Stray City

by Chelsey Johnson

  Given all I knew, Flynn and Vivian should not have surprised me, but still I couldn’t believe it. These friends around the table, this family—I would have found them one way or another, but it was Vivian who first brought me in. Who made me, we used to joke.

  I was a week shy of eighteen when I arrived at Reed College. Here, instead of being the queer girl invisible to the straights, I found myself the queer girl who was invisible to the queers, still so Midwestern, my dark hair pulled back in a ponytail, new sneakers, jeans from the department store. Most of my fellow freshmen arrived in band T-shirts and Doc Martens and haircuts I had never even considered a possibility, as if they’d already taken AP Cool I and II at their suburban magnet schools. They walked right past me.

  I looked for the Riot Grrrls I’d read about in zines, but the local chapter had already closed up shop. A heart-pounding visit to the orientation-week meeting of the gay student group yielded a hangout and then a date with a junior named Siri, who showed up at the proposed coffee shop in a long skirt and hiking boots and a deadly little hat. Siri had sunny freckles and had already bought tickets to the Melissa Etheridge concert coming in December. She took me to a party off Division Street that was not only students but adult lesbians. I had still hardly met any lesbians my own age, much less an adult of the species, and the house was packed. These lesbians were pros, labrys-bearers with full libraries of everything woman-on-woman written since the seventies. I ran my finger over the spines of books named Lesbian/Woman and Daughters of a Coral Dawn and the complete works of Elana Dykewomon and miles of mystery paperbacks. Purple was everywhere: the front door, the blouses, the frames of eyeglasses, the collar of the cat inevitably named Luna. The place had a warm, herbal smell. It was a house where I would have liked to curl up in the afternoon and take a long nap.

  But it was evening and lesbians were everywhere. Siri was utterly at home, stocked with knowing laughs, pausing to sing along to a favorite righteous line in the background music. I sat on a hard dining chair in the living room and tried to interact competently, my voice oddly strangled. All this herstory. I was so far behind. The magnitude of the studies I’d need to do loomed over me. I was in another kind of church. I missed, for the first time, Nebraska, where at least I knew the terrain and how to make my way through a conversation.

  At the bus stop Siri turned to me and tilted her chin down coyly. A pit formed in my stomach. It was my second chance ever to kiss a girl, and I couldn’t do it. I gave her a quick hug and said, “Thanks so much, see you at the next meeting.” And scurried onto my bus. I glanced back as it pulled away. A breeze had picked up, and Siri stood there with one hand holding her hat to her head, the other hanging uncertainly at her side. I gave an apologetic wave, and her hand rose as if it were tied to a deflating balloon.

  Maybe I’m not cut out to be lesbian after all, I thought. Maybe I had just loved Zoe, a fluke. Lonesomeness belted my heart. I went back to my dorm room and put on my headphones and lay on the floor, thin carpet over concrete, a surface that had never lived. The Discman rested on my chest, spinning inside.

  Then in October, on the way back from a trip to Goodwill with my roommate, I was carrying a bag full of boy-sized T-shirts and acrylic cardigans and corduroys—an attempt to step away from my past by wearing someone else’s—when I heard a girl screaming at the other end of the hall. We both stopped. The drums kicked in. It was a record. It sounded terrible and fantastic, raw, pissed. My roommate made a face.

  “I’m going to go check on that,” I said.

  “Tell them to turn it down,” said the roommate, a psych major from Wisconsin who res life had thought would be a good match. It wasn’t really their fault. Sitting at my parents’ kitchen table, I had accidentally filled out the form for their Andrea instead of the real one. Oops.

  I followed the sound to an ajar door at the end of the hall, and knocked.

  “Come in,” said an alto voice, and the door opened to a girl kneeling on the floor with scissors and a long navy slip.

  “This music—” I started.

  “Oh, sorry, is it bothering you? I didn’t realize the door was open. I can turn it down.”

  “No! No, it’s not bothering me. I think it’s great. I wanted to ask what it was.”

  The girl sat back on her heels and smiled. “That would be Blatz. I’m Vivian. Shut the door.” She craned her chin forward. “What do you have in that bag?”

  Vivian was nineteen and her world extended way beyond campus. School had defined my whole life thus far, but it didn’t for the girls Vivian knew—some had graduated, some had left, some had never gone, and it didn’t really matter. All of us were refugees of the nuclear family and its fallout, and some, like me, still embedded secret agents in our homes of origin but full citizens here. It was the world I’d glimpsed in Zoe’s zines times one hundred, and real. Girls cut their own hair, built bikes, silkscreened T-shirts, taught each other self-defense, formed bands on the spot, and did not hesitate to turn up the volume. I had read some of their zines before and it made me shy, to know them but not to be known. One had a patch that said, NO APOLOGIES/NO ASSIMILATION/QUEER FOREVER, the bravest thing I had ever read; I repeated it again and again in my mind. I hung out at Vivian’s side, doing my best to join a conversation I had been dying to have, and now I could hardly speak, I was so giddy and full of longing. People knew things: everyone’s names and nicknames, bands of every -core, unlisted show venues, the encyclopedic subtleties of what was butch and what was femme, how to play the drums. They talked about sex accessories and practices I had never heard of, nouns I did not know could be verbs. I was a tabby among tigers.

  “You don’t have to be good at it, Andy,” said Vivian as I groped stiffly at the neck of a borrowed bass. “Just do it. Expertise is a weapon of the patriarchy.” Our band fell amicably apart after three songs and one show; I attempted a zine but could not write a word in first person (how did people confess themselves, construct themselves, so artfully?). But I could draw and letter, and people started asking me to do flyers and posters. I proved my mettle at Scrabble. I made myself brave and my new friends made me braver. After I cut off my ponytail and the sleeves of my T-shirts, I made out with two different girls in one week, dead-end make-outs but crucial evidence that I was one of them. Then Vivian got wind of it and pushed me up against a wall at a Bratmobile show, slid her leg between mine, and claimed me with a long, conspicuous kiss that would carry on for a year.

  My grades slipped for the first time into B territory, but my life had surged into an all-encompassing present. I declared an art major and told my parents it was economics. I verbed some nouns. I crossed that border. I entered a whole world that no one in my hometown, least of all my family, had known existed, where I was not One of Them but One of Us. The split life I had been living—one for everyone else, one for me—merged into a single whole. My notebooks shifted back into first person.

  Oh, Vivian. I put my head in my hands. My palms cupped my eyes with soothing darkness.

  “Andy, you okay?” Lawrence said.

  I dropped my hands. All five of them were watching me. Here we sat, grown-ish, around the table. The people who’d stuck around after the fallout. Low light warmed everyone’s faces. The caramel lace glistened atop the remains of the cake. Since the breakup, I had avoided talking about Flynn if I could help it—she had once been a part of family dinner—and I tried to take the high road. I loathed the thought of my hardship being discussed. But why hide it? Maybe for once it was time to hold Flynn accountable. It was crucial to shape your own narrative. And it would pave the way for my coup de grace, the story of the night: my tragicomic man-kiss. I never got to drop the biggest bomb of the night, and here I had two right in my pocket.

  “Okay.” I folded my napkin and set it on the table. I cleared my throat. “I wasn’t going to say anything, but. Something funny happened at the show last night.”

  “Do tell.”

  “You’re not going to believe it. I wou
ldn’t believe it if I hadn’t seen it.”

  Everyone leaned in. Summer bounced in her seat.

  “The first thing was, I saw Flynn. With her latest trophy. And who, of all people on earth, would that be?” I set both hands on the table and lowered my voice. “Vivian.”

  I awaited the cry of outrage.

  Summer and Meena exchanged a glance.

  “Oh boy,” Meena said. Lawrence pursed her lips. Topher and Robin looked down at their plates.

  “Oh my god.” I sat back. I needed the hard chair to hold me up. “You already knew.”

  “There were a couple clues, but . . .” said Robin.

  “I heard a rumor from my Olympia sources,” Meena conceded, “but I didn’t want to believe it.”

  Summer widened her eyes and refilled her wine.

  “You didn’t tell me?” I said to Summer. “You tell everyone everything.”

  “I do not. Honestly, I didn’t think you needed to know.”

  “Did you want to know?” Meena said.

  “No! I wish I could un-know it right now. Forever.”

  “I rest my case,” Summer said. “You were doing well. Or not so well. You didn’t need it.”

  “I just can’t believe you all knew,” I said with a dismayed smile.

  “This information,” said Summer soberly, “it’s not a gift.”

  “It certainly isn’t. Can I exchange it?”

  “So what’s the rest?” Robin said. “You said ‘the first thing.’”

  They looked at me hungrily, and for once, I didn’t want to feed them. To feed myself to them. “Oh, that’s all,” I said. “That was the beginning and end of the story. Turns out you guys know the rest.” I choked out a sardonic laugh and reset my face.

  They offered to help me process it all. They started to disparage Flynn and Vivian, but the more they said, the more they revealed. Each remark made me feel like I was being flayed with a tiny vegetable peeler. I stopped them after only a few. I reached for the knife to cut another slice of cake and said, “Please, let’s move on. I’m done thinking about Flynn. Tell me something new.”

  We turned to another recycled plot. I knew that mine would be reserved for later, for my absence. It was how we bonded: shared concern for a friend.

  Meena tipped a bottle of wine toward my glass. I wanted to undrink everything I had drunk, or drink so much I forgot everything I knew. I knew I shouldn’t say yes. But knowing better, alas, has never stopped me from wanting. I said, “More, please.”

  The Lesbian Mafia Official Shitlist (Excerpt)

  Straight men in lesbian bars

  Straight women who make out for men

  Chasing Amy

  The fall of Anne Heche

  “Lesbian” porn

  President Clinton

  Congress (excl. Barney Frank)

  “I’m a lesbian trapped in a man’s body”

  Ani DiFranco

  Folk music “All lesbians are in the Lesbian Mafia.”

  “Ani DiFranco is no longer lesbian-identified.”

  “Well, a million other folkie lesbians still are.”

  “We don’t need to hate Ani. We just no longer listen to her.”

  “I haven’t listened to that shit since Puddle Dive—”

  “We know.”

  “None of us have.”

  No Expectations

  BAREFACED AND HOODIED, SUMMER LEANED BACK AGAINST the kitchen counter, eating a cold naked Tofu Pup. She dipped the rubbery thing directly into a jar of stone-ground mustard before every bite. A pink vinyl boot drooped out of her half-zipped backpack on the floor.

  “Give me a minute and I’ll make some real food,” I said, collapsing into a chair. My back ached from bending over the type and cranking the letterpress’s heavy inked cylinder over and over.

  “Have to get to work. The Sandy Jug.”

  “But the manager is so evil to you.”

  “Awful. But . . .” Summer rubbed at her eyebrow ring. “Rent’s due and I was out sick last week, so it’s either that or the seven A.M. shift at the Acropolis.”

  “I’m amazed that people will go to a strip club at that hour.”

  “They do. And they order the steak.”

  “You deserve better, Summer.”

  “Don’t we all?” She popped the last of the Tofu Pup into her mouth and licked the mustard off her fingers. She shrugged on her squirrelly coat. “By the way, someone called for you earlier. A dude.”

  “Who?”

  “Aaron? Brian?” She stuffed the last of the boot into the backpack and zipped it shut.

  “Ryan?”

  “Maybe. Yeah. They all sound the same to me.” I frowned, and Summer picked up on it. “What? Who is he?”

  “A friend of Flynn’s,” I said.

  Summer jangled the keys in her pocket, a sound like Christmas bells. “Do I sense a boundary issue?”

  “No, no, he cuts hair,” I said, to her visible disappointment. “Any message?”

  “Just a number.” On the counter was an envelope with her red Sharpie scrawl.

  I waited until Summer’s taillights had turned the corner, and even then still couldn’t help taking the cordless phone down to the basement for good measure. I flipped on the switch and a string of Christmas lights illuminated a minor junkyard of boxes, bikes, and leftover furniture.

  “You probably shouldn’t call me here,” I said when he answered.

  “Well, hello,” he said.

  I sat down on the arm of a haggard easy chair. “Sorry. It’s just, the walls here have ears. And mouths.”

  “What’s to hide?”

  “Nothing,” I said. “But, you know, people get ideas.”

  “I have an idea. I just got out of practice and I’m starving. Come with me to the Old Nickel for some breakfast.”

  “It’s nine thirty at night.”

  “It’s been one of those days where nothing went right and I want to start over. Did you eat already?”

  I admitted I hadn’t, and that I was facing down some leftover couscous.

  “But why?”

  I laughed. “Yeah. That’s about right.” I scratched my neck. “I actually could go for something less wholesome.”

  “Oh really?”

  “Like pancakes,” I said.

  “I’m leaving for tour in a couple of days, I just want to hang out.” He stopped me before I could counter him: “Don’t worry, I have no expectations.”

  “You have Scrabble in your van?” I was impressed, despite myself.

  “Hang on.” Ryan sprang to his feet, swerved out the front door, and jogged across the parking lot. I watched him through the rain-fogged window, a bright mirage.

  The restaurant was old and divey, out on Southeast Powell by the train tracks. Smoke drifted over from the bar side. The booths were deep and red, the walls paneled in dark fake wood. The water came in amber-colored glasses with a pebbly texture.

  Ryan slid back into the booth and unfolded the travel-sized board between us. “I feel kind of bad,” he said as we plucked the tiny clicking letters from their drawstring bag.

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m going to beat you.”

  “That’s funny, because I was feeling sorry for you.” I reminded him I was a professional arranger of letters. Scrabble was blood sport.

  “How about winner pays?” he said.

  “Doesn’t the loser usually pay?”

  “Right. But if you really care about the game, you’ll try to win even if you have to pay for it.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “I’m in.”

  A fluffy globe of butter the size of an ice-cream scoop rested in a puddle atop the pancake stack. The pancakes were soft and mealy and tasted like cake, like childhood, like going out to breakfast with my family after church. In between Scrabble plays, Ryan tore bites away with the edge of his spoon, while I extracted tidy triangles from the stack with my knife and fork.

  “I listened to your record,” I said.
r />   “Really? You have it?”

  “I picked it up on the way home from work. It’s good.”

  “I’d have given you one.”

  “It’s okay, I didn’t mind. I like to support friends’ bands.”

  “We’re friends?” he said, looking up from his tiles.

  “Sure, we’re friends.”

  The corners of his eyes crinkled; his brow eased. A sort of innuendo tightened the air. I didn’t want to say, What?

  Then he laid down HELIX on a double-word score, with the H on a triple-letter and nestled against an O for an exponential point burst.

  “Still?” he said.

  I fell back and made the requisite sounds of rage and dismay. He looked satisfied and said, almost apologetically, that his mother had brought him up playing Scrabble, with no maternal mercy. “That’s what happens when you move around all the time. Just the two of us. Lots of evenings together.”

  “You guys must be close,” I said.

  He flicked his head a little. “When we had to be. She’s doing her own thing now.” He flipped the conversation back to me. “Let’s talk about you. Where do you come from?”

  “You think I’m not from here?”

  “Nobody’s from here.”

  “Flynn is.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Western Nebraska. Sugar beet land.”

  “Nebraska,” he said approvingly. “My favorite Springsteen album.”

  “But it’s all about New Jersey,” I said.

  “Good point.”

  “I came here for Reed,” I said. “But I dropped out.”

  “Didn’t like it?”

  “I loved it. My parents stopped liking it when they found out I was gay.”

  “Oh.” He carefully rearranged the letters on his rack. “Didn’t take it so well, huh?”