I grew up in a hoarder house with a mom who drove a car held together by duct tape, and grass waving six feet high on the lawn. Oh, and I was gay.
Well, I didn’t know the word for it then. I just knew I had a mad crush on Stephie Schwartz. In 7th grade, I saw her underwear lying on the locker room floor and desperately wanted to sniff it, study it, and wear it as a hat.
Stephie and I were friends, but I wanted to be her best friend; the one to wear the other half of her “Best Friends” necklace. Oh, to “Be Fri.”
Stephie was Jewish and cool in her crisp, white Keds. I was Jewish and (did I mention the duct tape?) rocked crisp, white Neds. They were $10 at the local Walgreens.
One day, Stephie and I were both home from school sick, so our parents let us be home sick together in her little apartment in Queens. We were playing cards on her bedroom floor, when she leaned over and shouted, “War!” The v-neck of her white tee fell just enough for me to catch sight of her boobs. They were MESMERIZING! She had the biggest tatas in our whole grade and I couldn’t take my eyes off of them! I finally looked away, hoping she didn’t notice, but she caught my gaze, and gave me this look like, “Get out.” A chill ran through my body.
I walked to the bathroom, and shut the door. Click. There was a little sailboat in the bevel of her mint green tiled wall. It had a mast made of wire, and I thought, “I could slit my wrists with this thing.” I saw it on Law & Order once. You run the warm water, and push down with the rope.
I didn’t do it. I didn’t even try, but as I stood there with the water running, I knew I had done something horribly wrong.
A few months later, Stephie switched schools. Something about getting into this fancy, private academy in the City, but I knew it was because of me, and the boobs! It had to be. I was a freak ogling her Warner’s bra. I’d run from me, too!
I kept the secret until 1995, the summer before college. Mom and I were in the car eating a sack of White Castle burgers, and I said, “Ma, I think I like girls.”
“Oh, no you don’t! You were just really close to Grandma Levy and have a bad relationship with Daddy,” she said.
Yeah, I was close to Grandma Levy, but I'd never wanted to wear her undies as a hat. That would have been a very big hat! But my mother was always right, so I figured I must be wrong. I just needed to fix myself, and I could make this all go away.
So, I tried to be different, which meant I tried to be the same...as the other girls. I watched the way they walked, the way they talked, even what they wore, and gave myself a pep talk: Nikki, you got this!
I dated nice Jewish boys (mostly named David), wore Wet ‘N Wild lipstick, and even convinced my mom to buy me real life Keds.
But no matter how many wonderful “Davids” I dated, there was always a Stephie or a Stacy or a Shauna (I love my “S” girls) pulling me back. Could it be that I had been right, and the only thing wrong was believing someone else’s opinion over my own?
