Pageboy, page 15
A friend of my cousin’s sat down next to me, drunk, and started asking me about Canada.
“Do you live in an igloo?” he questioned sincerely.
I explained that I did not live in an igloo. He continued to tell me how much Canada sucks.
Parents were at home, just respectfully tucked away. Guests continued to waltz in. The music volume had incrementally risen, making it a struggle to hear much. As the pullulating house vibrated with hip-hop bass, I looked down at my chest, the tiny bumps. My new wardrobe was not the magic fix I’d hoped it would be. The layers were lighter but the discomfort heavier.
Maybe if I keep trying, keep practicing, it’ll come. Yeah, it just takes effort, a choice.
But when I returned to Halifax and walked through the school doors, voilà, success. Tout de suite, the hot girls praised my clothes. My Old Navy jeans clung to my legs, my tank top revealed more skin than I had shown before at school, apart from in the girls’ changing room.
“That shirt is so cool.”
I knew it would do the trick, I thought proudly. I could win at this game.
“You have a nice ass,” Katie said as she rounded a corner. She looked back over her shoulder, a covert smile, her hair following. I wanted her to like his ass.
“Now you just have to change the music you listen to,” suggested a friend on my soccer team in the car on the way to a game, her hair tied back in a tight ponytail. I liked Radiohead and Björk, “weird music.” I’d throw away myself, but not my songs.
The reaction to the girl I met in the mirror in an Old Navy in an industrial park on the outskirts of Richmond, Virginia, was what I’d wished for, but my response to that attention was not. It only heightened the sting, stretching and contaminating the wound, more of its grotesqueness on display.
Still, I couldn’t shake my mother’s glow, her happiness, the feeling that all was right with the world after so much pain. I wanted to give her that, but my new look began to fade. A graph with dueling lines.
20
JUST LEAN IN
Nikki wasn’t like the other kids. She was authentic, she was gentle, she was bold. Her smile, that smile, welcomed you in. Her red hair, thick and wavy, framed her face. I’d turn my body to look back, my stomach rattling, pop rocks crackling off. My vocal cords quivering, struggling to form words, I’d plummet into her green eyes and afterward regret whatever I had said. It was tenth grade, and I was in love.
She sat behind me in English class. I recognized her from playing basketball in junior high school. She went to Cunard Junior High, the same school my siblings had gone to. Scott and Ashley’s dad was a teacher at Cunard. Nikki had really liked him.
I remembered her from the court because I could not stop looking at her—a force, an electromagnetic pull. It baffled me the way some girls would affect me. All humans emit radiation, frequency. Was it the vibration? The invisible reaching?
A Scientific American article by Tam Hunt explains:
An interesting phenomenon occurs when different vibrating things/processes come into proximity: they will often start, after a little time, to vibrate together at the same frequency. They “sync up,” sometimes in ways that can seem mysterious.
“You asked me to stop being so pushy guarding you. Ha ha,” Nikki shared with her charming grin.
My heart bounced, it was not just me, that moment, that game. It wasn’t mine alone, she remembered me, too.
From that point on I always beelined for a desk close to hers. I searched for excuses to look. She wore socks and Birkenstocks, cozy sweaters, and had the best fucking laugh, utterly infectious. Her sense of humor got me.
“Sweater vests, solving the age-old problem, hot arms, cold chest,” she said, completely deadpan, in reference to her puffy vest.
I cackled noisily. An uncontrollable, energetic swell merged with a burst of ebullience, I was about to combust. What the fuck was happening to me?
Ugh, I was too hyper. She probably thinks I’m annoying. Be more chill next time. Be. More. Chill.
I wanted to know her better, I wanted to move the desks aside. I was transfixed, I was spellbound.
Despite my feelings, I pursued boys. There was a cute guy who had dirty blond hair and an interesting face with piercing eyes and a strong jaw. I did not necessarily enjoy kissing him, but I loved the adventure of it, the potential, maybe I can like a boy? We did not spend much time together in junior high, but the intimidation of this new frontier found us leaning on each other. Or perhaps he just wanted his dick sucked.
We’d hook up secretly in hidden corners around school. We would roll around together in the girls’ soccer room, where my teammates and I would prepare for practice. It reeked of stinky shin pads and scrimmage uniforms that needed a wash, a cloak of stale sweat. The space was chaotic, with one of those very large, very thick blue crash mats off to the side.
We lay on the cushy surface, making out, touching, dry humping.
He and I shared French class together. Despite my mother being bilingual, it was always my worst subject. She didn’t speak French with me as a child, which I mildly resent, and I struggled, languages never a strong suit. So, it was a delight to have a reason to escape, especially when a covert operation was taking place. He’d sit behind me and pass me a note.
Meet me at the boys’ bathroom
Raising his hand, the teacher nodded.
“Est-ce que je peux aller aux toilettes?”
“Oui.”
My lover rose and left the room. I let some time pass and then stuck my arm up.
“Est-ce que je peux aller aux toilettes?”
“Oui.”
I left the room and took a right down the deserted hallway. He stood outside les toilettes with an endearing confidence that couldn’t quite conceal his nerves. The bathroom was vacant, soundless. We crept in, whispering, and sped into a stall, looking at each other with mischievous smirks. Lips smacking, he put this hand on my breasts, my nipples grew hard. Fussing with his pants, he zipped open the fly, and pulled his cock out, perky and firm. He spit on his hand to moisten his dick, stroking it until my hand replaced his.
“Will you suck it?” he asked, his eyes begging for it.
I got on my knees. Holding his penis, I lined it up with my mouth, opening wide, inviting it in.
Our extracurricular activities were typically focused on his pleasure.
A staggered return to class, him first, me second.
I wanted to be in Nikki’s friend circle, but I wasn’t, not quite yet.
My French class escapades started to taper off. The thrill faded, sensation not outweighing risk. And you can’t be going to the bathroom the same time every class or le professeur will catch on. Dry humping in the soccer room also lost its appeal—I had grown bored and numb. Why couldn’t I feel more? I wondered at the time. The salivating that surrounded me, the urges, the boys, the girls … were others pretending, too?
Nikki and I were becoming more and more comfortable with each other. Transitioning from acquaintances to companions, an equal desire for closeness. My crush deepened. If she sat close, I’d wonder, was that on purpose? When she laughed and squeezed my upper arm, I’d think, maybe I should laugh and touch her back? I would giggle and quickly touch her shoulder. It felt like a new form of communication, disguised Morse code. I could not say the words outright, so my body searched for a way to transcribe them.
On Nikki’s eighteenth birthday, I biked across the city, heart thundering, to bring her a card. The front had an illustration of two women communicating something suggestive, lesbian innuendo. I wish I could remember what it was. I purchased it at Biscuit General Store downtown, one of the first, if not the first, hipstery clothing spots in the city. We loved that place.
Could I say what my intention was? I don’t know. It all felt mindless, it was just happening. When I bought the card, when I wrote in the card, when I sped across the city to deliver it to her with a gift. I had texted her on my thick Nokia cell phone to let her know I was on the way. Pumping my thighs, propelling forward, that vibration again. I couldn’t get there fast enough.
I tracked her down and handed it to her. She held the white envelope with two hands, staring down. Sweat dripped between the middle of my breasts. Nikki opened it, laughed at the card, and then I handed her Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse, one of my favorite books.
She hugged me, thanked me for the gift, and went back to her day. The instant I left I was mortified. A feeling reminiscent of when at sixteen I fell in love with a woman in her thirties I’d met on a film. I made her a mix CD and dropped it in the lobby of the Drake—a chic hotel in Toronto. After the fifteen-minute walk, when I returned to the silence of my small yellow room, I turned to pieces. What the fuck did I just do? I flew downstairs, raced the laces, and took off. Raining now, I sprinted, fraught with humiliation. No no no no. Out of breath I pushed on. Okay, run in, get the CD back and no one will be the wiser.
I waited impatiently behind someone checking in. Come on, come on.
“Hi, I just dropped something off for someone, but I need to get it back…”
“Oh, she actually just got back and took it up with her,” a clerk with a cool haircut at the desk responded.
She was probably listening to “Anthems for a Seventeen-Year-Old Girl” right now, finding it adorable that I had a crush. I may as well have shat blood. My heart itself passing through, straight into the toilet.
“Thank you for the music, I really like it,” she said the next time I saw her. Staring down with an endearing smile, an invisible pat on the head, as if to say—how cute.
I hoped, without much faith, that this time would be different.
Nikki and I skirted around our chemistry, hovering and ducking. We’d hang out constantly, it felt romantic at times. I was nearly certain it was not just me, but maybe it was, maybe I was the only queer.
I remember sitting together in her mother’s beige Toyota Camry at Dingle Park, not wanting to drive home just yet. The sun was setting, just about to disappear for the night. We sat in the quiet, staring out at the Arm. I thought we might kiss. Eventually, the sun winked from the tip of the horizon, saying its final goodbyes. I smiled at her, she smiled back. I remember how beautiful she looked. I could hear my heart and hoped she couldn’t also. A few beats went by and we both exhaled, circumventing once more, we turned our heads to face forward. We waited in the car until the night took hold.
Moments like these hid in our friendship, tucked away, unnamed. Another time we were huddled in a small tree house in her backyard. The classic kind, just wood, a small trapdoor. Nikki’s dad had made it for her. He had died when she was eight.
We smoked a joint, getting lost in conversation as the crickets joined in. The house was dark, except for the living room, the light radiated out. Inside, her mother watched television, distracted by the flickering glow. Our faces were close, Nikki looked right at me and I looked right back. Time stopped, the corners of our mouths offering the tiniest beginnings of a grin. We did not move.
Lean in, I thought. You just need to lean in.
I didn’t, neither did she, and the moment passed. We climbed down from the tree.
So many times where all I had to do was lean in, lean in to her and to myself, but I couldn’t. And eventually, I lost my chance. One evening, we lay on her bed talking. Her arm was around me, allowing me to nestle into her, the closest we’d ever been. I glanced up, a new angle. Her neck stretched as she looked to the ceiling, her chin pointed proudly. Nikki’s eyes moved downward, her head following behind, a new angle for her, too. Her lips, pink and full. I wanted them on my mouth.
“Nikki?” The door opened.
Immediately disconnecting, we created space in between. This was useless, we had already been caught.
Slowly, we began to drift apart.
The lead of the school musical asked Nikki to prom shortly after. He was tall, handsome, popular, friends with everyone, the kind of person who can move their way in and out of various groups and cliques without having to mutate. Talented, smart, funny … desirable.
Nikki said yes. The moment I found out, I felt my heart split. Earlier in the year she and I made casual remarks about going together, a hidden moment that evaporated like the rest. Yet some small part of me believed we would. I wanted to yell, to say go with me, to say I love you, but nothing came out. The image of someone else’s lips on hers stirred a new sensation. Pumped by the heart, jealousy revealed itself, cycling through my body.
Nikki and I did not completely lose touch. Years later, she told me she had felt the same.
I resent that we were cheated out of our love, that beautiful surge in the heart stolen from us. I am furious at the seeds planted without our consent, the voices and the actions that made our roads to the truth unnecessarily brutal.
She still has the copy of Siddhartha I gave her, with the inscription inside:
NIKKI—
I am not always great with words in regards to expressing feelings and sharing my thoughts. As you turn 18 I just wanted to let you know that I really do think you are amazing. I have an immense amount of love and respect for you. Please be kind to yourself and know that no matter what you wish to talk about or to not talk about, I am here. I hope you enjoy this book. It has played an important role in my life and I hope it touches your heart as it did mine. I don’t know many people like you. So giving, so kind and so hilarious. I wish you all the peace and love in the world, you deserve so much.
Ellen xo
21
THE HEALTHY WAY
The first girl I kissed worked at the Healthy Way, a smoothie, salad, and sandwich spot in the food court of the Halifax Shopping Centre. I’d returned to Halifax from Toronto to finish high school, taking a beat from acting. Her name was Jessica, and she dressed in all black, her dark, short hair resembling that of Tegan and Sara, a new Canadian band on the scene. Being near her filled me with an anxious excitement. It wasn’t so much that I had a crush on her, but that I knew she was queer and I had to be near her because of this. I found myself seeking her out.
I’d ride my bike to the mall solo and order some kind of wrap, watching her hands as she made it. I’d awkwardly say hi, then lose my words, catching a small smile as she grabbed the pickles. I worked to hide mine. Finding an empty table, I’d sit down to eat and then promptly leave without a word, only there to see her and be near her queerness. When I arrived and she wasn’t working, there was a mixture of disappointment and relief. Was it a compulsion? I kept going back for those wraps.
Eventually, we hung out one-on-one. I assume Jessica asked me because I was terrified, so nervous I was shaking. The sun had set as we walked down Spring Garden Road toward the harbor, Lord only knows what I was talking about. We stopped just before Barrington Street in front of Saint Mary’s Cathedral Basilica, a prodigious stone church that has the tallest granite spire in North America.
She turned around and we stared at each other. We stood close. The Gothic steeple loomed. Silence. She kissed me.
When our lips touched, I short-circuited, the elasticity of my brain not yet able to bend around what was happening. I jerked back, separating my body from hers. My breath became shallow.
“I have to go,” I said, “I’m so sorry…”
I made a ridiculously obvious excuse.
“Oh, okay,” she said. And I promptly fled the scene.
I literally ran away from my first kiss with a girl. Still today I cringe when I think of that moment. I’d been the one going to the food court day after day, watching her carefully place pickles on my sandwich, yet a single kiss made me disintegrate. I left her standing there alone at the foot of the basilica steps. Despite not being religious at all, a small part of me wondered if God had seen. If I had sinned.
Later in the year, after many months of awkward silence and no sandwiches, I went to a party at a classmate’s house. Teenagers crowded into the space, drinking and dancing. I saw Jessica. I was buzzed and determined not to be a coward this time. We sat down in the same large chair in the corner of the living room. A big yellow Lab kept coming to say hi. Something was different. I was different. I didn’t crumble or shake. And this time when we kissed, it wasn’t brief. I did not pull away, but pushed in. My tongue found hers, exploring, moving with the music, dancing in our mouths. I felt her hand reaching for the top button of my jeans.
“Is this okay?”
“Yes,” I answered with a nod.
She slid her fingers down my pants and touched me.
“You’re so wet,” she said.
And I was. Turned on in a way that was new, I felt the sensation I had only managed to reach on my own until this point. My body quivered, I wish we’d been alone, but the presence of others snapped us out of it.
Being in proximity to Jessica changed me. Growing up with hardly any queers around, this person helped me discover myself, someone who had pushed through the fear and the shame to exist proudly. Running into her on the sidewalk, seeing her at a party, eating the wraps she made at the mall, I didn’t have a crush, but I yearned to be near what was possible. Her visibility meant the world to me.
I think about this as I walk through the world now.
22
FLATLINERS
“You’ll be fine,” the stunt coordinators said to us.
“It’ll be even better if you aren’t strapped in,” someone said to Kiersey.
We should have removed ourselves, called someone, said something, but we’d been conditioned, filming is extremely costly and you have limited hours, especially during an action-filled night shoot like this one. The sun will come.
It was the summer of 2016, on the precipice of that horrid election. I was filming the remake of the 1980s cult classic Flatliners, in which a group of five medical students perform a high-risk experiment. They stop their hearts briefly to induce near-death experiences, “flatlining” until their colleagues resuscitate them. Obviously, things get messy. The original starred Julia Roberts, Kiefer Sutherland, and Kevin Bacon. I was fortunate to work with a fantastic cast for the remake—Diego Luna, Nina Dobrev, James Norton, and Kiersey Clemons.
