ANCHOR AND KITE
The first time I went to a sex toy store—the only feminist sex toy store in Boston—it was with my third girlfriend, Cody. I bought my first harness and an amazing dildo that I’m devastated to admit that I threw away. Look, at a certain point, that dildo just had too much history. But it was silicone (dishwasher safe! Know your materials!) and fully bendable and sparkly green and EFFECTIVE.
Jo had finally dumped my ass for cheating, and, after a few months of singledom, I had been set up on a blind date with Cody by someone at ImprovBoston. For our first date, we went to a jazz restaurant I’ve actually performed at since, during my brief career as a jazz comedian. Conversation was stilted, as we had pretty much nothing in common, but she was cute and she thought I was cute and we started dating anyway. Like truly dating. It wasn’t “I live in community with you and we are going to see each other all the time.” Instead, we both had time‑consuming jobs and activities outside of work, and made actual plans and set aside time to see each other.
While we were at the sex toy shop, I found a “cast your own dildo” kit, which was of course very intriguing to me. If you have a penis to cast a dildo from, I wondered, why would you not just use that actual penis? I was so curious that I asked the person at the counter what type of customer most frequently purchased the kit. Their answer was military folks, for use when a partner is deployed or away, which is an interesting fact/answer, and as I continued chattering away with the counter person about this and more, Cody suddenly piped up, saying, “I thought they meant ‘casting a dildo’ like in a play.”
Look, I’d had an intense and fraught relationship with Jo, followed by/concurrent with a treacherous and exciting relationship with Claudia, but both matches had worked. This was a real moment of clarity: my first experience realizing, Oh, not every queer woman will be a great match for me. I mean, WHAT?! I couldn’t imagine what Cody had thought was in that box. A tiny sign‑in sheet? An itsy‑bitsy curtain that the dildo steps out from behind onto a dildo‑sized stage? I hadn’t yet felt the need to side‑ eye a girlfriend. Now I did.
And this was helpful. I had to learn that sometimes dating isn’t all “how are we going to die together” or “I’m a terrible person for sleeping with you since I already have a girlfriend and also I might lose my job and housing but this connection is irresistible” or “you’re the first lesbian who’s ever made a pass at me and we have the same best friend and my girlfriend’s arriving tomorrow but I like you and this will be an amazing story.” Sometimes it’s this: “It’s very helpful information that you thought this was essentially a puppet‑show dildo set, and I didn’t know that would be a falling‑in‑love deal breaker for me. But now I do.”
My relationship with Cody led me to create a whole framework for relationships, my Anchor and Kite analogy. Operating outside a system where gender roles are dictated by patriarchy, I wanted some sort of guide for determining who to date. So I came up with Anchor and Kite—and I talked about it so frequently in my twenties that one of my exes got a giant anchor and kite tattooed on their arm as a surprise for me when they went home for Christmas. I found this out at an inopportune time: when I picked them up at the airport to break up with them, my bags in the back seat, since I’d moved out of our shared apartment over the holidays.
Ill‑timed tattoos aside, the theory was this: One person, the anchor, holds down the fort, emotionally speaking. They are usually more responsible, rooted in reality, and nurturing. The other person is the kite. They lift the couple up, focus on fulfilling dreams. They are shinier, less resolved, and more open. They fly on the wind. I believed role switching was possible, but that everyone had a natural tendency.
Some of this still makes a lot of sense to me—I respect little Cammy for trying to describe complementarity. But years of staring out various windows listening to the song “Wig in a Box” from Hedwig and the Angry Inch (one of my favorite staring‑out‑the‑ window songs) while deep in thought have also taught me… I have trouble trusting people. Not like I don’t trust people because I think everyone is a secret jewel thief waiting for Sandra Bullock to get out of prison so we can all hang with Rihanna and GET THOSE JEWELS. I don’t trust people to like me.
I’m unsure if it was growing up around so much focus on saintly purity or achievement in academics and extracurriculars or if it’s just because my family was loud and I didn’t always get heard or if it is presenting as masculine of center and internalizing our culture’s great discomfort with GASP! mannish women (what is mannish? And what are women?) or maybe it’s that I had a thing wrong with my face (crossed eyes) and I always felt ashamed of that or maybe it’s latent eating disorder bulls**t. I DON’T KNOW WHAT THE F*** IT IS. Probably all of that. What I do know is that I basically always feel at some deep, deep level that I am a burden and my emotions are a burden and everyone would prefer that I joke from a distance than be a nearby soft slug with feelings. In fact, it’s almost as if I contrived an entire career wherein I charge people to listen to me talk about my feelings as an insurance policy that they are not burdened by my totally normative human needs like companionship.
When I’d unfurl my Anchor and Kite theory, I’d always follow with “I’m a kite.” I thought this was because I was interesting and hard to nail down and full of potential. I thought shininess would get me adoration and that adoration would feel like intimacy without risk. Comedy made me feel shiny.
Excerpted from Save Yourself by Cameron Esposito. Copyright © 2020 by Cameron Esposito. Reprinted with permission of Grand Central Publishing. All rights reserved.
Save Yourself is available from Amazon and Bookshop.