The Harm in Asking: My Clumsy Encounters with the Human Race by Sara Barron

streets and homosexual-friendly acting classes would present me with a bevy of dapper-butch options. A Tilda or k.d. doppelgänger. Someone equally manly. But not, you know, a man. I hoped to meet a woman of this description and to make of her a ladylove. For to begin my lesbian exploits while I was in
college
? While I was in
New York
?
    I could think of nothing more unique.
    The one hint of potential came from Leah, a young lady in my Level 1 Emotional Arcs class. She looked like a tiny Tony Danza, and the first time I saw her I thought, How ’bout you and I head to Meow Mix for a round of Shirley Temples? How ’bout we go figure out what’s what?
    The sad thing, though, was that in reality, I could not follow through.
    At the root of my k.d. lang fantasies was this idea that
she’d
come on to
me
. Ideally, in a sophisticated bar. I had no real interest or ability in initiating flirtation myself, be it in an acting class or dormitory cafeteria. So it was that Leah and I fell into the standard friendship of all college freshmen in New York: we discussed how the city had changed us.
    “The other day, I walked down
Fifth Avenue
, Leah. At
night
,” I might say. “That sort of thing changes a person.”
    Leah and I would sit together and talk at lunch, and then at night, or rather, once every few nights, I would masturbate to the idea of her in a pinstripe suit, seducing me.
    Where once were two, there were now three: Tilda. k.d. Leah.
    I SPENT THOSE first few months of college wondering if somehow, some way, something might actually happen between Leah and me. She was not a likely possibility, but she was at least a
more
likely possibility than either Tildaor k.d. I wanted to measure an actual lesbian experience against my various heterosexual carryings-on. For I did carry on, as it were, heterosexually. There weren’t a lot of opportunities, but there were some. I met a guy to whom I eventually lost my virginity. However, he had a penis so big, I feared I would die, and this, in turn, prompted me to limit all future hetero experiences to bases one through three. Not forever, of course. But for a while.
    On the subject of these experiences, I’d like to say that each one felt correct. That’s talking in terms of biology. However, they also felt mostly underwhelming, and this, too, fueled my lesbian curiosity. I’d held out hope that Leah might be the woman to help me work through these various issues, but then one afternoon she and I ran into each other on the street and hugged hello, and I felt the wider-than-a-mile straps of her brassiere beneath her shirt. And I thought, NOPE. I CANNOT DO THIS. I CAN’T BE TAKING OFF ANOTHER WOMAN’S BRA.
    It was all so confusing! If a woman masturbates to Tilda Swinton and company, isn’t she surely a lesbian? And yet, if she’s repelled by reminders of the breasts with which she’d engage, isn’t she most surely
not
?
    I decided to ask someone about it. I had a new friend, Glen, who, like Leah, I’d met in my Level 1 Emotional Arcs class. He too was homosexual, and thinking he might offer me some insight, I took him out for pizza.
    “I think I might be gay,” I said.
    Glen looked up.
    “You’re not,” he said. “You’re in New York; you
wish
you were gay. But you’re straight. Like,
straight
. I mean, if I saw a vagina, and then I saw a penis go
into
that vagina, that is your level of straightness.”
    “But I masturbate to Tilda Swinton,” I said.
    “I masturbated once to Diane Lane. And what am I?
Not
gay?” Glen raised his hands to draw attention to this pair of vintage day gloves he had on. “No. I
am
gay. I’m a gay man who, for one reason or another, decided to try something new.”
    “But I mean, like, a lot,” I said.
    Glen thought for a moment. “So it’s not that you
have
masturbated to Tilda Swinton, it’s that you
masturbate
. Presently.”
    “Yes.”
    “Exclusively to Tilda Swinton?”
    “Three times out of ten.”
    “And what about the