The Swashbuckler

by Lee Lynch

  “I never thought about not drinking. How do people treat you in bars? Do they look at you funny?”

  “You mean like you are?”

  Frenchy joined in the laughter. She wished Mercedes would come in to be warmed by this fiery woman. Soon they were joined by a woman Jenny had met the night before at dinner: Pam. Frenchy could have sworn this heavy woman in a long skirt and many necklaces was in that carful of folksinging women that had passed them in the traffic jam on the way up. Pam was an artist who lived in the Village but never went to the bars. Too smoky, too much cruising and drinking, though she liked a little wine now and then. She accepted the glass Frenchy offered to buy her, though she’d only come to the Ace to meet Jenny.

  “But what do you do if you don’t go to bars? How do you meet women?”

  Pam tossed back her long black hair. “My last affair was with an artist’s model I found so incredibly beautiful I couldn’t keep my hands off her. I was open about being a lesbian and she told me she was too.”

  “You mean you couldn’t tell?”

  “Honey, she was sixty-five and looked like somebody’s grandmother,” Pam said, laughing. “No, you couldn’t tell. Not till you started drawing the part of her that was all wet because you were a lesbian admiring it.”

  Frenchy was still blushing when Jenny and Pam left to shop at the bookstore. She had declined to accompany them because she was embarrassed by Pam’s frank talk and she still held hope of seeing Mercedes.

  “Sweetheart,” the bartender said after they’d left, “you said you’re waiting for Mercedes?”

  “Yeah, you know her?”

  “Cute little Spanish chick?”

  “That’s her.”

  “They took her home.”

  Frenchy didn’t attempt to hide her disappointment.

  “I wouldn’t get mixed up with her if I was you.”

  Frenchy’s disappointment turned quickly to anger.

  “Don’t get rattled, I’m just telling you. She freaked out on them. They’re all staying in the place where I rent, and last night when I got home they were carting her out to the car. She took somebody’s sleeping pills and they got her to a doctor who pumped her out. He wanted to put her in the hospital, but by then she was awake and screaming about getting back to the city to take care of her daughter.”

  “Daughter?”

  “Yeah. The grandmother was taking care of her, an eight year old.”

  “But she’s queer as I am. How could she get pregnant?”

  “Let me see if I remember this right. This Mercedes took a girl away from the girl’s boyfriend. Then the boyfriend raped Mercedes to get back at her. She turns up pregnant and has to talk about what happened. But the femme believes the boyfriend who claims Mercedes was two-timing her. So Mercedes is minus a girl, has the kid, tries to act like a normal mother for a few years, then goes bonkers and comes out again.” Frenchy was silent.

  “You still looking for her?”

  Frenchy looked up quickly. “Of course.” She brooded for a minute. “You meet somebody and really like them for whatever reason, but you don’t talk to them enough, don’t tell them all you wanted to, kind of hold off from them. Then you hear something like this and you wonder if you could’ve done something. If you went just one inch closer maybe she would have opened up to you and felt better and not hurt herself. Maybe you talking to her just made her feel worse, like she’d never be able to make new friends with everything she had to keep inside.”

  “You can’t take it personal,” the bartender advised. “Like you said, if it’s someone you just met...”

  “You can still hope you would of done something, made a difference...”

  “Have a drink. On the bar. Cheer up. I’m sorry I told you.”

  “That’s okay. It’s better I know. Maybe someday I’ll see her again and it’ll be different. But I’ll take a rain check on the drink. I think I’ll go home and get dry before I catch pneumonia. When it rains up here it really gets chilly.” She began to walk away, but stopped. “Listen, I may never get the chance to get up here again. Do me a favor?”

  “Sure.”

  “You ever see her around, tell her Frenchy said hi. Okay? Frenchy. And tell her I’m looking for her downtown. Just give the bouncer my name if she has trouble getting in.”

  “Frenchy. Downtown. You’re looking for her.”

  “Thanks, pal.”

  * * * * *

  Frenchy and the boys drove out of Provincetown Monday afternoon. The three had spent a couple of more hours on the beach and Frenchy was beginning to look, and feel, less lopsided. In another day her right side would turn as brown as her left.

  She’d done a lot of thinking the night before in her tiny room, gazing toward the water from her window. That morning, while the boys ran in and out of the water, relishing the last of their freedom, she knew something had changed inside her, but she couldn’t figure out what it was. She went over and over her Provincetown adventures until it became clear that three events stood out most in her mind. Her first view of the broad, clear expanse of sea, so soothing, so exciting, so moving, whose smell alone still made her feel different, better. Then the women in the bar Sunday night who had just talked to her and didn’t go off to dance with other women or treat her like a prospective bed partner. It had been like talking to people at the store, in her neighborhood, except that she could be herself and talk about things that mattered to her. And then Mercedes. Damn, if that woman didn’t pull on her more than any girl she’d ever had. Was it her sadness, how much she needed someone? Frenchy had never wanted to be encumbered with a femme’s problems — if they got to be a nuisance drinking or crying too much then it was over, she wasn’t interested anymore. She had never wanted to help a girl like she did this one.

  She asked Rob and Gerald, “Guys, do you ever go up to Harlem?”

  “Once in a while, babe. Why?”

  “Like to go with you sometime is all.”

  “Sure. We’ll let you know. You’re fun to party with.”

  “Thanks,” Frenchy said, leaning back, not feeling as complimented as she would have even on Friday. Maybe she shouldn’t go looking for Mercedes with a partying crowd. Maybe this was something she had to do alone. Maybe the rusty French her mother had taught her would help her talk to Spanish women.

  They crossed the bridge which connected the Cape to the mainland, and slowed for traffic. The air filled with car fumes and they were surrounded by asphalt and buildings. Frenchy clung to her vision of the sea as she breathed the poor air. Release Me, sang Little Esther Phillips on the radio. Frenchy sang along.

  Chapter 3

  Mercedes’ Story

  1965

  Listen, I move here, I move there. Always, the crazies, they come to me, they get me. New York, Newark, Hartford, Bridgeport. I tried them all. Always the same: a big apartment high up in an old house, cracked windows, stove so old you can’t get it clean, ripped cheap furniture, and cousins. I got so many cousins I bet I could move to a new city every year of my life.

  Avila — that’s my mother’s people. Velez — that’s my father’s. All the aunts and uncles followed my mother and father from Puerto Rico thirty years ago. They all welcome me, try to get me to talk Spanish while I tell them they better learn English. If the crazies come, they take care of me and Lydia, my daughter.

  Until they hear I’m still seeing girls. Then they throw me out, or drive me out with their worrying about me and Lydia. That’s when I go back to my real family, the queers in the town. The black girls who have no one but each other for family, the gay boys all the time partying, the Puerto Rican girls who get beat up if they go home — and, like me, they’re always trying to go home. And the white girls so poor they hang around with us.

  Then I’m okay for a while. Maybe I’m in love. Maybe I just got Lydia back from my mother in New York by promising to stay with family in the new city, promising to stay away from girls. (I half mean it.) I don’t mind either way,
taking Lydia or leaving her with my mother, who takes good care of her, loves her — so I don’t have to worry about her. But I love to have her with me too. She’s the only good thing that’s come out of the mess of my life. But I don’t know. I worry maybe my mother is right: maybe I’m not a fit mother. But those times, when I’m starting out again in a new city, with a job packing or sewing — or the welfare if I got Lydia — with a place to stay, and sharing food with friends or family or a lover, I’m okay. But always one night I drink too much and there’s cops pushing and pulling on me, or I wake up in the emergency room from too many pills. Sometimes I get beat up or I beat on my girl and I take off. Nothing ever ends good for me, you know? It’s like I can be happy, safe, only so long, then things go bad. If somebody doesn’t do it to me, then I do it to myself.

  So this time, this time I’m telling you about, I got out of Elmhurst General in Queens after thirty days observation by being a good girl, taking my pills, staying away from the chicks on my floor who were worth my time. You should have seen this one girl, man was I good to stay away from her. She said she was gay, but, you know, they all say that when they’re locked up with you. I could’ve had her, but this time, I don’t know what happened, I wanted to get out of there. I didn’t want to give up like I usually do and have to get pushed into getting better. I guess I got kind of mad at myself.

  I’d drunk myself blind again ‘cause I saw Maria, my ex, with her kids, shopping with the food stamps. She didn’t see me, but when I saw the stamps I knew. Her husband took off. After all we been through. Him breaking her and me up, doing what he did to me, getting me pregnant. I’m sorry. I still can’t talk about it much, but believe me, I left scars on him. And he left me with my own kid and Maria with three more little kids to take care of. I bet it makes him feel like a big damn man to know we both got his kids.

  So I saw her that day, I hadn’t been around the old neighborhood in a while, and I wanted so bad to talk to her, ask her did she want me back now, couldn’t we make a home together. It was too hard. I started thinking about all the problems: what if he came back, what if I couldn’t stand living with her kids by him, what if we couldn’t live together except just on welfare, forgetting all our dreams when we first came out together. . . The Supremes sang it for me: You Keep Me Hanging On.

  I never did ask what happened to land me at Elmhurst — just decided that was enough of that. I couldn’t tear myself up over Maria and him all my life. We couldn’t have what we had wanted. I had to leave that dream go, like a balloon in the park when you’re a kid and you forget you’re holding it for a second and when you look up it’s traveling to the sky where you’ll never be able to go: lost, it’s gone, you’re so little and so low and all you can do is roar out your hurt till your mother slaps you and you forget the balloon, the beautiful balloon, because then you’re mad at your mother. So that night I drank to shut up my roar but it must have come out somehow ...

  For the first time in years I can think about what I had with Maria and say, “It’s gone,” without the crazies jumping all over me. I guess the tranquilizers help, but I’ve been on them so long I can’t tell any more. I want it to be over now, that’s all, I want to do something with my life.

  The song that was playing that night goes on and on in my head now: Stop in the Name of Love. Those Supremes have it. They sing my music. Lydia and me, we dance to them all the time at home, and I always play them at the bars. Now, though, I mostly go downtown to the bars. When I came out of the hospital I decided to stay in the city, not try any place new, partly because I had a new part of the city to go to. I met this other butch, Frenchy, way back, up at Provincetown where I went exactly twice when one of the black chicks I hung out with was dealing and bought a car. Man, it was something else up there. The beaches looked almost as good as P.R. Not that I’d know, I never even visited there, but one of the girls said so. Someday, you know, I’m going to live on a beach and just lie there listening to the waves slap the sand like a band with a good beat and forget all of this, all this craziness I’ve been through.

  So anyway, this second trip I meet this Frenchy and there’s just something about her, something that makes me want to talk to her. I’m afraid at first she wants to make it with me and I try to warn her off, because, you know, we’re both butch. But she doesn’t make a move, so we just talk and I always keep her at the back of my head with the waves and the beaches — and sometimes when it’s really bad, but I haven’t gone over the edge yet, I remember her and wonder what her life is like, not being Puerto Rican, or even New Yorican, but otherwise living the same life as me. So a few years later I see her uptown and she invites me, again, to hit the bars downtown with her. Me and my friends, sometimes we have trouble getting in those places. They tell us they’re full up or some bullshit, then we see white girls going in after we leave. Pretty soon you don’t go back after you’ve been told enough you don’t belong. Like me going back to my family all the time. But Frenchy, she really seems to want to be friends and after I check her out to make sure she just wants to be friends I say okay.

  I’ve been hanging out downtown awhile now. Frenchy’s a little older, like me, and not so smooth as she used to be, not so sure she wants things always to be the way they are, she tells me. Not so much the butterfly with the girls. I met her one girl, Edie, who she’s been seeing off and on years and years now. I’m not sure they’re going together any more. I guess Edie’s some kind of teacher, not Frenchy’s type at all, but they seem to like each other okay. Then there’s Frenchy’s best pal Jessie, who’s been with her own girl two years now. They want to move out to College Point, Queens together near the water. Nice, if you can. And all these little white chicks Frenchy knows — I haven’t gone with any of them yet. Mostly Frenchy and me we sit and talk and watch the action, because we’re closing in on thirty and we’re running out of steam. But I’m happy too, just sitting there talking to Frenchy.

  How do I feel being down there? That’s what Edie asked me one night. “It must be different from uptown,” she says.

  “Yeah,” I say, lighting a cigarette for her, hoping Frenchy won’t mind. “It’s not that I don’t love my people,” I tell her, “I do. That’s one of the problems. Much as I like you guys, and sometimes feel like I fit in here better than uptown, in other ways I’d rather be dancing to a Latin beat with a girl just off the plane from P.R. I feel good up there, more at home.”

  “But you do fit in here.”

  “I know, but don’t you understand, it’s just a size too small down here. I have a little trouble breathing.”

  “Nobody’s going to lock you in the House of D for coming in here,” Frenchy says, bringing drinks to our table. I’m drinking coke so far this night, afraid of what the booze does to me.

  “Not as long as I’m with you,” I answer her, looking at this tiny friend of mine with her pompadour and the clothes I always see her in: black jeans and jacket, light blue shirt, a comb sticking out of her back pocket. She’s Frenchy Tonneau (I can’t pronounce her first name — she’s named after her French grandmother), and she knows she’s good-looking. She’s even shorter than me, which is going some because I’m only 5'1''. We’re the same age, but it seems like she won’t let anything touch her inside, you know, and I always let everyone and everything touch me and leave their mark. I respect her cool, the way she never gets involved, but I don’t know as I’d like to be like that for myself. So far, what I’ve been through doesn’t show on my face any more than her shutting herself up inside shows on hers. When I catch us in a bar mirror together I’d swear we’re sisters except my skin’s darker and my hair a little lighter. Also my face, it looks more like a girl’s than hers. She has these sharp tough features. Mine are little and “cute,” people say.

  “Take a picture,” she says to me, “it lasts longer,” and I blush from staring at her. Sometimes it’s like I’m a little in love with my friend Frenchy, but I know that can’t be, because I’m butch too. Sometimes I cat
ch her looking at me that way too — but maybe I’m not used to having such a tight friend.

  “Maybe now they know me they’d let me in alone,” I say, “but they wouldn’t let me in with the other kids from uptown.”

  “They don’t let me into the bars uptown without somebody they know.” Frenchy always defends her turf.

  “That’s in case you’re a cop, not just because you’re white.”

  “Same difference.”

  “No, way, man,” I say, a little angry because she never understands this. “The white people always come busting into our bars and hurting us. We come down here looking for a good time.”

  “Not all white people are cops.”

  “No Puerto Rican people are.”

  “That ain’t my fault.”

  “Maybe, maybe not, but you could at least try and understand how I feel. I mean, honkeys have always been my enemy. It’s always them who don’t give me the job or who arrest me or who try to take away Lydia. When that happens enough to all of us, we get scared to see a white person come around some place we’re not used to them being.”

  Frenchy looks up from her drink. “Okay. I can understand that. And it’s the same when the bouncer down here sees a bunch of strangers coming onto our turf.”

  “No, it’s not the same. You don’t bounce out a group of strange white girls from out of town, but you do if they’re Puerto Ricans from uptown. And we have reasons to be scared of white strangers because we been hurt by them. Why are you afraid of a group of dark-skinned girls?”

  “I guess we must of been hurt somewhere along the line too.”

  “When? That’s what I’m trying to figure out. You always been over us.”

  Edie breaks in. “I’m just beginning to talk about this with a friend from school,” she says, “and I don’t have any answers. But I think it has to do with the unknown. Not wanting to let people who aren’t like us near us.”