams.

  She continued, “I don’t take a lot of long walks at sunset because of the bugs…or long walks at all unless I’m going somewhere in particular. I know so many women on here sound like they’re always running and jumping and biking and always out at the ballet or an art museum. The last place I went was the hardware store to find the right bathroom fixtures to match my brushed nickel faucet. I wanted everything to match like they do on HGTV, my favorite channel, by the way.”

  Could this be a match made in heaven? I not only liked HGTV, but I hated fixing things, and it sounded like she’d put in her own fixtures. What a woman!

  Before my membership expired, I gave her my email address, so we could stay in touch. Luckily, I did it just in time because her membership was expiring too. So we came within a feather of time, almost never meeting at all.