134. Mom, Can I go to an Orgy?

So, I’m sick. I’ve got this stupid sinus thing going on, which means I can’t breath through my nose, which has the lovely side-effect of making it impossible for me to sleep for more than 4 hours (the length of time any given drugs I take will last). So I’m up right now, waiting for my drugs (Advil Cold and Sinus) to kick in to I can go back to bed. Thought I’d make that time productive and tell you all a story.

Besides, I want to get my last post off of the top of my page because according to Statcounter someone from Ottawa read that one, and while it is entirely possible that that person could be a stranger, I’m kind of afraid that it is someone I know. I’m not at all sure who, but well… it scares me.

So, here’s the background to the story. At the GCN Conference (Gay Christian Network Conference for those who are still catching up) I went out with a group of friends for a "bloggers dinner, which was awesome, and over dinner I told this story and was informed I needed to blog it. It has very little to do with the regular theme of my blog, but it’s funny so here you go.

When I was 13 years old and lived in Winnipeg my mom signed me up to join the YMHA. ‘Don’t you mean the YMCA?’ you ask. Well, no… I mean the YMHA, the Young Men’s Hebrew Association. ‘Oh, I didn’t know you were Jewish,’ you say. Well, I’m not. My mom got a job there and discovered it was a much cleaner, nicer facility than the YMCA and so that’s where I went. I had already spent most of life being the only black person at any given place (especially in Winnipeg… that that city is so white it can hurt your eyes), and now I had the experience of being the only Gentile. It was rather fascinating – I’ll get to the story in a minute. It was the first place I ever encountered anti-Semitism… in a very strange way. A group of girls in the dance class I took there cornered me one day after class to ask me why Christians hated Jews, something I had never heard of (sparked an interesting conversation the next day at my private Christian school – “Do we hate Jews? They said we hate them, but I didn’t know that…”). It was actually a kind of frightening experience. They literally surrounded me and while they weren’t yelling, their voices were quite forceful as they asked me why Christians thought various specific anti-Semitic ideas that I had honestly never heard before that moment. In retrospect, it was probably very therapeutic for those girls to be in the majority for once, although I ‘m not sure I helped heal any cultural wounds with my incredibly intelligent answers of “What? …who thinks that? …why would anyone say that? …that doesn’t make any sense... I don’t know… I have no idea… “

Anyway, back to my story. There was a girl in that dance class named Meeka. Meeka was… well, she was unusual to say the least. She was loud and forceful. You couldn't help but notice her wherever she went. And she just said whatever came into her mind. I think she might have been where I learned the world ‘lesbian’ (before her, I lived in fear of being a ‘homosexual’, not a lesbian). I have a very clear memory of her telling us one time in the locker room that her life’s ambition was to 'grow up and be a lesbian', following which she looked at me (or at my chest specifically) and said “Nice tits.” Most of us changed in the bathroom stalls after that.

One day, after dance class Meeka approached me in the locker room to ask me the following question. “Hey, I’m having an orgy in a couple of weeks. Do you want to come?”

Now to explain my response, I need to go back and explain a little more of my experience at the YMHA. Being the only Gentile there meant that I was constantly encountering things I didn’t know or understand. And when I first began going there I was like a sponge, always asking questions, but after a while I began to feel like an idiot. It felt like every few minutes someone said something I didn’t understand or had never heard of before, and so I stopped asking. Most things would get explained or elaborated on eventually. So, when Meeka asked me to go to an orgy (a word I had never heard of before) I assumed that ‘orgy’ was some sort of Jewish event or tradition, and so the conversation went like this:

“Hey, I’m having an orgy in a couple of weeks. Do you want to come?”

“I don’t know, I have to ask my mom.”

Meeka just stared at me for a few moments, and then backed away.

I went home and thank all that is good and holy had the forethought to look up the word ‘orgy’ in the dictionary before asking my mom and was duly shocked. Needless to say, I did not ask my mom. The next week, after dance class, Meeka asked me if I was going to attend the aforementioned orgy, and I responded with a very emphatic “No!” She was mad, which was not a good thing to be on the receiving end of because she was a tour de force, but I stood strong and refused. She stormed off. A few minutes later another girl from our dance class quietly approached me and whispered “Did you say no to Meeka?” I nodded. She took a deep breath, “Really? Good… I don’t want to go either, but I was scared to say no.” She steeled herself and walked over to Meeka, and as she did, another girl came by. “I heard you say no to Meeka. You’re not going to go?” I shook my head. She turned and looked at Meeka across the room, who was now looking very angry as she talked to the first girl. “Okay… good. I don’t want to go either.” She walked across to join the angry conversation. One by one, all the girls she had invited came and asked me if I had said no, and when I confirmed this, they all went over and told Meeka they weren’t going. Even one of the boys she had invited found me when we came out of the locker room to make sure they had heard correctly – someone had said ‘no’ to Meeka – before going over to her and declining her invite.


From what I heard, she still ended up having sex with one of the guys she had invited, but it was not the big orgy she had envisioned. She didn’t really talk to me after that. But I will point out that the other girls were nicer to me.

And that’s the story of how I ruined an orgy.