When We Were Outlaws

by Jeanne Cordova

  Rachel stood up and began to pace. “I don’t know what kind of changes! I can’t think when my life is screaming all the time. I need a sense of calm.”

  I looked up at her. “Why didn’t you tell me about wanting changes, Rachel, before you went away with another woman?”

  “Because I thought you would leave me. If I told you I needed to be non-monogamous, I thought you’d walk out of my life.”

  Jumping to my feet, I walked to the bookcase, rested my elbows on the top shelf and cradled my head in my hands. It felt like I was drowning, something was compressing the life out of my lungs. Negotiating weekends from BeJo didn’t matter to Rachel anymore. Lifting my head, I turned toward Rachel’s front door. Walk through it, an inner voice told me. Free yourself.

  But my feet wouldn’t move.

  Maybe none of these words mattered. Rachel adored me. I was crazy about her. Other people couldn’t change that.

  I turned back to face her. “So, it’s non-monogamy you want?” my hollow voice asked.

  “It will make things easier between us, Jeanne.” She said, pulling my name out long like she was saying good-bye.

  “Easier!” The anger flashed again as I shouted. I grabbed a book out of the bookcase and slammed it against the wall. “It breaks my heart to hear you say these words! Am I supposed to sit around waiting while you screw other women, seeing you every Monday and Friday—make love—and pretend it doesn’t tear me up inside?” I looked down to see Andrea Dworkin’s hardcover, Violence Against Women, hit the floor in front of her. The sharp smack was satisfying. “What kind of easier is that?”

  Rachel sobbed louder and ran into the bedroom, screaming, “I can’t handle your rage. You’re always angry with me.”

  Running after her, I stood in the bedroom doorway. “I have a right to be angry. You lied to me. You start dating another woman without telling me and now you tell me you want to demote our relationship.”

  Rachel stood on the other side of the mattress, her face swollen to a dark pink. “Why is non-monogamy a demotion when I do it? You did it for months.”

  “I didn’t use it to distance myself from you!”

  “What a goddamn lie, Jeanne! Can you hear yourself?” she yelled.

  “BeJo was here before I met you.”

  “You told me non-monogamy was your preferred lifestyle.”

  “Not when I’m in love with you!” I pounded my fist against the doorjamb. “Where am I supposed to call you, at Jacki’s house?”

  “Call me at my house.”

  “Just drop in like I used to?”

  “Don’t come here if you don’t want to see what you don’t want to see.”

  Suddenly I heard us from afar, as if I were the Goddess listening in, a detached self gazing out the bedroom window. Córdova didn’t want to be alive and hearing these words from the woman she loved. The tiny bedroom wasn’t big enough to hold the hurt.

  I dropped to my knees, sitting on the edge of the mattress. “What are we doing to each other?” I mumbled through tears.

  Rachel came from behind me on the bed and circled her arms around my neck. The sweet pressure of her breasts against my back calmed me.

  “I’ve missed you so much,” she whispered, kissing the back of my neck. “I hate it when we fight.”

  I drank in her patchouli. “When will we see each other?”

  “As often as you want to,” she promised.

  “As often as I want?” I retorted, incredulous. “Rachel, why I’ve been trying to find you these weeks is that I want to spend every weekend together. I talked to BeJo. I’ve broken off our arrangement. I’m free to be with you.”

  For a long moment Rachel said nothing. She continued to finger-stroke my hair, combing it back over my ears like she liked it.

  “I waited months to hear these words from you, Jeanne. I can’t keep changing my life again to accommodate yours. Besides, you have so many meetings on Saturdays, you couldn’t possibly spend a whole weekend with anyone.”

  I sighed; Rachel was right about weekend meetings.

  “Well then, how about every Saturday night through Monday mornings then?” I reached up, cupping her head. “And at least once during the week. Wednesdays. Every Wednesday night?”

  “Whatever night you want.” Rachel pulled me backward, down to the mattress, struggling to take off my vest and work her fingers over my shirt buttons. “It’s been so long,” she breathed into my ear, sending a ripple down my thighs. “Make love to me, babe,” she murmured.

  Somehow, I wasn’t relieved. Something felt wrong…missing…broken. I got up, leaving her alone on the mattress, and went to the fridge to get us some beers. Alcohol never gave me the sweet oblivion it gave Rachel, so I reached into my pocket, grabbed and swallowed another Darvon. The night was young but already I knew I wanted to forget it. No, tonight I couldn’t make love to Rachel, but I could certainly fuck.

  “I’ve got some sad news,” Penny said, as I stood in her office doorway weeks later. It was November 3rd and I knew by the low pitch in her voice she had another rough assignment for me. I had a much thicker skin than Rachel, but being Human Rights Editor was eroding my human stamina.

  Looking down at her desk, she said softly, “Lenny Somberg, the Director of the Free Clinic, was murdered today. At his office. He was just sitting at his desk. Apparently someone broke in maybe looking for cash. When he wouldn’t hand it over they shot him. He died before the ambulance got there.”

  My mind began spinning—more death and loss. Was this an occupational hazard of journalists? My mind flew to Rachel. With life so easily cut short, why were the love of my life and I wasting so much time apart? For six weeks I’d tried to swallow Rachel’s non-monogamous announcement like a good feminist, valiantly putting the excruciating images of her in bed with other women out of my mind. I’d run every kind of feminist rationalization through my head—after all, I myself had been non-monogamous, now it was her turn. Jealousy was heterosexual thinking; Rachel didn’t belong to me. But our new arrangement, her declaration, had sent my emotional life into a bleak spiral. Being apart from her felt like falling from grace.

  As Penny talked on about my covering Somberg’s creation of the amazing L.A. Free Clinic and his life and death, all I could think about was writing Rachel a final letter. Returning to my office, I closed and locked the door and pulled the blinds shut. I wanted no interruptions.

  My Darling, I typed, what’s happened to our weekends and Wednesday nights? It’s November now and I’ve grown to hate this non-monogamous plan of yours. I can never find you on the phone or even at the Saloon. You don’t even seem to be living at your house anymore. It’s as though you’ve disappeared. I’ve memorized every syllable on your answering machine. Each inflection of your voice feels like a knife paring a hole closer to my heart. Our rare Saturday nights stretch across my life like oases that are too far apart to sustain life. Sometimes you leave me curt phone messages giving me feeble excuses about plans Jacki has made for you two so you can’t see me on weekends. And yet, you call me, sometimes from her house, crying, saying how desperately you miss me. Please darling, come back to me so we can share our joy again.

  My private phone line rang off the hook. But I was too absorbed. All I could do was write.

  I see you sometimes at demonstrations and you’re with her. You look at me with pain and longing. And still, you do nothing. Your actions don’t match your words. I don’t know which are true anymore. I fear I am beginning to hate you as much as love you. Is this what you call our new relationship?

  “Córdova?” Bryan called timidly through my door. “Your friend Rachel has been calling all afternoon.”

  I stopped banging the Selectric and ran to my door, unlocking it. “Goddamn it, Bryan. Why didn’t you interrupt me?”

  “I told her you were in a meeting with Penny,” he whimpered. “She said to tell you she wants you to come over to her house as soon as you can.”

  “You should have told m
e sooner,” I barked, as I tore the letter out of my typewriter and jammed it into my back pocket. A minute later I was speeding to her in Lionheart.

  The sky was mottled in smog and sunset red. Once more I found the front door to Effie Street left ajar. I found Rachel sitting on the back porch staring across the tiled rooftops and palm forest below. She held a joint pressed between her lips and was dressed in my pale blue button-down shirt, the one I’d left in her closet for overnights.

  Wordlessly, I sat down on the step behind her, my legs encircling her small frame, my chest pressed against her back. It was her favorite position. Her delicately pinched fingers held the joint over her shoulder offering it to me as she mouthed a line from Baez about passionate strangers who rescue each other from a lifetime of care.

  “No thanks,” I murmured, waving the pot away. “I popped a Darvon before I came.”

  “Of course you did,” she retorted, and I reeled from the bitterness in her tone. So it was going to be that kind of night.

  “It’s nice to see you, Jeanne.” Her tone switched to tender as she drew my name out long as if she’d waited all fall to say it.

  The heat of her back pressed against my chest, and I stifled an impulse to rip her blouse off and fuck her there on the stairwell. Memories of past times flooded through me. “You could say my name more often, if you’d answer the damn phone when I call.”

  Rachel picked up a cloth and started dusting the pile of album covers at her feet.

  We’d hit a wall. I stood and walked back into the living room to the stereo. Some lighter music might change the mood. She came up behind me.

  I turned to face her.

  “God, you make me so furious!” she screamed at the top of her lungs, her pent up rage blowing me a step backward. I wondered how much she’d had to drink. Her hands balled into fists as she pounded my chest. “Why did you say we can spend weekends together now, Jeanne? Why now? Don’t you know how many months I longed for you to admit you wanted to be with me?”

  My emotional thermostat was overheating, but I let her hit me until her rage collapsed into bedrock of tears. Then I pulled her close and wrapped my arms around her. “It’s going to be all right,” I soothed. “Are you saying you used to love me but you don’t anymore?”

  She pulled away from me, looking as small as a stunned bird. “I love you like I love the mountains, Jeanne. There is no past or present to that.”

  Her words made me lightheaded and I shook her by the shoulders. “Then leave that woman. Stop seeing her, Rachel!” Roughly, I pressed my mouth against hers.

  Her lips slackened and she went limp in my arms. Her forehead rested on my chest as she said dully, “I can’t. I can’t go forward or backward anymore. I have no more power, Jeanne. The Center won. The Saloon closed. You left me. I’m jobless and can’t afford my rent. I can’t change anything. All I want to do is run away from my life.”

  I lifted her head so that our eyes met. “I won’t accept your running away, Rachel. Don’t cop out on me. You have the power to make us right again. You stood up for lesbian rights at the Center, you came and found me and made me fall in love with you. You can change this!”

  Rachel sank to the floor, sitting cross-legged.

  I squatted beside her, taking her chin gently and studying her eyes. They looked dull and listless. How many bottles or joints had she consumed before I’d arrived? I had to find a way to get through to her. “I am here for you. I want to be monogamous with you. I can do the work for both of us. I’ll find us an apartment. We’ll live together. I’ll be with you all the time.”

  Rachel slapped me across the cheek. “How dare you say that to me!” Her voice came out cold and strong. “Where were you all summer when I sat here waiting like your goddamn mistress? Knowing you were with BeJo, or at some meeting. Everything was more important to you then. Don’t you dare come back to me now and offer me everything I once wanted!” She stood up, using my shoulders to balance her weight as she shrank toward the bedroom.

  The sting on my cheek ignited my adrenaline. I bolted to my feet, grabbing Rachel’s shirt sleeve. “Don’t you dare walk out on me now,” I screamed.

  “Then fuck me or leave me!” she yelled in my face. “I’m tired of this talk.”

  “You’re drunk!” I yelled back. “I fucked you last time when I was angry and it only made me hate you more when you disappeared again.”

  She came toward me, defiantly wrapping her arms around my neck; pulling my hair until it hurt, she brought my lips to hers. My body agreed: enough talk. She was right. Only sex was strong enough to break through her self-imposed wall of paralysis. My lips parted and her weight fell against me. I finished ripping off her shirt, my own, and I lifted her off her feet, bringing us both down hard on the bare polished floor.

  Being inside her mouth felt bottomless, as always, but this time both of us needed much more. I wanted her to remember my hands when she was with Jacki. And what, I wanted to ask, did she need? But talk was over. My nails raked the ridges of her nipples and her stomach muscles tightened in pain. I turned her over on her stomach and began to caress her back and buttocks, marveling at their whiteness, the color of bone, as I climbed on top of her.

  Her body quivered and froze. I could feel her fright. We’d never made love this way before.

  “It’s me, I’m here,” I whispered in her ear, blowing my voice deep into her ear. She lay beneath me her body steeled with trepidation. “I want your mouth,” she beckoned and I came to her buffering her face with my hand between her head and the floor, as I waited for her permission or denial.

  As her tongue yielded to mine, her spine relaxed against my weight, and she whispered, “Make love to me, darling, like tonight is our forever.”

  Her words shocked, then drove new rage into my knees as they bruised against the hardwood. When she moaned I knew she was ready. My hands returned to the naked cheeks of her ass, and my fingers probed the recess between her buttocks.

  “Hold me!” she called out urgently, but this time I didn’t stop.

  “Talk to me, baby,” she urged.

  “Easy,” I demanded, using her old nickname as I pushed deeper. “I’ve got you. Let me in.”

  “Jeanne,” she gasped. She grabbed my other wrist, as I my fingers slid inside her all the way to my palm. Her muscles squeezed my fingers as I began to pump.

  “Promise me you won’t ever leave me,” I demanded in rhythm with my hand, “Promise me.”

  Her body tightened once more and I saw the shock on her face as pain and pleasure fought one another. I had to knock down her wall and bring her home. I slid past her resistance and felt it yield as abruptly as it had come. Muscles relaxed around my fingers and our bodies went limp. Only then did my left hand go beneath her and find her clit. Slowly, she came back to life. I lifted her hips off the hardwood and stroked her thigh. Her jaw unclenched. Now there was only hunger in her face. Finally, we belonged to each other. Would it be for tonight or as she said, our forever?

  “Promise me, Rachel,” I repeated as I brought my naked groin hard against her.

  Joy swallowed us as we moved together.

  “I promise, babe, I’ll never leave you.”

  Her breathing grew rapid and my body climbed quickly to her speed.

  “…Jeanne!” she called out, coming with the last syllable of my name.

  Later in the night, her mouth on my nipples quelled what was left of my pain.

  A noise in the back of my mind roused me slowly. Rachel’s telephone was ringing. My eyes flew open. A small shaft of sunlight was peeking in through the window. Somewhere in the night we’d made our way from the hardwood to her bedroom’s futon. We lay on her multi-colored bedspread, clutching each other as tightly as two banks hug a river.

  I looked at my Timex. It was just past six a.m.

  Rachel was asleep, her face luminous, its lines relaxed with joy. Hating to wake her, I mumbled groggily in her ear, “Darling, your phone is ringing. Christ, who
would call at this hour?”

  She half-opened her eyes and looked at me dreamily and smiled. “You’re still here. It can’t be important,” she cooed, pulling my lips to hers.

  Kissing her deeply, a voice broke into our world. “Hi honey, I was calling to wake you up for a kiss and to confirm our picnic today…”

  Rachel shot out of bed like an earthquake had catapulted her from it, but not in time to prevent my hearing the woman’s voice end with, “Call me back honey.”

  I heard the click as Rachel snapped off the answering machine. But it was too late. The intimacy in Jacki’s voice chilled my heart, made it stop beating long enough for me to fall from grace into despair. I turned over on my stomach and used the pillow to smother my tears. Last night I’d been inside her as no one else had ever been. Last night we were as intimate as two human beings could ever hope to be. Last night we’d promised forever.

  Rachel was back in bed, stroking the back of my neck. “Talk to me, babe,” she pleaded. “I’m sorry you had to hear that.”

  The pillow remained between us as my only defense. This was the butt end of non-monogamy, the “slippage” I was never supposed to hear.

  “You lied to me.” I spoke through the pillow.

  “She means nothing to me. We’re friends.” Rachel tried to pull the pillow away, but I held on tightly. I wanted no living soul to see my hurt. In the blackness I thought about BeJo over the last two years. Had she ever had a moment like this? And Rachel over the summer, surely I hadn’t done this to her? Men must have invented non-monogamy. It was a paradigm meant for sex, not love. I wanted to disappear.

  “Talk to me, darling,” Rachel pleaded.

  A stern voice came out of me. “Would you go and make some coffee?”

  “What?”

  “Make some coffee and toast. Let’s have breakfast,” the voice instructed.

  Rachel got out of our bed. I heard noises in the kitchen. My tears were dry now. Swiftly, I pulled on my jeans and boots, threw the car keys into my pocket.

  I paused in the chilled living room, naked from the waist as I looked outdoors through her window trying to find the horizon. This morning’s marine layer had vaporized even the palm trees, but not the wall separating Rachel’s heart from mine. Last night was over. I couldn’t bear to let her see my pain.