Oops I did it again.

Oh Britney! I adore her. I adore her antics and shenanigans. I adore the fact that we are all so obsessed with her and her antics and shenanigans. The gasps of shock and dismay every time she takes a shit or drops her baby or flashes the paparazzi serve to prove the fact that it is us, the audience, who are the monsters in the cage and not the other way around. Given the way some of us were raised and the things we do it is no wonder we are infatuated. The easiest way to divert attentions from our own stupidity is to shine a light on someone else’s.
I am going to do Britney a favor and shine a light on myself. Expose something revolting, disastrous and ultimately entertaining.

My revolting disaster’s name was Tommy. I had just moved out of my mother’s home to live with my middle sister an hour away, leaving behind the tiny town of Amish baskets and collapsing businesses. My sister is something of a fan when it comes to gay men. She discovered a couple of gay magazines in my room and the rest is history.
Enter Tommy, her “If he were only straight!” best friend. Really who was I to question her? She knew more gay people than I even thought existed.
He was thirty-one. I was not yet eighteen when he came to pick me up for our first date. I was a virgin and had never kissed anyone in a romantic context.

I heard a lot about his car. It was an expensive model with leather seats and power windows. A far cry from the farm truck I was accustomed to.
The doorbell rang and before me stood my first big mistake in life. Pleated pants and a pressed polo with matching belt and shoes, parted hair and arched eyebrows that looked as though they were trying to escape were perched on taught dewy skin.

As I settled into the passenger seat I realized I was trembling. What would I talk to him about? Only weeks before I was slopping hogs and gathering eggs, now here I was in a fancy car with a man wearing makeup and wait are those really footprints on the windshield? No! Yes.
Strange I thought, thankful for the distraction. Conversation did not come easily and my talk of books was cut short at my mention of “The Ultimate Guide to Animal Husbandry for the Small Goat Farmer.”

The footprints he said were left by a “friend” he had given a ride home (plan to revisit) and left it at that.

No expense spared we found ourselves at Pizza Hut after a stop at an ATM which was exotic to me. I had never used one before and was amazed that it was spitting out money. We quietly enjoyed a thin crust pizza and orange sodas.

I was taken back to his place, still full of pizza and nervous enough to vomit. It was on his overstuffed black leather sofa I first kissed a man. My nerves kept us from anything more. I needed to go home and process the evening.
At that point my attraction was based on the fact that he had a penis and that he wanted to play with mine and it was overwhelming.

Date two, Evita and a roommate named James.

James came in halfway through our viewing of Evita. I was lost. Trying to get a seventeen-year-old gay boy on only his second date with a man to get past Madonna and understand the life story of a dynamic political icon must be much like training an alligator to separate the yolk from the white with his jaws.

James was my first lesson in gender ambiguity. The conversation between him and Tommy went something like this:

James: Hey girl, I just left the bookstore.
Tommy: Who was there?
James: Just some tired old queens. Adam was there and she was blasted trolling the booths.
Tommy: That girl needs some help.
James: Who is this?
Tommy: This is Nick, Allie’s little brother.
James: Nice to meet you. Don’t let Riva take advantage of you! She’s a dirty old man. -cackle-
Tommy: Bitch.
Exit James.

Problem one with the interaction was that there were no women or girls in the room. Problem two I wondered why this “bookstore” that evidently catered to royalty had booths. Problem three; Who the hell is Riva?

As the credits rolled and Evita continued to confound me, Tommy told me he had gotten me a gift. He led me through the kitchen to his sunken bedroom and sat me down on the bed. On the night stand sat a small brown bag. Cookies? I thought.

As I unrolled the crumpled paper bag he looked on with a knowing grin. Inside was an assortment of condoms and lube packets. No cookies. I had never touched a condom or lube. As I examined the contents of the bag he pushed me back into his plush pile of beaded pillows and we had sex. Rather he had sex and I fought back tears. Who knew this was involved? This was not in any of my magazines. My stomach hurt, my ass hurt and my legs were cramping. I didn’t know what was happening until it was over and I was in the bathroom.

When I returned to the bedroom he was smiling, sprawled on his bed like Nefertiti. I crawled over him and faced the wall trying to disappear. I felt him climb out of the bed and I was immediately dragged back to reality by Diana Ross. The music was just low enough for me to hear the rustle of fabric and shoes on the rug. My curiosity forced me over to what I can only describe as an unexpected spectacle, Riva, in a white dress, opaque stockings and ivory pumps transforming her self in the floor length mirror next to the bed. I was horrified. The man had just taken my virginity and was now lip syncing to “Stop in the Name of Love.”

As he sashayed and strutted, flung his arms about and cooed almost silently, I rolled back over. A small chip in the paint on the wall became my focus until my mind gave up and surrendered to my tired body.

If I had known that he had once lived as a woman and adopted the name Riva, or that he performed in a weekly drag show, I still wouldn’t have known better. We did not have sex again; in fact I never thought I would have sex with anyone again. I thought he had broken something.

A few weeks later he dumped me. On my birthday. I was now eighteen. He was going to return to his ex-boyfriend. As it turns out his were the footprints on the windshield, left after vehicular sex only a few days before our first date.

Tommy now works as a waiter in a gay bar in Indiana. He is 42 and those eyebrows have finally given up. They will never escape just the way he has never escaped. His skin is no longer dewy and he is wearing the same pleated pants and polo.

When he told me our tryst was over he asked me,

-So if it doesn’t work out with my ex, can we still continue to see each other?

I answered,

-Not on your life Tommy. Not on your life.

As I said, this story is for Britney. Really the day pictures of her in post-coital confusion, swaddled in a satin duvet as a forced audience at a private drag show ever surface I will be the first to sympathize and the second in line to by the magazine.