by Sacchi Green
Then Suli’s warm mouth captured my clit. The trancelike ritual vanished abruptly in a fierce, urgent wave of right here, right now, right NOW NOW NO-O-W-W-W-W! Followed, with hardly a pause to recharge, by further waves impelled by her teasing tongue and penetrating fingers until I was completely out of breath and wrung out.
“I thought I was supposed to be storing up energy,” I told her, when I could talk at all.
“Jude, you’re pumping out enough pheromones to melt ice,” Suli said, “and I’m not ice!”
It turned out that I wasn’t all that wrung out after all, and if I couldn’t talk, it was only because Suli was straddling my face, and my mouth was most gloriously, and busily, full.
The chill kiss of the blade lingered on my skin the next day, along with the heat of Suli’s touch. I passed up the chance to do a run-through of my program, which didn’t cause much comment since it was just the exhibition skate. Johanna, who knew what I was up to, took care of getting my music to the sound technicians with no questions asked.
There were plenty of questioning looks, though, when I went through warm-up muffled in sweats and a lightweight hoodie. Judging from the buzz among my fans, they may have been placing bets. Anybody who’d predicted the close-cropped hair with just enough forelock to push casually back, and the unseen binding beneath my plain white T-shirt, would have won. The tight blue jeans looked genuinely worn and faded, and from any distance the fact that the fabric could stretch enough for acrobatic movement wasn’t obvious.
It was my turn at last. Off came the sweats and hoodie. I took to the ice, rocketing from shadows into brightness, and then stopped so abruptly that ice chips erupted around the toes of my skates. There were squeals, and confused murmurs; I was aware of Suli, still in costume from her own performance, watching from the front row.
Then my music took hold.
Six bars of introduction, a sequence of strides and glides—and I was Elvis, “Lookin’ for Trouble,” leaping high in a spread eagle, landing, and then twisting into a triple-flip, double-toe-loop. My body felt strong. And free. And true.
Then I was “All Shook Up,” laying a trail of intricate footwork the whole length of the rink, tossing in enough cocky body-work to raise an uproar. Elvis Stojko or Philippe Candeloro couldn’t have projected more studly appeal. When my hips swiveled—with no trace of a feminine sway—my fans went wild.
They subsided as the music slowed to a different beat, slower, menacing. “Mack the Knife” was back in town: challenge, swagger, jumps that ate up altitude, skate blades slicing the ice in sure, rock-steady landings. Then, in a final change of mood, came the aching, soaring passion of “Unchained Melody.” I let heart-break show through, loneliness, sorrow, desperate longing.
In my fantasy a slender, long-haired figure skated in the shadows just beyond my vision, mirroring my moves with equal passion and unsurpassable grace. Through the haunting strains of music I heard the indrawn breaths of a thousand spectators, and then a vast communal sigh. I was drawing them into my world, making them see what I imagined…I jumped, pushing off with all my new strength, spun a triple out into an almost effortless quad, landed—and saw what they had actually seen.
Suli glided toward me, arms outstretched, eyes wide and bright with challenge. I stopped so suddenly I would have fallen if my hands hadn’t reached out reflexively to grasp hers. She moved backward, pulling me toward her, and then we were skating together as we had so often in our private predawn practice sessions. The music caught us, melded us into a pair. Suli moved away, rotated into an exquisite layback spin, slowed, stretched out her hand, and my hand was there to grasp hers and pull her into a close embrace. Her raised knee pressed up between my legs with a force she would never have exerted on Tim. I wasn’t packing, but my clit lurched with such intensity that I imagined it bursting through my jeans.
Then we moved apart again, aching for the lost warmth, circling, now closer, now farther…the music would end so soon...Suli flashed a quick look of warning, mouthed silently, “Get ready!” and launched herself toward me.
Hands on my shoulders, she pushed off, leapt upward, and hung there for a moment while I gripped her hips and pressed my mouth into her belly. Then she wrapped her legs around my waist and arched back. We spun slowly, yearningly, no bed, this time, to take the weight of our hunger. And then, as the last few bars of music swelled around us, Suli slid sensuously down my body until she knelt in a pool of scarlet silk at my feet. She looked up into my eyes, and finally, gracefully and deliberately, bowed her head and rested it firmly against my crotch as the last notes faded away.
An instant of silence, of stillness, followed, until the crowd erupted in chaos, cheers and applause mingling with confusion and outrage. TV cameras were already converging on our exit. I pulled Suli up so that my mouth was close to her ear; her hair brushing my cheek still made me tingle.
“Suli, what have you done? What will—?”
She shushed me with a finger across my lips. “Sometimes, if you can’t stand to be left behind, you do have to jump without knowing exactly where you’ll land.”
So I kissed her right there on the ice for the world to see. Then, hand in hand, we skated toward the gate to whatever lay beyond.
I’VE BEEN AROUND THE BLOCK, THREE TIMES, MAYBE FOUR
Danielle de Santiago
When did you first know you were Canadian?
—Dame Edna to k. d. lang
I’m always kind of surprised when other women tell me about their coming out and how they figured out that they are lesbians. They tell me about subtle and slow developments; about secret looks they gave their female friends, about bad and unsatisfying relationships they had with men, and how they finally, slowly, step by step, discovered that they liked women. With me it was totally different; it didn’t come quietly, on velvet kitten feet. No, with me it was something sudden. One day it was just there. It was like waking up.
When I was a teenager in Westphalia, Germany, I dated boys of my own age. It wasn’t bad. They treated me well, and I never felt displeased. I never felt unsatisfied—but I also didn’t fall in love. I never felt this excitement, this wild and stormy feeling of lust my girlfriends told me about. I never sat by the soccer field and gossiped with the other girls about how well my boyfriend could kiss, about how strong his arms were and how firm his butt was. No.
To be honest, I didn’t even realize that my boyfriend had a butt! He was certainly the guy I considered to be my boyfriend, but still he was just a good friend. We only met on weekends, a rule of my parents that was very suitable for me. A bit of kissing and making out didn’t make me feel too uncomfortable. Aside from that, we just watched many, many movies in the theater, and he lent me a lot of his records…but no heart beating, no butterflies.
It went on like this with the next guy and the next. We got along very well, but I didn’t fall in love, and it would be a while until I found out why it was like that.
One morning at the Free University Berlin, as I stood in the bathroom of the dorm and brushed my teeth, a girl from my French class told me that she had just learned that her boyfriend was cheating on her.
That girl’s name was Michelle. She had long, shiny red hair I envied, and unbelievably big eyes that always seem to invite one to take a dip in them. She was one of the prettiest girls at the university, and while she told me about her cheating boyfriend I happened to think, What an idiot! If I could be with such a wonderful girl, I would never cheat on her.
If I could be with such a…girl?
There it was. Lesbian in big neon letters. All of a sudden it was crystal clear; I was a lesbian. But what now? Unfortunately life isn’t an episode of “Ellen” where the unbelievably attractive Melissa Etheridge comes along with a piece of paper and welcomes you into the L-World after you have signed your coming-out papers.
The discovery that I was a lesbian didn’t make things easier for me. No shit, Sherlock. Unluckily, no one tells you how you become a “real” lesbi
an. Inconspicuously I started to observe two girls, seniors, who were gossiped about as possible lesbians.
One of them, Joanne, was a discreet young woman with thick glasses and a tendency to wear men’s pants. She was quiet and somewhat mysterious, a combination of bookworm and Victorian maiden. I was about to tell her that I was a lesbian, too, when I saw her one afternoon at the bus stop…holding hands with a guy who wore the same thick glasses as she did, and the same wide corduroy pants as well. Joanne wasn’t a lesbian; she was just a nerd.
The other one, Melanie, was a totally different type of girl. She had shaved off her hair on the sides while the rest was piled up in a jet black crow’s nest above her white-powdered face. Her lips and nails were also painted black, and sometime she smelled a bit strange. Was that what being lesbian was about? Was that the deal? Did I have to wear ripped-up fishnet stockings? Did I have to become a goth to be a lesbian?
I searched in the university library for help. Wasn’t there some kind of advisor? Or lesbian books? No, at least not in the library. So I went to town. Berlin is a big city, much bigger than the little village in North Rhine-Westphalia where I grew up. Luckily, there were a couple of women’s bookstores in Berlin Mitte and Prenzlauerberg.
There was a lot of literature, coffee table books, feminist books, computer books, poetry collections and—goddesses have mercy—lesbian books as well. At first I wasn’t brave enough to pick up one of “those” books. Instead I sneaked for hours around the racks, flipped through cookbooks, and bought incense. How I would have loved to pick up one of these books! Instead I looked around with a feeling of shame. My gaze glided over the covers, until at last my fingertips followed. Here I saw everything the lesbian heart desires: Best Lesbian Romance; Hot Lesbian Erotica; Rode Hard, Put Away Wet; as well as Susie Sexpert’s Lesbian Sexworld. Finally, I held my breath and bought two books.
Later I sat in the park to read. I turned page after page and couldn’t stop being amazed. I read about infatuating dykes on motorbikes, and vibrator parties and young lesbians in New York. How could it be that I was the only lesbian in my university while there were nightclubs full of them in other cities? Okay, I was far from being a club kid, but there had to be other ways to meet women. What should I do?
It couldn’t be so hard to meet other lesbians. What else did I know about lesbians besides that they wore gothic makeup and rode motorcycles? Who were lesbians? And how could I become a real one? Were there rules? Orders? Secret passwords? Who were the best-known lesbians? Jodie? Ellen? Melissa? Suddenly I knew. Martina Navratilova! Sure, she was the most popular lesbian. So I borrowed a racket and pleaded with my sister to join me to play tennis. For four weeks she hunted me up and down the tennis court on each Saturday and played, unfortunately, a lot better than I did. And the lesbians? Well…there were no lesbians as far as I could see.
Finally I gave in to the nightclub possibility. If that was the only way to meet women, I would put on my dancing shoes. I read that a gay nightclub nearby had a lesbian night once a month, and that sounded like a good start, more like having a nice swim than jumping into the cold water. For weeks and weeks I prepared myself for the event, bought a new dress, high heels, and even thought about buying some black lipstick and matching nail polish, just in case.
Then the evening came. It was almost midnight when I made my entrance into the Joko. But what can I say? I had imagined it differently. Dizzy twilight lit up the club and the five or six women who stood at the bar, looking bored. Here I was, the only lesbian in a dress and with a purse. All the others wore rough boots and plaid shirts matching their LSHC (lesbian short haircuts) and looked with suspicion at me.
Everything will be all right. I tried to calm myself down. I told the girl behind the bar that I wanted to drink something. What? Of course what all the others drink too, I said. Though I would rather have had some Irish cream, the bartender served me a beer. Insecure, I smiled at the woman next to me who had a big Molly tattoo on her bicep, but she didn’t react.
“Are you often here?” I tried to make some conversation.
“Yes, once a month,” the woman answered. Not a very chatty fellow.
“I’m here for the first time today, and…” Before I could say any more the woman turned away from me. Why didn’t she want to talk to me? “I have a tattoo as well,” I wanted to shout at her. “I’m one of you! Don’t you see that?” But…was that true? Was I really one of them? I didn’t even own a lumberjack shirt. The only thing we had in common was that we were into women.
Maybe that was the problem. I wanted women who looked like women. I wanted long, silky hair, dresses of thin fabrics, and lips of sensual red. I wanted to kiss a girl who smelled like Jil Sander Sun perfume, wanted to touch and peel off her lingerie before we made love. I didn’t have anything against the women in this bar, I didn’t mind that they were butch, but that wasn’t what I was looking for. I desired a femme.
Two weeks after the Joko fiasco I visited the women’s bookstore again. By then I had been there more often and had become friends with Bettina, the owner. She wasn’t a lesbian, but she always had a willing ear for my problems and tried to help me as far as possible. Usually Bettina offered me a cup of herbal tea, but this time she had something much better for me; the number of a new lesbian group.
“Why don’t you just give them a call?” Bettina handed me a little lavender piece of paper with a picture of a violet next to the number.
Bettina was right. Why not just try? Wouldn’t hurt. Would it? Still, I was unbelievably nervous. Finally I dialed the number, and a woman named Rita invited me to the next meeting of the group. Now that the date was fixed I was really, really scared. Every night I dreamed about a huge room with a huge table and many women who looked at me distrustfully, trying to find out if I were a lesbian for real.
At last the day came. It took me a while to find the right address, so I was a bit late when I finally arrived. My heart beat like crazy when I knocked on the door and a voice told me to come in. There wasn’t a big table, and it seemed that I wasn’t the only one who was late, since there were only three women in the room, sitting on an old couch. They were friendly and offered me a seat.
I had found them. The lesbians. All three of them. Because there weren’t any more lesbians in this group.
Vera, Jeanette, and Rita. Three awesome and really nice middle-aged women who finally answered all my questions. Unfortunately, they too weren’t what I had been looking for. I wanted to have fun, to enjoy life with women of my own age, and, finally, to fall in love. With these three women of my mom’s age I felt rather like a novice who eagerly listened to her teachers. It was like visiting my aunts every two weeks to have coffee and cake while we talked about boys, or rather, girls.
But I stuck to my new group. I went to the meetings and the discussion groups, went with them to see plays at the city hall, and visited street fairs. After five months, two of the women moved away or started a new job, so I became the new group leader. Instead of the discussion groups we had billiard evenings, went to lunar parks, took road trips and bicycle tours, and started a bimonthly lesbian disco in the basement of the house.
What can I say? Suddenly they came, all kinds of lesbians: blondes and brunettes, with short and with long hair, ugly ones and beauties, smart ones and funny ones. Exciting women, boring and shy women. Students, dykes on bikes, doctors and single parents, teachers and chefs, artists and gym class teachers, butches and femmes…and among all these women, me. But not only me. She came, too. The one. The one I had waited for so long. Lina.
She wasn’t exactly how I had imagined her. At the age of thirty-seven she was a bit older than I, and instead of dresses she wore soft black leather pants that fit perfectly around her long legs. Instead of blouses and tops she wore T-shirts from local rock bands with the sleeves cut off and men’s undershirts, and her dark red hair was rather short. But she wore boots with high heels, owned a collection of lipsticks in seven different shades of red,
and underneath her leather outfits (as I would eventually find out) she wore satin underwear.
It was desire at first sight, but still it took a while until shy flirting and secret looks became more. It happened on a warm summer evening. The group had spent the day at the Wannsee outside of Berlin where we chilled bottles of wine in the lake and grilled steaks and vegetables beside the shore. When the night came, all the women were sitting around the campfire, drinking wine and roasting sticky-sweet chocolate bananas.
All of a sudden there was a thunderous sound, and colorful lightning illuminated the sky. Rita yelled loudly, and two or three of the other women jumped up from their blankets, but it was just the yearly fireworks at the Peacocks’ Isle fest on the other side of the lake. Its blossoms bloomed red, orange, and yellow and cast a mysterious light on the deep-hanging clouds.
Lina, who was sitting next to me, gave me a smile and stood up. “I’m going for a walk. Does someone want to join me?” All the other women giggled since Lina was looking directly at me.
“Well…sure,” I said hastily, and rose with blushing cheeks to leave the fire with Lina. We walked along the waterfront and watched the last red and yellow sparks die above us. Suddenly I felt a touch at my hand, tender and silent, like a bird’s heart. Lina’s hand glided into mine.
“Don’t walk so fast,” she said, and stopped so that I had to stop walking too.
“What’s up?” I asked nervously, and tried to see the fire far behind us.
“You know what’s up. Don’t you?” Lina laughed silently and came closer. “Look at me,” she said. “I won’t bite you. Well… maybe I will.” Her hand came out of the dark and brushed the damp hair off of my forehead.
I tried to say something, but there were no words inside me. Instead, I finally felt the beating heart I had missed for so many years. I had craved it for such a long time, and now that it was here I felt like it was tearing my chest apart with…love? Was that love? It had to be.