Yellow

Mission 1. Hook up with someone as old as my mom (54) and as young as my sister (20) in a month.
Mission 2. Live a completely gay lifestyle (without the gay sex) for a month.

In my under-nourished, substance-abused and disproportionate state, a single word ushered in the synapse necessary to jumpstart my brain. A single color helped me see what my mind had concealed. Daniel could have saved all his talk about Kamikaze shots, lost cowboy hats and my apparent run-in with a dumpster. But late night war stories aside, the detailed disarray was unnecessary. He could have simply cut to the chase. Cut to the word.

Yellow.

“You’ve got to remember your girlfriend in the yellow sundress,” were Daniel’s exact words.

They stopped me in my tracks. The blood rushed to my head like a five-minute headstand. It was an aching feeling, yet one that sent situational impulses to my already abused vessel. Not now, I thought. Now now.

We grabbed a bagel, coffee and two waters. It was the comfort food I needed for this slow journey back in time. But as I saw my reflection in a storefront, I went back further than last night. I went back to the emotion. Back to the core of this feeling. I was in college.

I went through a period of rebellion after leaving my parent’s house and heading west for school. One that I am not particularly proud of. But, like everyone, there is a good side and the bad side to me, separated merely by relevant degrees.

So now, my mind was back at homecoming weekend. I was trying to seduce a girl who was more interested in pot than me. Luckily, I was a stoner back then and didn’t care. We drove back to my dorm room, and on the way back I clipped another car. Merely. Barely. Not even my fault. But given the circumstances, I killed the lights and took off. The other car took off as well, so I imagine that driver was in a similar fix.

I dumped my car and didn’t even survey the damage. We walked back to the apartment party, and nothing ever happened with the girl. The next day, I found myself in my dorm room, naked. Alone. I hoped I didn’t walk home that way, but I couldn’t find my clothes. Weird.

I kept my car off campus, so I went to the lot to look for it. It wasn’t there. I couldn’t remember where it was. I walked to my fraternity house to get ready for the float. I was Prince Charming because the band uniform looked best on me, at least that was the running commentary. I was a pasty faced prince, reminiscent of the dark ages where royalty carried a vaguely urine-esque smell.

A pre-puke hot flash brought me back to the parade. I needed my mind back and its help to drum up the willpower to not heave in this crowd. It would no doubt hit at least a dozen people if I did. I beat it and breathed. A split second later I was feeling oddly errant. I wondered, if I puked here, how many people would that sexually excite? My thoughts were selfish and beleagured. I needed to go home.

“Yea, we had to save you, I totally thought you would remember that. You were pissed at us. You called Jeff (Arkansas) a cock-blocker. Well, he definitely ‘cock blocked’ you,” Daniel said, making quote signs with his hands.

I rubbed my beard and took a swig of water. I was beginning to return to my former self physically, but mentally I was sitting squarely in abandon. My mind raced through the events. Then I played them back again, more slowly.

I went briefly back into college again. I remembered the last time I grew a beard was when I was on that float in college. Maybe beards are bad luck for me.

Someone else was rubbing my beard last night. It was that girl. Yellow girl. We sat at the bar, talking about her job at some food packaging company near Sacramento. She seemed to really like me. And after about a halffhour or three hours (this is where things got foggy), there began a more physical side to the conversation. She would touch my shoulder and laugh. I would move the hair out of her face. I forgot I was on a mission. I forgot I was not on a date.

But the weird part, as she was moving in for the kiss as a natural progression to the events, something clicked. I realized this was a man, or as my Thai friend verbally conjugates, “Lady Boy.” Even weirder, the realization did not cause me pause. Not because I was attracted at that point, but because I wanted to see what it was like. Getting my head around the gender-bending gay subset was difficult. I could not understand why men dress like Paris Hilton, and others find attraction there.

The kiss was a kiss. Nothing I’m proud of, but nothing I’m ashamed of either. It wasn’t a tongue wrestling match, but it wasn’t a tight-lipped “Everybody Loves Raymond” goodnight kiss either. It was somewhere in between. And, it honestly wasn’t bad. She kissed like all the other girls I knew, but that’s the only frame of reference I could rely upon. And in the end, it was merely a kiss, but only after I neatly compartmentalized the event in my head. Because, even early in the month, as a straight man in gay disguise, I could understand my attraction to the cross-dressers, transsexuals and general assortment of gender benders. It was what I knew. Blonde hair, long legs, great “tits.” Those attributes navigated me back to the hetero highway. Back to Maxim.

There was a moment. I call it the "eye pause." It’s that split second that is as real in life as it is in cinema. The moment when two people gaze at each other just before a star-crossed kiss. Whether the people are married to other people, or in this case a straight guy and a gender bender, it always plays the same. It’s the reflective stare before a life-changing sexual event. Sometimes that pause breaks the moment, but in this case, it charged it. Good conscience did not take over and lines of sexuality began to melt. It was my moment to stop, look and listen. I did, and I crossed the road.

Arkansas saved me from anything else, whether it was by jealousy or friendship. He did for me what I did for him.

I think I've had enough.