Queermance Anthology, Volume 2

by Queermance Anthology- Volume 2 [MM-FF] (retail) (epub)

  A group passed her in the wings, all hushed giggles and slender limbs, as Christine headed around the side hallway to re-enter the main room from the back, discreetly.

  The Grand Victorian Eisteddfod - a word that even the notably intelligent Chrissy had to look up to be able to spell - was a state-wide competition held every year between high schoolers. Someone on the Eisteddfod’s organising board had determined that the best time to hold it would be in winter. Christine suspected that it was because they had a sadistic streak and enjoyed watching adolescent children shivering in the local town hall.

  Whatever the case, her performance was very well received. She was unsure if she had a chance at winning - there was another solo act that was very good, a rather fat boy with greasy hair and a trumpet - but she felt confident as she made her way toward her school group.

  The host had just finished announcing the music section of the Eisteddfod closed and the next section - dance - open.

  Her seat was waiting for her when she got back to it, Miss Pomfrey whispering her congratulations. She liked Miss Pomfrey. Truth be told, she had a terrible and secret crush on Miss Pomfrey. It was a silly thing, a teenager’s fascination, and she knew it. Her cheeks glowed under the praise, though, and she grinned happily.

  ‘Please welcome,’ the host was calling out, ‘the students of Millsborough High!’

  Chrissy sat up straight. She knew that name. It tickled her memory, teased at her, as five girls ran out on stage and got ready for their act. She hugged her violin case absently as one of them stood up - a full hand higher than the rest. Her heart stopped for a moment and she burst into a grin.

  Yvonne was still tall, still as slender as a willow wand and still had that luxurious black hair, held back by a headband and falling about her face to frame it in ringlets. Chrissy’s brief childhood friend flowed with a grace that spoke of physical health and long hours of practice. Bend, stretch, step, turn���

  Yvonne was good, though not actually very good. Nonetheless, Chrissy only had eyes for the raven-haired teen on stage. If you were to ask her she would have said, without any expertise at all, that Von’s dance form was flawless.

  ‘Wow,’ she muttered to herself.

  What else could she say?

  The night was wearing on and the awards were soon to be announced when Chrissy stepped into the women’s toilets two steps behind Yvonne.

  ‘Oh, you were just fantastic,’ she burst out, ‘I loved your act!’

  Yvonne stared at her in the mirror above the sinks. There was a flicker of recognition there, Chrissy could see it, and she couldn’t help but feel a pang of hurt when the taller girl failed to put a name to her face.

  ‘Um, thanks. Sorry,’ she added, heading to a stall.

  She was washing her hands when Chrissy finished her business and emerged to do the same.

  ‘You don’t remember me.’ Chrissy lowered her eyes, focusing on the sink. She was blushing.

  ‘No, I��� I do, I think.’ Yvonne nodded reassuringly. Chrissy wondered if it were a show to spare her feelings. ‘But I just can’t remember where from.’

  ‘Well, when we met I was wearing a really stupid hat and my hair was purple.’ She lifted a hand to flick her blonde ponytail about, held in place by a strip of deep purple cloth.

  There was silence and then Chrissy was almost knocked off her feet, the other girl’s arms flung around her.

  ‘Christine! Chrissy! Wow, I had-I never expected���’

  The two giggled in place for a few moments as other girls came and went. Nobody threw them an odd glance; meeting old friends at an Eisteddfod was practically par for the course. They were alone again when Yvonne finally released her.

  ‘You grew up,’ she remarked, eyes briefly stuck slightly south of Chrissy’s collarbones. Von caught her friend’s eye and blushed, covering her face with one hand. ‘I can’t believe I just said that.’

  ‘It’s all right, I did,’ Christine grinned. ‘We both did.’

  ‘Yeah, I suppose, but you grew, um, out more than I did.’ Both hands covered her face this time. ‘I really said that, didn’t I? I’m so stupid. I don’t mean you’re, um���’ Von waved a hand. ‘Fat. You’re not, not at all, you’re gor-uh, I mean, you���’

  ‘Grew some tits?’ Chrissy suggested, delighting in the taller girl’s hazel eyes widening at this coarse language. ‘Yeah, I-‘

  Miss Pomfrey chose exactly that moment to peek in and call out, ‘Chrissy! Two minutes, they’re announcing the music winners!’

  ‘Okay, Miss Pomfrey!’ Chrissy called back. ‘She’s my music teacher,’ she explained to Yvonne, once the teacher had gone.

  ‘She’s, um, really pretty,’ Yvonne noted.

  Chrissy tilted her head as a thought occurred to her. ‘As pretty as me?’ she asked, grinning widely as if making a joke. If she gets upset, she reasoned, I can say it was a-

  ‘Um, no,’ Von answered, giving Chrissy a look that suggested she were mad if she thought Miss Pomfrey was the prettier. ‘Not even close.’ She fidgeted and her cheeks began to flame as her ears caught up with what had just come out of her mouth, but Yvonne didn’t look away.

  There was a pause. Chrissy disliked pauses. They were awkward and she had very little time before she had to go. Her hands moved up, as if of their own accord, and undid the purple fabric holding her hair in place. She folded it up a couple of times as her blonde tresses swam over her shoulders and put it in Yvonne’s hand.

  ‘I want you to have this.’ She held Yvonne’s eyes as she closed the girl’s fingers over the fabric. She stood on her toes and kissed the taller girl on the cheek.

  ‘Uh, I���’

  ‘Too late, it’s yours,’ Chrissy grinned. ‘It was great to see you again,’ she called, running out the door.

  Yvonne stared at the fabric in her hand. Pulling it out to its full length she recognised it as a man’s bow tie in deep purple silk. It smelled faintly of flowers.

  In a burst of movement and golden blonde hair, the door to the toilets flew open again. Before Yvonne knew what was happening Chrissy had put her hand up, wrapped it around the back of Yvonne’s neck and pulled her down a couple of inches, kissing her squarely on the lips.

  Time seemed to stop and the world held its breath; Chrissy let the taller girl go but Yvonne did not pull away, not immediately.

  Then, in a flurry of colour and noise, Chrissy was gone.

  The best thing about working in a regional university town, Yvonne decided, had to be the variety of people.

  Getting out of her parents’ - or rather, her father’s - house as soon as she could was like a cold splash of water on a hot day. She loved her father very dearly but since the accident that had killed her Mum he had grown suffocatingly protective. Now, two years later, life was not going to stop and wait for her to catch up.

  So she moved away from Millsborough and found a place in a town called Winston, which was based, for the most part, around its single university. Yvonne found work easily enough at a local cafe, set directly next to the single small supermarket that served the town. She had the feeling her employer, a slightly shifty-looking man named Douglas Barry, had hired her mostly due to her looks, but whatever the reason, she was grateful for the work and he kept his attentions to staring at her legs.

  1974 was a good year for the university; it was a good year for all universities. The government’s decision to abolish university fees resulted in a vast influx of students, some of them several years out of high school already, and that signalled a boom in towns like Winston.

  It looked as if Yvonne’s job, as humble as it was, would remain steady - as long as she could keep up.

  The cafe was filling up quickly by lunch time. Bored students freed from their morning lectures came in for a toasted sandwich and coffee, a bustling roar of noise compared to the quieter locals who typically came in during the morning.

  A quick glance around the cafe showed a new group at table three,
set off in a corner near the main window: a party of three students. Two blondes and a brunette, women in bell-bottoms and blouses rather than the more popular short-skirted dresses (like Von’s uniform).

  It was a good look, Von thought, and was admiring the trio as she headed to their table. Two of them were in heated debate about the current government’s approach to women’s issues - was Gough Whitlam doing enough? Was he not? - and the third had her nose buried in the menu still.

  Yvonne knew that nose. She knew the face it belonged to.

  ‘What can I get you?’ she asked brightly as she reached table three, order book already in hand.

  ‘Black coffee,’ the first blonde answered immediately, ‘and a pie for me.’

  ‘White tea, please,’ came the brunette’s voice, polite and precise.

  Yvonne marked these down and looked to the group’s third member. She was still poring over her options.

  ‘How about you, Chrissy?’ she asked, keeping her tone as nonchalant as she could.

  Christine looked up absently, did a double-take and quite amused her friends as both mouth and eyes made perfect O’s.

  Introductions were made - the brunette’s name was Melinda, the blonde’s was Lucy - and greetings were offered. Chrissy, in the end, had white coffee and two sausage rolls. Yvonne took the order, smiled politely and headed off with a bounce in her step.

  ‘You okay, Chrissy?’

  ‘Hmm? Oh, yeah.’ Christine nodded to Melinda, still watching Yvonne. ‘It’s just-That hair tie she’s got.’

  ‘The purple one?’ asked Lucy, more interested in the debate she and Melinda had been enjoying than Chrissy’s childhood friend. ‘What about it?’

  ‘I gave it to her years ago. Can’t believe she kept it.’

  The night was chill when Yvonne left work for the day, stepping into the street and thanking her lucky stars she had remembered to bring stockings to work. Her work outfit did little to protect her legs from the cold.

  Chrissy was there, leaning against the wall, waiting for her. Von wondered how long she’d been waiting. An hour? Two? Since they were both nine years old?

  ‘Come for a drink?’ the blonde asked casually, without preamble. ‘The pub’s pretty good. I mean, for a pub.’

  ‘Uh, sure,’ Yvonne nodded, ‘but I need to go home and change first.’

  ‘Oh. Sure.’

  A pause, a few seconds longer than comfortable.

  ‘Want to come along?’

  ‘Sure.’

  It felt different, not just due to the five years that had passed, but also because the privacy was a new factor between them. They were no longer in school, no longer living with parents, no longer constrained by the unspoken agreement that showing interest in public might be dangerous.

  They took Von’s car, a battered little Bluebird already a decade old, though the trip was short. Conversation, though brief, came just as easily then as it did underneath those pine trees years ago.

  After the brief tour of Yvonne’s little two-bedroom rental home, the blonde mentioned the last time they met.

  ‘Sorry I ran out like that,’ she blushed, shaking her head.

  ‘That was my first kiss, you know,’ Yvonne admitted, laughing when she saw Chrissy’s disbelieving look. ‘No, really. It was my last, too, actually.’

  ‘Wow,’ Chrissy gasped, drawing closer. ‘We’ve got to change that.’

  Her lips were not the way Yvonne remembered, nor as she had dreamed since that Eisteddfod night. They were softer, more skilled, more confident. Chrissy tempted her, teased her with soft nips and touches, arms around the taller girl’s neck, bodies pressed together.

  She showed Yvonne how to do more than kiss. While Von vacillated between urgent passion and selfconscious nerves the little blonde was patient. Soon her purple blouse was open, then off, generous breasts relieved of their prison-like bra, and Chrissy sighed in pleasure and relief as she guided Von’s hands to them.

  They didn’t get out to the pub that night.

  Chrissy missed all of her lectures the next day as the pair lay in Von’s bed, exploring one another, making love and falling back into comfortable slumber. Christine was just as fascinated with Yvonne’s body - her athletic limbs, the muscles of her back, her petite breasts with their prominent, sensitive nipples - as Von was with Chrissy’s generous curves and the blonde tangle of her pubic hair.

  Only hunger forced them from their sweet refuge and Yvonne, who had a day off, drove them to the next town over for a late lunch. The place they found was a bit expensive but neither of them cared, buoyed on the thrill of newfound love, their meal more a celebration than mere sustenance.

  Though her friends sometimes looked at her lover with thinly-disguised pity, given that the dark-haired woman worked in a variety of small service jobs rather than availing herself of a tertiary education as they were, Chrissy cherished Yvonne like nobody else.

  Yvonne, in return, adored Chrissy. It took little time for the two women to move in together, Yvonne bringing in the bulk of the money to support the two of them, but she was happy to do so. Around their home they were open about their love, bringing several friends into their confidence.

  Perhaps it was inevitable, then, that less sympathetic minds were to discover the truth about the “housemates”.

  Chrissy had been sitting in front of the lounge room window only moments before it shattered inward, razor-sharp shards of glass and a chipped brick landing just where she had been.

  She had risen to get a drink from the kitchen; if she hadn’t done so the pair would have been at the hospital emergency room rather than picking through the remains of Chrissy’s textbooks as a small crowd screamed at them from their front lawn.

  ‘Lezzos! Fags! Cunt-lickers!’

  ‘Get the fuck outta town, filthy sluts!’

  ‘Syphilis bitches!’

  ‘Leave our kids alone!’

  That last one prompted a roar of anger from the crowd - no matter what, irrespective of logic, common sense or bald facts, homophobes always seemed to conflate homosexuality with child abuse.

  The crowd dispersed just before the police showed up, but they didn’t seem particularly inclined to help. Von knew that the cops would be more than happy to drag them down to the station given half the chance, and already would have if they’d been men; as it was they combed the house “looking for anything dangerous”, but both women knew they were searching for something that they could class as even halfway illegal.

  After that they were questioned. Had they done something to anger anyone? Had they seduced someone’s wife? Gone too close to someone’s kid? Did they owe anyone money for drugs? Every question probed and prodded, made the women more and more aware that the police - or these two officers, at least - were not their friends.

  It took longer for the cops to leave than the crowd and as the evening grew late, Yvonne didn’t know which she’d been more scared of violence from - the authorities or the vandals who had shattered their quiet haven.

  Less than a week had passed when their home was broken into.

  Chrissy and Von were out when it happened. Neither was sure how bad it would have been if both - or, worse, only one of them - were home at the time. The entire house had been ransacked, every room turned upside down. Most of their clothes had been ripped and cut, their crappy black-and-white television was in pieces, their crockery decorated the kitchen floor in shards that gleamed like miserable stars in the glow of the kitchen lightbulb.

  Even Von’s fish tank had been shattered, the tiny bodies of her beloved goldfish mashed into the carpet by heavy stomping shoes. That sight, more than anything, drove Yvonne to tears. Harmless, inoffensive, helpless fish, not just killed but crushed, reduced to unrecognisable smears underfoot - simply because they were hers.

  Would Chrissy’s body be lying there, broken and mangled, if she had been home? Would her own?

  Yvonne sat silently, head in her hands, at the only unbroken kitchen chair, now that
the table had been turned the right way up again. Tears speckled the table’s surface, ran down her cheeks, stained her fingers with their dejected salt.

  ‘Bastards,’ Chrissy growled, stalking back and forth. Pieces of plate and cup crunched under the soles of her boots. ‘Fucking bastards. We’re not bothering them! We haven’t done a fucking thing to any of them-‘

  ‘They don’t care,’ Yvonne answered. Her voice was flat but her shoulders shook with emotion. ‘I-if you’d been home-‘

  ‘Heyheyhey.’ In an instant Chrissy’s voice dropped, low and soothing, sliding her arms around her lover and kissing her black hair. ‘Don’t think like that. We weren’t home. It’s okay, we’re both safe.’

  But Yvonne could feel her lover trembling and knew the lie for what it was.

  Footsteps and a knock at the door brought them back to the outside world, fear crawling up Yvonne’s throat and strangling her breath.

  It was a face that they recognised, however, when they reached the door. Yvonne’s father took her daughter in her arms and rocked her gently, whispering quiet and reassuring words as Chrissy stood awkwardly nearby.

  Christine had met Alan Walter before but this time was different. Circumstances aside, neither woman had come out to their respective parents and it was a tense, tear-stained conversation that felt more like a confession than a casual talk.

  To his credit Alan, if he had any misgivings, did not voice them. He simply accepted his daughter’s revelation that she did not, in fact, like men and that Chrissy was her girlfriend. He nodded, asked that she be patient with him while he adjusted to the idea, and then he hugged them both.

  Christine’s parents arrived, then, to a much more volatile meeting.

  Annie, Chrissy’s mother, had long suspected that her daughter had tastes that she would call “unconventional”. The two were close and her daughter’s recent happiness, coupled with her obvious disinterest in boys ever since high school, was enough for her to have been wondering for years.

  Peter Daley, however, was blindsided by the whole thing - and not happy about it.

  ‘You’re a fucking dyke?’ he yelled, face growing red. Fists clenched and half raised, he stepped forward, glaring daggers at his only child.