I feel warm and look around, as if I’m afraid these wimmin can read my mind. I’d catch hell for sure if they knew I was thinking about that. Radical lesbian feminists aren’t supposed to think about sex, at least not that way. We don’t objectify women. Thinking about having sex with a woman I don’t know, not respecting her whole being, her mind, that would definitely be viewed as sexist male behavior. And anything that even seems slightly related to male behavior is bad, bad, bad.
Funny, when I look at her, men are the last thing on my mind.
“So how long have you been out?”
I’m still shaking a little. I told her it’s because I’m cold, and that’s safe because it’s freezing out, but it’s warm inside the diner, almost too warm, and I can feel a trickle of sweat working its way down my back. I’m shaking because I don’t know what to say and I can’t believe I’m sitting here across from her. I guess she must have noticed I was staring at her most of the meeting. She did a good job of not letting on, but she was waiting for me when I came out of the community centre and asked if I wanted to go have coffee. Me. Out of all the women in the room who are so much more mature and certainly know more about politics and the movement and everything, she wanted to have coffee with me. So I’m nervous because I don’t want to blow this, make a mistake, sound too young and dumb and boring.
Truth is, I’m not sure if I am out. I wear all the buttons on my knapsack, like “Lesbians are everywhere” and “A womyn needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle” but the truth is, I haven’t had much experience. I spent a whole year of high school sneaking off to the first-floor girl’s bathroom during study hall to be felt up by one of my high school friends who confessed to me once while she had her fingers in my underpants that she’d always wanted to be a boy. That and a few nights in university when a dorm mate stayed over late and we laid on the bed and start kissing and touching each other, while she kept telling me over and over that she wasn’t a lesbian. She wasn’t much of a kisser either, kind of limp and lazy and disinterested, and, truthfully, I had preferred my high school experiences. At least that had been exciting, especially knowing there was always a chance of being caught. But something told me me I shouldn’t tell her that.
“A while. You?”
She leans back and stretches her arms out along both sides of the fake red leather seat. Cocks her head to the side, looks at me and smiles. A little sheepishly. She has blue, blue eyes and tiny streaks of gray in her short brown hair. I watch the smile lines around her mouth, trace her lips with my eyes. She starts to laugh.
“Honey, I think I was out before you were born.” Then she looks at me, real serious. Like she’s waiting for me to react.
Honey. She called me Honey. Like a man would. I wish I could think of something indignant to say, something that shows my awareness of how language oppresses us. How it objectifies me, makes me a sex object.
But the truth is, I like it. I really like it. A tiny bubble of desire rises in my stomach. I wonder what it would feel like to sit close to her when she called me that. To lie back inside the “L” of her arm that’s thrown over the seat. A shiver of heat courses through me. I try to ignore it. We talk some more, or she talks, mostly about this book she’s thinking of writing and how she’s come to the group because some friend of hers thinks she should. Because, as she says, the world is changing. And I listen and think of her arms and her lips and being called Honey. And when she walks me to my subway stop later that night, she leans over and kisses me quick on the forehead without even asking if it’s okay and while I wait for the world to stop spinning, I watch her walk, no, hop, dance, bop away, light snow shimmering around her like tiny disco mirrors under the bright street light.
The following Tuesday, I get to the community centre early so I can rearrange the chairs so she can sit beside me when she gets there. If she comes. I’m hoping. Finally, she does and I smile and she smiles back, but it’s a little smile, like I’m just a friendly stranger, like we didn’t talk for three hours and drink four coffees each and finally order big messy pieces of coconut cream pie because the waitress kept giving us dirty looks. Like she hadn’t called me Honey. Or talk about how long she’d been out and how many women she’d dated and even lived with and how it had seemed like a lot, but I didn’t say anything because it felt like I was judging her. Besides, she’s almost twice my age, so she’s had time to do all that. She didn’t sit beside me but right across from me, and from time to time through the meeting, she would look over to see if I was looking at her.
That was even better.
The night’s topic for discussion was gender constructions. About how thanks to feminism lesbians have started understanding their oppression and how they oppressed each other by playing roles. How now that we know better, they don’t have to act like straight heterosexual couples anymore, don’t have to ape the patriarchy, like one of the wimmin said, to pair off in couples where one would be more feminine and one would be more like a man. Butch and femme they called it. Now that we are so much more aware. Free to be what we want to be. There’s no need to do that anymore.
She was waiting for me, head down, looking at her desert boots. She looked up when I came out, and smiled a small awkward smile. “Coffee?” she asked and I nodded and we started walking toward the diner we had gone to the previous week. After a block or so, she slipped her hand around my arm.
“It’s slippery here,” she said very matter of factly. “I don’t want you to fall.”
After we ordered, I pulled my knapsack off the floor and pushed it along the length of the bench seat. She watched me intently.
“I keep meaning to ask you what’s in the bag?”
I really don’t want to tell her my secret but I can’t outright lie.
“It’s my clothes.”
She waits for more details.
“My work clothes. I had a meeting today so I had to dress up in a skirt and heels. I change in the subway bathroom and wash off my makeup and perfume before I get to the meeting. I know it isn’t really that honest, but I can’t walk into the publishing company looking like this.” I motion down at my jeans and turtleneck and navy wool pea coat.
She leans back and traces her finger along the metal edge of the table. I’m worried I’ve offended her because I wear stuff like that to work. I put my hands on the table to stop them from shaking. She still has that effect on me.
Finally, she looks at me and says, “I’d really like to see you in those clothes.”
I smile. Nod a little nervously. I think she’s making a joke, but she’s looking at me intensely, like she’s waiting for more of a response. I keep smiling, but she’s making me nervous. She leans in closer. Slides her hands over mine. Whispers in a low voice that’s almost a growl.
“I mean it. I really would like to see you dressed like that.”
Within minutes, she’s paid for both coffees, which probably isn’t very feminist, and is sitting beside me on the subway, solid and warm, just as I had expected, but silent as we rock and sway our way to my apartment.
❤
I’m almost afraid to come out of the bedroom. I didn’t change back into my work clothes; I wanted to put on something fresh and clean. I’m wearing a gray houndstooth straight skirt, with a side slit to make it easier to walk in, my favorite deep rose silk blouse with tons of little buttons that presses tight to my breasts; sheer stock-ings—the good ones that cost a lot so I don’t wear them everyday— and a pair of black patent leather heels. I lean closer to the mirror, unbutton one more button. Almost instinctively I think I know what she wants from this. I spray on a little bit of “Bluegrass” perfume, touch a tiny bit of Revlon’s “Wine with Everything” to my lips. I look like I do when I have to go into the office to drop off reports or pick up more manuscripts. No, better than that. But I look so different from what she’s used to seeing. I steady myself on the heels; take short steps so I don’t trip out of nervousness.
The room is dark. I had lit a co
uple of candles before I went to change, for effect and to make her not notice how tiny my little apartment is, that the furniture is secondhand at best, some of it found on the street on trash day. I want everything to look as good as it can right now. Including me. She sits up straight and pulls herself to the edge of the couch as I walk through the archway. She doesn’t say a word. But there’s nothing shy about the way she’s looking at me, starting at my face, slowly moving her eyes over my shirt, down over the round swell of my breasts inside a lacy demicup bra that pushes them upward and out. Past the curves of my hips under the skirt, down, down to the slit that reveals my legs, the heels that make my legs look shapelier. She still doesn’t say a word, but her eyes grow wider and softer and she closes them for a moment. Looks away, then looks back at me. And before I can say a word, she’s next to me, she pushes me backward until I feel the wall behind me. She lifts my arms above my head, anchors them back with her hands, so I can’t push her away. She kisses me, my neck, my shoulders, her lips wetting the soft silk of my blouse, whispering yes, yes, yes. She stops. Looks at me. Whispers again.
“This is what I wanted. I knew it when I first saw you. The way you looked at me. Like you knew what you were looking at. No woman’s looked at me that way in so long. I didn’t think they made ’em like you anymore.”
She grasps my shoulders with her hands, kisses me again, this time on the mouth, her tongue exploring mine, needy and wanting. She slides her hand lightly over my breasts, and my nipples harden instantly. I feel like I’m falling, but she’s holding me too tight. Her breathing changes. She moves her lips in a trail down my neck. With one hand she twists open a few of the buttons, her mouth grazes the edge of my bra, she licks a line down between my breasts. My legs buckle. I can feel the wetness seeping into my panties and I try to press my legs together to stop it. But before I can, she pries my legs apart with her knee, presses tight against me, arches her back, starts to grind against me. Her hands are everywhere.
I can feel her breath, and I hear sighs and moans and I can’t tell if they’re hers or mine. There’s an ache between my legs, the only time I felt anything like this was in the girl’s bathroom during my study hall escapes. And never this strong. I think the word. Cunt. Yes, inside my cunt, I’m hurting for her. I want to feel . . . something. She’s whispering my name; her hands slide over my hips, pushing me higher. I’m not sure if I’m still standing on my own, or if she’s holding me up against the wall with her body. Her hand is between my legs now, stroking me through my panty hose, through my underpants. I push down, to feel her closer. She stops. Smiles. “That,” she whispers, “is what I liked about the old days. Stockings are easier.” And she laughs and I’m not sure I get it, but I don’t care, I just want to keep feeling like this. Finally, she reaches down, lifts me—she’s stronger than she looks—my legs slung over her arm so we look like some stupid honeymoon scene. She whispers, “You got a bed in this place?”
She spreads me out on the bed, turns on the small light on the night table. I look panicked. She whispers, “I just want to see you.” She takes off the flannel shirt she’s wearing over her T-shirt and arranges it on the lamp, diffusing the light. Smiles. Then she lies down beside me on the bed, finishes unbuttoning my blouse. Grimaces at the number of buttons. Slides her hands over my breasts and reaches behind to unhook my bra. My breasts tingle in the air. With one hand, she grasps one nipple, hard, takes the other one in her mouth, and bites me, just a little. My hips buck up off the bed. She smiles down at me, reaches behind me. In seconds, my skirt is off, the panty hose gone. I feel exposed. Vulnerable. For a second, I think about all I’ve read about lesbian sex, about sharing and equality and no one being in charge, but she is, she is leading this, doing the doing and I’m ready to explode. This is what was missing, I can’t explain it, I have no words for it, but this is it. She is it.
She rolls on top of me, slides her thigh further between my legs, grips my hips, and presses hard against my wetness. Her body is amazingly strong. I feel like I’m swimming in the heat beneath her. Then she rises up and starts to slide her thigh against my wetness faster and faster and I know I’m crying out, moans and sighs and noises I’ve never made before. She’s watching me lose myself in this, she must know it’s my first time really, it’s pride I see, pride that she can make me feel the things I’m feeling.
She slows for a moment, rolls onto her side beside me, strokes the lips of my cunt with her fingers. I want to scream. I keep rising up off the bed, as if I’m trying to trap her fingers inside me.
She whispers. “Tell me what you want.”
I can barely hear her. I can barely think.
“Tell me,” she says. A little firmer. “Tell me if you want my fingers inside you. Tell me if you want my mouth.”
She stops. Hesitates. She’s doing it on purpose.
“Tell me you want me to fuck you. Tell me you want me to make you mine.”
I nod. Yes, yes, yes. Yes to it all, I want her and whatever she wants to do to me. Yes.
“No.” She stops. Her fingers stop moving. “Say it. Say what you want.”
I reach up to her, touch her lips. I want her to kiss me. I don’t want it to stop. I pull her toward me. She resists. Smiles just slightly, but it’s a hard smile. Bare with lust.
“Tell me,” she says again, this time arching up away from me.
So I do. I do. I scream out for her to take me, to fuck me, to eat me and suck me. I beg her to put her fingers inside me. Beg her to fuck me hard, harder, harder and she does and I scream because I’ve never had this before and it hurts just a little, but it’s a sweet pain and I want more. I feel so open, I want to take her whole hand inside me, I want to wrap my legs around her, pull her inside, and I tell her all these things, and that I am hers and hers alone. And I am panting and screaming and crying and I come and I come and I’ve never done that before either really, so I scream and speak words I couldn’t imagine saying to anyone.
When it’s over, her fingers are still inside me. She pulls them out slowly, so not to hurt me and I feel a gush. The wetness streams out of me. Her hand is full of wet creamy fluid. I never knew there would be so much. I look at her hand and feel embarrassed. I whisper, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
She wipes her hands on the already wet sheets and puts her finger to my lips. It smells like me. She lays her head down on the pillow, pulls me close inside her arms.
“Listen . . . don’t ever apologize for that. For being that wet. It’s beautiful. It’s a gift. A gift to me. To whomever you’re making love with. It means what they’re doing is giving you pleasure. And a woman like you is going to make a lot of butches want to do just that.”
I’m still a little groggy. “A lot of what?” I ask. I’ve heard the word she said. I can’t remember where.
“Nothing,” she whispers. “You’re tired. Rest. I think you earned it.” There’s something so caring and gentle about her voice now, so different from the way she spoke to me when we were making love. Protective. That’s what it is. And it works on me because I fall sound asleep beside her.
❤
Later, much later, it must have been the middle of the night, she woke me to tell me she had to go home and get dressed for work.
After I locked the apartment door, I fell back to sleep right away. When I woke up in the morning, I realized I had nodded off before I had a chance to do anything back to her. But she seemed perfectly okay with that.
Between that Tuesday and the next, she came over every night. She didn’t call, she just appeared at the door, as if she knew I’d be there and let her in. Knowing she was coming, I started dressing up for her. During the day, I’d sneak away from work to buy something new, a long silky nightshirt, a lacy teddy and finally, a pair of stockings with a real garter belt that stung my thighs, but made me get wet whenever I put it on, just thinking about where her hands would go. That was on Friday and because she didn’t have to work the next day, she stayed all night. In the morning, I
made us coffee, real coffee with real cream, and we laid in bed and finally, I got the courage to offer to make love to her. I reached over to touch her breasts under the T-shirt she always wore in bed.
But she stopped me.
“No,” she said. “That’s not necessary.”
I was confused. I didn’t want to do all the taking. I told her that.
“Oh honey, you aren’t. You have no idea what you’re giving back to me.”
And I left it at that because I didn’t want anything to change.
The following Tuesday, I couldn’t bear to put on my sloppy fatigues, my dumpy T-shirt. I couldn’t look like that in front of her now, so instead I keep my work clothes on. Good dress pants that hugged my hips and legs in all the right places. A baby blue button-down sweater opened at the neck. And just a touch of lip-gloss. The other women notice it too, stare a little. I don’t let on. But she doesn’t look at me at all during the meeting. I keep looking her way, trying to get her attention. But she sits there like a stone. Tonight we talk about equality in relationships. Monogamy is bad. No one has any claims on a lover. No one can belong to anyone. And why chastity is an excellent option, how it makes it possible to have deep relationships on other levels.
Wild Nights Page 4