Once we’re seated at the restaurant, I sit quietly next to Jaye. I’m introduced as a “friend,” but everyone who saw the kiss knows what’s up. Still, they think it’s cool I’ve come all the way from Colorado to see Jaye, and my KC scarf means I do support the team. They ignore me quickly in favor of giving Jaye her props and teasing Nickerson for giving up a goal. I’m surprised the warrior queen lets them get away with it.
Jaye holds her own in the banter department, but it’s soon clear, to me at least, that she’s got things other than soccer on her mind. Over the appetizers our eyes lock, and for a moment we are the only two people in the galaxy. I casually brush my hair back, making sure it’s not caught fire.
Across the table Nickerson watches us with a stony expression. She knows what’s going on, and apparently she’s not happy about it. I suppose I can understand her point of view. She doesn’t know me from Eve, and here’s her best friend diving in head first. Perhaps she tried to get Jaye to slow things down. If so, the effort failed. Jaye wants me. Wants us. This thought warms my heart, and makes it easy to ignore Nickerson’s glare.
Jaye and I both order salads for dinner as they don’t take a lot of time to eat. She sets a speed record for consuming lettuce and salmon. I make it through about half of my Greek vegetarian when I feel a hand run along my thigh.
“We’re skipping dessert,” Jaye informs me. Her eyes smolder, and her skin is flushed, as if hiding an inner fire.
“No,” I counter, giving her the flames right back, “We’re having dessert somewhere else.”
Definitely the right thing to say. Jaye takes my hand, interlocks our fingers, and stands up. “Let’s go.”
I stop her long enough to pull out my wallet and hand some money to Kirstie Longstreet. “Please give the waitress the change.”
“In a hurry?” She asks with a knowing smile and a killer Georgia twang.
“Train to catch,” Jaye says, and pulls me gently out of the restaurant. I imagine—I hope—wolf whistles coming from behind us as we leave.
We do have a train to catch—the light rail will take us right back to the hotel. As we wait at the stop, Jaye gives me a sexy grin. “Did you like the goal?”
“I can’t believe you did it. You were amazing out there tonight.”
Jaye leans up close and puts her lips to my ear. “I plan to be even more amazing when we get back to your room.”
I mentally cross my fingers and think, “So do I.”
By the time we reach the hotel I’m energized, wild with anticipation, and utterly turned on. As we enter the elevator I’m tempted to steal a kiss, but we aren’t alone, so I squeeze Jaye’s hand and catch her eye. Her fingers tremble as they interlock with mine. She smiles at me, and the air hums with tension.
She wants this, too.
The elevator finally opens to the seventeenth floor. We step out into the hall. As the elevator doors close, Jaye takes me in her arms and gives me a kiss full of pent-up energy. My legs threaten to give out for a second. I rally to keep me standing, and she lets me kiss her back with equal intensity.
“I couldn’t wait,” she says when we at last break off the kiss.
“Come on,” I say, fighting off the urge to run full speed to the room.
I let Jaye enter first, then follow her in and slam the door shut. Even as I throw the deadbolt on the door, she is turning me around, sliding her hands in my hair, pulling my face to hers. I’ve always thought moving across a room while being lip-locked to someone else was romance fantasy stuff, but we do it, working our way to the bed in a tangle of arms and feet and what has to be gracefulness, since we neither stumble nor fall nor bump into anything—
—until we tumble onto the mattress as one, still kissing, lips and tongues competing to see who can learn each other’s face first. Eventually we expand the contest. Jaye pulls my shirt loose from my jeans. I get my hands under the tail of her shirt to touch the skin of her back, all the way up to her neck, then all the way down to the band of her pants, and below. Jaye moans as I cup her ass. She returns the favor by getting my zipper down and her own hands inside my clothing.
Jeans, though, are harder to work under than sweats, and this necessitates a frustrating pause in the action. No matter how writers and movie directors make it seem, clothes don’t magically melt away. Jaye sits us up, pulls me onto her lap, and grips the fabric of my top in both hands.
“Wait!” I say. “I like this shirt.”
She stops moving and gives me a sheepish grin—yes, she was indeed about to rip the buttons off. After a deep breath, she gives me yet another searing kiss, and undoes my shirt buttons one . . . by one . . . by one . . . by one . . . slowly, surely, carefully. She manages this while keeping our lips in contact the whole time. Job complete, Jaye pulls back, slides the shirt off my shoulders with exaggerated care, and tosses it across the room.
“Better?” she asks.
“Much. Your turn.”
Jaye’s shirt is a pullover. I get it over her head easily and fling it to keep mine company.
She’s not wearing a bra. I’m struck still at my first view of her breasts. They are small, perfectly formed, the pink nipples already pert with arousal. I brush my thumb against one, and Jaye closes her eyes and gasps. I like that and get my other thumb in on the act. She lets me explore her until both nipples are rock-hard. I’m about to kiss the delicious, smooth flesh of her when she stops me.
“No fair,” she says. “I want to play, too.”
Jaye reaches around to undo the hooks of my bra. In a second my last piece of protection is gone, and all my aged glory is there for her to see. I know I’m in good shape for my age. But gravity has also taken its inevitable toll. Will the plain-sight evidence of my older years wake her up and send her running?
Jaye takes her time staring at my chest, then cups one of my breasts in her hand and slowly massages my nipple with her tongue. The sensation is a jolt of lightning, enough so that I very nearly come, right then and there.
She seems to sense this and backs off. “Lie down now.” I slide off her legs to comply and she shifts position, sets herself up to get the rest of my clothes off.
“You, too,” I say, reaching for her pants, but she takes my arms and puts them above my head.
“In a minute.”
Jaye hovers above me, pauses for a moment. Our breasts are almost touching, her gray eyes are shaded now with dark smoke. I’ve written plenty about lovers’ eyes “darkening with desire,” but this is the first time I’ve ever seen it in person.
“We’ve found each other, Rachel,” she whispers, and kisses me again, hard, pulling all the passion in the room into one little spot of contact. Whatever I have left of coherent thought shatters and blows away.
We don’t so much fall asleep as end up unconscious from our pleasures and exertions. When I come to again, it’s dark outside and in (when did we turn the lights off?). Jaye’s body half covers mine, her head rests on my shoulder. Softly, oh so softly, I brush my fingers along her back, a gentle touch of appreciation and wonder.
“I like that,” comes a murmur against my collarbone.
“Good. I’ll keep doing it.”
The murmur morphs into a laugh. “You’re not tired?”
“I can sleep when I’m alone again in Denver. This is special.”
Jaye shifts a little, as if settling deeper into me. My hand keeps moving, giving her the barest touch of my fingertips to her skin, like I’m trying to leave a thin layer of air between us. Her breath quickens.
“That’s amazing.”
“I’m glad.” I laugh softly. “There’s something so magical about the feel of a woman’s skin, yes?”
I get no vocal answer to this. Instead Jaye takes her free hand and starts her own slow exploration, her fingers making soft circles as they caress my hip, my thigh, then come up to the edge of my breast. Now it’s my breath quickening,
and it’s all I can do to keep touching her like she’s touching me. Something will have to give soon.
“God,” I mutter breathlessly, “this is incredible.”
Jaye raises herself up, making lovely use of all her athletic strength to suspend herself slightly above me. I do my fingertip thing on her shoulders, tracing the firm line of muscle all the way down her biceps, then over to her breasts. She lowers her head, touches her lips to mine, and blows my conscious mind to smithereens.
We kiss for a long time, and somewhere amidst this heaven Jaye slips to the side, shifting enough to get her left leg in between my thighs. I feel her wetness against my skin, and I’m sure she feels mine. As she begins a slow thrust against me, I sense we are crossing the line between hot sex and making love. Awareness of the difference sends a shiver through me, a shiver of delight, anticipation—and the faintest, guess-who’s-still-here touch of apprehension, too.
But Jaye kisses one of my nipples, which shoots down the apprehension, lets the delight take over.
If depression insists upon visiting, it can wait until I’m alone again in Denver.
Chapter Four
Fyrequeene’s Blog: May 3
“Playlist”
On a flight home from magical Portland I listen to Pandora and hear a new song. I like it, get caught up in it, wonder who the artist is and if I can find it later. I love that music can do this, take you to another place and mood and completely away from where you are, especially when “where you are” is a crowded metal tube 35,000 feet off the ground.
But when the song ends, a new one begins, shifts me away from the mood and the place I was in, shifts me before I was ready to leave.
So much of life is like that, I realize. We talk about “being in the moment,” then make sure our moments run together so we can’t stay in them at all. Adding in noise, chatter, appointments, and video streams dilutes the moments even more, so their true nature is lost.
With this in mind, I switch from Pandora to iTunes and bring up an old playlist of mine, try to have a little more control over this particular slice of place and time.
“Queer Sensibilities” is a mélange of songs whose subject should be obvious. I put it together a long time ago (the original compilation was a cassette tape) when I wanted a background to contemplate sexuality, to lose myself in the romance of two women kissing, touching, exploring each other. When I wanted to imagine such things for myself, let it light me up and bring me to life like nothing else. Like literally nothing else.
I always had to imagine. Love and intimate connection could never be real for me. Back then I thought of my lesbianism as a gauntlet thrown in the face of the world, a challenge to everyone who would condemn me for my desires, for my love of women.
And make no mistake, I love women. I wanted to shout it from the rooftops. I wanted it to be taken as a matter of course. But I also wanted to be different, wanted to feel like I was privy to something rare and wonderful, something most of the world didn’t get. Because this love is so special to me.
I was angry then, and it may well have affected what chances I had for actual romance. I couldn’t balance my incredible attraction for women with the fury that much of the world did not accept it. I couldn’t simply love and flaunt it in conservative faces because I was too afraid those conservative faces would kill me. And so I hid, I kept myself apart, I stayed alone.
A lot of the songs on the playlist reflect this: “Angels Never Call” by Til Tuesday; “Tony” by Patty Griffin; Bronski Beat’s “Smalltown Boy.”
But my anger has faded now, with age and therapy, and thanks to the beauty of iTunes, I’ve added songs to the list to remind me how the specialness of who I love, who I desire, burns as strong as ever.
“Crimson and Clover” by Joan Jett; “Harmony” by Heather Peace; “Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover” by Sophie B. Hawkins; “Hang Out in Your Heart” by Chely Wright.
To name a few.
As the metal tube shoots through the sky, I listen to each song with a long pause in between tracks. I savor the thoughts and feelings each recalls, good and bad, and ultimately appreciate where I am now, even reveling in the strength of the desire I hope never goes away.
I am a lesbian. It is not the entirety of me. But it may be the biggest component part.
Monday morning, 6:06 a.m., my eyes pop open. I’m back home in Denver. For most of my adult life getting me up voluntarily before nine a.m. took an act of military planning, like with D-Day. Since my late forties and the joys of pre/peri/post-menopause, however, I come alert, like clockwork, between six and seven a.m. every day. The adjustment period for me, a confirmed night owl, was long and challenging.
But I learned to embrace mornings, and today I wake up raring to go. Time to swim, yay. But when I try to get out of bed, every bone in my body creaks, and every muscle screams in protest.
At first I’m mystified, wondering if I’ve got the flu or light-speed-onset arthritis. Then my brain engages. Wow. Now I know why writers so seldom have fifty-two-year-old women as romantic leads.
“We can have the hot sex,” I say out loud, “but we can’t move for days afterwards.” This strikes me funny, and soon I’m laughing so hard I lose the seated position I’d struggled to and fall right back onto the mattress, everything creaking as I go down.
I’ve laughed a lot in the past twenty-four hours. Jaye and I woke up with smiles on Sunday morning, laughed our way through first-morning pillow talk, into some fantastic morning sex (no laughing there, just more amazing sensual connection), and laughed in panic as we barely got dressed in time to catch our respective flights.
This morning’s amusement fades as I remember one particular moment:
I had come out of the shower and Jaye greeted me with a long-stemmed rose.
“I took a chance,” she said. “Went to the lobby and the gift shop was open.” She brushed the petals down my cheek, and she was glowing, absolutely radiant. I got lost in the soft sensation of the rose and the beauty of Jaye, my lover (lover!), standing before me.
Oh, please don’t come to your senses anytime soon, I thought, managing to swallow the words in my throat. “Thank you,” I said instead, with as much feeling as I could put into it. “Thank you for last night.”
Her smile rivaled the early morning sun shining through the window. “You’re going to let me do this again, right?”
“Buy me roses? Sure.” I gave Jaye a wink, then took her in my arms. “And the sex? We can do that again, too.”
“Good.” Jaye’s eyes drew me right in, and only the threat of exorbitant airline change fees ended the passionate kiss that followed.
We did get to the airport on time, barely. I spent the flight home listening to music, writing up a new blog entry on my laptop, and eagerly, almost painfully, anticipating the next time I could see Jaye.
Now, sitting in my bedroom on a bright Monday morning, I remember the feeling I’d had after her game last week, the leak springing through the dam. Something long repressed, long dammed, has been freed. Emotions I didn’t know I had gush forth from me. I have given myself to a woman completely. I’m not the same person I was two days ago.
“We’ve found each other, Rachel.”
Could this be true?
I rise, get my swimsuit on, and head out to the pool. I do a series of long, slow freestyle laps, stretching my body out in the buoyancy of the water. The smooth motions soothe my muscles. I hardly creak at all when I’m done. In the afternoon, on FaceTime from my basement, I relate the story of my oh-so-slow exit from bed and how I still find it funny.
“It’s not because you’re old,” Jaye says, her lips twitching with amusement.
“Hey, we both know—”
“Rachel, I couldn’t get out of bed either.” Her face goes pink. “I found out there are some muscles you don’t use to play soccer. But I used them Saturday night.”
“You’re blushing!”
<
br /> The pink suffuses with pleasure. “I’m so glad you came to Portland.”
“Me, too.”
“Any chance I’ll see you in Washington?”
“Nope. I don’t have enough money in the budget. But Kansas City, as soon as the painters finish.”
On cue, the sound of a ladder being moved across the room clatters above me.
“You could come stay in KC,” she says, “and get away from the noise.”
There’s a loud clunk! as something lands hard on the floor. Not heavy enough to be a body. I hope it wasn’t an open can of paint.
I roll my eyes up at the ceiling. “I think I need to be here to make sure the house survives.”
The line isn’t that funny, but soon we’re both laughing fit to save the world. Laughing with joy.
“Why do you always call me?” Jaye asks on Thursday. We’re talking every day and have yet to run out of things to say.
“As opposed to beaming over to Kansas City and meeting you in person?”
“No, silly. As opposed to texting. I send you a text, and you call me back. Why?”
“I don’t text.”
“Why not?”
I shrug, shake my head. “It’s too easy to send five words to somebody and think you’ve communicated with them. I want to do better with you. Call me. Leave a voice mail. I’d rather hear your voice than read a text any day.”
“I don’t see why you’re so stubborn,” Jaye says, and honestly, coming from someone who grew up in the texting generation, she’s being reasonable.
“We’re going to have one chance to do this right. ‘Right’ is not tapping out letters on a phone. ‘Right’ is talking to you as often as I can. And if it means I don’t hear from you every hour, then fine. That will make hearing from you all the sweeter.”
Game Changers Page 7