Page 32 of My Own Kind of Person

“The oldest you’ll ever be?”

“Yeah.”

“Hopefully not.”

At the elementary school we hop over the chain-link fence to the playground.

I sit on a swing and kick off. “What do you think you need to work on about yourself?”

She gets on a swing and slowly spins in one direction, twisting the chains. “You wanna know what’s wrong with me?” she says in a tough guy voice.

“What is wrong with you?” I shout as I swing.

Instead of lifting her feet and spinning quickly, she slowly unspools herself. “You know in Alice in Wonderland when she drinks the potion that makes her small?”

I let myself slow down. “Yeah.”

“I do that when I’m around other people.”

I would have said the opposite about her. “Why?”

“So I’m not too much for people. So they like me.” She shrugs. “I like to be liked!”

“I love to be liked.”

“Then you must really love being loved.”

“Nah, that’s scary.” I drag my feet so I come to a stop. “That was supposed to be a joke, but…”

“Oops.”

She follows as I leave the swings and duck under the slide.

“This is the sandbox where the girl I joke about in my stand-up beat me up.” I gesture. “Memories!”

“I can’t believe she kicked you in the balls.”

“In real life she only knocked me down.” I move sand aside with my foot like I’m uncovering the scene of a crime. “I heard she had a crush on me and I said I had a crush on her too, so we met at the sandbox during recess and everyone watched us kiss. Then she pushed me down and never spoke to me again. Like a year later she came out as a lesbian.”

Christy turns. “Wait. Lauren?”

“Yes?”

She almost jumps with excitement. “She was my first girl kiss!”

“No.”

“We partied together in middle school.”

“Your first girl kiss was my first girl kiss!”

She laughs.

I put a finger up. “Who was your first boy kiss? I want to prepare myself.”

“You don’t want to kiss him.” She makes a laughing sound. “Although it would make so much sense if the first nice guy I ever dated turned out to be gay.”

I follow her to the end of the sandbox. “Hold on. What’s your sexuality?”