6. Noa
NOA
From the first moment I laid eyes on Casey at lesbian book club two years ago, I was cooked.
Perched on a leather armchair at Herstory Books, she commanded the room with an easy confidence, leading a heated discussion about the metaphor of time travel in Octavia Butler’s work.
Her pink-tinted wolf cut caught the late afternoon light, and I found myself mesmerized by her hands and arms, covered in fine line tattoos of constellations and botanical illustrations.
I sat in the back, clutching my dog-eared copy of Kindred and praying I wouldn’t have to speak.
Casey was a fashion photographer who knew every hipster lesbian east of Cahuenga, greeting them all with inside jokes and casual intimacy. She had strong opinions about magical realism and could quote Deleuze on demand, which should have been insufferable… But I was all in.
I had dated my share of women and men and enbies in my teens and early twenties, but I hadn’t dated anyone since grad school and I was majorly out of practice.
The isolation of my Flavor Fellowship with stoic Stella had set me back.
When met with Casey’s cool-girl ease, my brain and mouth seemed to disconnect in spectacular fashion every time I got within a few feet of her.
But Casey seemed to find my verbal stumbles charming.
She’d laugh, not unkindly, and draw me out with gentler questions until we finally broke through that barrier of comfort where I could form complete sentences and she could get to know me.
We bonded over our love of musical theater and experimental cooking (though her idea of ‘experimental’ usually involved something unintentionally fermenting on her windowsill).
The first time we kissed, I felt our entire future together flash through my mind. I saw Sunday mornings making mochi pancakes, road trips to exclusive desert art installations, growing old surrounded by rescue cats and floor-to-ceiling bookshelves…
Then she pulled back. “We can keep this low-key, right?”
I nodded dumbly, and we were off to the races for eighteen months of inconsistent texting and missed hangs, punctuated by handwritten poems slipped into my bag. Candlelit dinners followed by being ignored at parties. Sweet nothings undermined by stinging caveats.
I wish I had the self-worth to have ended things for good, but it was Casey who called it. She met some tarot reader who does non-competitive gymnastics as an adult , and fell in high-key love like she never did with me.
It’s been six months since the breakup. The rejection still stings, but what’s worse is knowing I had so little self-respect that I would’ve accepted her scraps forever.
Now I’m hiding out in the bathroom stall at The Velvet Tongue, stress-scrolling my favorite food chemistry blog about the crystallization patterns in chocolate tempering, all because Casey’s disruptive pink hair materialized at the other end of the bar as I was closing out my tab.
Aiden didn’t notice my exit because he was, as per usual, surrounded by a gaggle of gays and theys, the perpetual life of the party.
The restroom door bursts open with such force that it bangs against the wall. Two sets of footsteps click across the tile floor, accompanied by heated whispers that quickly escalate.
“You brought me to a lesbian bar?!”
I can hear the panic in the woman’s voice.
“For one of your last nights on the town! You might not get to come here again, unless… you know.” The second woman trails off.
I can see the panicking woman pace through the crack in the stall door. “You had no right to put me in this situation.”
“These are the safest people you could ever be yourself around. No one is trying to tattle on each other, they just want to have a relaxed, gay time.”
There’s a long silence and I realize I’m holding my breath, I’m so invested in these two strangers’ sudden drama.
The pacing woman stills. “This is not working.”
“Oh, we’re doing this again?”
I can’t tell what’s happening beyond the confines of my little eavesdropping booth, but I hear more footsteps then the door swinging open again, followed by silence.
At least someone’s having a worse night than me.
I’m not surprised that closeted lady freaked out about being here. Even the sinks at The Velvet Tongue are gay. The faucet is a tongue emerging from between two fingers in a peace sign. Which is aspirational to me, but I get that not everyone will be on the same page.
I finish my article on chocolate tempering before leaving the stall, because why rush?
It’s not like Aiden is missing me. No one is.
I wash my hands and something clatters in the supply closet to my left.
Probably just a mop falling over, but in my current state, I’ll take any excuse to linger in this bathroom.
I dry my hands and head over to investigate.
I turn the door handle.
“JEEPERS!” The scream tears out of me.
There’s a woman wedged halfway through what has to be the tiniest window I’ve ever seen, her legs kicking in the air like an overturned beetle. The window is a good seven feet up the wall, a stack of paper towel boxes arranged below her into a makeshift stepladder.
“Do you need–”
“Shit.” One leg stops kicking long enough to wave at me emphatically. “Don’t call anyone!”
“Are you… stuck?” It’s a stupid question, she’s very obviously stuck, but my brain is still trying to process the scene in front of me.
“No, I often like to hang out of small windows,” comes the muffled response.
“Right, well I’ll leave you to it, I guess–”
“Yes, of course I’m stuck,” she snaps. “And if you could maybe help instead of just standing there; this is taking every last bit of ab strength I have.”
I square my shoulders. “Right. We’re gonna get you down, no problemo.”
The woman groans. “No, I need you to help me get the rest of the way out . I’m leaving .”
“Right. Yes, one sec,” I tell the maniac, not wanting to upset her delusion. I step into the messy closet with zero plan on how to help. “Any suggestions as to how I can assist?”
The woman manages to twist her body to the side just enough to look at me. Maybe she’s an adult hobby gymnast, too.
Well, if she is, she’s an adult hobby gymnast with a face that could convince me to start doing gymnastics as a hobby. She’s got Pantene-commercial thick black hair, and dark lashes to match, with two arched, perfectly manicured eyebrows currently raised accusingly at me.
“Sorry, I zone out sometimes. Did you say something?” I scramble my way out of the embarrassment of being caught checking her out.
“I need you to lift my knee–cup it–and push me up so I can swing my leg over the ledge.”
I do as I’m told. “You’re very spatially aware for someone who got stuck in a window.”
She snorts so softly I can tell she didn’t intend to laugh but couldn’t help herself.
“Okay, that’s good, now push,” she instructs.
At first I’m not sure I’ll be strong enough to give her the boost she needs, but then her weight is off of me and she’s climbing through the window… and landing with a metallic crash.
Now it’s my turn to scale the tower of boxes. I poke my head out to find her face-down in a dumpster.
“Are you–?!”
She gives me a thumbs-up from her prone position.
“I’ve never met someone so desperate to get inside a dumpster.”
“I do it for the thrill,” she mumbles into the sticky plastic.
“Do you need me to call someone? Mom? 3-1-1? Therapist?”
She attempts to right herself atop the mountain of trash bags, but her arms just sink into the mushy, shifting heap of crumpled poetry-reading flyers and expired dental dams.
“Does it look like I have a therapist?” Her balance betrays her every time she nears stability. It’s a slow-motion disaster until she finally ends up right back where she started.
“There’s a straw on your head.”
She fishes it out of her locks. “Better me than a sea turtle.”
Finding a foothold on a nearby trash hill, she hoists herself up with frankly impressive upper body strength.
Like an Olympian on the planet’s nastiest pommel horse, she swings her leg over the rim before landing with an offensively gentle thud on solid ground.
Maybe if I used my Thinking Rod for its intended purpose, I could one day climb out of a dumpster with such effortless grace.
Her head pops back up over the metal wall. “I look forward to never seeing you again.”
“Same,” I wave.
And with a small tilt of her head and a tight smile, she spins on her heel and disappears into the night.