Lucky was right. I’d been fielding increasingly frantic and irritable texts and calls from my friends wanting to know if I was all right. I’d told them that I was busy getting beaten and fucked, but this was wearing thin. I reminded them that I was making up for years of nonconsensual celibacy, but they whined that I was acting like a straight sixteen-year-old girl with her first boyfriend. And truthfully, I missed them too.
Each new manifestation of intimacy frightened me. I would recoil, worried that either it was a trap or that one of us would stumble, bringing both of us flailing to the ground. Then, I would settle. The word baggage was so coolly polite for this bone-chilling fear. Spending more than three nights together in a row, meeting Lucky’s mom, daily texts, Lucky’s toothbrush in my bathroom, Lucky cooking me chicken soup when I caught a cold, shopping at Rainbow together, me ironing Lucky’s shirt in the morning, sharing Pendleton flannel shirts, making house keys for each other—the list grew and grew, one act piled upon the other, never toppling over. Would I ever grow confident enough to live without doubt? My childhood nickname continued to be an apt moniker.
I took a steadying breath. “Okay. When?” And with that, we started planning our first dinner party of many, although we didn’t know that at the time.
Once back at my place with our bounty, we spread out in the living room with cookbooks and Post-It stickers, reading recipes out loud, dissecting them, and picking potential dishes for the party. An hour into our food wallow, our energy started fading, so Lucky put on water for tea. We settled in with a platter, Southern pimento cheese sandwiches made from a simple spread from the Georgia Masters Golf Tournament recipe and cut unto dainty triangles, and a pot of mango black tea. Lucky decided on baking an onion tart with mustard and fennel and a pound cake, and I decided upon peach khoresh with rice, tadig, David Lebovitz’s gluten-free brownies, and a traditional Persian appetizer of lavish, Bulgarian feta cheese, and fresh mint.
Food daydreaming and cooking had become favorite pastimes of Lucky and me, right behind fucking. Lucky’s copy of The Moosewood Cookbook and Jerusalem: A Cookbook had migrated into my apartment just the week before. I liked cooking with Lucky even though we had different preparation habits. She used a garlic press, while I minced garlic with a knife. I preferred to clean as I cooked, while Lucky wrecked the kitchen and then cleaned after eating. Lucky whipped cream with a whisk, while I used an electric mixer. I threw dinners onto plates willy-nilly, while Lucky plated with fussy precision. Despite our culinary differences, we’d learned to relax into camaraderie in the kitchen.
After our first trip to Rainbow together, our relationship shifted. It was plain that we had gone beyond tricks. We started nesting, our mutual fetish for cozy domesticity leading us to reading together, playing Scrabble, cooking, writing together, and playing gin rummy. I introduced Lucky to the lazy joys of checking out library ebooks online at midnight, while she insisted that we also visit the Main Library near Civic Center when we went to the nearby Sunday farmers market. We discovered that we both craved consistency and had missed our friends terribly, so Lucky resumed attending Buddhist meditations at Rainbow Retreat on Sunday afternoons, while I resumed meeting Tov at Café Flore for our Sunday writing date. Lucky happily went back to puttering twice a month with the San Francisco League of Urban Gardeners, and I returned to answering the crisis line at San Francisco Suicide Prevention. We read together on my cushy sofa with my handmade, wool-suiting patchwork quilt wrapped around us and our sockclad feet intertwined, Francy sleeping contentedly between us. Then we tottered off to bed for a round of fisting, cocksucking, and orgasms before sleeping the sleep of the well loved and the well fed.
We added more permanent bondage to the bed by tying rope to the bed legs. I gave Lucky a space in my toy drawer for her favorite floggers, dildos, and butt plugs, and we bought an antique glossy moss-green McCoy pottery umbrella stand for Lucky’s canes. We discovered that although we both loved sleeping with Francy curled between us, we did not agree on sharing showers. Lucky thought showers were sexy excuses to soap each other up, slipping hands and cocks through the bubbles and suds, then letting the hot water wash everything clean again. Showers were meditative for me. They were precious time for me to be alone, renew myself, and ground myself to earth and pleasure. Lucky was more outgoing and gregarious, while I was more introverted and craved time alone. We both were stubborn in our needs—mine for solitude and Lucky’s for company. However we also had equally strong desires for intimacy. We were finding that we were well matched and that our areas of possible compromise complemented each other’s.
Lucky was spending more and more time at my place. By the time the weekend of our coming out party and potluck rolled around, it was clear that it was time to have another talk. I wanted to wait until after the party though, in case things blew up in my face. We did not need verbal fisticuffs before our first cohosted party. I expected the party to be a fishbowl of judgment, with both of us being examined by our friends for approval or disapproval. Was I good enough for Lucky, and was Lucky good enough for me? As Lucky hand-penned tabletop ingredient placards for the dishes, we took turns predicting our friends’ reactions to one another.
“Poppy will worry that you’re encouraging my tendency toward butter and deviancy,” Lucky muttered as she labeled her onion tart Vegetarian, the peach khoresh Has Meat & Gluten Free, the rice Vegetarian & Gluten Free, the brownies Gluten Free with Nuts, and the pound cake Butter & More Butter.
“Oh fuck, we don’t have any gluten-free, vegan main dishes! I wonder if Adrian will come. I can’t remember if he’s talking to me this week,” I said as I poured ice cubes into a vintage iridescent cut-glass bowl.
“How many people are coming now?”
“Between the two of us, Poppy and Tiny, Tov, Birdie and Tamera, the Nona-James-Laura trio, Ian, Maxwell, Ebony and Faye, and perhaps Adrian and his latest trick. Or his spouses or maybe a unicorn. Who the hell can tell with him! I think Adrian already thinks you’re a player and will break my heart.”
“Can we designate the apartment a glitter-free zone? Please!” Lucky begged as she set out the black cloth napkins.
“I wish. You can’t stop the glitter.” I fetched a stack of glasses from the kitchen as the doorbell rang with an early guest.
It was Ian Stecher, the elderly and notorious gay leather fetish photographer and baker par excellance. Ian stood huddled next to my doorstep, holding a glass platter with a blue plastic lid under his leather jacket. “It’s about time!” It must have started raining a little bit ago, and it was pouring now. We were in the midst of a several-years-long drought, so this unaccustomed shower was an immense relief. The air smelled wet and fresh, and great wafts of gray clouds rolled overhead ominously.
“Oh, no! Come on up.” I dragged Ian upstairs, while Lucky carried Ian’s strawberry tart into the living room, and then I dried him off in the bathroom like a baby, rubbing his bald head until it shone.
After Ian, the rest straggled in over the course of the next thirty minutes, damp from the rainstorm, bearing dishes, and curious about whatever had distracted their friends so thoroughly the past few months.
Ebony and Faye were exes who, after breaking up, managed to remain friends and roommates. They came in a flurry of Christian Dior Eau Sauvage and Miss Dior. Ebony was a muscular black German Brony and Faye was exactly what she sounded like, the most delicate and fairy-like blonde transgirl possible. Ebony wore leather overalls, a tight red waffle-weave top, and boots, while Faye wore a vintage lavender silk blouse, skintight white leather pants, and white iridescent patent-leather high-heeled boots. They brought a rosewater-scented golden Persian saffron-rice pudding topped with crumpled green pistachios in a beautiful clear iridescent Carnival glass serving dish. Faye planted her slender six-two self in front of me. “Let me take a look at what has made my little Lucky so starry-eyed!”
Poppy and Tiny were androgynous twinsies, and Poppy was Lucky’s best friend from the Rainbow Retreat Buddhis
t group. Poppy was from an old Georgia United Daughters of the Confederacy family, and Tiny was second-generation Chinese and grew up in San Francisco’s Chinatown. They were sweet middle-aged dykes in their forties and both wore flannel shirts, jeans, chain wallets, and Vans. Poppy wore an antique blue ombre flannel and Tiny wore a barn-red and black buffalo-checked flannel. They were into urban foraging and carried a huge bamboo bowl of salad made partially with greens that they had personally harvested from around town. Tiny later surreptitiously read my palm while softly but pointedly grilling me about my job, my relationship with my family, my exes, and my intentions.
The ever-dapper Birdie wore a spiffy red western shirt embroidered with giant black roses on the yoke, worn jeans, and black pointy-toed cowboy boots, while her femme girlfriend Tamera wore a tight black tank top, excess cleavage, love-that-cherry red lipstick, a full 1950s sequined floral skirt, and red cowboy boots. They brought baked chicken seasoned with mustard and sweet paprika, along with a basket of still-warm Southern biscuits, dense and flakey. “I used lard for you’specially,” Birdie drawled into my ear. “You two look great together!”
The Nona-James-Laura trio had just flown in from New York where Laura had been giving a lecture on polyamory and responsible nonmonogamy, so they were a little bemused, disheveled, and tired. Nona was a glittering fashion kaleidoscope in shades of purple leather, satin, mohair, and tulle topped with a fuchsia Mohawk. James was stately as always, wearing worn leather jeans, an orange tweed waistcoat, a gray-plaid flannel shirt, boots, and his giant Barbara Bush pearls. Laura wore a knee-length silvery knit wrap dress, gray lace tights, and tiny silver kitten heels topped with leather bows. They plopped several bottles of wine from their tote bag onto the table and collapsed in a heap on the sofa, each entwined with the other in an entangled mass of jet-lagged polyamory triad.
Maxwell, a seventy-year-old, randy, leather-Daddy sweet-tongued devil, brought a new trick, a sweet little cub barely learning to walk named Jay. Maxwell came in full leather regalia, with the trick on a short leash, attentive to a state of adoration, and carrying a cobalt-blue Fiestaware platter of still-warm chocolate chip cookies. “I figured everyone likes chocolate chip cookies. The boy made them right before we came and right after he blacked my boots. Useful little bugger!” He tousled Jay’s short blond hair.
Maxwell looked long at Lucky and me, Lucky in her 501s, aqua linen button-down shirt, mustard-and-aqua windowpane wool waistcoat, and Wescos, and I in my black pleated pants, pink-and-gray floral shirt, dark-gray knitted necktie, and black-and-red cowboy boots.
“You both look great! And look at that spread,” he said, as he had his boy set down the plate of cookies. Then he said sotto voce to Lucky and me, “I thought all butches went for high femmes with glossy red manicures, seamed stockings, fuck-me heels, and long black hair. And most of the transdudes I know end up becoming gay men. I’m surprised that you two hooked up at all. Isn’t this a little strange? I mean, how does it work? And who’s the top?”
“We manage.” Lucky and I smirked in unison, rolling our eyes as we poured glasses of wine and sparkling water for Maxwell and Jay.
Nina interjected warmly, “There’s nothing wrong with a little boi-on-boi action!”
I’d forgotten about how judgmental people could be, particularly when others start coloring outside of the lines. Masculine-masculine couples were not common in the dyke and queer community, and many folks saw masculine pairings as distasteful, taboo, and unnatural. Or only good for tricks, something to relieve the itch if there wasn’t a femme around. There were a smattering of dyke and genderqueer Daddy-boi couples in the kink community, but they were mostly people under the age of forty. Dykes, queers, and transmen over the age of forty were pretty strongly invested in butch-femme or FTM—gay men dynamics. There was even the Butch-Femme Social Group, and TM4M Cruising Night at Eros for transdudes and gay men. Before I’d met Lucky, the only people I’d found to date were either twenty years younger than me, or butches that were on the down-low and deeply confused and ashamed about their unexpected masculine attraction. I’d met one other butch dyke who was turned on by masculine people, but that relationship was brief and fiery.
Tov came late, his new boyfriend, Mikail, in tow. He’d had a difficult time finding a parking space. Tov was my best friend. He was a philosophy professor who wrote and grew orchids as hobbies. This was the first time I’d met Mikail. He’d met Mikail on GROWLr, which was one step up from SCRUFF and three steps over from Recon. Mikail was from Turkey, in his forties, and owned a cookbook store in the Inner Sunset called Little Spoon. Tov shrugged off his Mr. S hoodie, removed his wet boots, then held Lucky’s hands with both of his, staring intently into her eyes. “I’m so glad to finally meet the person who is making Behrouz so,” he paused mischievously, “glowing!”
Adrian texted that he couldn’t make it. He’d had an allergic reaction to the shampoo that his latest play partner used. He’d broken out in an itchy, scaling pink rash and had a migraine. He threatened to come by if he recovered in time.
It was a great party. Birdie brought her guitar and performed a tune that she and Tamera had written about a couple that fucked so much they forgot to eat and sleep and destroyed their apartment with their antics, while Tov nudged me chortling. I said, “Hey George Jones already sang that song!” and we broke into an impromptu rendition of “Leaving Love All Over the Place.”
Tiny discovered that she knew Birdie from the past. They had dated for a couple of months twenty years ago. They’d met at Black and Blue, the tattoo parlor where Birdie apprenticed briefly before getting a job with the city. Tamera drew herself up huffily once she caught on to Birdie and Tiny’s decades-old dalliance, glaring and all but baring her love-that-pink nails.
I was in the kitchen fetching more ice when Poppy strolled in to grab some more pita bread for the hummus. As she sliced the bread rounds into eighths she gave me a tight pious smile. “I wanted to talk to you about something. I’m concerned and don’t want to see either of you hurt. You know, Lucky usually dates femmes. You’re not her type at all.”
I stared at Poppy, aghast at her rudeness. “Things change,” I replied dryly.
“I wish you two all the luck and all, but don’t you think it’s a little weird? I mean two masculine-of-center folks dating each other? Butches usually date femmes, you know. I mean, it’s okay for fucking, but not for romance,” Poppy said huffily.
I didn’t want to insult Lucky’s best friend, but I was horrified. Was she trying to make me feel insecure, or was she just being petty and closed-minded? I tried to rearrange my face into a neutral expression. “We’re happy together.”
“Whatever, but I don’t see it working out in the long run. It just isn’t natural,” and Poppy started to breeze out of the kitchen with the turquoise Fiestaware plate of freshly sliced-up pita bread.
I stopped her. “Have you ever heard that expression about eating one’s own? Passing judgment is fucked up and hurts us all in the end.”
Poppy huffed off to the living room as I gritted my teeth, dumped fresh ice cubes into a metal serving bowl, and returned to the party.
Beth Ditto of the Gossip’s paean to untrustworthy backstabbers, “Listen Up,” was playing as I walked down the hallway to the party. It seemed fitting.
By 9:30 Maxwell had Jay kneeling in the center of the room, whistling show tunes and shining everyone’s boots while we feasted on tarts, cookies, salads, chicken, and biscuits, gossiping avidly as torch songs played in the background. I don’t know if our friends were reassured, but at least now there were names to know and faces to remember.
The party lasted until midnight, when we shooed Maxwell and Jay out the door. It had stopped raining. The moon was high and shining white, with trails of clouds hurriedly flying past. We waved the crowd off, standing in front of the wrought-iron gateway, our arms around each other’s shoulders and happy to be alone again.
The next night we dissected the party while polishing s
hoes and ironing shirts for the upcoming workweek. I almost didn’t tell Lucky about Poppy’s kitchen ambush, but decided to after talking about Maxwell’s unexpected catty comments.
“Poppy corned me in the kitchen and scolded me for corrupting you with my hidden deviant masculine desires.”
“What?” Lucky looked horrified and annoyed.
“She gave me a dressing down about the unsuitability of butch people hooking up with one another.”
“Do you want me to talk to her? She may be my best friend, but that’s no excuse for mean-spirited comments! First Maxwell then Poppy! I expected flack from strangers, but not from our friends!” Lucky said angrily.
“No, please don’t say anything to her. Remember, you two have been best friends for years,” I pleaded. Lucky was steaming by now.
“But I want to say something. Our relationship is none of her business, and her attitude is narrow-minded!”
“Look, I took care of it. Besides, I’m hoping that over time she’ll adjust. I think that once Maxwell and Poppy settle and get used to us, they’ll be fine. They’re both good people, just set in their ways.”
“Whatever.” Lucky grabbed a pair of brown Frye boots and started cleaning and polishing them gruffly. “Let me know if you change your mind. I won’t have that kind of bullying, even from Poppy.”
We’d spent the past few months holed up together, blissfully letting our community’s negative judgments about gender identity, socialization and orientation fade from our consciousness. Tonight had been a reminder. It was always something. I knew some transdudes that dated dyke femmes and were alarmed when they were perceived of as a straight couple in public. The repulsion for butch-butch couples had been around since the 1940s, and although I understood the dynamic had relaxed some in the past decade, I’d seen little evidence of change. I felt very fortunate that Lucky and I had found each other.
Behrouz Gets Lucky Page 6