We got up from the park bench and walked down Columbus toward City Lights Bookstore. Lucky took my arm and sighed, “We have a good thing going and marriage could fuck it up. We’re fucking queer. That is q-u-e-e-r with a capital Q.” She sighed. “I also know that you’re right about marriage smoothing things over in Iran.” She licked cannoli filling out of the flaky shell distractedly, then nibbled the edges of the pastry.
“I’m sorry for bringing it up, but I mean it. We’re leaving soon so we would need to do the deed sooner rather than later. Let me know what you think within a few days. We can have a shotgun marriage at city hall. We don’t even have to tell our friends. It can be our dirty little secret.” I nudged Lucky.
We continued softly bickering about marriage as we wound our way down the street, through the late afternoon crowds of tourists, and into the doorway and stacks at the tiny bookstore. Once there, we made a beeline for the Middle East section.
Lucky leafed through a copy of Cyrus Copeland’s memoir, Off the Radar and sighed, “I love you, but this is a little weird. I’d be a grandmother.”
“I have that book at home. Cyrus and I went to school together in Shiraz,” I sighed. “Betty would become my mother-in-law.”
“I wish there were more queer erotica out there! Betty liked you. She said you were a regular whippersnapper,” Lucky said as she opened a copy of The Marketplace by Laura Antoniou.
“So write some erotica then,” I replied as I browsed Persian phrase books.
“Then there are Social Security and tax benefits. Medical rights. Oh fuck,” Lucky thought out loud. “This isn’t a bad idea, but it wasn’t what I expected.”
I’m a romantic, but I’m also a skeptic. Lucky and I were living together nicely, thanks to terrific chemistry, love, and a mutual fetish for domesticity. Give me a half-naked butch dyke in jockey shorts hovering over an ironing board, wielding a bottle of spray starch, and a heavy metal iron and I’m yours. That is what I had with Lucky and I didn’t want to fuck it up. Would a slip of paper from city hall fuck that bliss up?
Eight weeks before we were set to leave for the Middle East, I came home from dinner with my friend Birdie. I’d known Birdie ever since she and I had briefly dated fifteen years before. We quickly figured out that although both of us were bottoms with no sexual chemistry between us, we made fine friends. Birdie was a fey silver fox butch from the deep inbred South with a wicked self-deprecating sense of humor and a sexy swagger. We’d had dinner together monthly for years, trading off on picking the restaurant. Tonight it was a full moon and we’d ended up at A La Turca in the Tenderloin. They had a butch Turkish cook there whom I never tired of flirting with as she slapped meat around skewers with her muscular hairy arms glistening with sweat. I’d imagine that the cook was Cherifa and I was Jane Bowles. We’d loll in the desert, smoking opium and fucking all night under the Moroccan sky. I rolled home, all jolly and filled with dolma, feta, and lamb.
The house was quiet when I unlocked the door, and it smelled damp and spicy. Lucky must have just taken a bath. She was in the library. She was awake in the semi-dark, sitting in her Mid-Century butterscotch-colored leather chair in front of the fireplace, with a faceted tumbler of Blanton’s Original Single Barrel bourbon on the teak-and-resin side table next to her chair. The only light was the low flickering flames from the fireplace, and she looked thoughtful. Her normally impeccable pompadour was mussed, she was wearing her favorite charcoal-gray plaid pajamas, and Patsy Cline was crooning “Walkin’ After Midnight.” Lucky’s bare feet were propped up on our needlework naked-lady footstool. She was smoking her rust-colored cherrywood pipe, the aromatic fumes from the Manor Heights tobacco forming a fragrant cocoon around her.
Lucky smiled. “Sit down. If I married anyone it would be you. I still think marriage is a tool of the patriarchy, but I don’t want to put us in any danger while we’re traveling in Iran. I’ve thought about our getting married, but I never thought it would really happen. Marriage just seems like something that happens to other people, but not to me. I never thought I’d be a groom, and I’m certainly no bride. I love you though and I want us to turn into old geezers together. Will you marry me?”
I sat down on the carpet at Lucky’s feet, massaging each clean brown toe. “What happened?”
“We took a chance moving in together and the sky didn’t fall. I love you more than before and I love our life together. It’s hard being two prickly people together like us. Here we are trying not to leave and wanting to stay. We can do this together.”
“And hating to process.” I added. “Please don’t forget hating to process.”
“You hate to process more than I do, kid.” Lucky took a sip of bourbon and grimaced. “There was an article on BBC today about another lesbian refugee from Iran. They tried to force her to transition, but she fled instead. Her parents said that they would kill her if she disgraced the family with homosexuality. Besides, there are tax, medical, and federal benefits here at home too. Maybe it’s time for us both to stop being afraid of permanency.” Lucky tousled my hair and her face started to relax. “What the fuck monkey butt, let’s do it!”
And as if all the goddesses and satyrs were smiling down on two jaded old queers, Ella Fitzgerald’s voice broke into “Let’s Fall in Love” and the fireplace sent out hot red and orange sparks. I leaned over to suck on Lucky’s toes, licking the damp little cave between each toe, nibbling her arch, then the sensitive spot near her ankle. I adored being on my knees and looking up at Lucky’s face, her eyes dropping closed and her cheeks flushing with desire, listening to her breath deepen. Lucky reached down and grabbed her cock. I could see its eight-inch length under her pajamas. She was packing the longer one, the one made for mouth-fucking. My nipples ached and my mouth watered with anticipation. I reached under her flannel pants legs and stroked her strong shins, rubbing the long hard muscles, then tenderly licked behind her dimpled knees. I reached up to unbutton the fly of her worn flannel pajama pants. The fire cast a warm apricot light on us, the rest of the room in purple shadows. Lucky’s sandalwood soap, the fireplace smoke, the bourbon, and the burning tobacco from Lucky’s pipe surrounded us as I freed Lucky’s cock, leaned in, and swallowed it gratefully. This is what I lived for, sitting on the floor with the wool rug scratchy and rough beneath me, bent over with Lucky’s hard cock between my soft lips sliding down my wet throat, and the smell of her cunt rising, pulling me closer. I was turned inside out with pleasure. Lucky’s cock pushing inside of me, filling me, the sensitive lining of my mouth being stroked, my lips engorged around her cock. I started drooling, spit dripping down my chin and down her cock, wanting to fuck her deeper until I was filled with her so hard that the space between her cock and my skin disappeared. No distance between us; our skin, our membranes merging into something electrical. A chemical change and we become a different animal snorting and sloppy, hoofs clanking, all synapses afire. I pulled out, stroking my overstimulated lips with the head of her cock, feeling my eyes roll back with pleasure. Lucky shifted, jamming her flannel-clad leg between my legs so that I could ride her as I sucked her cock, my cunt pressing onto her leg. My cunt sliding like the rider of a hobbyhorse, with her leg bobbing up and down, up and down. My throat was my cunt and I came, her cock rubbing inside my mouth so hot and wet. Then my mouth was moving faster, spit puddling onto Lucky’s fly, the salty sweet smell of sex wafting around us both, her hands tight on the back of my head shoving me down harder as her hips arched upward, soft flannel and hot flesh, and she was coming inside my mouth as I came again, this time on her leg, the most perverse hobbyhorse imaginable.
* * *
We bought our marriage license online, made an appointment at city hall for the day before our flight, October 10, rustled up Birdie and Tov as witnesses, and asked Ian if he would become an honorary Deputy Marriage Commissioner so that he could marry us.
Getting married felt incredibly transgressive, as well as a little awkward and frightening. Of my previous three
marriages, one had ended in widowhood and two in d-i-v-o-r-c-e. Lucky had never been married in any shape or form, but she was the kind of person who was blithe once she had made up her mind. She spent the next weeks whistling show tunes and cruising vintage ruffled tuxedo shirts online. I gnawed my cuticles raw, popped antacids, and baked cake. We were also getting ready for our Iran trip, so things were hectic.
We told our friends that we’d concluded that marriage might keep us from undergoing a stint of nonconsensual torture in a dank room at Tehran’s Evin Prison, and joked that it was like a shotgun wedding, except that the President of Iran was the one holding the firearm to our stately heads. This wasn’t entirely true though, we loved each other and had a need for the kind of intimate family that only a romantic partner could fulfill. It was something different, not more and not less, but different from close friends, blood family, or chosen family.
Fortunately, checking Bride or Groom was optional on the marriage application form so we checked neither and left it blank. Gender wasn’t on the form at all. Lucky identified as female and butch, whereas I identified as genderqueer. Would we be pronounced man and wife like in the movies? Who was the wife and who was the husband? Were we both husbands? Both wives?
I had more of a propensity for privacy than Lucky, and was prepared, willing, and eager to keep it small. An elopement in name, almost in deed. Lucky felt differently. As Lucky eloquently put it one night five weeks before our wedding, while standing in our bedroom wearing nothing but red boxers, striped sock garters with black socks, I Hate Perfume Cedarwood Tea, and a white muscle tank top, “If I’m getting married, we’re having a party!”
I was flabbergasted and flummoxed. “Have you ever even seen a bridal magazine? Talk about heteronormativity! Weddings are a deluge of rose petals, matching outfits, tulle, champagne toasts, bad catered food, and drunken uncles. Can you imagine Betty giving you away?”
“Here, take my daughter, she never would wear a dress,” Lucky said, in a spot-on imitation of her mother, Betty.
“Okay, we can do a for-real wedding, but please let’s keep it small. And no tulle. I hate fluffy bridal puke!”
Lucky immediately texted Betty to buy an airline ticket: Buy tix for October. Getting married on the 10th. You’ll be giving your little girl away.
Betty responded within minutes, setting off a flurry of texts about wedding dates, clothing, open relationships, and heteronormative privilege, mostly from Betty. Betty was concerned that marriage would mean that Lucky would lose her carefree ways, become Republican or Libertarian, and that our sex life would suffer. It was obvious that the apple did not fall far from the tree.
Lucky had changed from a reluctant fiancé to an enthusiastic groom within a week of saying yes. I was blindsided by her unexpected eagerness, but it felt like an adventure into a possibly delectable unknown. Why not, indeed! I tried not to roll my eyes over the deluge of sentimentality.
There was a lot to fret over. The drag seemed like the easiest. I got our tuxes dry-cleaned, polished our boots, and shined our cuff links. There were rings, cakes, invites to send, vows to write, and flowers. Maybe there were even punch bowls and ice sculptures. It was a bit of a bamboozle. I’d forgotten about Lucky’s love of a good party.
Lucky had her heart set on a ruffled dress shirt, and it had been surprisingly difficult to find modern ruffled dress shirts. Most that I’d found were either vintage or costume shirts, and neither Lucky nor I were vintage shapes. We were too husky to fit into the shirts I’d found on Etsy and eBay. I finally bought a handful of costume shirts and hoped that the fabric wasn’t too cheap.
The shirts were delivered by UPS on a Thursday. It was late in the evening by the time we got around to opening the package. I’d picked up our laundry from the cleaners that morning and was untying the twine from the stacks of clean clothing wrapped neatly in crisp sky-blue paper, then putting the laundered clothing away. Francy and Lulu-Bear had fled from their nest on the bed, the noise from the crackling wrapping paper having driven them away. Lucky ripped open the UPS package of new dress shirts.
Lucky removed pin after pin from the pink ruffled front shirt until she shook it loose. She pursed her lips as if she’d swallowed a noxious still squirming bug and examined the shirt’s tag critically. “This is cotton poly! It has sixty percent polyester. Feel it! It’s slimy. This feels like something Humbert Humbert would wear to spy on ten-year-old girls through the bushes.”
I’d raised a monster. Lucky had been content with common vintage cotton poly blends before we’d met, but I’d been sewing her shirts for the past year. I’d taught her about pima cotton, linen, shirtings, and oxford cloth. Shell, horn, and corozo buttons. Spread collars, button-down collars, club collars, and cutaway shirt collars. I’d lectured her on the indignities of polyester, exclaiming that polyester should please archeologists, as it would live long after human flesh had rotted off its bones. Polyester and McDonald’s hamburgers had a lot in common in tenacity, and both were no longer part of our lives.
“This will never do!” Lucky said indignantly. “Can you sew us two ruffled shirts by October?”
I was brushing up on my Farsi, had a bad case of the pre-trip jitters, and was planning a wedding. The idea of sewing two ruffled tuxedo shirts put me over the edge. All those ruffles, the pressure of getting the fit right, buying fabric. It was too, too much.
“There’s no way! I don’t have the time. Why don’t we find a tailor to make them?”
Lucky looked miffed and disappointed, and I felt guilty, but I couldn’t push myself to crank out two ruffled shirts in the next eight weeks. “I’m sorry. Sewing ruffles is a bitch, and I haven’t sewn one since Theo was a little girl. Let’s go to Britex Fabrics on Saturday and pick out fabric. How about I sew our bow ties instead?”
Saturday was sunny but cool, with puffy white clouds filling the deep-blue sky, almost a parody of Saturday mornings. At 10:00 a.m., fortified with Blue Bottle coffee, Irish breakfast tea, maple bacon, and yeasted pecan and banana waffles, we walked the three blocks from Market and Third to Union Square.
Lucky was suave in an olive-green chambray shirt, black 501s, a brown leather bomber jacket, a black bandana in her left back pocket, and Pikolino brown wingtip ankle boots. I wore a striped long-sleeved T-shirt in shades of rust and pink, a black wool vest, blue jeans, a worn black leather jacket, and black Frye lace-up ankle boots with bright red laces. We had gotten up early to dedicate the morning to solving the wedding shirt problem.
We grabbed more coffee and tea for fortification at Emporio Rulli in Union Square, and were sitting among the flocks of camera toting tourists, tall palm trees, and greedy pigeons. We walked past La Perla, Chanel, Jimmy Choo, and John Varvatos to Britex Fabrics. Britex was an anomaly, a four-story upscale fabric store packed with reams of couture fabric, a massive selection of buttons, and a passel of surly Russian clerks. The Russians were separated, one to a floor, as if containing all that aggression on one floor might lead to textile-fueled uprisings and insurrection.
We headed for the cottons on the second floor. Faced with the floor-to-ceiling-shelved wall of imported cotton fabric, Lucky browsed the traditional shirtings on the left, while I went directly to the more flowery Liberty of London cotton lawns on the right. I found a rose-strewn print in slate blue, shades of red, and ocher and brought it over to Lucky.
“Have you found anything you like yet?”
Lucky was fondling an Italian pima cotton in sea-glass green with a rapturous gleam in her eye. “Feel the soft hand of this shirting. It’s imported from Italy.”
Just then the second-floor Russian sales clerk darted over to us like a heat-seeking missile riding in an ocean of pungent 1980s Giorgio perfume. “The fabric must speak to you!” she hissed. “Vat are you making?” She sparkled, wearing a rhinestone-encrusted, stretch purple denim jumpsuit that clung to her hefty voluptuous figure, her hair a mountain of dyed red ringlets festooned with lighter purple silk artificial flowers.
“Ah! A vedding! You need vite cotton for tuxedo shirts then.” She started yanking bolts of white shirtings from the wall of fabrics vigorously, thrusting them into Lucky’s hands.
“No. We want colors.” I took the bolts from Lucky and put the white fabric back on the shelves hastily.
The salesclerk looked insulted, her haughty drawn eyebrows arching and narrow pearly pink lipsticked lips pursed in shock. “All grooms vear vite,” she pronounced firmly, grabbing the white fabric from the shirting shelves and unfurling it for our approval, her gold costume jewelry rings flashing.
“No. We want colors. I’ll come get you when we’re ready to buy fabric.” I put the white fabric bolts back again and shooed her away.
“I’m all about the love that dare not speak its name, but talking fabric? Wow, she is hardcore.”
“Well, Lord Alfred Douglas, I like this Liberty print,” I said, and unfurled my floral Liberty with a flourish.
Lucky laughed. “I’m not wearing flowers, but I like the way this cotton feels.” She held out the pima cotton she was caressing. “Maybe I can find it in a slate blue to match the background in your flowered fabric. What do you think?” She pinched my ass surreptitiously, winking at me as I jumped in surprise.
We found a slate-blue pima cotton imported from England and entreated the huffy Russian salesclerk to cut our unorthodox fashion choices. “This fabric vill never vork!” she muttered as she cut the Liberty floral and the dark slate-blue fabrics, her r’s rolling harder than her hips, then thrust the fabric into our arms and flounced away in a tizzy of indignation.
Behrouz Gets Lucky Page 17