by Radclyffe
When I’m fifteen, my lips betray me—or rather, their paralysis betrays me. My numbness is a stubborn one, Novocain from the inside. My lips use silence to conceal—but sometimes silence is the most revealing. “Does it have something to do with sexual orientation?” my mother asks me at my bedside, noting the fragility in me.
Today I thank my lips for having kept shut—contort though they did against my salty pillow that night. I thank them for knowing that the impulse of an excusing “no” would surely have buried me. The next morning I trot silently down the hallway in my plaid pajama pants, hiding from my parents under lowered eyelids. I search for the feeling of relief that I’d hoped for. In the kitchen, in the bedroom, in the yard—it must be hidden somewhere.
I’ve asked my mother not to inform my father yet.
*
When I’m seventeen my lips pucker for photo shoots alongside superficial girlfriends, who sometimes, in moments of empathy, hold my head still for me, calming the marbles that swirl within it. These girls restore in me a lost impulse for affection. The guys at school are awed, playfully begging for tips on getting girls.
My father picks me up from school, and on the way home I recline against the black leather, flipping stations to avoid the gloom of his silence, which is broken only by his deep sighing. On one such car ride, in an attempt to test his sensitivity, I’ll answer truthfully to the scripted question, “How is school?” I will discuss the bonds I share with my female friends, almost hoping to evoke jealousy in him. I am desperate to ignite some sort of emotion in him, to engage him somehow. He’ll see the photos we’ve taken at home, Sheila’s slender arms wrapped around me, and he’ll make comments, naming me a “ladies’ man,” a sort of hero. I’ll hate him for this and wish to myself that it were the arms of good, strong men around me in the photos, men who laugh and feel and speak and love.
*
Outdoors, we neaten the backyard over Thanksgiving vacation, grouping dead leaves with gentle motions across the earth. I am nineteen. This semester I’m learning to weld metal rods, to paint with oils, and to be my own unconditional back tickle. Even though I’m looking forward to meeting the right guy to share that job with me.
Zoe, now twelve, has just layered her hair. In her striped hat and gloves, she looks as though she’d fit on the side of an autumn shopping bag. She laughs when I tell her so, as I take her picture. “I’m so lucky to have a gay brother,” she sings, implying a stereotype that a melting heart can forgive from a little sister. Julie wears the hand-me-down windbreaker of an old family friend. She remains soberly focused on the raking. Inside, my mother stacks the clean dishes as my father settles at the bay window with a draft of my philosophy paper. He lowers his spectacles, looking for strength and security in the Times New Roman of his son’s ideas. He has not always known enough of his own strength to meet this son’s eyes, to know him. But something in him has been defrosting ever since he found out that his son too was a prisoner. Though the exposed absence of our relationship has alarmed him, it’s colored his once-smirking eyes with a new earnestness. He wants to understand, and he’s almost there. We’re almost there together.
The grass is still new, baby hair in clumps of wet dirt. Even Julie admits the effort is futile: “I feel dumb working so hard to get these leaves off. This grass isn’t going to last the winter, anyway.” Still we move across the yard, stroking it softly with our rakes, tickling the ground. In these moments my lips will part, tap each other affectionately, like old friends, and communicate a feeling. “I guess we want a clean lawn when the snow melts this spring,” I offer. “A lawn free of autumn decay,” I add, grinning like a playful poet. Julie rolls her eyes and smiles sheepishly. Feeling warm, I lick my lips. They are learning, I hope, to speak again.
Fighting for Lies
Aimee Lukes
Billie was studying at Alaina’s house. She was trying to avoid thinking about Spanish by figuring out Christmas gifts before New Year’s rolled around. (Billie’s mother always made jokes about her late Christmas shopping.) She was also using it to avoid thinking about kissing Alaina. If the thought got stuck in her head, she wouldn’t be able to think of anything else until she did it. Even though she had a boyfriend. Instead of kissing her, Billie stole Alaina’s glasses.
“Hey! What are you doing?” Alaina was obviously surprised. “No fair!”
Billie put them on. “Wow, Laney, you’re fucking blind.”
“Am not!”
“Okay, maybe it’s not that bad.”
“Give them back, Billie.”
She cocked a smile. “Okay, fine. Just let me put them back on you.”
“Really?” Alaina didn’t sound impressed.
“Yes.” Very carefully, Billie held out the glasses.
“Don’t poke me in the eye.”
Billie squinted. “I won’t!” It was a bit difficult to get them over the ears properly, and Alaina had to readjust them, but Billie managed to get them on.
“Did they bother you at first?” she asked. “When you started wearing glasses, I mean.”
“I kept forgetting them at breakfast, but my mother would always catch me before I walked out the door,” Alaina told her.
“I bet that was a load of work.” Billie sighed and lay back. She snuck her hand down to grab Alaina’s. Alaina looked surprised for a minute, like she wasn’t sure what Billie was going to do, but that passed when Billie did nothing. She just wanted to hold her hand. She couldn’t do the other things she wanted—things that ranged from raunchy to sweet, but all were intimate.
I promised I would stop doing this. She was supposed to stop being so affectionate, as if starving those desires could make them die. She couldn’t help it, though, and she kept being overly affectionate to cover just how much she touched Alaina. She had the worst urge to pull down Alaina’s blouse and kiss her shoulder. Billie’s finger twitched. I could use a cigarette.
“Are you coming drinking with us on Saturday?” she asked. “To the airport.”
“Do I have a choice?” Alaina joked.
“You’re the captain,” Billie told her. That nickname, born in a childish game of pirates, wasn’t used often, but it was always used affectionately. “Would you like another lesson in how to be bad?”
“Will there be boys there?”
“We weren’t really planning on it, but we can invite some.” Billie refused to frown.
“A girls’ night sounds nice.”
Billie grinned. “Good.” There was a dip just above Alaina’s collarbone that Billie wanted to lick. She wondered what Alaina’s skin tasted like—perfume? lotion? salt? Books, she decided. She shivered when she imagined her mouth on Alaina’s collarbone, her tongue teasing the skin there. She let go of Alaina’s hand.
*
Alaina sat in the circle between Gayle and Barbara, across from Billie. There was a bottle of rum in the center, and Barbara’s chubby ankles nearly touched the base. She was the tallest, and it didn’t help that she had scooted in closer than everyone else. Gayle’s ankles, by contrast, were bony, almost refusing to match the rest of Gayle’s body (save for her thin, elegant fingers). Alaina’s feet were flat and wide, and her heels jutted out a bit oddly, in her opinion. Billie’s were small and smooth, and her ankles were delicate bumps that were almost invisible in the night.
Alaina reached for the rum, but Gayle got there first, so Alaina flopped onto the ground. It was disorienting to stare at the night sky, and she couldn’t recognize any of the constellations, try as she might. She didn’t know if she had drunk too much or if she was just shitty at astronomy. She hummed a little tune, but she didn’t know what she was humming.
Barbara burst into titters.
“What?” Gayle asked, placing the rum back in the middle of their lopsided circle.
“Alaina,” Barbara told her, finally stopping. “She is so out of it tonight.”
Billie only stuck her tongue out and made farting noises in Barbie’s direction.
“Stop that,�
�� Barb told her.
“Yes, Barb.” She fidgeted a bit while Alaina continued to hum away the silence. “Don’t you think,” Billie cut in, “that we should turn the headlights on? It’s really dark now.”
“Yeah,” Gayle agreed. “We don’t want people sneaking up on us.”
“Nah,” Alaina told them. “It’s too late in the season for that.”
Barbara fell into a fit of giggles again. “What season is that, boy season?” This time the other girls giggled with her, and Alaina swung herself up to get the rum. This time, she beat Billie.
“You want it?” Alaina asked, sloshing the bottle.
“Yes!” Billie answered, probably more loudly than she intended.
Alaina laughed. “Rum for the captain first.” She took a quick swig, then handed it over.
“I like rum,” Billie said needlessly. Barbara patted her on the back while she drank deeply. She cradled the bottle in her arms. “I think I love it more than I love babies.”
“Let’s put the rum back, Billie,” Gayle said, slipping the drink from her arms. “The boys will show up soon.”
“Oh, great,” she groaned. “Show up just when we’re blind drunk.”
“When else?” Barbara said. Her laugh was more like a set of hoots, and Alaina couldn’t stop giggling until Gayle shushed her repeatedly.
“They’re coming, they’re coming,” Billie whispered.
Each boy was driving his own car, and it took Alaina a few minutes to remember that they probably wanted some private time with their girlfriends. They stopped a few feet away, still in the airport’s clearing. Alaina was thinking about how cool it was that abandoned air fields had so much room when Gayle hauled her to her feet.
“Jeremy, you know Alaina,” she was saying.
“Hi, Jeremy.”
Jeremy shot her a shy smile. Christopher, Billie’s boyfriend, elbowed Jeremy. Their eyes met, and Chris gave Jeremy an encouraging nod. “Hey, Alaina.” He cleared his throat. “I’m glad you’re here.”
Suddenly, all her friends were gone, and it was just her and Jeremy.
“It’s kind of cold out here.”
“Well, it’s November.”
It was Alaina’s turn to clear her throat, and she stared down at her feet.
“Oh, right! Um. Do you want to go back to my car? We can warm up in there.”
Alaina smiled. “That would be lovely, Jeremy.”
Jeremy looked very surprised when Alaina kissed him in the backseat. Alaina was wondering where to put her hands as he kissed her. He stroked her hair—something she wasn’t particularly fond of—and whispered how she was really sweet and he found her smile endearing. So she smiled. It turned out that she didn’t have to worry about where to put her hands. Jeremy seemed perfectly fine holding them while they kissed, softly rubbing her wrists with his thumb.
Everything was wrong, but Alaina didn’t care to say that. She wasn’t going to date him again, that was for sure, so there wasn’t a problem with letting him have his one night of kissing, was there? She’d have to ask Billie about that later. Some time when she wasn’t focused on how to move her tongue.
*
They were in Billie’s backyard. There was snow on the ground but not very much under the tree. Billie was smoking, but she was almost down to the butt. She’d offered Alaina a cigarette, but Alaina declined.
“So how was Jeremy?” she asked. “You never told me.”
Alaina stuck her tongue out. “He was all wrong,” she explained. “I guess…there wasn’t anything wrong with his technique—though I could use some practice, I suppose—but I just didn’t like it.”
“Well, how do you like to be kissed?” Billie asked.
“I don’t know!” Alaina giggled. “I just…I don’t know if I want to keep being the third wheel.”
“You’ll find someone,” Billie assured her.
“I don’t want someone,” Alaina insisted. She became very quiet and leaned against the tree. “Doing all this stuff—drinking and smoking and boys and skipping class—I’m not built for it, Billie.”
“What are you saying?” she asked.
“I feel like I’m being pressured to do those things. That isn’t right, Billie.”
Billie flicked her cigarette to the ground and stomped it out. “I’m sorry, Captain. I’ll tell the girls to back off.”
“It’s okay…I should have said something earlier.”
Billie cleared her throat. “So, did you hear the news?”
“What?”
“Barbara and Melvin are having sex.”
Alaina’s face turned red faster than a stoplight, and Billie laughed.
“I’m kind of jealous,” Billie admitted. “I mean, it’s been so long for me…and Christopher’s still not ready. Or maybe he just thinks we’re not ready.”
“I…What is sex like?” Alaina asked.
Billie paused to consider. “Filling.”
“What?” Alaina shrieked.
“Well, what else would it be?”
“Loving? Romantic?”
“I wanted to pick something that was more…universal.”
“And is it still universal if you don’t have a penis?” Alaina blurted out before covering her mouth.
“Not so hard to say, is it?”
They both giggled, and Billie reached down to hold Alaina’s hand. She leaned back next to Alaina on the tree. They turned their heads to look at each other, and Billie wanted to kiss her. She smiled to cover it up, and Alaina smiled back nervously.
Why should she be nervous? And then it hit her. She wants to kiss me, too. There was no time to think; Billie just leaned in.
Alaina didn’t taste like books. If softness had a taste, it would have tasted like Alaina. The Chapstick on her lips had dried out, leaving them slightly raw. Her mouth was a little on the wide side, and she was sloppy from inexperience, but she compensated by letting Billie lead.
For Billie, it lasted forever and ended too quickly. When she pulled back, she saw the most scared look on Alaina’s face.
“I’m s-sorry,” Billie stammered. “I shouldn’t have…It was stupid. I—I thought…I thought you wanted me to kiss you.”
“I do.”
Thank God it’s not just me, she thought. Her heart was still fluttering, and it wasn’t just from kissing. Billie was scared, too.
They stood there, shivering or shaking, Billie couldn’t be sure, until Alaina spoke up.
“Can I kiss you again?”
Billie nodded, and Alaina pulled herself up to kiss her best friend.
*
This is bad. No, this is worse than bad. Billie had refused to leave her room since Alaina left. She’d skipped dinner because she couldn’t bear to look at her parents. How could she talk to them and pretend she hadn’t kissed another girl? She was so scared she’d blurt it out, so scared of what would happen if she told them…but how could they not see it? It was all she could think about.
She didn’t have the strength to cry, and she wondered if Alaina was crying. Did Alaina manage to eat dinner? She could imagine Alaina’s nervous smile, her stuttered body language, her shifting attempts to hide her feelings.
Billie felt empty. The elation she had when she realized Alaina wanted to kiss her had given way to fear and shame, which Billie had wrestled with. Now she was hollow. Her mind couldn’t produce emotion; it could barely create thought out of the string of nothing that encased her. She knew she wouldn’t feel that way when she woke up, but she couldn’t get to sleep. She was restless. Her mind buzzed; thoughts chased each other like a dog chased after its tail. She knew it was pointless, but that didn’t mean she could stop it.
It was late at night when she snuck into the kitchen. When she opened the fridge, there was a plate for her wrapped in aluminum foil. She slid it into the oven, hoping it wouldn’t be too long until the food was hot. She was famished. She was pouring herself milk and fetching a fork when the lights turned on.
“Hello,
sweetie,” Mary Alice said.
Billie took a deep breath. “Hey.”
“I knew you’d be hungry.”
“I can see that.”
Her mother chuckled. “It’s pork chops, you know. Mashed potatoes and green beans, too. I know how you like green beans.”
“Thanks, Mom.” Billie sat at the table. “What are you doing up so late?”
“I heard you rummaging around.” Mary Alice rested her chin in her palm. “What’s wrong, baby? Did you and Alaina get in a fight?”
Billie hadn’t thought of a way to explain why she’d locked herself in her room, so she was glad that her mother had provided her with one. She nodded, and her mother reached over and pulled Billie’s head to her chest.
“Everyone fights, you know. You two will make up soon.”
“She’s just jealous of Chris. She can’t find a boy she likes, and she blames us for picking out boys she won’t like.” The jealousy part was probably true, Billie realized, though she couldn’t imagine anyone as docile as Alaina being jealous.
“She’ll find someone,” Mary Alice said immediately. “You have to understand, Billie, it must be hard to come here and find friends who all have nice boys. Alaina hasn’t had a boyfriend before. Maybe she feels like something’s wrong with her, so she’s lashing out at you to work through those feelings.”
“I know she’s more responsible than me—”
“You’re doing fine, sweetheart.”
“—but sometimes she can be so immature.” Billie pulled her plate out of the oven and set it down at her seat.
“Alaina is a good girl, Billie. She’ll apologize and explain, I’m sure of it. When she does, I want you to forgive her. Right away, too. You don’t want poison in your friendship.” Mary Alice squeezed Billie’s arm. “Besides, forgiveness is good for the soul.”
When she went back to her room, Billie didn’t have a problem getting to sleep.
*
Tuesday morning, Billie spent her time trying to figure out how to act around Alaina. Would Gayle and Barbara take it amiss if she wasn’t happy and affectionate? Would Chris? She wasn’t sure she could touch Alaina, not now that she knew…But she couldn’t be affectionate with Gayle and Barbara and then ignore Alaina, could she? The fighting excuse would work again, but Billie hadn’t told Alaina, and if Alaina thought Billie was mad at her…