This Post Not For The Homophobic Of Heart.

After hanging out with Toby I stayed at Arabica while he went to a meeting at the Lesbian and Gay center. It was a great place to get writing done, but unfortunately.....eh. The problem with not having a little hovel of my own to go write in - and having to be in public constantly - is the opportunity for people to get all up in my face with questions. I would have gotten so much more done if it weren’t for this guy who kept literally leaning over my shoulder to read and not get the hint when I gave him short answers to his questions. He kept trying to get me to go out to dinner with him, even when I kept saying, "No, thanks" or "I’m not interested", stuff like that. Ergh! I hate that! Well, he finally left and I stayed til the place closed. Then I wandered over to the diner I had slept outside of a few nights before and splurged on an actual hamburger! And fries! I know what you’re saying - "Jessica, let’s not be crazy. I mean, come on - french fries too? You are becoming a madwoman!"

I wrote more at the diner, which meant fielding more weird looks but at this point it’s almost second nature. I love catching someone staring at me and then getting a look on my face like, "What, bitch? Bring it!" I always win the staring contests. So I was at the diner for a good couple hours, until about midnight. There was a Pre-Pride party going on across the street at Twist, the gay bar I went to earlier in the week. I wandered over there after parking my car in the CVS lot and putting another "please-pity-me" note on the windshield for the tow-truck man.

The scene was the same as it had been the other night, only busier. I felt like I was in that game on Sesame Street with the four squares and one thing doesn’t belong - "One of these things is not like the others, one of these things is not the same!" Still, I feel like that a lot so it didn’t bother me. I wandered around until I found the dancing and then it was all good! I hooked up with these three guys - obviously they were gay, so it wasn’t like that - and we danced and danced, it was so fun! Even the gay boys were like, "Damn, girl, you’re awesome!" I love to dance.

There were women there, too, a big group of them. I danced a little with one of them. She was older than me and she looked really good for her age, tan with long, layered red hair and a big smile. She was tall and her jeans complimented her lean figure. Eventually they turned the music off and everyone poured out onto the street. The woman I was dancing with and two of her friends asked me all sorts of questions - the first one was, "So do you kiss girls?" - and we got to talking about my trip. "Where are you sleeping tonight?" one asked me.
"In the CVS parking lot." I said.
One of the women, short and masculine with curly blonde hair, said, "Well, you can come on home with me."
"Um, no thanks. I’ll be okay in the parking lot." She gave me a bad feeling.
My dance partner spoke up. "You could stay at my place. I have kids and a cat but you’re welcome to stay."
"Um, thanks but I should be okay. CVS is open 24 hours so it should be safe." Curly Blonde was giving Red Head the evil eye, as if to say, "Don’t cock-block me." (What would you call lesbian cock-blocking? )

I started to walk towards the CVS parking lot. They were parked there as well. Red Head, whose name was Donna, reiterated her invitation. "You don’t have to come home with me, I just know how much it sucks to sleep in a car. I won’t try to....y’know..... it’s not like that. But you’re welcome to just crash. You can have my bed and I’ll sleep on the couch. And that way you can shower in the morning."
She said the magic word.

I looked at her with my please-don’t-screw-me-over-I’m-really-nice eyes and said, "Are you sure it’s not.... like that?"
"Completely."
"Okay."

I did trust her a little, definitely more than Curly Blonde, whose name was CJ. CJ noticed this and was offended, especially because I had turned her down. Donna rode with me. As we were waiting for my breathalyzer to warm up, CJ approached the passenger side window, very upset. I rolled it down and she spit some venom at Donna, something about "For someone who won’t even give out her phone number, you’re being awful stupid about bringing home this psychobitch! You don’t even know where she’s been. She’s probably gonna kill your kids in the middle of the night, Donna!" I was thinking, "Um, hi, I’m sitting right here..." But she was drunk and pissed that I didn’t want her, so I didn’t care.

Their driving arrangements required all of us going back to Donna’s, since a few other people’s cars were there - and because CJ wanted to follow me and make sure I actually went to Donna’s and not turn down some side street to murder her. Donna and I got to know each other as we drove. She was very nice, not at all creepy. She’s a single mom and works as a Project Manager for a big company. I told her how hardcore lesbians sometimes scare me because they’re aggressive. "Like your friend," I said.

When we got to her house, CJ and another woman, Geri, stayed in the car for awhile, obviously gossiping and/or talking shit about me. I think Geri might have actually been trying to assuage CJ. Anyway, they finally got out and said goodbye. CJ said, "Call me in the morning if you’re still alive, Donna." I was just laughing, it was a little ridiculous. Donna stuck up for me, saying, "She’s not a psychobitch! She’s a sweet girl!"
"I promise I won’t kill your friend," I said. "I’ll even give you my website."
"To be honest, I don’t want it!" CJ spat.
Well, I can’t win them all.

Donna set me up in her room with clean sheets and the whole shebang. Her kids were asleep, oblivious to the late-night population increase. Those eight cups of coffee and Red Bull were still careening through my blood but eventually I fell asleep, waking up at 10 AM. I peeked out of Donna’s bedroom doorway at her seven-year-old son, Jacob. "Um, hi," I said, my hair sticking up like shoveled hay.
"Hi," he said, not knowing what to make of this rumpled stranger in Mommy’s room.
"Mornin’!" Donna called from the kitchen. I walked into the room, startling her two-year-old nephew, Andrew, who was staying there for a few days. He was toddling around in a diaper and a t-shirt in the heat. With his shaggy blonde hair and mysterious blue eyes, he reminded me of a baby Val Kilmer. I sat down at her kitchen table as she said, "I’m gonna run to the store and take the boys. You can stay here and take a shower, although my daughter’ll probably freak out." Her daughter’s name is Jessica, too, and she was still asleep upstairs. Thankfully, she woke up and came down before her mom left, preventing any chaos.

Donna’s kids are so sweet. I fell for them immediately. When Donna and the boys came back from the store, proudly bearing donuts, I was showered and on the phone with my mom, assuring her I wasn’t dead. Jessica was hard at work in the kitchen making pancakes and bacon - she obviously knew the way into my heart is through salty pork. I regaled her and Jacob with stories of my run-ins with animals on the road - the butt-biting deer, my Dunkirk raccoon. We had a quarter-spinning contest as the bacon popped in the pan and Jessica told me about her guitar lessons. She was like Audri, a 14-year-old capable of holding an intelligent conversation with an adult. My favorite kind.

After breakfast Donna let me follow her into downtown for the Pride Parade. She didn’t stay, but she knew I would get lost otherwise - what a smart lady. She ran over to my window before turning back around, saying, "If you need a place to stay again tonight, feel free."
"I’ll probably take you up on that!" I said. Actually, I had been hoping she would offer, to the point where I didn’t even say goodbye to the kids because I figured I’d see them that night.

I parked and bounced over to the parade’s starting point, jubilantly high on gay pride and love for people. I wore some gold Mardi Gras beads I had been given the night before at Twist, blue jeans and a wife-beater. It was awesome! There were people in costumes, in drag, in cages on floats! There were signs saying, "Proud Bi-Sexual", "Proud PFLAG Dad" (PFLAG stands for Parents and Friends of Lesbians And Gays), even "Straight Guy For The Queer ‘I Do’". There were balloons. There were boas. There were beads. There were hot girls! I was in Big Gay Heaven.

I took a lot of pictures. I should have taken more of some of the shirts, the shirts were the best. A sampling of some of the guy’s shirts I saw:

I (heart) Dick
100% All-Beef Frank
I Kissed Your Brother
Gaywad
I Swear It’s This Big (with hands)
Scrumptious
Who’s Your Leather Daddy?

And the women’s shirts:

If It Has Tits Or Tires, You’re In Trouble
I (heart) Pussy
Ambiguous
I(heart) Boobs
I’m More Man Than You
Proud Lesbian

It was hilarious! My mistake was trying to seek out Toby - who told me he would be wearing a rainbow-printed shirt - in a crowd of Priders. Honestly, I was scanning the crowd thinking to myself, "Okay, big guy in a rainbow-colored shirt..... big guy in a rainbow-colore.....*sigh*.... I’m never gonna find him. This is like looking for a queer in a big gay haystack..... a gaystack...."

But eventually I found him. I took a picture of he and his friend Robert in the PFLAG Grand Marshal rocket and apologized for getting flustered at points during our interview the night before - Toby’s voice carries so much and some of our subject matter had been a little risque. I was worried that he was upset with me for blushing and tossed and turned over it the whole night. He assured me that he wasn’t offended but I do have to say: Toby, if you read this - again, I am so sorry! I adore you and don’t want you to think I have anything less than bunches of love and admiration for you in my heart!

The parade started and all kinds of music was blaring, from marching band staccatos to house music. People were dancing on the sidewalk and catching candy and bracelets thrown from the floats. At the last float, I joined in the parade - it was great! There were girls handing out fliers for a gay bar and I asked if I could help. A pretty girl in a brown t-shirt and brown trucker hat handed me a stack with a smile and soon I was bounding down Ontario Street, passing out fliers for a ladies’ night I’d never get to go to.

The parade ended in the usual mish-mash that parades do, with everyone crammed at the end and milling around, not knowing where to go. Eventually I made my way, along with my new gang o’ lesbian friends and we lined up to get in the gates. Maya, my be-browned trucker hat friend, introduced me to everyone, saying, "This is Jessica and she’s not from around here so we’re going to play with her today!" Most of them were drag kings, complete with fake goatees glued on and they looked awesome! I met all of them and they made me blush when they told me my trip was fabulous.

We got inside and I just tried to soak everything in. When I do that I get really quite and just look at stuff. After awhile I chatted with a great girl named Erin and she told me all about her ex-girlfriend problems. Actually, ex-girlfriend problems seemed to be the underlying theme of everything these girls were talking about and I was reminded of my conversation with Gay Steve earlier in the week when he said, "Women can’t let go, they just hang on forever. Guys have closure and they move on, and it’s done. But, lesbians, my god, they hang on til the bitter end and beyond." Still, the girls were so sweet and I was touched that they would open up to me about the drama.

It was cool to see how many children there were, especially with two gay parents. They were some of the happiest kids I’d ever seen.

At about 5:00 a DJ set up in a side parking lot and started spinning hip-hop. Guess what little cracker did not leave that lot until the music shut off? Yeah, that would be me. It was unforgettable because I just started dancing all by myself and pretty soon all these little black girls were sandwiching me, but they didn’t look like girls! These two that got me at one point, they looked to be about 13. They literally looked like two 13-year-old boys. It was so awesomely different! And there were some amazing dancers there, it was really cool to watch them. I ended up getting separated from Maya and the gang because they had no interest in hip-hop, but it was cool. After a little while of dancing with the little drag kings - I called them drag princes - and dancing by myself, this beautiful black girl approached me. I guess she could be considered a drag king, too, very masculine-ly dressed and her hair was in cornrows. Her caramel skin was smooth and tiny beads of sweat dotted the nape of her neck. She came right up to me and found the beat, and soon we were showing everybody else how it’s done.

"What’s your name?" she asked after a few songs. Hers was Jennifer. We wore each other out. At one point a song she loved came on and she stepped away to join a group of other girls who were doing some kind of step something-or-other dance, yelling, "This my jam! Aww, this is my shit right here!" I tried to follow her but was intercepted by a large black woman who grabbed my hand, saying, "No, honey! I been watchin’ you! You comin’ over here with me for a minute!"

She led me over to another part of the lot and called to her friend, a larger black woman, "Look, I got the blonde girl! I got her! Come on!" The two of them....kind of..... attacked me. I was laughing hysterically at the situation because in all my life I never thought I’d be double-teamed by a pair of ginormus black women. The bigger one was in front of me and bent all the way over, putting her fingertips on the pavement and pushing her backside into my crotch. Oddly enough, I was loving it! I mean, it’s not an experience I would have sought out, but I came out on the road to experience new things and that was definitely something new! I was laughing so hard I almost lost the beat.

And, okay, I lied earlier, I actually did leave the dance lot for a little bit - after I wrestled free from the Double-Freak Twins, I couldn’t find Jennifer so I wandered over to the mainstage to see an act that was performing there. I am hereby ensuring a barrage of insults from one Max Glass by saying this, but I intentionally stood in front of the stage at a Kimberly Locke (American Idol II runner-up) show..... yes, I just outed myself: I am a Kimberly Locke fan.

It was hilarious, it was me and a bunch of queens all standing around and "Wooooooo!-ing" as she came out and started singing some backbeat-laden, synthesized pop power ballad and it was awesome! I sang along to the ones I knew and called Jojo’s cell to agonize him with music I know he hates. And yes, I am officially a geek.

After Kimberly's set, I went back to the dance lot and stumbled across Jennifer again. "I thought you left me, boo," she whispered in my ear.
"No, honey, I just went to be girly for a sec."
We danced for the rest of the evening, until the music was shut off and all the priders were kicked out of the grounds and out onto the streets of Cleveland. Jennifer gave me her number and I called her so she would have mine. "I had a great time with you, thanks so much," I said.
"Me, too," she said.

I smiled and was about to walk away when she held onto my arms, sliding her fingers down to my hands. She leaned in and kissed me softly, tasting sweet like creme brulee. It was surprisingly wonderful. I caught my breath and stepped in closer, cupping her face in my hands. (Yes, Grandma, I sometimes kiss girls.) A loud "whoop!" carried over the crowd as all of Jennifer’s friends shouted, "Daaaaaamn, homey!", watching us. I blushed immediately - I’m not used to causing a scene just by kissing someone.
"How old are you?" I asked her as I pulled back.
"Sixteen."
"Wow. Wow, I gotta go." I suddenly felt like a haggard old woman. Seriously, what is it with me going for younger people? If cradle-robbing were a sport I swear I would be an Olympian. I would be an MVP.

I booked out of the gate and called Donna, making sure I could stay with her again. "Sure, come on home, and later I’ll take you to a bonfire at my friend’s!" she said. As I walked back to my car, all the way back to the start of the parade route, I ran into Jennifer again. "Hey, baby," she whispered. "Well, I guess talking to her can’t be that evil since I’ll probably never see her again," I thought to myself, and we fell into step. She walked me to my car and we got to know each other a little. She told me about growing up in inner-city Cleveland, how her mom cries because her daughter is gay, about her upcoming court date. "What are you being charged with?" I asked.
"Felony drug-trafficking."
"What?!" I looked at her - she was just a baby. She still has a tiny bit of baby fat on her smooth, hazelnut jawline.
"But I didn’t do nothing!" she cried. "I ain’t guilty! But if they find me guilty I’m gonna get locked up in a juvenile detention center til I’m 21. That’ll be four years and three months." She said it matter-of-fact, as though she weren’t scared at all. I asked her if she was.
"Naw, I ain’t scared. I can take care of my own."

She amazed me. Here was this tough-as-nails little girl, with enough balls to come out to her mother at age 12, hardened on the streets of the poorest city in the country, 16 years old and already facing felony charges - with no fear. My heart felt heavy just trying to understand what it must be like to live under those circumstances - I couldn’t. I mean, I cried when I had to go to court for a $26 ticket for a seat-belt violation. She was so beautiful even in her baggy clothes, like a child playing dress-up in daddy’s closet. I marveled at her for the last few blocks. I may never fully understand what it’s like to live in her shoes, but I respect her strength.

She kissed me goodbye before I got in the car and I could taste hints of cinnamon gum on her tongue. "I ain’t never gonna see you again, am I, baby?" she asked me.
"You never know, honey. Maybe you might."
She pulled me closer to her. "I don’t wanna let you go."
"Well, you better get home before it gets dark. I worry about you." (Damn, there goes the mom in me, ruining even romantic moments.... "She. Is. Six. TEEN!" was about the only thought going through my head at that point.)
"Okay, baby," she said. "I don’t want to make you worry."
She kissed me one more time and squeezed my hand as I whispered, "‘Bye..."

I spun quick on my heel so I wouldn’t have to watch her walk away, thinking, "Jessica, you are a terrible person. You are SO going to Hell!" I plopped into the car and drove back to Donna’s house, where she and the kids were sitting on the porch, chatting with the neighbors and waiting for me. On the way, I contemplated my sins of the day and justified it by vowing to be a positive role model for Jennifer if she needed it - a voice of reason, someone to remind her to do her homework and beg her to quit smoking. From a distance, of course. Maybe then I won’t go straight to Hell, at least Satan may let me take the scenic route.