by Radclyffe
“Well then you can die happy, can’t you?”
I looked out the kitchen window into the empty driveway. “Where are they anyway?”
“They went to the store. We’re out of lettuce.”
“God forbid.”
“My sentiments exactly,” said Al.
I stood on my toes so I could see out into the street. “How long you think until they get back?”
“No, you don’t have time to cross town for another round if that’s what you mean.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I dropped a couple of ice cubes into my milk. “I was just gonna practice doing my hair.”
Al shuddered. “How can you do that? It’s like drinking cloudy water.”
“I like it with ice. It tastes better.”
“Nonfat milk’s already watered down. You’re just taking something that has little nutritional value and making it have no nutritional value whatsoever.”
I finished the glass and grabbed my book bag. “So it’s like the food equivalent of hearing you talk?”
Al smiled. “Touché, Sis.” He flipped the pages open to another article. “Maybe there’s still hope for you.”
Bobbie’s mother opened the door and lifted an eyebrow so neatly tweezed it looked drawn on.
“Hi, Mrs. Slezak.” Before I realized it I had lifted onto the balls of my feet. I had forgotten that flats were never a good idea around Bobbie’s house. Even her little sister had three inches on me. “I’m just here to return a book I borrowed from Bobbie.”
“Uh-huh.” She pursed the matte magenta of her lips together and held the door open wider. “You know the way.”
I stopped at the top of the stairs. “Hi.”
Bobbie got up from her desk.
I stepped into the doorway of her room. “I just came to return your book.”
She squinted at the cover. “The History of the North American Audubon Society?”
I pushed the door shut behind me and kissed her so hard she stumbled back.
“You gotta quit this, Jack.”
I wrapped my arms around her shoulders. “Like you mind.”
“I just need to know where I stand.”
I put a hand between her breasts. “You shouldn’t be standing anywhere.” I pushed her down onto her bed and climbed on top of her, our weight wrinkling her bedspread into darker green folds.
She crawled out from under me and sat up. “Look, I can’t just do this with you. I can’t just have sex when you feel like it and ignore you when you don’t.”
“I never said you had to ignore me.”
“You kinda did.” She scooted to the edge of the bed and put her feet on the floor. “You didn’t even look at me at school.”
I shrugged. “I’m here now.”
“Yeah, and you’ll be here as long as you want it. And as soon as you’re not feeling amorous anymore, I’m out in the cold. Again.”
“Shh.” I put my hand against her chest again. “No more talking.”
“Hey.” She took my wrist and set my hand down on the bed. “I’m not gonna let you play me.”
“I’m not playing you.”
“Yeah, you are.” She stood up. “I can’t.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means I like you. I want to go out with you. Like on dates.”
I breathed out. “It doesn’t work like that.”
“You mean it doesn’t work like that with me.”
“I’m not going out with anyone else.”
“You’re not even going out with me.”
I pushed my hands against the bed and got up. “Bobbie.”
She looked away and shook her head. “I think you oughta go.”
I ran out of the room and down the stairs so fast I almost bumped into Bobbie’s sister. “Hi, Lauren. How’s it going?”
She grinned at me. “You’re really doing it?”
I inhaled. If tears stopped gathering between my eyelids right then, they would stay caught between my lashes like a film. My eyes would just look glossy, shiny, as long as nothing fell from them. “Doing what?”
“Debbing? This Friday?”
I nodded. “Yeah. You’re coming, right?”
She followed me across the front hallway, her ponytail bouncing behind her. “Who you going with?”
“My brother Al.”
“Is it amazing?”
“It hasn’t happened yet.”
“No, I mean shopping for your dress, and dancing lessons, and rehearsals. Is it amazing?”
“Yeah. It’s fun.”
“Is your dress incredible?”
I nodded. “Yeah. I guess so. If you really like it you can borrow it in five years.”
Lauren frowned and looked down at her twinset. “Six actually. Thanks though.”
“Six then.” I coughed to clear my throat. “I’ll see you there.”
I wiped the backs of my hands over my eyes, the robin’s egg blue eye shadow Mom had gotten me smearing on the skin near my thumb.
Al looked up from his math book, flopped open on the dining room table. “Tragic final fitting?”
I looked away and tried to smile. “Yeah. Sure.”
He cocked his head. “No really, what happened?”
I sniffed. “Yeah, right.”
“Okay. You don’t want to tell me. I get it.” He tapped his pencil against the open book. “Is there anything I can get you? Tea? Vodka? Straight razor?”
I laughed. “Tea. Sure.”
He snapped his fingers. “Aw, man. I thought I was about to become the sole inheritor.”
He poured water from the kettle into the two mugs we had saved from just before Café Koko went under, the ones Al and I hid in the back of the cabinet so Mom wouldn’t see they were chipped and throw them out during one of her clutter purges. He handed me one, and I let the full, almost lemony scent rise in steam near my face.
“So is it”—he flipped over the empty tea bag package—“ ‘a wonderful way to relax and unwind any time of day?’ ”
I smiled. “I guess.”
“So you gonna tell me now?”
I looked down at the kitchen floor. “I hurt a friend. Really badly.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Friend?”
“Shut up.”
“If you hurt somebody, why are you the one crying?”
I blew air out of my mouth until my body felt hollow. “I don’t know. Because there’s nothing I can do about it.”
“There’s always something you can do about it.”
“Really.”
“Really. Usually.”
I nodded and held my palms against the sides of the cup. “Thanks for the tea.”
“No problem.” He raised his mug and clanked it against mine. “Cozy Chamomile and I aim to please.”
My mother shook her head and trotted down the stairs, the sequins on her dress flashing in the light as her legs moved. “Poor thing.”
I looked up from smoothing the tulle of my skirt. “What?”
“Your brother’s sick.”
“He’s sick?”
“He can barely talk.” She smoothed the edges of her lipstick in the hallway mirror.
I narrowed my eyes and looked up the stairs toward his room. “Let me see if he needs anything.”
She turned around and looked at me. “That’s really sweet of you. Just make sure not to get anything on your dress, okay? You look perfect. Like one of your dolls, remember them? Don’t mess yourself up.”
I glided my hand along the banister. “I’m just going upstairs.”
I flicked on the light switch in Al’s room.
“Oh, my stomach.” Al groaned and peeked out from under the covers with one eye. “Oh, it’s you.”
I sat on the edge of his bed and handed him a bottle of Orange & Cream Jones’. “You’re not sick.”
“No. Not really. I just don’t want to go to your stupid coming out party with its disgusting rubber chicken.”
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“You’re up to something.”
He twisted off the cap and took a sip. “Yep.”
“Afraid of being seen in a tux with your big sister?”
“Petrified.”
“You could have just said you didn’t want to do it. I would have covered for you.”
“I just now decided I couldn’t face everyone wearing a bow tie.”
“Oh, yeah?” I fluffed my skirt over the bed. “Try doing it in forty yards of tulle.”
“I think I win with the bow tie.”
“You do realize you’re leaving me to come out into New England society alone?”
“New England society?” He swallowed and sat up straight. “Who’re you kidding? New England society is Boston. Newport. Not here. Look around. We’re outnumbered by our cows.”
I smiled. “You know, you shouldn’t do this to Mom. She goes white when you sneeze twice in a row.”
“One day I’m gonna get a cold. I’m just preparing her.”
I stood up and pulled my gloves up past my elbows. “You better be on the sofa eating Ruffles when she gets back or she’s gonna have a heart attack.”
“But there won’t be anything on.”
I pulled the beanbag pillow from his desk chair and threw it at him. “See you later, coward.”
“Takes one to know one.”
I stopped in the doorway. “Excuse me?”
“You know what I’m talking about.” He scooted the atom model a few inches toward the wall and set the soda bottle on the table next to his bed.
“I thought I’d find you here.” My dad sat on the stone bench across from the swing set. “Is there a swing under there?”
I smiled and looked down. My skirt overflowed on either side of the swing, hiding the seat and burying a few inches of each chain in tulle.
“You know I’d be your escort.” He straightened his lapels. “But I have to do the dad part. I’ve been training for the father-daughter waltz.”
I laughed. “Glad to hear it.”
“I know your brother’s fine, by the way. You don’t have to cover for him.”
“Don’t be mad at him.” I kicked my satin pump in the gravel. “Would you really want to wear one of those things in front of a hundred girls if you were in the eighth grade?”
He chuckled. “Not on your life.”
“Didn’t think so.”
“You look beautiful. Must be my good looks.”
I grinned. “Why thank you.”
“Any guy would be lucky.” He stood up and brushed the dust from the granite bench off his hands. “I’ll tell your mother you’re getting some air.”
I watched him cross the park back toward the hotel, the streetlights flickering as he got to the edge of the grass.
“What happened to your brother?”
I looked up, catching my breath in my chest when I saw her. “He’s…not coming.”
“Oh. Is he boycotting antiquated misogynist rituals?”
“It’s not misogynist. It’s fun.”
Bobbie put her hands on the chains over my gloved fingers and pulled them back a little. “You’re having fun?”
I dug my toes into the gravel, stopping the swing and looking up at her. “I want you.”
She sighed. “I know.”
“No.” I laced my fingers between hers. “I want you. Tonight. I want you to be my escort.”
She shook her head. “What?”
“You heard me.”
“Do you have any idea how much trouble we’d get in? The Mob’s got nothing on the League of Mother-Daughter Philanthropists.”
“What would we get in trouble for? Like you said, it’s legal in this state.”
“Your mother would kill you.”
“That would be illegal.”
She laughed. “You’re really serious about this.”
“Yes.” I stood up. “I am.”
She looked at me. “You look beautiful, by the way.”
“You clean up pretty good yourself.” I flicked the bow tie, undone and draped over her neck. “This is easy. You just bow and then dance with me.”
“I know it’s easy. It’s everything after this.”
I shook my head. “I don’t care.” I put the tip of my finger to the corner of her mouth, a half-shade redder than usual, and smiled. “You wore the cherry kind?”
She shrugged. “Special occasion, special Chapstick.”
“Evening, lovebirds.” Al slid into the booth next to me.
I shoved his shoulder. “Oh, look who decided to show.”
“I know.” He heaved a sigh. “I just missed it.”
“Mom tell you where I was?”
“Yeah.” He looked at Bobbie. “And forgave me for aiding and abetting.”
“Think she’ll forgive me?” I asked.
“Pack your bags for an all-expense-paid guilt trip, but yeah, I think she will.” He took a sip from my water glass. “Why aren’t you two partying with the other cupcakes and penguins?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Getting drunk on cheap beer and throwing up on my dress at Maureen Holson’s after party. My idea of fun.”
Bobbie nodded. “We thought we’d go for pie.”
I pushed the plate toward Al. “It’s cherry.”
“And catch gay?” said Al. “No, thanks.”
“You already like girls.” Bobbie handed Al a fork. “It’s too late.”
THE ONLY GIRL I WANT
Sommer Marsden
Carla twisted her swizzle stick and frowned. “What do you mean? Like never?” She was huffy. And heavy. A huffy, heavy redhead with big green eyes and full pink lips. Her face, devoid of makeup, was peppered with freckles and as smooth as a baby’s ass.
“Not for a while,” I said with a shrug.
Maryann’s reunion party was a nightmare. Half our college crowd was present, half of those married and toting screaming, runny-nosed toddlers. Another quarter were single, chic and trying to hide distasteful shudders as toddlers and babies wailed around us like some choir from hell. The other quarter was like me. Either not weighing in at all with their personal lives or proudly announcing that they had not only come out of the closet, but blown the closet door to kindling long ago. I had kissed Maryann’s cheek upon arrival and said, “I’m gay.”
“I know that.” She had laughed then, her pale, friendly face lighting up with the laughter that uncoiled from her throat. I was mesmerized, as always. Completely and totally taken with her and the spattering of pale freckles that dotted her nose and her cheeks. Captivated by the café au lait hair that spilled from a plain silver clip. Crazy over her figure, fifteen pounds heavier than it had been and every pound stunning in the extra beauty it added.
“You do?”
“I’ve always known,” she said and handed me a drink. “It’s an Italian Surfer. Drink up.”
“What do you mean you’ve always known?” I had swigged my Surfer like a fish.
“I mean, I have always known. I knew in high school.” She waved a tray of shrimp puffs in my face. “Can I tempt you?”
I had taken a puff but didn’t eat it. “Well, I sure as hell wish you would have told me. It would have made my high school years easier. And honey,” I said, finding my bravado, “you’ve always tempted me.”
Her lovely pale cheeks flooded with color and she dipped her head—her chin pointing to the floor, her eyes closing almost all the way, long sooty lashes touching the apples of her round cheeks. She looked like a Madonna in some Italian work of art: beautiful, kind, lush, and ripe. My body started to buzz with an overwhelming want to touch her. Maybe kiss her. A want accented with just enough regret, because I wouldn’t get to. And I had been celibate long enough to know the drill, to switch off that part of myself like flipping a light switch. Celibate by choice. But Maryann was hard to resist. For me, she always had been.
Two hours had passed and I watched her play the crowd. Carla frowned at me. “Why would you do it, Stevie? Why would you be celi
bate on purpose when there is so much to sample? In this day and age, picking a sexual partner can be like making a grab bag of candy. A boy here, a girl there, a boy and a girl after a dinner of pasta. Maybe an orgy. A threesome, a foursome, a moresome.”
I kept waiting for her to laugh or even smile to show that she was joking, but she didn’t. She just went on glaring at me with that big green gaze, looking half flabbergasted, half angry. Like I had somehow betrayed women everywhere by not getting laid every four seconds.
“Maybe that’s why I did it,” I said with a shrug. “Plus, I don’t switch off with the whole guy today, girl tomorrow thing. Not my deal. I like women. Period. End of story. And I just want one person, I don’t need a menagerie.”
She blinked again and I wondered for just a second if she was going to punch me. Monogamy! What was I thinking? Why have one special person when you can have one special person a day? I almost laughed but thought better of it. Instead, I finished my Italian Surfer and excused myself.
“Where are you going?” she demanded. Though we hadn’t been friends in college, she acted as if we had and had latched on to me the moment I entered.
“I think I’ll go mingle, grab a plate, another drink,” I muttered. I backed away slowly. The same way I had read you should back away from a bear should you happen upon one. “I’ll be back. Don’t worry.”
I was totally lying.
“Stevie! Stevie!” I glanced around to see George waving wildly. Even in our freshman year of college, his name had been Boy George. George was one of the first young gay men I had met who was totally open about who he was. His sexuality was not a secret. At all. He had been one of my heroes. One of the first to urge me to tell my parents the truth and claim my own identity.
“Hey, there!” I went to him and he gathered me in his generous arms. He’d somehow gone from a rail-thin boy in pegged jeans and false eyelashes to a tall, plushy man with gorgeous skin and a double chin. “Oh, my god, you look fab.”
“You mean fat,” he quipped.
“No, you look gorgeous, love. Really.” A slight younger man stood behind him, grinning with a mix of love and pride.
“And you, darling Stevie, look sex starved.”