Scissors, Paper, Stone

by Martha K. Davis

  Laura and I had only one class together in the fall of eleventh grade. In a way, I was relieved. After we had talked in the hot tub, an awkward tension settled over our friendship. What she had said about feeling she was in competition with me began to prove itself true; I could feel it not only in our comparing grades, but in the careful way we spoke of our other friendships, our families, and especially about boys. Sex hardly ever came up in our conversations anymore. When it did, it was in the abstract, something unconnected to our own bodies or to another person’s. I never mentioned Miguel’s name.

  At school Laura and I still met between classes at her locker or mine. Sometimes, while we complained about our teachers and walked between buildings to our next class, Miguel would pass by. Each time I watched Laura stare at him as though she thought she was invisible and he couldn’t see her doing it. Embarrassed, I would grab her by the arm and lead her off somewhere. I’d ask, “Are you listening to me?” to break her gaze and bring her attention, unfocused, a little lost, back to me. I could tell she was still trying to understand why I had slept with him and liked it while she continued to hold off, waiting for the right time, the perfect guy. She seemed to think that by scrutinizing Miguel she could discover some hidden trait in him that set him apart from other boys, some unknown quality that had made me respond to him over anyone else. Perhaps she was looking for something in him that she herself could respond to, if given the chance; something, I guessed, that was tender and thoughtful and safe. That wasn’t what had turned me on about Miguel, but since our conversation in the hot tub, I had come to recognize a little better that what Laura wanted was also what frightened her. I didn’t understand it, but I had begun to see it.

  As for Miguel and me, he never directly caught my eye or acknowledged me. I had stopped hanging out at the beach, so we encountered each other only at school. He acted as though we barely knew each other, as though our lives had no point of intersection. Once he nearly knocked me over as he came careening out of the student center as I was going in for lunch. He put a hand on my arm to steady me.

  “You okay?” he asked, and, seeing his face, I remembered the way he had looked at me after the first time we had had sex, when he was concerned that I hadn’t had an orgasm. On either side of us, arriving students jostled by, in a hurry to eat. Someone bumped my arm with his knapsack and pushed on.

  “Yeah, sure,” I answered. I wanted to say more. “Listen, Miguel—”

  “I’ve got to go. See you around.” He moved away, unable to look at me for more than that one second. I had to admit to myself I was disappointed. I had hoped for some reason that during the school year we would revive the easy rapport we had shared over the summer and develop a comfortable friendship, built from our past relationship and his continuing desire for me. It appeared he’d gotten over that desire. There were days when I found myself missing him. Not the sex so much, but his smile, and the way our rowdy, stoned laughter had made me feel, for moments at a time, no longer alone. On the other hand, I made no move toward reconciliation myself. I didn’t even look at him with recognition when I saw him in the crowded halls and on the sloping paths between classes. Something stopped me, and I acted as though we had never spoken beyond the confines of the school. Yet I expected him to talk to me despite, or even because of, the way I had treated him, and I was hurt that he didn’t.

  Near the end of September, Alison invited me to a David Bowie concert. Flattered, I said yes and, not knowing his music, bought the new album that afternoon. We went on a Saturday after work. We drove in her beatup Datsun to the Mission for a quick burrito, then across the Bay Bridge with the rush-hour traffic to the Greek Theater in Berkeley. In the car I rolled down my window and smoked a cigarette leaning back against the door on my right, my left leg propped up on the seat, so that I was facing Alison as she drove. Alison, like Laura, was blonde, but her hair was short and messy, as though she never combed it. That day she was wearing jeans and a soft-looking beige shirt and cowboy boots and two silver bracelets on one wrist and her watch set in a thick leather band on the other. No one at school ever looked that cool. I couldn’t take my eyes off her.

  She was telling me about a professor of hers at State who had come on to her earlier that week. “The guy’s in his fifties, at least. Like, I don’t think so, you know?” She glanced in her side mirror, accelerating as she moved into the left lane to pass the car ahead of us.

  I was confused. I had expected her to object to his gender, not his age. But I took one last drag from my cigarette and said, “Yeah. There’s a girl in our class who’s fucking our social studies teacher from ninth grade. He’s at least in his thirties. She thinks no one knows, but he’s always goofy when he’s around her.” I flicked my cigarette butt out the window behind me.

  She shook her head, grinning. “You can always tell,” Alison said.

  “What can you always tell?” I asked, thinking she was talking about older men.

  She glanced at me. “You know, what other people want. Who they’re attracted to.”

  I was silent. I picked at the torn threads around the knee of my jeans, feeling unaccountably sad.

  “Don’t you think?” Alison asked. I looked up. She was intent on the highway ahead, passing all the slower cars. The sun through her window lit up the hair that stood out from her head. When she shifted into fifth, her hand stayed wrapped around the gearshift for a moment before moving back onto the steering wheel. There was authority in that hand, and self-assurance. Feeling drawn to Alison felt odd after having been focused on Laura for so long. I was surprised at how effortless being attracted to her was, and I was even relieved; I could probably be interested in a lot of women simultaneously. At the same time, I knew I was giving up something that had been precious to me. I didn’t know if I would feel anything close to the intensity of what I had felt about Laura ever again. I wasn’t sad about it, exactly, but I was aware of a kind of wrenching or uprooting. The wind rushed through the car as we picked up speed. I felt paper-light, ready to blow away.

  Alison glanced over at me. I said, “I guess you can tell, if you’re looking.”

  My neck was getting stiff. I slid around in my seat and sat facing forward. Alison asked me to look through the cardboard box at my feet for Diamond Dogs. I flipped through the cassettes, found it, took it out of its case, and handed it to her. With one hand on the wheel, she popped the cassette into her tape player and cranked the volume up high. The bass reverberated under my feet. It was impossible to talk without shouting. I leaned my head back and let the music surround me from all four speakers, cocooning me. Except for conferring about directions, we drove in silence for the rest of the trip.

  The Greek Theater was an outdoor concert hall set on a hill. Stone bleachers took up most of the area beyond the stage; higher up, the green grass of the hill provided extra seating. The concert had sold out, and by the time Alison and I arrived inside, the seats were filled but there were still patches of grass visible among the crowd of bodies. The hill looked like an unfinished quilt made up of spread blankets. We climbed up and found a spot near the center. Below us, the stage was set up with the band’s instruments. I glanced around at the audience. A group of college kids to the right of us drank the beer they had smuggled in. People milled around, searching for faces they recognized. The sun was setting behind the hill we sat on, and the sky slowly leaked the dark ink of night onto the sky. I sprawled on the grass next to Alison and felt my skin tingle. I was waiting for the dark, wanting to be seduced by the music.

  “What are you smiling about?” Alison asked, stretched out on her side, smiling herself.

  “I don’t know. I’m happy, I guess. What was that song about rock and roll we listened to in the car?”

  She tilted her head back, gazing up at the promising sky. She started to sing. Her voice was lovely, high and clear, not at all what I had expected. She met my gaze.

  “So, why didn’t you invite your girlfriend instead of me?” I asked, op
ting for the direct approach to a question I had been wondering about since Alison first mentioned the concert.

  “Oh, she hates David Bowie.”

  “Alison, come on.”

  She looked away for a moment, as if considering other responses. “Truthfully?” she asked. I nodded, but she wasn’t looking at me. “It’s pretty much over between us. It has been for a long time. I don’t know why I’ve been hanging on.” She looked down and pulled a blade of grass out of the ground, then pulled up another. I wondered why I hadn’t known, seen the signs, whatever they were. All I had seen was that Alison had a girlfriend and I didn’t.

  She glanced up at me. “I guess that means I’m single again. Single young lesbian on the loose.”

  “So am I,” I said, holding her gaze. Telling her was as easy as when I had asked Miguel to sleep with me.

  “I know,” Alison said lightly.

  I stared at her. “No way. How did you know?”

  “I just did.”

  “What, do I have ‘lesbian’ written across my forehead?”

  She smiled. “Not exactly. But it’s obvious.”

  “How?” I felt strange, exposed. Had something changed about me over the last few months? Would she have said the same thing a year ago, before I knew myself? Was it something only other lesbians could see? Had my mother guessed? Had Laura?

  Alison said, “I told you, you can always tell what people want.”

  “Always?” I asked. Then I realized that her recognizing my desire was a good thing. I didn’t have to hide it.

  She reached across the space between us and slowly brushed her fingers over my hair. “When you’re looking,” she said.

  Then she sat up and gazed down at the stage. “When’s this show going to start?” she asked. It was already half an hour after the warm-up band was supposed to play, and there was still no sign of life on the stage.

  I sat up too. “Let’s rock and roll!” I shouted into the night air above me. One of the girls in the group to our right stared at me. She looked away when I glared back.

  A week after the concert, I told my mother I would be working an evening shift so she would let me spend Saturday night in Alison’s dorm room. It rained the entire day. After work Alison and I sat in a movie holding hands. I had never had that anticipatory time with Miguel, feeling excited by and also fearful of what would happen later. And it wasn’t only fear of being sexual with Alison, it was a fear of what crossing that line would mean for me. As we watched the screen, I was aware that I was making a decision, and that what I chose would change me forever: how I lived, what I thought, who I was. I didn’t know what I meant by that, but my trembling told me it was true. I breathed in deeply, held Alison’s hand more tightly. I was ready for change.

  When we arrived back in her dorm room, our pants and shoes soaked from the rain, I stood near the door while Alison shook out her umbrella and propped it in a corner to dry, then pulled shut the drapes and cleared books and clothes off her single bed. I looked around, surprised her room was so small, noticing the photographs of women on her walls. Somehow this first time mattered more to me than it had with Miguel; what Alison thought of me mattered more. And though I’d had a crash course in sex with a guy only a couple of months before, I was afraid it wouldn’t help me. Alison came over and tugged on my hand. “Come on,” she said, smiling. “Let’s get out of these wet clothes.”

  It was not as easy as it had been with Miguel. We couldn’t get in synch, get a rhythm going, so that while she was trying to kiss my ear, I was intent on unbuttoning her jeans. We tussled for a while, and then we stopped and looked at each other and started laughing. I saw that she was nervous too, and the relief of understanding this made me relax a little. We lay back on the bed and made out, stopping every now and then to pull back and smile at each other, touching the other’s face or hair. Alison’s hair was lighter in color than Laura’s, her face more defined. I ran a finger along her cheekbone, down her jawline. She caught my finger with her teeth, then kissed me again. I wondered if this was all that was going to happen between us, and I wondered if that would be all right with me. I didn’t know.

  Eventually I started again to take off her clothes. She helped me with mine, and then she rolled on top of me, and we kept on kissing. The way she lay on me was uncomfortable, her hip bones digging into mine and her body heavier than I would have thought for someone as thin as Alison was. Her smothering weight on me made me uneasy. Maybe she wasn’t a very good lover. Maybe we’d be incompatible in other ways too. I remembered Laura telling me she wanted sex to be more than fumbling around, how lucky I had been with Miguel. I wondered if this was what she had meant. Maybe sex wasn’t always easy. Always fun. But it was at the moment of doubt that Laura closed off, shut down, before she knew anything yet.

  I shifted beneath Alison, rolling her half off me. If she noticed, she didn’t seem to care. As we kissed, I moved my hands down her back, along her waist, her thigh. She moaned; my breathing quickened. We were beginning to match up. I loved how her skin felt, warm and dry and smooth, and the sheer luxuriousness of the feeling of her full body against mine made my eyes close with pleasure. This was what I had been waiting for.

  I was very excited when Alison put her hand between my legs. With my eyes closed, I thought it would feel the way it had when Miguel did it. In fact, it didn’t feel very different—his fingers, though bigger, were deft, as hers were—but it was different, because I knew it was her: her woman’s fingers and breath and consciousness accompanying me where I was going. I wanted to give her instructions—a little further down, harder—but I knew there would be another time for that, and I didn’t need much help. I heard her whisper, “Oh, baby,” as I started to come, mildly, a small bubble of pleasure bursting.

  It was later, when I did the same for Alison, that I felt something inside me click into place, like the last piece of a jigsaw puzzle that I had been working on for many years. Sliding my fingers into the slick wetness between her legs was beyond pleasure; it was a homecoming, to a place I hadn’t known existed. I felt I had been born just to experience this moment, my fingers swimming in the juice of this woman, slipping over the folds and pouches of her flesh. I found her clitoris, hard beneath the skin like a pit inside fruit. I found the contracting, steady beat inside her. Startled, I said, “Oh!” out loud and stopped moving. I wanted to cry. Or laugh. Or tell her that I loved her. I opened my eyes and looked down at Alison’s flushed face, her bright eyes looking back at me, a little puzzled. “You’re beautiful,” I said. I started to slide my fingers against her again and watched her eyelids sink slowly closed.

  The next morning was clear and warm, and I invited Alison out to Mill Valley for the first time. I had been thinking a lot, since my breakup with Miguel, about the ways I kept the people in my life apart. I wanted to introduce Alison to my mother, not as my girlfriend—not yet, at least—but as my friend. We had breakfast at a Greek restaurant in the Sunset, taking our trays upstairs to the outdoor garden. On the drive up, I told Alison about my adoption, because I didn’t want her to be surprised and say something stupid. By the time we arrived it was after noon. The house was empty. There was a note on the kitchen table from my mother saying that she had gone to brunch with two friends and would be back sometime that afternoon.

  I started to show Alison around the house, but we couldn’t keep our hands off each other and only got as far as the living room. We were standing in the middle of the room making out when I thought I heard the back door click shut. It was hard to pull myself away from Alison’s mouth. I looked up. My mother stood in the entrance to the room.

  “What are you doing?” she asked hesitantly. Alison and I quickly stepped back from each other. I couldn’t tell if she had actually seen us kissing. Frantic, I tried to reconstruct the last few seconds in my mind. Her gaze moved from Alison to me. In the middle of my panic, I saw that she was carrying a sweater and her purse over her arm, and her hair was pinned up at the back of her h
ead.

  Then she focused on me, as though she finally recognized me, and her face changed, becoming angry. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” She didn’t move but simply stood there, blocking the door.

  I buttoned up the top buttons of my shirt, trying to think, but no thoughts would come to me. I remained silent.

  Alison said, “Maybe I should go,” more to me than to my mother. I stared at Alison for a moment, hoping she would understand that I wanted her to stay.

  “No, you’re not leaving this house,” my mother shot back at her. “I don’t even know who you are. Neither of you is going anywhere until you tell me what is going on here.”

  “I was going to tell you—” I began.

  “You were going to tell me? You were going to tell me? What were you going to tell me? When? I hardly see you as it is.”

  “Well, that’s as much your fault as it is mine,” I countered.

  “Don’t talk back to me like that, Min.”

  Again I said nothing. Alison folded her arms across her chest and watched my mother warily. All three of us stood there, not moving, not saying anything, absolutely at a loss.

  “Look,” Alison said at last, moving toward the door, “this is really none of my business, and I think my being here just makes it worse. Um, I guess I can’t say it was nice to meet you, but, you know, I hope we’ll meet again sometime.” She stood in front of my mother, waiting for her to move out of the doorway. She was several inches taller than me, about my mother’s height. My mother looked at Alison for a long moment. Finally she stepped aside and let Alison pass. In the hallway, Alison turned around and looked at me. “Call me,” she said.

  After the door shut, my mother came into the room, circling around me as if she were afraid of touching me. She fell into her overstuffed armchair and covered her forehead with her hand, closing her eyes. “It’s bad enough that you’ve been lying to me and running around behind my back,” she said tiredly. “But this. I can’t think of anything worse you could have done to me.”