The Swashbuckler

by Lee Lynch

  “But which group feels like that, hers or mine?” Frenchy wants to know.

  “Both groups, I think,” Edie answers. “But the darker skinned races have the additional fear of knowing what white people, the people different from themselves, have done to them.”

  Frenchy gets up. “Well, it shouldn’t be like that.” It’s like she’s clearing it up once and for all. She winks at me. “All this thinking is making my head swim. I’m going to see who else is here.” And she walks off through the crowded bar, stopping at almost every other table to say hello. She knows everybody down here, and I mean everybody.

  Edie and me talked small talk for a while, then somebody came over and asked her to dance. I sat alone a couple of songs. My Supremes were singing You Can’t Hurry Love, and I sat there feeling restless and out of place in this white bar, hoping not to find love here because it would complicate my life. Hoping not to find love for a while anyway till I straightened out my head. Love was always cropping up where I didn’t expect it and throwing me for a loop. This time, I hoped, I’d get a handle on it before it got a handle on me.

  Frenchy sat down, startling me from my thoughts. “How about let’s go check out this other place just opened on Sixteenth Street?” she said, a little shyly for Frenchy. “See what the action’s like over there?”

  She never asked me to go any place alone with her before. “What about Edie?”

  “I didn’t come with her. I told her we’re going.”

  That’s nice, I thought, a little mad. Telling Edie I’d go before asking me. That gave me a nudge to ask what I’d been wanting to know. “You two not going together any more?”

  “No. Not for a while now. We didn’t break up or nothing, but we didn’t have it for each other no more. She’s got a new girl anyways.”

  “Somebody I met?”

  “No, somebody she works with. I never met her neither. Not our type, I guess,” Frenchy added, winking and pointing to her head. “Brains,” she explained.

  “Oh,” I said, surprised at Edie. I was just getting to trust her, too. At the same time I felt a little mad at Frenchy again. I mean, I know I’m not brilliant, but I read a lot, and I talk better than her. Which isn’t hard. She works at “talking tough.” So how does she know a brain wouldn’t be my type? But it was easier to feel mad at Edie than at Frenchy. “Sure,” I say, not minding walking out on Edie now. “Let’s go.”

  * * * * *

  Me and Frenchy walk along Greenwich Avenue which at midnight is bright and still filling up with faggots hunting for one another. They pose between the lighted plate glass windows of the shops, one leg propped against the wall, arms across their chests, their bodies like ads for the night. What always gets me about them when they’re cruising like this is how serious they look. No smiles, no emotion at all, like girls in a fashion magazine. But I guess that works for them — the lineup’s always changing.

  Sixth Avenue is a little darker, and feels far away from the music and crowds we just left. It’s more a daytime street with bakeries and food stores. As a matter of fact, Frenchy tells me how she dreams of coming downtown to work at the Sixth Avenue A&P. I realize I’m really enjoying our walk. Frenchy’s got this old diddy-bop way of walking like the hoody guys at school used to do. Her shoulders dip back and forth like she’s snapping her fingers to music only she can hear, stopping once in awhile to run the comb through her slicked-back hair. Makes me feel not alone because I walk butch too, my hands in fists, long fast steps, like I mean business. In my neighborhood, the kids on the street call me names, the guys laugh at me because they know right away from my walk I’m a queer. It’s what tipped Maria’s boyfriend off to us. So it’s good not to walk next to somebody like me.

  We talked about it. Frenchy never tried to walk the way she does on purpose either. It’s always been the way we walk. And they’ve always laughed at us. Sometimes I feel this glow thinking about how Frenchy and me are alike.

  So we finish our butch parade outside a very dark doorway on 16th, go down some stairs and I know we’re in the right place because there’s a bouncer at the door. Frenchy pays for the both of us. I’m not insulted, I told her I had no cash for another cover. Inside it’s packed, a big room with a bar off to one side and colored lights turning around on the ceiling. One of those new type places just coming into style because of all the drugs the kids are using. That’s one thing I won’t do. A little dope, maybe, once in a while when my head can take it, but no smack, no hallucinating drugs. Just the lights inside make me feel kind of shaky, never mind taking something to make every place look like this.

  It’s mostly girls and some of them are dressed like hippies. I see it’s a whole new kind of crowd here. I smell pot from one corner. It’s funny to see some of the kids with headbands and jewelry. Don’t they know if the bouncer knew how much Indian I am she probably wouldn’t let me in? I see long hair a lot, too. And long hair dancing with long hair. We got to the bar and I say to Frenchy how different this is from where we just were. She’s staring at them too. “You can’t tell who’s butch and who’s femme,” she says.

  “It looks like we’re going out of style,” I joke back. But the music’s pretty much the same as at our bar — after all, the same syndicate controls all the jukeboxes in the gay bars. We sit and listen to it, watching and drinking. Even I have a drink now because I’m nervous being here and being alone with Frenchy. We can’t talk much because there are these huge speakers around the walls. I’m just starting to feel high from the drink, looking around for a chick to ask to dance — not wanting to leave Frenchy’s side, though. Frenchy gets real close to my ear and asks me to dance.

  Out of nowhere she asks me to dance. I feel real funny, scared, but not in a way I mind. Kind of like it feels just before a chick touches her lips to me down there. Like she could do anything she wanted just then and I wouldn’t do a thing to stop her. But glad to have her there, glad to let her take me over like I took her over. As long as she knows it’s only like that in bed. I’m not stone butch, you know. I like it too.

  So all this goes through my head as Frenchy’s asking. We’re some place we’ve never been before, maybe never will be again, neither of us knows anybody, and it’s dark except for one of those weird strobe lights. I’m feeling even shakier from the drink and the lights and now Frenchy knocks me all the way off balance. Her boots put her on a level with my eyes and I look at her face all lit up shiny from the strobe one second, dark the next. Asking me with her face to dance and nothing else, then blinking off into mysterious darkness with sex written all over my memory of her face when the light was there. Then the strobe flashes over her again and the sex is gone, it’s just Frenchy. I keep staring at her, knowing inside me I’m seeing every gay girl I’ve ever been with — the sex side of them flashing into the friend side. I see all of a sudden that every butch is a femme; every femme is a butch. I know the lips of my friend could get me hotter than the lips of any femme in the room. I remember how it looks like femmes and butches went out of style in this bar. I think, as I slip into Frenchy’s arms, maybe I’m going out of style too.

  I feel dizzy. I didn’t know I was feeling like this about Frenchy before, I swear. We’re on the dance floor, then, arms around each other and barely moving. The Supremes are singing Stop in the Name of Love. “Stop,” I laugh into Frenchy’s ear, quietly. This isn’t supposed to happen till later. And then you need a slow song. You get so you’re hardly moving, just grinding crotches. But we aren’t that far gone. The strobing finally stops, but the song goes on. I’m glad I only had the one drink, with the tranquilizers in me and the lights. Rose and blue colored lights bounce off a globe hanging over the dance floor, a thousand tiny mirrors break the light up to the beat of the music, little rose fragments flying over the dancers, the floor, Frenchy’s face. I pull back to look at her. The music is throbbing with a slow heavy bass. Frenchy’s normally closed handsome face is naked now. She wants me. Jesus, she wants me. And all of a sudden I kno
w how badly I wanted her all along.

  We touch cheeks. I tingle, starting with my cheek, into my arm, my hand at Frenchy’s waist. We touch breasts, and warm, lush shivers run all inside me; run into my shoulders, down my stomach, between my legs. My breath stops with my mouth open, unable to take in air. I press the whole side of my face to hers. She draws back and even though my eyes are closed I know she’s going to kiss me.

  I left my mouth open, just taking her kiss. I couldn’t think. When her small warm tongue touched me I sucked it in further, dug my fingers into the small of her back and drank Frenchy in. I felt her breath in my mouth. I pressed our bodies together. She ground against me and everything between my hips melted while our mouths stayed together, lightly, open.

  If we weren’t both wearing heavy denim I don’t know what would have happened. All this went on during that one song, but it seemed like forever. There was nothing, nothing in the world but Frenchy and me. As the music peaked the lights did too, and it was like we were in a world of rose and blue lights somebody just let go of so that they were wandering wild. Frenchy had led me deeper and deeper into this love-making, but as the music stopped I knew I wanted to lead her, too.

  So far I knew I was acting like an easy femme. It felt okay, but I didn’t want it to be like that between Frenchy and me. So I kissed her, struggling to reach her like she’d reached me. Wanting her to feel weak, to be giving in to me as I took my turn giving love to her.

  She felt like an iron bar. I kept kissing her, pouring all of me into her lips, waiting for her to respond. She responded all right. She started pulling away from me.

  After a couple of tries I let her go and just stared at her. Here I let myself go in her arms, trusted her, my friend, my equal, and she wouldn’t do the same for me. “Don’t pull no stone business on me, baby,” I warned her. “Not after that. I’m no damn femme either.”

  I guess it was my pride. And my temper. She couldn’t do this to me. If I couldn’t touch her she’d see me as femme. I wanted her to know who I really was and to see I could move her like she moved me. Or else I wasn’t interested. I’d rather just be friends where we knew our ground and treated each other the same. I was strong. A good dancer. Good-looking. Knew how to talk to a girl, how to please her. All that was me, not just the woman who fell apart at Frenchy’s kiss. She couldn’t ignore all that. She couldn’t do this to me. Coming downtown I was turning my back on everything else I once was because I felt trapped up there in the Barrio by the old ways. But now, what could I do, as much as she meant to me I had to push her farther away from me. Frenchy was double-crossing me. She had no business doing that, no right to mess with my head, my reputation, my way out.

  When she reached out for me I swung at her. The crazies were on me. I could feel them grab all the muscles in my body, tensing them up. Like all the little reflections spinning around and around, they were running wild in my head. I knew I should take a pill, but I let the crazies take me over. I’d let them do what they wanted to me. I wished I’d never been stupid enough to trust this white chick. I’d use them against her, I’d kill her.

  I started to go for her again, but something stopped me. The dancers around us were still dancing, almost as if they understood our scene and were covering us so we could do our thing. Frenchy was standing there rubbing her cheek where I connected with her. All of a sudden I felt sorry for the friend I’d hurt. I thought, I didn’t want to hurt her. But I couldn’t comfort her the way I knew how. I could only hit her again or leave. There was only one way I knew to treat a girl I felt like that about, and she didn’t want to be treated that way. Tears were coming into my eyes and I was damned if I was going to let her see me cry. That I could cry like any girl was none of her damned business.

  “Damn you!” I shouted, but my voice was high and whiny.

  “Mercedes, I love you!” she shouts back.

  “Don’t you understand? You got to let me love you too!”

  If she would have tried then, if she only would have come to my arms then, we could have worked the rest out later. But she marches up to me like in the movies, like some dumb cowboy buying a whore.

  “Let’s talk,” she says, trying to turn me to the door.

  “Go talk to yourself, man,” I hiss at her.

  Then I realized that’s how she made me feel. Like a girl with a man. Like being raped again. She had all the aces and wouldn’t give me none. I turned and ran out the door.

  Outside I kept running. I was humiliated and let down and ashamed of myself. Acting like a damn femme. Trusting a white girl like one of my own. Wondering how long she’d planned this. Asking, why, why did she do it, why did I give in? How did I get to feel like that about her without knowing it? Did I really want to make it with a butch like Frenchy? As long as the questions ran through my head I kept running.

  I turned downtown. By 13th Street I was out of breath and had to slow. I hadn’t thought of Frenchy following me, but I turned to check. I felt calmer. But I didn’t want to think about her. The Women’s House of Detention was in front of me now and I remembered how bad it felt to be in there. It made me feel even meaner thinking about that place. I headed for the bar. Maybe Frenchy’d got to me, but the rest of the white girls hadn’t. Maybe I’d find a girl tonight who knew the difference between butch and femme. Who’d respect me.

  The first person I saw inside was Edie. Since Frenchy took off with me and left her behind, I figured Edie was fair game.

  “Hi, darlin’,” I said, sitting at her table.

  “I didn’t expect you back.”

  How much of her plan had Frenchy told her, I wondered. “We just did a little bar hopping. Can I get you a refill?”

  “Just some seltzer, Mercedes. I’ve got to go soon.”

  I knew I shouldn’t drink either, but I was still thinking about Frenchy and what she did to me, so I ordered one. The way they watered them down I figured it wouldn’t matter.

  “So what’s been happening?” I asked Edie.

  “Not much,” she said, smiling, as Jessie and her girl Mary came over to sit with us. It was usually nice to see them, they were so much in love, but tonight it hurt. “I’ve just been visiting with people I haven’t seen in a while. I don’t come down here much.”

  “It doesn’t seem like your kind of place, hanging out with a bunch of dropouts like us.”

  “I don’t think of you like that,” Edie said, looking hurt.

  I felt guilty. “Sorry, sorry. I do, is all.”

  Mary and Jessie had been making out, but now they were listening. “When you get to know people,” Mary said, “they’re all the same underneath the school and the jobs and the color of their skins.” She looked proud of knowing this. “That’s what I’ve noticed anyway.” Mary was nice, I thought, but like Jessie, not too smart. And speaking of not too smart, Jessie bought me another drink. I drank it.

  I heard a Supremes song go on then and it shook me up. “Want to dance?” I asked Edie.

  “That’s the best offer I’ve had all night.” She smiled, and I believed her. She’s one of those girls who always seems to mean what she says. I couldn’t help but like her.

  “Hmm,” I said as I took Edie in my arms.

  “Like this song?”

  “I like everything The Supremes do. They sing about my life. Mostly, though, I’m feeling the liquor. Makes me warm inside. Makes me feel strong like bull.” I said this jokingly, with a Russian accent.

  “I understand. But the next day, doesn’t it make you feel weak like baby?” She laughed.

  “I’ll worry about tomorrow tomorrow. Who knows where I’ll be? I could be dead. Maybe better off that way.”

  “You don’t mean that.”

  “Sure I do,” I answered her, smiling, and hearing the Supremes singing Where Did Our Love Go? “You can’t get ahead in this world if you’re a Spic and a gay. Your own people don’t want you because you’re queer. The white girls walk all over you. You end up living in dives in Harlem wit
h kids as bad off as you. You know you’ll never get out.”

  Sometimes I can’t stand the way white people look at me when I tell them what it’s like to be inside my skin. All sympathetic like they want to put a bandaid on you. A “flesh-colored” bandaid. Edie, though, she looked me straight in the eye. “Where do you want to get out to?”

  I laughed. “Now that’s a hard question. Maybe I just want a choice.”

  She nodded seriously. “I understand.”

  The music ended and Jessie was coming back to our table with another round. “We got here late, got to catch up,” she explained. Mary scowled at her.

  I was drinking this one slowly, because the other drinks were mixing with the tranquilizers always in my bloodstream and were starting to knock me over the head, when Frenchy walked in. She looked surprised to see me. I decided to pretend everything was okay and flashed a grin at her. But I felt my lips twist underneath in pain.

  “Get bored there, mano?” I asked, leaning heavily on the mano so she’d get a whiff of how I was feeling.

  “Strange scene,” she said, combing her damn hair.

  I wanted her to be holding me again in the worst way and at the same time wanted to hit myself for feeling like that after what she’d done to me. Frenchy acted like I’d taken some of the starch out of her, but mostly she was her cocky old self. After all, she’d had me. She was king of the roost again. I was hers — so she thought — almost as much as Edie was hers, and Jessie was her best pal. She’d even gone with Mary awhile a few years back. This was her turf.

  She went off to the bar and brought back a round. I drank it to spite her. I wanted to bring on the crazies again. I wanted them to take me over so I could get her, never mind me sitting here playing nice to the little man. I went and stood at the bar. I asked myself, did I really want to do this? Then my brain shut off. It does that sometimes so I can take care of myself. Too much thinking makes me feel weird. I didn’t have to figure anything out anymore. Whatever happened happened.