by Beth Burnett
Chapter Five
One of my hardest rules is “Don’t get your honey where you get your money.” Technically my money comes from my grandparent’s estate, but I do enjoy my job at the bookstore so I have never had sex with any of my co-workers. There have been a few temptations, but I’m strong. Besides, with so many other options available, there’s no point in risking creating a tense work environment.
I’m working with Renee today. She’s amazing. We can spend all day arguing between customers, but I respect the hell out of her. I can feel her smiling at me behind my back as I try to deal with a customer who is looking for a book.
“I don’t remember the title.”
I have the world’s most patient face. “Do you know the author?”
“I don’t.”
“Can you give me a brief synopsis?”
“A what?”
I swear I hear Renee chuckle behind me, but when I glance at her, she is completely straight-faced, studiously ignoring me as she organizes some new arrivals. I turn back to my customer.
“What is the book about?”
“It’s about a woman who meets this guy, but her best friend is a guy, and he’s in love with her, and she isn’t sure which one she loves more.”
“Sounds familiar.”
“Do you know it?”
“I live it.”
“Pardon me?
“Never mind. I might need a little more information. Is it new?”
“I’m really not sure.”
“All right.” I look up at the ceiling. “Is it Twilight?”
“No.”
“The Great Gatsby?”
“Definitely not.”
“Angel Falls?”
“I’m sorry,” the woman says.
“No, it’s fine. It’s just this is a small used bookstore. We really don’t have a lot of stock.”
“Can you think of any more titles?”
“What about Rough, Raw, and Ready?”
Renee gives a small snort and stalks off into the stacks. She rummages around for a few seconds. She walks back with a book in hand.
“Love the One You’re With,” she says, holding it up.
The customer looks doubtful. “Doesn’t sound familiar.”
Renee smiles. She has a face that projects truth and rightness. Men and women melt in her presence. Thankfully, she is not in the market for meaningless sex or she’d steal all of my lovers. “This is the one you want.”
The customer nods. “You’re probably right.”
“I’m sure you’ll love it,” Renee says, still smiling beatifically. I’m about to puke. I’m pretty sure this middle-aged straight housewife is about to propose marriage. I grab the book and ring it up for the customer.
“Is there anything else?”
She tears her eyes away from Renee. “No, that’s all.”
We finish our transaction and the customer leaves. I turn around to give Renee a scathing look.
“Do you have to do that to everyone?”
“Do what?” She looks innocent.
“Turn on that radiant “one with the universe” smile and transform them into love slaves.”
She laughs. “She just wanted a book.”
“That probably wasn’t even the book she wanted.”
“It doesn’t matter. She’ll love it.”
I shake my head. “You’re so much nicer than I am.”
“You tend to be a little prickly.”
“I’m not prickly.”
“I mean that in the most loving way.”
I smile at her. “How come we never dated?”
She laughs and tosses a paperclip at me. “We’ve had this conversation a million times.”
“Let’s have it again.”
“We’re both butch.”
“I’m way butcher than you are.” I am, too. We’re tall, blonde, and good-looking, but I have more muscles. And she has big boobs. I wear cooler boots. Plus she has hair. I look awesome with my shaved head.
She pats me on the shoulder, grinning. “I do have some femme traits.”
I nod. “Painted toenails.”
“And I don’t change my own oil.”
“Technically, I don’t, either. But I can.”
“We work together.”
“Don’t get your honey where you get your money.”
She laughs. “Besides, you’re a tramp. I could never date a tramp.”
“Ha. Yeah, you’d get kicked out of your church.”
She shakes her head. “My church is very welcoming.”
“Not to people like me.”
“We’ve had this conversation a million times, too.”
“Well, stop trying to convert me.”
She throws her head back and laughs loudly. “Andy, you are always the one who brings it up. It makes me think that there might be some latent curiosity in there.”
“The only thing I am curious about is how you can be a lesbian and still be a Christian.”
She opens her mouth to answer, but stops as the door opens. I turn to look at the customer.
“Hi,” I say. “Welcome to the Book Nook.”
The woman looks surprised, but quickly recovers. “Andy Eriksson,” she says, dryly. “What a pleasure and joy.”
Uh oh. I look at her carefully. Thirty-something, hot. She has dark hair and a lot of eye makeup. I’m pretty sure I picked her up at “Dick’s” one night and took her home. If I remember correctly, we had nothing to say to each other in the morning. Sexy, but kind of dumb.
“Hey.” I pause, searching my memory for her name.
Renee steps forward, smiling and holding out her hand. “Hi, I’m Renee, what’s your name?”
“I’m Lisa.”
Lisa. Of course. I send a silent thank you to Renee.
“So Lisa, what’s up?”
She glances at me. “I guess I could ask you the same thing.”
I lean against the counter and fold my arms. “I guess you could.”
“You never called me. You never bothered to get in touch again at all.”
I smile at her. “I thought we were on the same page there. We didn’t really turn out to have anything in common.”
“So you just fucked me and kicked me out of your house.”
Renee clears her throat. “Perhaps I should go check on some stock.”
“No, please,” Lisa says. “I’m sure you’d love to know your co-worker’s true nature.”
“I already do,” Renee says, gently.
Lisa falters for a second, looking at Renee’s smile. Good. Maybe I can sneak out and Renee can work her magic. Lisa turns back to me. “You know, Andy, there’s nothing wrong with one-night stands. But you can’t disrespect women and expect them to be okay with it.”
“I didn’t disrespect you. I never said I would call. I was completely honest about everything.”
“Being honest and treating people fairly are not always mutually inclusive.”
I sigh and look at the ceiling.
Renee steps toward Lisa and puts a hand on her shoulder. “You are absolutely correct,” she says. “Hard feelings often come about because of sex. It is so intimate that people tend to get their feelings involved whether they want to or not.”
“So I’m an idiot?”
“Not at all. Our feelings and our rational mind don’t always agree. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s part of being human.”
Lisa smiles up at Renee, then turns to glare at me. “Andy, if you knew what it was like to be hurt, you would be more careful of other people’s feelings.”
“I didn’t mean to hurt you. I honestly didn’t think that I did.”
“You didn’t hurt me. You just treated me like shit.”
“I’m truly sorry that you feel that I treated you like crap.”
Renee leans toward Lisa again. “You are a beautiful woman. You deserve so much greatness in life.”
Lisa looks at Renee for a moment before giving her a q
uick hug. “Too bad I didn’t meet you instead,” she says.
She turns and stalks out. Renee looks at me. “That’s not going to be a repeat customer.”
“Fuck. Thanks for handling that.”
“You should be more careful of people’s feelings.”
“Why do I always have to run into women I’ve fucked.”
“Because you’ve fucked every woman in this city?”
“Ha ha. You’re such a comedian.”
“She’s right, though.”
“Don’t start.”
“I’m not giving you a hard time.” She puts her arm around me and presses her head against mine. I lean into her for a moment, savoring the connection. We may be the same age, but in her soul, Renee is ninety-years-old and mother to the world. I envision myself crawling into her lap and being a kid for a few minutes.
“I have been hurt, you know.”
“I know, Andy.”
I don’t know why the world assumes that a big, muscled butch is impervious to pain. I may not broadcast my emotions to everyone in the world, but it doesn’t mean that I don’t feel. This thing with Davey has cut me to the core, but I’ll get over it, because getting over it is what I do. Besides, it isn’t as if she was the first woman to hurt me. Maggie took care of that almost twenty years ago.
Sophomore year of college was so long ago, I can barely remember the emotions. I know they were intense at the time. I was just stretching and trying to find my butch sensibilities. I was completely out, but I was struggling to figure out what it meant to be a lesbian.
In high school, all I knew was that I was a freak. I knew I didn’t want to be with boys. I knew that I found women cuddly and beautiful and delicious and I knew that was completely wrong. I knew when I told my parents, because I felt that they should know my true nature. I don’t know why I thought they would somehow magically become loving if I told them. Perhaps there was a part of me that thought that the reason we always had such a thorny relationship was because I was so confused and out of sorts. When I finally decided to put a label on myself, I may have been setting myself up for societal rejection, but at least I wasn’t conflicted about my own feelings. Of course, when I told my parents, they freaked and kicked me out.
I remember showing up at Davey’s house with a suitcase, crying my eyes out. Fucking parents. I don’t know why I let them get under my skin. Gram and Gramps were amazing. They brought me right in without fanfare. In fact, I remember Gram saying, “You spend enough time here anyway. Might as well make it official.”
Leah wasn’t in town at the time, but she was delighted when she came home. I still don’t understand how I didn’t get Leah as my real mother. The universe is not a fair place. Despite my lack of long term love relationships, I have to admit that I have been lucky to have a lot of strong, loving women in my life. Leah, Gram, Davey, Renee, And Maggie.
Maggie was the first out and proud lesbian that I met. Don’t get me wrong, I knew a lesbian when I was in high school. There was a lesbian that worked at the convenience store on the east side of town. She was huge and hairy and had a deep, gruff voice and she yelled at us whenever we went in there. I remember her making me turn out my pockets once and threatening to call the cops. She hated kids and adults alike. My parents spoke scathingly of her if they had to stop in. That was the first time I heard the word “dyke.”
So, I was aware of the existence of lesbians, and I knew a few gay guys. But here was Maggie, out and proud and attractive and smart. It opened my eyes to the possibility that maybe I wasn’t some mutant of the human race. I met her at a coffee shop, of course. Sometimes it seems as if all of the important events in my life revolve around food, books, or coffee. Then again, those are three of the most important things in my life, so perhaps it makes sense. I hadn’t yet grown into my signature style yet. I generally dressed like one of the guys from The Outsiders. Straight leg jeans, white undershirt, slicked back hair. I thought I was some kind of cool.
I was sitting in the coffee shop reading some feminist text when Maggie smiled at me from across the room. She got up and made her way over to my table. She sat down without asking for permission. I smiled at her and said, “Please, have a seat.”
She laughed. “I’ve seen you before. I saw you at Harvey’s.”
It was a gay bar. I had been there looking for answers and the occasional fling.
“Why didn’t you introduce yourself?”
“I was with someone.”
“Ah.”
She handed me a book. It was “The Cat Who Walks Through Walls” by Robert Heinlein. Heinlein would quickly become an obsession for both Davey and me as we devoured his entire collection. At that time, however, I had never heard of him. I picked up the book and looked at it.
Maggie grinned. “Something tells me you would love his work.”
“I don’t generally get into male authors,” I said.
She grinned sarcastically. “I see. You’re one of those hardcore feminist lesbians who thinks she has to scorn all things male in order to be true to herself.”
I didn’t answer. She had nailed it. When I decided to come out, I came way out. I started listening to lesbian punk bands and reading feminist texts. I went to female empowerment meetings. I voted for women. I got into the separatist movement for a while. And now this chick was sitting across from me mocking my actions. I stood up and tried to hand her the book back.
“It was nice meeting you.”
“Keep the book,” she said, smiling. “You might like it.”
I kept it. For some reason, I kept it. And a few weeks later, I read it. And a few weeks after that, I ran into Maggie again, and I took her home, and we made love and talked about Heinlein and empowerment and love. We smoked a lot of pot and cooked disgusting meals on the little burner in my studio apartment. She explained to me that her theory of love was that there was enough to share and that love shared was love multiplied.
I understood on an intellectual level, but in reality, I wanted her to love me and only me. I asked if she was sleeping with anyone else, but she refused to talk about it. She claimed that jealousy was a love killer. I tried to keep it at bay, but when we weren’t together, I thought about it constantly. Davey kept telling me to calm down, to take it slow. She had room to talk. She was wildly in love with some asshole psychology major who claimed that not wanting to get kinky with him meant that she harbored feelings of inadequacy because of the absence of a father figure in her life. What a dick. My relationship was so much better than that.
Maggie and I argued politics and religion. We would get stoned and look up words in the dictionary. She taught me how to not take myself so seriously. I taught her how to change her own tires. I know we went on some double dates with Davey and the dickhole, but not many. I was guarded of my time with Maggie, and I never felt as if I got enough of it. I remember arguing about it one day.
“Where did you go last night?”
She was calm. “I was out with a friend.”
“A male friend or a female friend.”
“Andy, we’ve been through this.”
“I want to go through it again.” I was relentless. I loved her for her free spirit, and yet I wanted to kill it and have her stay with me. I was in a constant state of confusion.
“Andy, love is freedom. I love you. But loving you just makes me more open to loving other people.”
“I don’t want you to love other people.”
“I want you to love other people.”
“I don’t.”
“You love Davey.” She smiled.
“That’s different.”
“It shouldn’t be.”
I slammed my hand down on the counter. I was so mad and the angrier I got, the more peaceful she became. It pissed me off to no end.
“Maggie, you can’t just fall in love with someone and have sex with them and then go and have sex with other people!”
“Yes,” she said calmly. “You can.”
&nbs
p; We argued about it several times and the more she tried to explain it, the angrier I got. In between times, when I could squelch my jealousy and anger, we were blissful. I remember reading to her in bed. I remember experimenting. I remember my first strap-on. I remember her pulling out several strands of my hair during a particularly feisty moment. She taught me how to be a butch. I already had the outward appearance, but she taught me how to take charge in bed and on the dance floor. More than anything else, she helped me grow into the person I am today. But she wouldn’t marry me, and she wouldn’t agree to be monogamous with me.
Finally, during a heated argument about sex and faithfulness, I let slip and called her a whore. She didn’t get mad, not even then. She just looked at me sadly and said. “Andy. I do love you. But I can’t be with someone who isn’t kind.”
She started to leave, and I grabbed her arm. “Don’t go. I didn’t mean it.”
“You did, though. And I won’t be able to forget that.”
“Maggie, don’t make me beg. I promise to be okay with you having sex with other women.”
“Andy, it isn’t about sex. It’s about love. It’s about sharing joy. You aren’t there yet. You might get there someday. But I can’t stay with you while you reach for it. It’s too hard on me.”
The argument lasted a while longer, but it was over at that moment. I made a fool out of myself, crying and begging her to stay. I promised over and over to change. None of it made a difference, though. I wasn’t ready for someone like Maggie, and it was hurting her spirit to be with me.
Over the years, I often thought about what Maggie said. I wanted to be at peace with the concept of shared love, but I couldn’t, not for a long time. After Maggie and I broke up, I have to admit that I slutted around a lot. But being a slut and believing in shared love are two entirely different things. I was having sex for sport. I was having sex to forget about love. It took me many years to realize that Maggie didn’t believe in just having sex for the sake of having sex. She believed in making love for the sake of sharing herself with women she loved and respected in one way or another. I have tried to emulate that, but of course, picking up strange women in bars, fucking them, and then never talking to them again is counter to everything Maggie wanted to teach me.