Amber Alert: My Dignity

The summer of 2009 was like no other thanks to Poopsie (Pat) and my other friend who we shall call, Sam. (I went by Chris for that summer...we chose gender neutral names...we were drunk.) I started chronicling our summer because we decided we wanted to remember it forever. Here is the first chapter, with hopefully more to come.

  Amber Alert: My Dignity

The ironic paradox of young life is often the moments you never want to forget, are usually the ones you cannot remember.  This is more than just a tale of three young women brought together by a mutual love of, in no particular order, rugby, drinking and women.  It is also a story of three young women who discovered that sometimes in losing your dignity, you find yourself.

Ying and Yang

Fresh out of college with a useless degree in one hand and a contract to work my fifth summer at an overnight camp in the other, the summer of ’09 was looking bleak at best.  To make matters worse, the summer of ’09 was the year marker of my sex free lifestyle. This lifestyle was not a choice. At the end of the summer of ’08 my girlfriend and I of two years ended our relationship. I unintentionally went celibate, she started dating a firefighter…a male fire fighter.

The kick off to my summer was my younger brother’s high school graduation party. No amount of beer can help with the questions and awkward glances from my strict Irish Catholic family.

“So, still no men in your life?” 

“Where is that best friend of yours from college that was around a lot for the past two years?”

“Are you and Patrick wearing the same shirt?”

Let me explain. I am a female identified, gay person that looks like a 12 year old boy, acts like a butch (until I get excited then I become a gay man), who hates the word lesbian. If you need a label call me, gay. If like me you think labels are for soup cans well, you can call me gay too. So, as thrilling as playing 20 Questions was with my family, I felt it necessary to call in my good friend, Same for back up.  Finding the perfect combination of adjectives to describe Sam is damn near impossible. She can better be categorized by nouns such as, vodka, gym, Blackberry, and sex.  Sam is also one of the most loyal people you will ever meet and thus I knew she could come to my rescue.  I texted her, “Help, stuck at little bro’s grad party…send back up.” Her response, “Baby girl, put on your dancing shoes, I’ll be there in an hour.”

About three hours later, as Sam functions on her own time, she rolled into my driveway. Sam and I could not be more different, from our physical appearance to our actions, we epitomize ying and yang. As we embraced, the pale tone of my Irish skin violently contradicted with her perfectly tanned Portuguese glow and I wondered why I thought going out with Sam would help my sex life (or lack thereof…).  She is taller, leaner, more muscular, and more charming than me, the short, fat, out of shape, awkward kid.  She is the life of the party, I am the weirdo in the corner who thinks that simply tapping my foot and nodding my head is an appropriate form of dancing. However, despite these glaring differences Sam and I have been friends for a while and have learned to use each other to our own advantage. She makes sure I have a social life and I make sure her social life doesn’t kill her.

Being a good friend, Sam did the obligatory, get out of the car and say hi to the parents routine. With most families this song and dance takes a few minutes and generally is just a quick hello and a few questions about the plans for the evening.  My family is not, “most families.” Mom insisted that Sam not only eat a plate of food before she leave, but also take a plate of chicken wings home with her (which turned out to be a great drunken, late night snack, so thanks mom!). Dad pleaded with Sam to teach me to have some sense of style (I was wearing jeans, a purple v neck shirt, and my favorite purple Nikes and saw nothing wrong with that).  My uncle told a few off color jokes about Mexicans while my cousin tried his best to lay down his best pick up lines on poor Sam. I packed a backpack full of beer, stole a water bottle full of gin (mind you, I’m 23 and this was the first time I stole alcohol from my parents…), rescued Sam from my family and ran out the door.  As we drove off into the setting sun I opened a beer and toasted to good friends, stolen alcohol and the hopes that this summer would at least be interesting. 

to be continued...