I met Tiff @ a the TAPPS Spring Speech Competition in Austin, TX during my senior year of high school. I was 18. I’d rocked the fucking casbah at both the district and regional ASCI meets earlier that year and was tearing shit up at this huge competition. I remember being so excited b/c I’d come up from Houston with only 3 other students from school and I got to stay @ this hotel for the weekend. The meet was a 2-day event and everyone at the meet looked the same as each other — all the guys were rocking Structure and Pac Sun, all the girls rocked Forever 21; I stood out like a sore thumb, and I was secretly just loving being the quiet, quirky-yet-edgy, smooth operator (Did I just link to 4 pics of myself? YES! I! DID!) The only other person who stood out from the crowd was this sweet-faced, pixie-ish goth-punk cutie (who I later learned to recognize as a *ugh* Riot Grrrl) from this all-girls school in College Station. “Hey,” she said, smiling me up. She was dressed in all black gear, with a spiky choker and combat boots, and she had the bluest eyes I’d ever seen. “I liked your peice. Was that Poe?” “No. Millay,” I replied, smiling back. “Thanks, I liked yours too.” When everyone else had gone up and performed excerpts from the Bible? she’d gone up and performed a monologue about the archaic tribal torture rituals of vaginal mulitation. She had this little tattoo on her wrist and when I asked her what it meant, she just giggled and said it meant that she was twice as likely to fall in love. God bless my Christian little mind b/c I had no idea what that meant, but I was majorly smitten. We hit it off immediately and spent the next 2 days clinging to each other in the sea of conformity around us (yeah, we thought we were SO rebellious b/c we both had seen RENT), talking about how we were both heading to New York once we could get out of Texas, griping about how lame the private school thing was, and sneaking some kissin’ here and there around the campus. When it was all over, we exchanged info, promised to write back and forth, and that was that.
Skip forward to Septmeber of 1998. A lot had happened. High school was over, my parents had nearly split up, I’d gotten accepted into this performing arts school and moved to New York City, and I was living alone in some apartment way out in the suburban world of Westchester: New Rochelle, NY. My phone rang one night and guess who it was — Tiff! She’d somehow tracked me down and as it turned out, she was in Westchester too, going to a liberal arts college in Bronxville called Sarah Lawrence, where she was majoring in women’s studies. Suprise suprise. She said she LOVED it there and invited me over for a big party on campus that weekend. I couldn’t wait! I was SO excited! I’d come to New York nearly a month before school was supposed to start but I hadn’t really gotten the hang of this new life of mine yet, I mostly just sat in my apartment trying to think of things to do to keep myself from freaking out. Meeting up with Tiff was gonna be awesome, it would be my first solo-venture out into the city, and I was hoping to get my NY Bachelor existance off to a good start with some good-good lovin’ that weekend. So on Friday night, I metup with her and some of her college friends (all girls) in the East Village @ the Life Cafe and damn, what a great time. It was just one of those incrdible autumn nights in New York, kind of rainy and cool, and it would totally set a tone for how I gauged every other night of my life in the city. Tiff looked AMAZING, she’d cut her hair really short and added blue chunks in it that really brought out her eyes. I actually picked her up when I saw her on St. Mark’s Place, and whirled her around. Her friends were incredible, there were like, 6 of them tagging along. We all laughed and joked all night about so many things, most of which I don’t really remember anymore. It was those girls, actually, who nicknamed me Spriteboy, it was b/c they said I reminded them of “Puck” from A Midsummernight’s Dream. Heh. So, I headed back up to Bronxville with them after dinner and we went to the party on campus. I had no idea what I was in for. I wasn’t a registered student so they had to sneak me in really quick through a window of this big bldg where the party was at — and DAMNED if my jaw didn’t drop when I got my first glimpse of a real-life, college-y, lesbian party.
There were girls making out EVERYWHERE. Kissing and groping and OH MY GOD! I had never seen anything like this before… it was freakin’ jarring. I hardly saw any guys, and most of the ones I did were making out with each other and then with girls too. People were just going at it everywhere I looked, some of them would be dancing on the mainfloor and then just start GOING AT IT. And so many drugs. I was scandalized! SCANDALIZED! And kinda scurred. I ran through the girl-orgy, looking for Tiff, and found her sandwiched and tongue-tied between a tall, leggy waifish redhead and one of her other “friends” from earlier that night. WHA?! 
That’s when it dawned on me that my secret expectations for the weekend were SO not gonna be happening. But you know what? I ended up having an AMAZING time. The party was a lot more fun once I loosened up and started dancing, and the next day? we had a big breakfast in the Dining Hall and the girls showed me all over the gorgeous, cottage-like dorms and campus where I met a TON of interesting ppl (most of whom all thought I was a butch little dyke at first but that’s ok). The weekend was truly a beautiful one and I will always cherish it. I got to see Tiff, spent my very first NYC evening with new and exciting friends, went to my very first official campus party, and had my very first glimpse at the wild and fun-loving world of post-feminist bisexuality.
I’m not sure what exactly has made me recall any of this just now. Maybe it was the Indigo Girls concert in Central Park last week, perhaps it had something to do with the 2xist party we hosted @ Hudson last night, or maybe it was b/c of the double back to back reruns of Queer Eye and Boy Meets Boy the other night. Whatever the case may be, I’m just glad I got to experience it.
* I never did hear from Tiff again after that weekend, though. Sometimes I wonder what she’s up to these days, she’d probably have graduated by now. I’m sure that wherever she is, she’s happy and laughing and probably making out with a girl.
Shit. I let go of her (shit, that bitch is from the Bronx — I’m lucky she didn’t bodyslam my ass and beat me like I stole something). But it was too late now. I’d already made a fool of myself and was not gonna make it worse by vomiting up some awkward apology that would only embarass myself and her even more. Hell no, I was gonna play this shit off like a damn fool.
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