Girl Unwrapped

by Gabriella Goliger

  Between mouthfuls, Robin tells Toni who among the women’s libbers and Marxist-Leninists that frequent Loulou’s are living together or have slept with one another and so weaves a tangled web of relationships in which she too has been involved. If Toni thinks those women are sexless missionaries, she’s sorely mistaken. The love juices flow as freely as the rhetoric. They are an incestuous bunch of sisters, which can make for tortured sessions at consciousness raising groups. Still, they’re more loving than hurtful of one another, Robin insists, and the urgency to fix a broken world keeps the bonds strong. Robin is in full sympathy with the revolution—who wouldn’t be, she asks—but without waiting for an answer sighs and admits that lately the intensity feels stifling. The imperative to make all personal acts political takes up so much energy. She wouldn’t mind an uncomplicated roll in the hay that doesn’t have to go through the feminist-analysis shredder in the morning. As Robin says this, she licks her thumb, and something about her direct look into Toni’s eyes hits like a hammer on a gong. Toni feels her face heat up.

  “Me, I only date femmes,” she says gruffly and takes a huge gulp from her mug. The fizzy drink explodes into prickles at the back of her head. She has to close her mouth quickly to swallow a cough. When she glances Robin’s way again she can see she’s being observed with amused interest.

  “How do you define ‘femme’?”

  Robin strikes a pose, chin on fingertips, eyelashes fluttering. Then another: eyes wide, mouth in an “O,” hand on heart like a damsel in distress. Another still: face sideways, smile vampish, the tip of her pink tongue peeking from the corner of her mouth. The mimicry is perfect, the contrast with the boyish flannel shirt, absurd. Toni guffaws, but the tightness in her chest intensifies.

  “Seriously, I’m curious. I’ve never actually talked to someone who’s into the butch-femme thing. It’s kinda out of style these days. What about it turns you on?”

  “Oh, well, you know. The ultra-feminine look. Dresses, makeup, glamour. I couldn’t date a girl who looks too much like I do. Opposites attract.”

  Blood rushes up Toni’s neck, into her cheeks, her eartips, in an inferno of embarrassment. She’s suddenly aware of how tall, rangy, and big-boned she is, compared to Robin’s delicate features and petite form. How stupid to have brought up the subject of dates.

  “Opposites attract? Only opposites? Really?” Robin grins. “Is that what they teach you in biology? So how come mice don’t mate with elephants? Or ballerinas with road workers?” She shrugs. “I think everyone’s potentially androgynous. Straights go out of their way to accentuate differences to shore up heterosexuality. But to each her own. Personally, I like the surprise package effect.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Well, when a woman’s got plain clothes on, she’s like a mystery present in a brown paper wrapping. You get her home, undo the wrapping and, wow! You discover the lovely, soft body underneath. More seductive than satin and lace. At least to me.”

  Suddenly, with great clarity, Toni imagines Robin lying back on a bed, her black hair loose, her plaid shirt unbuttoned. The faded green-and-brown flannel contrasts with the freshness of her skin. At the base of her throat is a delicate hollow into which the tip of a tongue would so nicely fit. Then Toni realizes she’s staring at that very spot and her heart begins to pound without mercy.

  “I guess the libbers have brainwashed me,” Robin is saying. “I like a sense of equality. Oh well. It’s late.” She yawns without covering her mouth and the scrunching up and subsequent relaxation of her face are enchanting. Like a magic trick. “Time to get a move on, I guess.”

  When the waiter comes with the bills, Toni tries to pay both.

  “But why?” Robin asks, eyes wide. “This isn’t a date, is it?”

  Toni bites her lip and agrees to go Dutch. While they’re getting up from the table, Robin asks where Toni lives.

  “In Snowdon. With my mother.”

  “Oh my God, that’s so butch!” Robin’s hand flies dramatically to her heart. “Do you have a curfew? Don’t look so mortified. Just kidding. Can’t help myself. You’re so kiddable.”

  Snow flutters down from the heavens when they emerge onto Sainte Catherine Street. Like a zillion white moths, fat flakes fill the air, pull the city into the premature embrace of winter. There’s no wind, just this steady, dreamy rain of white. Feathery snow blankets roads, sidewalks, tops of cars, windowsills, mailboxes, fallen leaves. The traffic has thinned. A few cars sail by with a hiss of tires on roadside slush. The sky between the drifting flakes is pearly grey and luminous.

  “Oh,” Robin cries. She flings her arms wide and tips her face heavenward. “Wow.”

  Her long black coat flaps as she gambols about. She grabs Toni’s arm.

  “Let’s walk! Let’s walk!”

  Down Sainte Catherine Street they scamper, past darkened shops, lampposts haloed with glitter, Saturday night stragglers rushing home. They slip and slide on their smooth-soled shoes. Snow settles on Toni’s hatless head, creeps down the back of her neck, and she shivers, but she isn’t cold. At Eaton’s department store, whose displays are well-lit despite the hour, Robin stops to mock the mannequins in fur coats. She contorts her limbs into ridiculous poses, hip thrust this way, elbows that, fingers splayed. She pirouettes, toppling backward against the window glass, and Toni doubles up with laughter. In that moment Toni sees how appreciative laughter energizes Robin’s antics, how Robin’s spirit blossoms like a plant in the sun, and Toni feels the delicious power of being sun-like in her attentions.

  They meander down side streets. Where are they heading? Nowhere, it seems. Wherever their feet will take them, for as long as this mood of abandonment lasts. Nothing matters to Toni but this white magic all around and this bold frolicking imp at her side. They walk through alleys where snow transforms garbage into cuddly creatures, down the middle of streets following tire tracks of packed-down slush. Robin’s unabashed chatter—now pure clownery, now interesting revelations— is a key that turns locks. Toni finds herself talking too, about adolescent longing and high school misery. Stories of pain and loneliness that shared become badges of honour.

  “Yeah, that was me, all right. It was hell … ”

  How wonderful to have a hell to describe to another who understands and nods and grins. And interrupts so charmingly.

  “Jewish camp, no kidding? You’re Jewish? So where are your horns? Don’t tell me you don’t have horns, I’ll be very disappointed. According to the nuns, I’ve been hankering for the devil all my life. I’m a failed Catholic, thanks be to Christ. Came out at boarding school. The Sacred Heart convent on Côte des Neiges. Yes, the building on the hill that looks like Dracula’s castle. I was sixteen. Me and my roommate Mona cuddled under the covers at night, dying with lust and fear because Sister Agatha patrolled the halls in running shoes and held onto her rosary beads so you couldn’t hear her coming. Mona finally cracked. Guilt ate her up. Made me join her in self-imposed penance. Cold showers, kneeling on bare floors, fasts. We’d make love, then she’d wake me in the night for Hail-Mary marathons. Looney-tunes. But I couldn’t let her go. Thought I’d have to throw myself out the fourth-storey window. Finally, Mother Superior realized something was up and sent Mona home. Exhaustion, they said. Maybe she had the saint’s calling, but in the meantime she was suffering from nervous strain. We were to pray for her mens sana in corpere sano. I begged my parents to take me out too, which they did, thank the Goddess. Best thing for me, going back to a normal school with normal delinquents. What about you? Did you see that counsellor again? Did you and her finally get it on?”

  “Well, sort of. It was, it was in Israel,” Toni falters.

  “Outta sight! And?”

  “A long story. I’ll tell you another time.”

  “Ah, the pain of first loves,” Robin says gently.

  On and on they drift, through a night as dazzling as the Milky Way. Presently, they’re on Sherbrooke Street, heading for the massive stone gates of t
he university. Robin falls silent, lost in thought, though she walks with purpose. Toni doesn’t ask where they’re going, but a hunch grows and her heart beats fast. Beyond the snowbound campus they arrive at a neighbourhood called “the Ghetto,” a moniker that always struck Toni as odd. Nothing here calls to mind the seething ghettoes of medieval Europe. Elegant rowhouses of grey stone line the quiet residential streets. Some buildings were once manors but have since been subdivided and served as digs for generations of students. Long outdoor staircases with graceful wrought-iron banisters stretch from the street to upper floors. At the bottom of one of these Robin stops.

  “Here’s where I live.”

  Toni can’t speak. All through their long walk, she’s been chanting an inner prayer: Take me home with you. Take me home. Now, as they stand at the foot of the snowy stairs that lead to Robin’s door, Toni grasps the icy banister to keep from sinking to her knees.

  “Your feet must be freezing.” Robin smiles and begins to climb the stairs. “Mine are. Coming up?” Toni clings to the banister.

  “But you’re shaking like a leaf. What’s the matter? Why don’t you come?” Robin descends a few steps and peers at Toni’s face. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost. Say something. Oh no! Now I’ve got it.” Robin strikes her forehead. “You’re a virgin. ’Course you are. Why didn’t I realize? All that butch-femme bravado and the way you were blushing at the restaurant. I thought it was shyness, but shit, you’re not even out.”

  “I’d like to come up,” Toni manages to mumble.

  “Uh-uh. Not a good idea. I’m not feeling motherly right now. Virgins are famous for falling in love with whoever brings them out. Instant enchantment, like in Midsummer Night’s Dream. Snap, and you’re in love with whoever flicked your switch. It gets too personal and complicated, see? All I want is a fling, an easy fuck, not to have to feel responsible. Oh shit, don’t look at me like that. Why weren’t you upfront?”

  “I’m not a virgin.”

  Toni feels herself blush to the roots of her hair.

  “Your nose is growing. Men don’t count. If you’ve been fucked by a man, it doesn’t count.”

  “I won’t fall in love. I promise.”

  Toni grabs Robin’s sleeve.

  “You must think I’m full of myself,” Robin says, gently pulling herself free and taking a step backward. “I’ve just seen a lot of intensity lately. And I don’t believe in love anymore. It’s a trap, makes people possessive. Slaves.”

  “Just this once. I’ll go home right after … ”

  She tries to think of a promise to convince Robin that the need ripping through her body isn’t dangerous. Other nights, when she stood on the doorstep of someone willing, she was the one to turn away, overwhelmed by her desires. Yet it was nothing to what she feels now. Terrified. Incandescent. Filled with a hot white light. Sure in her bones that only good can come of this. Unable to say it out loud.

  “Aw, look at you. You make me feel like a bitch. All right then, Goofy, come on up.”

  Does she just feel obliged, Toni wonders, as one would feel obliged to take in a stray cat? But the hand that reaches out and grasps Toni’s is sure and firm and transmits a more heated invitation than words alone could do. Toni’s heart hammers harder. Robin in the lead, they ascend the long, snowy staircase toward a red wooden door at the top. Inside, they creep down the hall so as not to wake Robin’s roommates, and arrive at a tiny bedroom whose narrow space is almost entirely filled with a wide, low bed. Robin lights candles, one after another until the room is ablaze, then pulls Toni down. They swim into the deep warm sea of a kiss.

  “What do you like?” Robin whispers when they are naked. “Tell me.”

  “I don’t know,” Toni confesses, amazed to hear herself tell the truth. “It’s my first time … like this.”

  She shuts her eyes and waits for Robin’s reaction, the I-knew-it accusations about Toni’s virginity. Everything could be over before it has begun.

  “Right, your first time.”

  Robin sighs, producing a long, warm, tickling breeze that sets everything inside Toni a-quiver.

  “Well then, we better go slow. The first time is really important.”

  She has left the known world. She is waving goodbye, this time for real. Behind her, the certainty of pyramids. Before her, the wilderness, the dry, brown earth, crags and thorns. No shelter here. No history to hang onto. Only space and silence and the freedom to be naked. She is no longer the chosen. She chooses. The flood of heat. The thunder of her heart. She is home.

  chapter 27

  They never use the “L” word. Banished is the sentiment that creates mountains of expectations and sinkholes of grief: Love. Ooey-gooey love. Beware the romance industry, Hallmarks, Harlequins, the patriarchal capitalist plot, the cleaving that turns women into docile imbeciles, emotional weaklings, slavish consumers of everything from overpriced lingerie to washing machines. Love equals monogamy equals aping the straight world’s idea of marriage (egotism à deux, imprisoning domesticity).

  Though they have excised the word “love” from their vocabulary, “lover” is okay. Lovers can be bold, sexy, sophisticated, spontaneous, non-exclusive, free. Lovers don’t wallow or cling. Lovers aren’t “in” anything. They are just themselves.

  Toni, the lover, strides across campus toward the Ghetto. Walking tall. She is tall. She is stretched out to her full glorious height, never again to shrink into herself like a faint-hearted turtle. She wants a gift to bring her honey. But what? Flowers? Verboten. Flowers to Robin would be like bacon to a rabbi. Chocolates? Another romantic cliché. She follows the trail of dirty slush into a grocery store and cruises the aisles. Beans, par-boiled rice, instant mashed potatoes—the staples of student diets. There must be something. Finally, she settles on a Sara Lee banana cake from the frozen foods cooler. It has a thick, golden layer of frosting. Sweet and sensuous, yet neutral. But will Robin be pleased? Toni hurries from the store plagued by doubts over the hard, icy package tucked under her arm.

  At the bottom of the long outdoor staircase leading to the magical red door of Robin’s apartment, Toni pauses to catch her breath, compose her face, think of casual opening lines. Hi, doll. How’s it going? Brought a little something for dessert. At last she can wait no longer. The staircase shakes beneath her bounding feet.

  “Oh!” Robin says. “It’s you.” Her brown eyes register the guarded surprise of someone who finds an uninvited guest on her doorstep. Panic stabs Toni beneath the breastbone. Did Robin forget their date? But the impish face breaks into a grin. “Kidding. Just kidding. Jeez, you’re so easy!”

  How lovely Robin appears, a woodland sprite in a plaid flannel shirt and men’s work socks, her glossy, unpinned hair spilling over her shoulders. They sit on the edge of Robin’s bed in the small, overheated room, and all Toni’s efforts to calm herself come undone. They’ve been going out (if that’s what it’s called) for more than a month and still Toni trembles as she did the first time. She swabs her sweaty brow with the back of her hand. Robin apologizes for the overheated room, says the window is stuck. Toni leaps up, glad to have a chore to perform for her sweetheart. She yanks and pummels the stubborn sash until a cool hand touches her arm.

  “Hey, Goofy. Save your energy for something better.”

  Robin’s eyes are wide and dark. And tender. So amazingly tender.

  They tumble upon the bed.

  How is it possible, Toni wonders anew, to penetrate that soft vulnerable place in Robin and deliver not pain but pleasure? A miracle. Her lover’s body arches, the navel smiles, a deep-throated groan echoes through the room. They take turns taking all they need from one another, then they fall into velvet sleep.

  Later, howling with laughter, their naked, unequally sized bodies wrapped together in a bed sheet, they lurch across the hall to the bathroom. The walls are painted metallic red—the red of accidents, of lipsticked temptresses—and there are candles, incense holders, and ashtrays. There’s a poster of John Len
non in wire-rimmed glasses, another of Janis Joplin in feathers and beads. Robin squeezes gobs of raspberry bubble bath into the gush from the faucet of the big clawfoot tub. Mounds of foam swell as the water pounds. Clouds of steam fog the window, shutting out the winter night. Robin has bath sports to teach, games with washcloths, soap, toes. Where did she learn to play so deliciously? With other girls? Jealousy! Verboten.

  They soak until their fingers pickle, passing a soggy joint from hand to hand.

  “I think I’m starting to corrupt you a little,” Robin says.

  Later still they attack the Sara Lee cake. They eat straight from the aluminium container, clashing forks, letting the flavours explode on their tongues and in their marijuana-soaked brains. Mesmerized, Toni watches Robin’s buttercream-shiny lips move in rhythmic chewing. Her own mouth moves in exactly the same way, the same pace, as if drawn into a dance. How wonderful. One mind in two bodies. The union of souls. Union? As in marriage? Hush. Shush. Don’t spoil the moment.

  Toni explains the magic of photosynthesis as exemplified by chains of formulas and diagrams of cells packed with chloroplasts. She rhymes off the multi-syllabic molecules proudly, as if she had discovered them herself. Though she can see Robin’s face has gone stiff with boredom, Toni talks faster and faster. Her lover yawns mightily. She hops up from the bed, away from Toni and the fat, densely printed textbook between them.

  Robin is into arts, drama in particular. She has no head for facts and formulas, and like much of the ill-informed world, finds science a bit sinister despite its usefulness. Science run amok leads to nuclear bombs and lobotomies, she argues. Look at her dad, a doctor, and a prime example of cold, patronizing hubris. Plus, she feels sorry for the rat in the maze, the dog in the cage, the chimp attached to wires. She almost wept over the experiment on the nurturing-deprived rhesus monkeys. The photo in Toni’s psychology text showed a deranged baby monkey cowering in a corner and rocking on its haunches. Toni had to admit she too was disturbed by the forlorn expression on the animal’s face, but how else is science to advance?