The Big Sugarbush

by Ana Good

  And not someone Dr. Antwerp would mind seeing butt naked on her operating table, either.

  Dr. Antwerp grumbled under her breath as she toted her own bags up the stairs. She wasn’t even sure she was a lesbian. She loathed that word, but not as much as she loathed the word homosexual.

  Queer did little for her, either.

  She’d spent her life cultivating a respectable professional veneer; the whole lesbian thing did little to advance that.

  The A-gay Hollywood lesbians, Ellen and Rosie, would never lie down for a major nip-tuck. Sure, they’d endure chemical peels, and Botox, but they’d never order the big-ticket items. Hell, Dr. Antwerp had bought a private island in the Caribbean on Cher’s ass-lift alone. God bless insecure straight girls.

  “Lesbians should be more looks conscious,” she grumbled to herself as she mounted the stairs.

  9. The Lesbian Thought Police

  Babe was brewing a pot of lemongrass green tea at the registration desk when the farmhouse door banged open and a winter blast slapped her full body. She shivered. A large woman, shaped suspiciously like a purple tent, tumbled toward her.

  Babe rubbed her eyes. “Betty Frump?” she asked, recognizing the woman from her photo on the editorial pages of LesFam Magazine, the monthly non-glossy magazine Betty and her partner, Alice Everwright, had founded three decades ago to further the political rights of gay families.

  Frump approached Babe, hand outstretched. The activist wore black-rimmed plastic glasses and a scowl that grade school teachers everywhere would envy. Her frizzy hair was swept back from her face, braided in thick salt-and-pepper ropes that coiled like a crown around her head. She was wearing snow-clad black canvas slippers, the type Chairman Mao used to sneak about in. Her purple caftan whooshed as she walked.

  “Sister.” Betty pumped the hell out of Babe’s hand.

  This was the first time Babe had met Betty in person, but she knew all about her from the press. Betty Frump had been fighting for lesbian rights since Stonewall, where, barely a pimply-faced tween, she’d been arrested. Betty was an icon of the feminist women of her generation; and a constant pain in the ass for the fun-loving, gender-fluid queers of today.

  “Being gay is not a lifestyle,” Frump was fond of saying. “It’s a political struggle.”

  These days not everyone agreed. These days, much to Betty’s chagrin, many lesbians just wanted to have fun. They dressed like sluts and humped like hormone-crazed weasels. They joined the PTA and did hot yoga in sparkly barrettes like life was some sort of sorority picnic. Betty blamed the whole thing on Madonna.

  That and the drug Ecstasy.

  Betty Frump and her un-merry gang of political pranksters, glumly known as the Lesbian Thought Police, had recently come under scrutiny for issuing what was now known as Frump’s Ten Commandments. The first commandment was no woman ought to penetrate another woman during sex.

  Never.

  Not ever.

  No matter what.

  Penetration was seen as violence. Phallocentric. What men did to women.

  Frump had organized a dildo reclamation program at the last national Gay Day march on Washington. Every lesbian who turned in a dildo was eligible to receive a free subscription to LesFam and a discount coupon for a family fun pack of tofurkey.

  The event raised a lot of eyebrows but only three dildos, two of which had clearly been chewed on by pets and were way past their prime, anyway.

  Babe herself was not in favor of the no-penetration commandment — Lily demanded (and enjoyed) a good bit of invasive action — still, some of Betty’s old-fashioned commandments sat right with Babe.

  Betty had the registration book in hand and was signing in before Babe could give her the ten-cent tour. Betty grunted. “Sorry about being late. This place was hell to find. To conserve greenhouse gases I took an electric Uber from the airport. Driver was a Jamaican brother. Got lost quite a few times.”

  “We own fifty acres up here. Nice and quiet, deliberately not easy to find.”

  Betty dumped the contents of her canvas co-op tote onto the registration desk. “My luggage should come later. This is all I have.” She stretched out her arms and twirled in a circle. “Frisk me?”

  “Take you at your word. What’s your addiction?”

  “Dope. Smoke it to relax.”

  “Any on you?”

  “Certainly not. I’m here to get clean. Need the Mary Jane monkey off my back.” Frump glanced back at her rounded shoulders as if something really were sitting there.

  “I the only crone here?” she asked as she repacked her canvas tote.

  “Nope. Wee Gee Judd is about your age. From Kentucky. Writes those best-selling romance novels under the pen name Foxy Hot Pants.”

  Frump frowned. “Hetero trash?”

  “I think they’re all hetero. Not much of a market for lesbian romance, it seems.”

  “Romance is a weapon of the patriarchy.”

  Babe twisted her lips. “You don’t think lesbians enjoy romance?”

  “They might, but they ought not. You read my commandments?”

  Wishing to avoid being Bible-thumped, Babe changed the subject and handed Betty a list of house rules along with the key to room number two, where Storm Waters, the war correspondent, was already ensconced. “You can smoke tobacco, but not in the house beginning in the morning. Once treatment begins you have to smoke outside.”

  “Don’t smoke poisoned commercial stuff. Causes lung cancer.” Frump grabbed her tote and headed for the stairs. “I have a room to myself?” she shouted over her shoulder when she’d gone halfway up.

  “Everyone shares. Part of treatment.”

  “Who am I bunking with?”

  “Storm Waters.”

  “The war correspondent?”

  “The same.”

  Betty bumped up the stairs, thinking, So the rumors are true. Storm Waters was a sister and big-media connected, to boot. Betty’s mind banged and buzzed with a plan to recruit the famous war correspondent for the sisterhood.

  10. Breakfast Not at Tiffany’s

  Poppy awoke disappointed to find neither Dirk nor Thumper McGraw in her bed, as she’d been dreaming, but that old goat, Babe. Babe was barking orders, something to the effect that it was time for Poppy to get her ass up and make breakfast.

  “Breakfast!” Poppy squealed. “Sod off, you old bag!”

  Babe pulled the covers off Poppy for the third time and grabbed her by a pretzel-thin ankle. She dragged her to the edge of the twin bed. “You’ll be cooking our meals. You and Wee Gee. Up and at ’em!”

  “Huh?”

  Wee Gee loomed behind Babe. “You and me, baby girl, we got food issues. That’s why we’re on kitchen duty. It’ll help us face our food issues. Me, I eat too much. You, well, I’m guessing from your looks you eat your fist every chance you get.”

  “Sod off!” Poppy repeated. She liked Wee Gee. The woman had spunk. And she was a straight shooter, but Poppy tended to loathe women her mum’s age on principle.

  “You better get your skinny English ass outa that bed, sister,” warned Wee Gee again.

  Poppy burrowed deeper into the down comforter. She hadn’t become Britain’s leading pop music diva by buckling under to old badgers. She had no intention of giving in now. Her normal time to get out of bed was … noonish. Furthermore, if and when she did get out of bed she certainly was not cooking breakfast.

  Poppy thought she’d won the covers tug-of-war until she felt a bucket of ice slide up under her pajamas. A cold cube shot across her bum.

  “Yooo!” she screamed as she leaped out of bed.

  Babe stood there grinning. Her blonde hair, which had been braided the night before, was hanging loose in a large floppy ponytail now. She was wearing a plum spandex workout suite and a triumphant smirk.

  “What the bloody hell!” barked Poppy.

  “Get dressed, dear,” said Babe.

  Wee Gee took Poppy by an elbow. “You better do what that crazy ol
d cracker says. If you don’t, you’ll end up on moose duty.”

  “Huh?”

  “Moose duty. If you don’t want to cook, you have to do another chore.”

  “Moose duty,” echoed Babe. “We keep Lil’s pet moose, Winkle, in the barn at night all this time of year because of the snow. The shit gets deep in there. Someone has to shovel it out.”

  “Me?” Poppy was sitting up in bed now, her wet PJ shirt ripped off. She pointed at her emaciated chest with her index finger. Her nipples were red and puckered from the ice. “Me, the bloody Queen of British Pop? Work for you?”

  Poppy was so thin Babe could almost see through her. “What’s your objection, dear? You telling me you never shoveled shit before?”

  Wee Gee roared with laughter. “Oh, she’s shoveled it before. She’s shoveling it now!”

  Poppy stormed into the bathroom. She turned to lock the door but the door had no lock.

  Wee Gee shrugged in Babe’s direction. “Don’t worry. I’ll get her downstairs. We’ll make everyone a mighty fine meal. Just don’t go expecting breakfast at Tiffany’s.”

  In the room next door, Dirk McGraw rubbed her eyes and sat up in bed. Someone was pounding on the door to her room. Thumper was asleep, a motionless lump in the twin bed next to her.

  “Coming,” Dirk muttered as she stumbled to the door. It was that old chick from the night before. Lily, she seemed to recall. She was dressed in a lime-green bell-bottom jumpsuit, still dripping in diamonds.

  “What?” asked Dirk as she raked a hand through her gel-stiffened hair. “What is it?” Dirk wrapped her arms around herself and rocked in the doorway, her brown eyes bloodshot. She was still trying to remember where she was. Not the Olympic training bunker. Too freezing-ass cold for that.

  “Breakfast in half an hour.”

  “Uh, okay, I guess.”

  “Wake your sister up?” Lily peered into the room at the massive flannel lump.

  “Yeah, sure. Probably.”

  “Fine,” said Lily. “See you downstairs in the kitchen.”

  Thumper poked her head from under the covers. “What’s up?”

  “That old chick. Says we have to get up. Breakfast in half an hour.”

  Thumper blinked. “Who was that blonde chick you nailed last night?”

  Dirk grinned. “Bunny Van Randolph.”

  “The senator’s daughter? Cool!”

  “She was okay. No biggy.”

  “Dirk?”

  “Yeah,” her sister said as she unzipped her duffel and searched for her toothbrush.

  “Do we have to stay here?”

  “Yeah, we have to get clean. If we flunk another drug test, we’re history.” Dirk plugged in her Sonicare and began to vibrate it against her perfectly white front teeth.

  Her sister rolled out of bed straight into a baggy pair of jeans. She pulled on a black ski sweater, which form-fit to her muscular chest. “We stopped the ’roids last month.”

  “I know,” Dirk mumbled as she spat brightening toothpaste into the sink. “But the Olympic board doesn’t know. Until they’re sure, we have to keep peeing in a cup. It’s the way things are done. Play along with these old chicks. We’ll be fine.”

  “Okay,” muttered Thumper as she slipped on some woolen socks and shoved her feet into a pair of hiking boots. What she hadn’t yet told her sister was she hadn’t stopped using steroids. Not yet. She was scared that if she did she’d lose her edge. She hoped nobody at this weird lesbo farmhouse was going to make her piss in a cup anytime soon.

  11. Candy Irons Her Underwear

  Bunny Van Randolph was certain she was having a lucid dream or an outright hallucination. A beautiful redheaded woman with skin as smooth as butter cream was knocking about in her room. The tall, stately woman was dressed in expensive Italian lingerie: a green silk bustier with matching lace panties that barely covered her impeccably waxed woo-woo.

  The odd thing, thought Bunny, wasn’t the lingerie. The odd thing was that the woman was standing at an ironing board, demonically pressing pair after pair of silk panties as if her life depended on the arduous task. She had an inch-high pile of underwear stacked on a ladder chair next to the ironing board.

  Bunny gulped as she clutched the down covers tight to her breasts. Surely she hadn’t picked up this woman in the lobby last night. Femme on femme was not her style. Bunny always wore the lingerie.

  Always.

  “Excuse me,” she said, clearing her throat. “Have we met, honey?”

  Dr. Candice Antwerp set the iron on end. “I’m your roommate. Arrived late. You were asleep.” Candice offered Bunny her carefully manicured hand.

  Bunny wrapped the flannel top sheet around her naked body and swung her waxed legs out of bed, relieved she hadn’t crossed the dark line into doing femmes.

  “Bunny Van Randolph,” she said.

  “Dr. Candice Antwerp.”

  “Doctor?”

  “Plastic surgeon.”

  Bunny’s face lit up, at least as much as it could, given her fondness for Botox. “Oh yummy!” she declared.

  Downstairs Babe and Lily were setting the table for breakfast, making sure Poppy and Wee Gee knew where everything was located in the kitchen. As a two-time rehab veteran and mother of seven grown kids, all born while she was struggling to make subminimum wage as a writer of torrid romance, Wee Gee knew her way around a stove.

  Poppy was still grumbling about having to work. Wee Gee handed her young sous-chef an electric mixer and instructed her to shut her gums and beat the hell out of the blueberry pancake batter instead.

  Yellow batter splattered Poppy’s cheeks and her inky-black Pebbles ponytail. Following Wee Gee’s urging, she licked batter off her fingers, not stopping to worry about the calorie-laden treat.

  Cooking with Wee Gee was almost fun, Poppy decided. She just hoped no paparazzi got a shot of her, Poppy Zigfield, pop diva extraordinaire, doing domestic duty.

  Poppy stopped licking batter when the snowboarding twins loped into the dining room, their blonde hair mussed from sleep. She tried unsuccessfully to catch either of the twins’ attention; which one, she didn’t care.

  It pissed Poppy off when Bunny arrived in the room wearing too little skirt and too much makeup. She watched the senator’s daughter make an ass of herself around the McGraw stud-muffin snowboarders. Her only consolation was that the twins seemed bored with Bunny’s yak-yak. It didn’t take them long to shoulder their snowboards and dart out the back door for an early-morning run in the snow.

  Several other women sauntered into the dining room. Poppy didn’t recognize any of them. All older. Blimey, she had no idea old dykes had so many problems. She thought only cool young people did drugs. She was relieved when one woman under the age of thirty erupted into the dining room. She heard one of the other women address her as “Dylan.”

  Dylan looked promising. Tomboy. Tall and deliciously rangy. Her raven hair was unevenly sliced, streaked auburn in a patch or two. A thatch of black hair hung like a flag of bad-girl honor over Dylan’s right eye. She was delightfully loud. Her black, paint-splattered jeans were ripped at both knees. She wore a red T-shirt that proclaimed: “Ask Me About My Big Pink Pussy.”

  Dylan had been in the room less than ten seconds when a verbal joust broke out between her and some elderly dyke who floated around the table wearing what looked to be an oversized purple tent.

  “Who’s that?” Poppy whispered to Wee Gee as Wee Gee poured the pancake batter onto a sizzling iron griddle.

  “Child, you don’t know anything, do you? That old goat is Betty Frump. Sergeant General of the Lesbian Thought Police. Helped Clinton win the gay vote. One hard-assed, nail-spitting lesbian. Got hair on her chest, and proud of it. Better not mess with the likes of her.”

  “Who’s the woman she’s yelling at?”

  Wee Gee chuckled. “That’s Dylan Redford herself. Girl, she’s the artist who made that piece of monumental art what has the White House so upset. The Big Pink Pussy.
You’ve heard of that, no?”

  Actually Poppy had heard of that. She hadn’t seen it, but poster-sized photos of the artwork had been all the rage in London’s Soho the last few weeks.

  “She’s, like, steaming hot,” whispered Poppy, feeling like she was confessing lurid desires to her grandmother.

  “I’ll say,” agreed Wee Gee. “Now put your tongue back in your mouth and mix us more batter.”

  Across the room Betty Frump was not backing down.

  Neither, unfortunately, was Dylan Redford.

  The two had gone face to face before. On public TV last month. They had debated whether Dylan’s Big Pink Pussy glorified women or defiled them. Dylan had insisted her art was meant to force people into honoring the existence of female genitalia.

  Frump had argued that women like Dylan, shock dykes, were doing more harm than good by making America think all feminist lesbians were little more than loudmouthed pornographers.

  “I am not a pornographer!” shouted Dylan.

  Betty came at Dylan, puffed up. At almost six feet and three hundred pounds, Betty rolled like a lavender stone across the room. Her thick glasses were fogged with anger. Her Amazonian hatchet earrings threatened to fly off her head and impale Dylan in the heart. Her long, frizzy salt-and-pepper hair couldn’t help but put everyone in mind of a witch.

  Lily was the only one brave enough to step between the two women. “Time out!” she boomed. “Back to your corners, both of you.”

  Lily grabbed a cowbell from the table and rang it loudly in both their ears. “Breakfast!” she yelled as she motioned to Wee Gee to bring steaming stacks of blueberry pancakes to the table before all-out war erupted.

  12. Grumpy Group