The Swashbuckler

by Lee Lynch

  Pam was nibbling at her ankle and sliding one hand up under her pants along her calf. Just when Frenchy was about to embarrass herself and say please, Pam turned with a small smile toward her, and began to unbutton her pants. Then she moved up and slipped one arm around Frenchy’s shoulders, her hand inside Frenchy’s pants, where she found, and increased, the butch’s wetness. Frenchy came, quickly and without inhibitions, as amazed at herself as she’d been the first time. She laughed as she scrambled up to reverse their positions.

  “What’s so funny?” breathed Pam.

  “We haven’t been in the house for five minutes.”

  “It’s been a long week. And I’ve wanted you every minute of it.”

  Reassured that there was no one else, she doubted that Pam’s near-celibacy would last. Eagerly she watched Pam remove her clothes. They stayed on the couch until hunger for food overtook them. As Pam made dinner, Frenchy poured wine and set the table. Over and over she felt desire for Pam well up in her, fighting with her need to visit the bar, to see the kids, to be her other self. She’d been, after all, Frenchy the bar butch a lot longer than she’d been Pam’s lover.

  They finished supper and even did the dishes — a week’s worth — which Pam allowed Frenchy to wash while she showered and dressed in her new “bar clothes.” Frenchy had been careful to take her good shirt off when they made love and still wore an old shirt of Pam’s which hung to mid-thigh.

  “Voila!” said Pam.

  Frenchy was amused to see how Pam’s bar clothes had been transformed into an outfit that was Pam’s alone, and she felt the desire triggered again by this gypsy-vision. Pam had wrapped a scarf around her hair like a long headband and her long dark hair ran richly down her back under it. She had put on a beaded shimmering belt, her gaudiest dangling earrings and several rings. She’d painted her nails. The white blouse had puffy sleeves and tight cuffs, colored embroidery clashing — almost — with the colors of the band, the belt and the earrings. “Well, what do you think?”

  “You look groovy!” Frenchy laughed, purposely using Pam’s word.

  “Do you really think so? Will I fit in at the bar?”

  “Baby,” Frenchy said, shaking her head in wonder, “You’ll always stand out no matter where you go. You have a way of doing that.”

  Frenchy stood, legs apart, hands on hips, cigarette hanging from her lips, shirt open over her pants.

  “Don’t move,” said Pam, quickly sifting through a mess to find her sketch pad. “I have to draw you. I just melt to see you like that.” As she drew she talked. “When you tell me how good I look, and I look at you saying it, I can’t tell you what a thrill it gives me.”

  Frenchy shifted, half-embarrassed, half-pleased.

  “Don’t move! I want you just like you were.” Pam’s face was flushed, but her look was intent as she drew. “Sometimes I wish I looked like you myself. I’d like to make women feel the way you make me feel when you stand like that, so butch, so I can just see your little butch breasts under your shirt.” Relaxing a little, Pam’s pen strokes became longer, firmer, more sure. She sighed. “But I just don’t have the body for it. Or the discipline. How do you do it?” she asked admiringly. “How can you just stand there and look so damned attractive like it was the most natural thing in the world, like you don’t even know you’re doing it? Don’t you know what a fine body you have, how good it looks, how good-looking your face is, especially all serious I like that?”

  Thinking an answer was required, Frenchy shrugged.

  “Do keep still, just a few minutes more. I’ll try to keep you amused.” Pam was smiling again. “I wish you could feel my heart pounding, I wish I could show you how much I want you. But it’s better to wait sometimes. We’ll have our own private erotic scene going in front of everybody at the bar.” She was nodding as she spoke and Frenchy wondered what she was cooking up for them now. She knew that look.

  “I’m getting excited just thinking about you later, darling. How I’ll look right through your clothes remembering a hundred other ways I’ve seen you walk and sit and lie. I’ll think of you like that, nude, when you’re only showing the world what you want it to see. Just a little longer now. Stay still. When you’re paying for my drinks I’ll imagine you last week, in the shower, coming as you leaned against me. When you’re dancing with one of your old femmes I’ll think of your legs open, waiting for my lips and my tongue. And if I think you’re not paying enough attention to me I’ll remind you by the way I touch you, and where, by the way I move against you when we dance. How delicious,” Pam said as she put down the pad and pencil.

  It was hard even for Frenchy to go out into the Greenwich Village streets after that.

  Full darkness had not yet descended. It was too early to go to the bar. She and Pam joined the people who seemed to drift aimlessly along the streets.

  “Let’s go over to the coffee house,” Pam suggested.

  “The coffee house?” Frenchy looked as if she had just tasted something bad.

  “Not for long, Frenchy. Please,” Pam said, with her most winning smile, the smile that had coaxed so much from Frenchy already.

  Frenchy wasn’t giving in. “Why?”

  “For dessert!” Pam declared.

  “I’m too full for dessert.”

  “Not for this, you aren’t. Ever had baklava?”

  “Sounds communist.”

  “You’re so delightfully square. And you’re chicken.”

  “I’m not scared. Just don’t like all those bearded creeps.”

  “Come on, I know the waitress. She’ll seat us in the back. Ah, Frenchy, my mouth is watering.” Pam’s eyes glittered.

  Frenchy pursed her lips. “All right,” she said. Pam grabbed her hand as if to take her there before she changed her mind.

  “Too damn dark in here to see who’s what anyway,” Frenchy complained when they were seated by the steaming front window. Afraid one of her bar friends would see her, she turned her back to the street.

  Pam laughed. “That’s why they wear beards. So you can tell which are boys.”

  Reluctantly, Frenchy grinned at Pam. When the waitress came Pam ordered for both of them.

  “Who wants expresso?” asked Frenchy.

  “You’ll love it. There’s nothing better than expresso with baklava.”

  “That’s what you say about everything.”

  “Only if I’m in the mood,” Pam claimed.

  A great whoosh came from the back of the room and Frenchy started. “They’re blowing the place up,” she said, only half-joking.

  “Darling, this is not a communist plot to assassinate you. That’s the expresso machine. This is a little Village restaurant that’s been here forever and I hope will stay here forever, serving the kinds of things you can’t get anywhere else. The owners are capitalists like the owners of the A&P. They just don’t make as much money as the A&P. But they would if they could.”

  The waitress put the order on the table with their bill. “Thanks,” Frenchy said. She looked to Frenchy like a thin duplicate of Pam. Maybe all these artist types were just like Pam. How could she like these drafty old places with nothing but wine and beer and strange food and no jukebox? What kept these people sitting around for hours? It just didn’t seem American. Frenchy tasted the expresso. “Argh,” she spat at its bitterness.

  “Baklava first,” Pam instructed, waving some on her fork. “Then you can appreciate the expresso.”

  Frenchy tried it. The thing was so small and flaky it crumpled under her fork.

  “Tiny bites, darling,” Pam suggested.

  She tried again, got a tiny piece on her fork and put it in her mouth. It was heavenly. She scowled at Pam, picking up the tiny expresso cup again. It did go well with the dessert.

  “Well?” asked Pam.

  “Well what?”

  “Isn’t it great?”

  “I like it okay,” Frenchy conceded.

  “You’re impossible!”

  Frenchy shru
gged and broke up a tiny bit more.

  “If you don’t want it, I’ll finish it for you.”

  “That’s okay,” Frenchy assured her with a martyred air.

  They ate in silence. Frenchy, while enjoying the food, glanced sharply around. Whatever they were, communists or hippies, they were certainly straight. A woman sat with a man at almost every table.

  “At least do you like the music?” Pam asked. Classical tapes were playing.

  “It makes me itchy.”

  Pam sat suddenly despondent over her uneaten baklava.

  “How come you’re just sitting there?” Frenchy asked.

  “Because you won’t even try.”

  “What do you mean, try? I’m eating, ain’t I?”

  “Yes, but Frenchy, I like this place. I’d like to come here again with you. And I like some of the people.”

  “They’re all straight.”

  “Oh, no they’re not. Is that what’s wrong?”

  Feeling remorseful, Frenchy admitted her real discomfort. “I don’t belong here. They’re all staring at me. They know I belong down the street in the Swing Lounge.”

  “You said you can’t even see them. How can you tell they’re staring at you?”

  “Straights always do.”

  “These people are different, Frenchy. Look, see those two guys in beards over there with the woman? They’re fags.”

  “What about her?”

  “She’s a fag hag.”

  “You mean a faggot moll?”

  “She only likes fags.”

  “Right.”

  “And that man over there is a far-out sculptor. He’s teaching Dorene. That’s his wife. But they know Dorene and I are gay and they don’t care. The same with that group who just left. They’re going to another coffee house later. They asked me during the week to go. They’re all straight.”

  “I don’t trust them. Why’d they want you to go?”

  “They like me.”

  “Even though you’re gay?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What’s there to know?”

  “I just don’t like being around them. I can’t explain it.”

  “You’re prejudiced.”

  “I am not. I got black friends.”

  “Not against blacks. Against straights.”

  “Maybe I am. I don’t see why I shouldn’t be. They’d as soon lock me up as let me be on the street. You see how they look at us. The tourists from New Jersey over here to sightsee on Saturday nights. They stare at us like we’re something the tour guides put here for them. They hate me. And they think you shouldn’t be with me.”

  “These people aren’t tourists.”

  “No, they’re used to us. Once they were tourists, though, and I bet it took them a long time not to stare.”

  “They’re my friends.”

  “You can have them.” Frenchy knew immediately she’d gone too far. “I’m sorry. I never knew any straight people to like gays.”

  “You never had the guts to let any straight people know you’re gay.”

  “Guts! You think I’m stupid? It’s none of their damn business. They can come on as friendly as they want, and turn their backs on you anytime they want. The whole world is straight. I’m going to tell them I’m different? That’s like, like, going to war without a gun!”

  They glared at each other.

  “Maybe —” Frenchy said after a while.

  “Maybe —” said Pam at the same time.

  They laughed. “Go ahead,” said Frenchy, lighting a cigarette.

  “No, you go,” said Pam, taking it from her while Frenchy reached for another. “No, let’s share this cigarette.”

  “I don’t want to. You tongue them.”

  “I what them?”

  “Tongue them, get them all wet. I like them dry.”

  “Crazy,” said Pam, shaking her head. “We’re so different. Go ahead, what were you going to say?”

  “Maybe some of them are okay. You’re right, I wouldn’t know. But I still think I’m right to be scared of them. What did you want to say?”

  “That you could be right. These people, especially the men, might turn against me if they had to. You know, if the Nazis came or something. But they’d get me for being a Jew anyway, so why should I hide being a lesbian? Maybe I’m just more used to feeling exposed than you because I’m a Jew. Maybe I live with their dislike and suspicion too easily.”

  “Like you said, we’re so different,” Frenchy said, almost touching Pam’s hand.

  “You can touch me in here, no one will say anything. I’ve touched other women right at this table.”

  “Did they look as queer as me?”

  “Maybe not.”

  “I better not. Anyway, I like the expresso. And the — what is it?”

  “Baklava.”

  “And I’d like to have it again sometime. I just wish there was a gay coffee house somewhere.”

  “Me too. But you can’t have everything.”

  “It’s late enough now. Want to go to the bar? The kids ought to be just about getting there.”

  “After dressing up, do you think I’d miss it?” Pam rose and swung her jacket over her shoulders.

  The lovers joined the crowds on MacDougal Street. Jewelry stores seemed to battle with each other for space to sell native American, African, Mexican merchandise. The bars along the streets and up the alleyways were filling up and jukebox music stole out of them to draw the crowds in. Frenchy kept an eye on the Swing Lounge, one of the bars she frequented, but no one she knew went in.

  Pam walked slowly, dawdling despite the chilly fall air, looking in shop windows, reaching to touch Frenchy and whispering to her. Frenchy slowed her normally brisk, aggressive and confident walk to match Pam’s, aware of the stares they attracted, while Pam seemed oblivious. As Pam pointed to bracelets she would like to wear, Frenchy stared down a man who, seeing her, grabbed the hand of his date.

  The crowds and stores thinned as they neared Washington Square. It was darker. Frenchy could hear dry leaves blowing across the pavement. She took Pam’s hand as they passed through the park.

  The closer they got to the bar, the more eager Frenchy became to be with her own. There, in that smoky dark place owned by racketeers, fueled by poor liquor, so crowded she sometimes could not sit and had to wait in long lines to use the toilets, where she danced on a packed floor to music most often sung by straights, she felt at home, accepted. She paid the bouncer at the door for this acceptance and entered with Pam.

  They stood, just inside, Pam blinking to adjust her eyes, Frenchy breathing in relief to be there. She hadn’t ever been away from the bars this long. “Frenchy!” she heard someone call in welcome, and her homecoming was complete.

  She looked at Pam, inspecting her for acceptability — and found her all wrong. Yet surely all her friends would recognize how she and Pam felt about each other. Like they felt about their girls. That’s what made them all belong. Pam looked overwhelmed by the bar.

  “It’s okay, Pam,” Frenchy said. “These are our people.”

  It was Pam’s turn to look skeptical. They went to join Jessie, Mary, some others at their table. “Where you been?” Jessie asked, thumping Frenchy on the shoulder. She was more dressed up than Frenchy was used to, with a turtle-neck under a Madras shirt. Her hair was cut more stylishly too. “We ain’t seen you since you come out to the house. Like my new duds? Mary’s got great taste.” She said all this while suspiciously eyeing Pam.

  “I been busy,” Frenchy said. “What’re you drinking?” she asked the table. She ordered a round, including a glass of chablis for Pam. As she made introductions she could tell the others were torn between admiration for Pam and disapproval. This was their pal Frenchy’s new girl, but boy had her tastes changed. The longer Jessie stared, the more disapproving Mary looked.

  It was a ragtag group, a mix from years of hanging out at the bar. Hermine, a heavy bleached blonde,
had been married to a man before her sister-in-law brought her to the bar. She was from Brooklyn, but had adopted the gay life so completely she’d moved into the City. Her dream was to own one of those tawdry jewelry shops that catered to Village tourists. Next to her was Beebo, an immigrant from Connecticut. As a teenager she’d been thrown out of her house because she was gay, and she had never recovered. She was tall, but stooped, as if cowering from anticipated blows. Because she was so tall her friends had nicknamed her after a character in one of the gay paperbacks they passed among themselves. She worked in the garment district, sewing.

  Everyone was gossiping and laughing except Pam. “Want to dance?” Frenchy held out a hand to her. “What’s the matter?” she asked when they had squeezed onto the floor.

  Pam had to shout. “I’m not used to this. I don’t fit in.”

  “Sure you do. Everybody’s gay!”

  Frenchy tried to calm some of Pam’s fears. Pam wasn’t, Frenchy assured her, so different from her friends at the table. “You just don’t understand them,” she said. “You’ll see when we hang around with them for a while. They’re all nice people. They’d do anything for you.”

  “But why do they dress like that?”

  Frenchy looked over at them. Beebo, as usual, was in her ill-fitting jeans; a turquoise and black striped muscle shirt exposed her thin pale arms. Like Jessie, Mary was dressed up. Her frilly white blouse fit tightly across her breasts and rounded stomach, and she wore black knit pants and white cut-out heels. Hermine was all in black, with blue eyeshadow and pencilled brows.

  “Like what?” asked Frenchy.

  “Why does that one wear sunglasses in the bar?”

  “Beebo’s been around forever, baby. Sunglasses used to be cool. They’re part of her now. Like you wearing all that Indian jewelry. They probably don’t understand that.”

  “Don’t you like it?” Pam asked.

  “I like it a lot on you. Now, if Beebo wore it she’d look pretty silly, right?”

  They slowed almost to a stop and swayed together, feeling the desire again. Frenchy touched Pam differently, more intimately.