Salami Sandwiches

I think of my first love when I make salami sandwiches.

Last April, I deemed my fridge a nutrient desert despite a side door of condiments, provolone cheese, and salami. I attempted to recall when I bought this specific pack of deli meat- it appeared expired and dried out at the edges. As my stomach growled, I contemplated spending $20 on lunch after my bank account was robbed by yet another student loan payment. A sandwich would have to do. 

The construction of a slightly expired sandwich doesn’t normally make me sentimental, however, in the days following my brain’s full development at age 25, I possessed a newfound sense of emotional being (as an already emotional person, this was a fucking disappointment). Mayonnaise spread across a stale slice of whole wheat bread when the thought of her hit me for the first time in five years. The image of her strawberry blonde hair and large round glasses stopped me with a jarring realization. 

I’ve been buying salami and provolone cheese with every grocery trip since I began living on my own. Never had I reflected on why I was drawn to this assortment or how it became a staple in my diet. I never liked salami, truly, but I was comforted by the way it rotted at the back of my fridge. How long had I been living with her braided into my subconscious?

My mind raced for an explanation, the meaning, the connection between my affinity for tasteless sandwiches and the girl I hadn’t spoken to since my 20th birthday. 

Then, between slices of cheese, it made sense. She was my first love. The girl who was titled my high school best friend was my first taste of love. A sadness followed the thought. 

Had I missed the occurrence of my first love? How could something so monumental, a milestone in a person’s life, be so easily overlooked? 

How many queer women experienced their first love without ever knowing it?

We were sixteen, codependent, and unaware of the romantic nature of our relationship. We never kissed or confessed the butterflies that filled our bellies when we held hands that one time. At sixteen, my queer identity wasn’t in the picture, it wasn’t even a thought. Sure, I had an affectionate relationship with each passing “best friend”, but that was normal in girlhood, wasn’t it? And sure, I often found myself looking at women with adoration of their attractiveness- a sentiment that never paralleled on to men. But no one told me what being queer was. I’m sure my mother told me I could love whoever I wanted when I grew up, but the option of a woman wasn’t outwardly mentioned. I didn’t know loving my friend was something I could do.

My high school best friend, let’s call her Zoe, would make me salami sandwiches after school. I would go to her apartment after geometry class, sit at her dining table, and listen to her talk from the kitchen until a plate was placed in front of me. She’d sit to my right with a duplicated meal. 

We’d take our first bites in unison (an unspoken rule between us) then continue talking about whatever it is that high schoolers talk about. 

I had boyfriends in high school, but my interest in them were shallow puddles in comparison to Zoe’s ocean. They didn’t have the same humor Zoe and I had. They lacked manners. They had no clue how to talk to me like a person and never took the time to get to know me. They were rough in places where Zoe was soft. Their scents were musky while Zoe’s was warm vanilla. Kissing them was always too wet, too harsh, and deficient in the sparkling romance I told myself would eventually develop if I only put more effort into liking them. Where my high school counterparts found excitement in the prospect of boys, I found nauseating anxiety. Guilt settled at the pit of my stomach when I lost my virginity to my first boyfriend; not due to the act, but the weighing knowledge that something was different about me.  

With her, with Zoe, I felt no anxiety, no guilt, no signs of every cell in my body rejecting her like a bad piercing. Around her, I was my unfiltered self and she was hers. We lived as shameless teen girls coming into their confidence. We’d see each other throughout the school day, between class periods before the bell rang, and when the day ended. We’d meet up on the weekends and walk every inch of Manhattan, only resting to take photos of one another. She’d pose and I’d adjust her hands, and her dress, untuck the hair from behind her ear, then snap a photo that lives on her Instagram to this day. Like any artist, I was an admirer on the opposite end of the lens. The photos we took were orchestrated for social media, but in truth, were moments we found each other so beautiful it needed to be captured.

Each bite of the salami sandwich I eat at age 25 pieces together the image of my stolen adolescence. In a cocktail of mixed feelings, anger is most potent. How could I have been so ignorant of my feelings? Did every young girl think about their best friend every day? Did they count down the minutes until they would see them next? Had they laid beside their own Zoe and felt the warmth of her arm pressed against theirs? 

One day, Zoe invited me to the park. Though I thought the location childish for sixteen years old, I went to meet her. We sat on the bench, ate treats, and talked. As the sun set, she suggested we partake in our favorite pastime: walking through a wealthy neighborhood and fabricating our lives as children of rich homeowners. I agreed to the roleplay that was specifically our own. 

At the park’s entrance, Zoe held out her hand. This exchange was less than ten seconds, but to me, it felt like an eternity. I considered my friend’s open palm, my heart panicking for the first time. What an odd thing for her to suggest, I thought. To hold my hand? What was she thinking? Two women walking through 2016 New York City hand in hand? 

It wasn’t the prospect of us holding hands that sent my brain into a riot, but rather, what would happen to me if I took her hand? Which of my unknown secrets would become untethered when we interlaced our fingers?

I gawked at her pale pink skin. Her hands were small, delicate even. I had never intimately touched them before, but I could tell they were meant to be held with care. My hand itched to learn the feeling of her -  how her thin fingers would slot perfectly into the large gaps between my own. 

Her hand was mine to obtain- an act never offered to me up to that point. Curiosity overpowered my fear. I slid my fingers between hers, my thumb resting atop her thumb. 

I’d like to be a passionate romantic and say holding her hand was electricity through my veins, but it was something different. It was a mixture of low humming and the gluttonous relief of scratching a bug bite.

 If Zoe felt the same reprieve, she did not let it show. I wish she would have shown it, even for just a minute.

So I played it cool, pushing the whispers of protest to the back of my head. We walked towards the neighborhood of Tudor-style mansions as I tried my hardest to not inspect where our bodies connected. 

A teenage girl, unaware of the pivotal moment she finds herself in, can only react in fear when the question of why holding a girl’s hand mirrors a sugar high. I had overeaten the forbidden sweets too quickly and now I was sick. 

Panic knocked on the door, shame kicked it in, and fear forced me to drop Zoe’s hand. I gave a faint smile and then looked forward. Zoe didn’t say anything. It wasn’t like her to address my change in mood.  

That school year, two other classmates would hold their hands out to me and I’d settle into them hungrily like I had never been fed.

Though Zoe and I are no longer on speaking terms, I wonder if in her recollection of our time together, she recalls the innocence of our intimacy. Did she feel the same way I did?

Had we watched our first love pass us by like so many sapphics before us?