Damn Straight

by Elizabeth Sims

  Eventually, we pooled our resources and moved into an apartment on Prentis Street, where I encountered for the first time the most hideous emblem of the low-rent environment: the window frame with grit painted onto it. You know, where somebody paints over a filthy surface, over the scratchy grit that collects on city windowsills. No sanding, no cleaning. So that the grit merges right into the paint, becomes part of the resultant surface, like a lacquered emery board. You couldn't lean a naked elbow on it without recoiling. An uncleanable surface. I recall the visceral repugnance I felt when I encountered it for the first time; I assumed it was an unfortunate aberration. But I soon found how typical the painted-in-grit windowsill was. I tried to imagine the mind of a person who would do such a poor, careless job, or who would pay for it to be done. I couldn't.

  This, more than rats in the alleys, more than roaches in the kitchens and clothes closets, more than leaky roofs and axle-busting chuckholes in the streets, was what signified to me where I came from. In the drafty classrooms and lecture halls of the university, I found clues as to where I wanted to go.

  Truby and I battled the disappointments of life by calling our apartment "The Star." We were, then, Starmates. The Star was ship-like, low-ceilinged, and as cozy as we could make it with Indian print throws and spray-painted bookcases. We decided what course The Star would take during any given evening or weekend, who would be allowed on board, and who would eventually be driven off. We began with a schoolgirls' alliance and gradually moved into a semblance of maturity.

  Truby had had an impressive string of boyfriends, grown men with cars and histories of adventure and loss. She spoke their language—she wasn't intimidated by them. Both of us were short on looks, but there was a special spark to her, the way she moved and laughed, and men adored her. She very much wanted me to approve of her boyfriends; knowing this, I was usually able to work up some enthusiasm. But men bored me, except for my Uncle Guff and Jacques Cousteau. I dedicated my extracurricular time to learning all about wonderful women.

  Then college was over and we went our own ways—she to study French and art, managing years in Europe on God knew how thin a shoestring; I to a motley series of jobs in Detroit, eventually making my way to writing for money.

  For the past, oh, two years, I thought, Truby had been seeing a guy named Theo, a chef at a fancy restaurant in Beverly Hills or someplace. Boyfriend trouble? She'd never settled down with anyone. I hadn't either, at least for very long. I doubted any guy could vex Truby very much. She never relied deeply on her boyfriends. When the chips were down, she called on her sisters or me.

  Money trouble? She had a good job in the art department at Paramount. Drugs? Trouble with the law? Back in Detroit she'd revealed a slight streak of kleptomania, but I thought she must have left that behind with the poverty.

  No, from her tone this wasn't some off-the-shelf crisis. I stared at the tops of the clouds.

  Maybe she'd come across some secret, one she wasn't supposed to know. Maybe a stranger had approached her with a cryptic message, and she realized she's been mistaken for some underworld go-between, and the stranger keeps coming around asking for Ramon or Misha or Nam Thi or Eddie, and won't believe she isn't who she says she isn't, and things are getting tense.

  Maybe, while doing research for a new movie, she was looking through some vintage architectural plans and found that the governor's mansion in Sacramento had been designed with a series of tunnels linking it to the nearby Romanian consulate, where a mysterious long-ago kidnapping had soured relations between the United States and certain factions of Eastern Europe, which had led to World War II, and she blurted something to somebody, and now the feds know she knows, and they don't want her knowing, and things are getting tense.

  Maybe somebody's dead. My heart lurched: Maybe she killed somebody. Maybe Theo started slapping her around one night, and she brained him with a casserole, and now he's lying in the bathtub covered in plastic and formaldehyde, and she can't bring herself to go to the police.

  And things are getting tense.

  The plane touched down in Los Angeles before I had a chance to speculate about satanic ritual abuse or alien abduction. A gust of warmth hit my face through a gap in the jetway—welcome to LA., baby. The breeze was half jet fuel, but it was warm. I searched for Truby's face as I hauled Todd and my stuff to the baggage claim.

  There she was, arms folded, leaning against a pillar, looking pale. Her eyes were like embers. We hugged and cried just a little, then joined the throng around the carousel.

  I said, "Can you tell me anything about it now?"

  "No." She walked along looking straight ahead.

  In her car on the way to Santa Monica she said, "Forgive me, Lillian, for being like this. You'll understand soon. Tell me about your trip, how was it?"

  As we walked into her apartment I loved it all over again, mainly for its view of the vast Pacific Ocean. There was just a trace of indigo left in the sky; stars pricked through, and the water shone black. The apartment, a contemporary one, had beautifully smooth walls, parquet floors, and thin windowsills of extremely clean polished wood. Truby had decorated it simply and chicly, with an awesome old Persian rug and a few low tables and chairs. Great coffee table—the top of it looked like the cabin door from a racing yacht.

  As I mentioned, she made good money at Paramount, much of which she'd spent on paintings. She wasn't rich enough to buy a slew of Agnes Martins, or Wayne Thiebauds, or Susan Rothenbergs, but she had a collection of paintings by up-and-coming artists whose qualities reminded you of Agnes Martin, Wayne Thiebaud, and Susan Rothenberg. I liked them.

  "Your room is nice and fresh," she said. "Veronica changed all the linens yesterday."

  "Veronica? Oh." She had a cleaner.

  Todd thumped in his case, reminding me of my first order of business. I took him out and let him look around. "He'll be good."

  "I'm not worried."

  I dropped our stuff in our room, then cleaned his case and got it ready for the night. Truby had thoughtfully left a stack of newspapers handy.

  Always a calm rabbit, Todd had a high threshold for novelty. He bumped slowly around the living room. I could tell he was tired. I stroked his cheeks to relax him, gave him some water and chow, and closed him in our room, making sure to show him the newspapers I'd put down in every corner. Sometimes rabbits will mark a new place. I didn't want to close him in his case all night, but left it open for him to climb into when he was ready—rabbits being nocturnal and all. Tomorrow he'd have more freedom.

  As Truby watched us, I tried to watch her a little. She looked gaunt in the face. And certainly pale. Her face was wide and active, easy to read, usually. Her upper body was small, and her hips flared out into strong big legs, which she usually tried to hide, but which I envied. She was moving all right. She looked stressed but not sick.

  She'd put out a bracing assortment of snacks on the coffee table: a hunk of Camembert, a bowl of pears, a dish of walnut meats, a few celery sticks. There was a slim baguette and a bottle of Bordeaux that even I could tell cost above the ten-dollar range. Truby always had the gift of putting food together, no matter what odds and ends faced you in the cupboard: salami and popcorn, marshmallows and mangoes, Raisin Bran and beer. Really.

  "God, I'm glad to see you," I told her.

  "I know you can help me," she said simply.

  We settled down to talk and eat.

  I was beginning to feel very nervous. Given the enormity of her trouble, how could I help? Why turn to me? Yes, I was a trusted friend, but what could I offer her? I had no money, no influence—political or otherwise. I wasn't a black belt in any martial art; I didn't know much about law; I wasn't wise. However, I did have a reckless streak. I could act like a jerk. Hey, lady, need any jerky stuff done?—you got the right person.

  She poured the wine. We turned to each other across the corner of the coffee table, raised our glasses silently, and drank.

  I waited.

  My friend
grew paler still, if that was possible. She cleared her throat and tapped the cheese knife on the cutting board for a few minutes. Minutes. I ate a nutmeat and watched a tendon in her wrist jump. Then she grew very calm, composed her face, and met my eyes.

  "I think I'm gay," she said.

  Chapter 3

  I waited. There had to be more. What was the crisis?

  Truby sat there expectantly, tragically.

  At last I said, "That's it?"

  She nodded, her eyes welling.

  "Truby: What I'm asking you is, is that it? You think you're gay?

  "Yes."

  "You got me all the way out here from Detroit just to tell me you think you're gay?"

  The tears burst forth. "Lillian," she cried, "this is important! This is my life!"

  "Oh, hon." I scooted over and held her as she sobbed. She really cried—man, she did some serious crying there.

  When she could talk again, she said, "Well—wasn't it important for you? And upsetting? When you—you know, came out?

  "Well, yes, but the thing is—Jesus. You're not. You're no more a lesbian than you are an albino." I took a slug of Bordeaux, scanned the room for a box of tissues, then fished a handkerchief from my pocket and handed it to her. "I mean, if somebody asked me which of my friends is the most hetero, I'd say you. My God. What happened with Theo?"

  "Lillian." She said this reproachfully, around the folds of the handkerchief.

  "I'm sorry. I thought that was a logical question. Okay. Why do you think you're a lesbian?"

  Her tears at bay for the moment, she crossed her legs tailor-style on her cushion. "I've been reexamining my whole life. I realized I've done nothing but run from one relationship to the next, always looking for a guy I could really give my self to, my real self. A guy who could satisfy me by not acting constantly like a butthead. And I had to honestly admit that I'd never found one."

  "I'm sure you know that's not unusual."

  "Don't get smug on me. Theo—all right, Theo broke it off between us. He said something that made me go unhh"— she sat straight up and clutched her fists to her chest as if receiving a hard-thrown football— "he said, 'The word frigid has gone out of fashion, but they should revive it to describe you.' He called me frigid. And a bitch. And a latent lesbian."

  "He stopped making you come?"

  "God, on the nose. It wasn't as if anything really changed. Well, maybe it did change. I think he was starting to get impatient with my sexual needs. We'd been having problems for months."

  "That's too bad. Maybe he was the frigid one. Why don't you eat a little?" I chopped out a bit of cheese and handed it to her on a crust of bread.

  "Thank you. He wasn't fucking frigid. He was just—look, the point here isn't Theo. After he left I was sitting in the bathtub thinking about everything, men, women, everything. And I suddenly thought, gee, it's hard for women to get abortions. Then I suddenly thought, gee, men rape women. And this big enormous bell went off, and I realized how it really is for women. I mean, how it is and why it is."

  "Yes."

  "I thought, well, maybe I've been blind to the obvious. I always just took for granted being straight." She chewed and swallowed. "But it's only brought me—well, at best it's only brought me temporary happiness. All my happiness, my whole life, relationship-wise, has been temporary. Maybe I've been fooling myself. Maybe I've been missing something."

  I bit into a pear. "Have you ever been in love with a woman?"

  "Well, God, years ago I think I was in love with Barb Speas—"

  "Barb Speas? You were in love with Barb Speas?" She was our next-door neighbor in the building on Prentis Street, an education major who was always inviting herself over to rummage through our refrigerator in search of leftover pizza.

  "Well, I remember looking at her a few times and going to myself, Yes, she's appealing."

  "Ugh. Ugh. Anybody else? I mean, didn't your heart race over any of our profs, or somebody at work? One of those movie stars that are always coming and going? Or even longer ago, like in high school? Tell me about your formative years, Miz Mills."

  I sipped some more wine. It tasted deep and rich on my tongue.

  "Come to think of it," she said, "I had one girlfriend in junior high school with the most beautiful red hair. The most beautiful skin. We took showers together a few times."

  "That's good. How did that make you feel?"

  "It was great! Then she moved away."

  "Was that your only intimate experience with a woman?"

  "Mm-hmm."

  "Well, hell, that's not much to go on."

  She pondered that, looking down at my handkerchief in her hand. "This is a really nice handkerchief," she said. "Is it linen?"

  "Thank you, yes. My aunt Rosalie gave them to me last Christmas. She sent away to Ireland for them." The hankies were square and plain, except for a thin tan border, and my monogram embroidered in small tan block letters: LB. Aunt Rosalie had gone whole-hog and bought me two dozen.

  "They are très, très sophistiqués."

  They did help my self-esteem, actually. My jeans and shoes were wearing out, but with a couple of elegant squares of linen in my pockets, I felt prepared for most any occasion.

  Truby asked, "How did you feel about women when you were young?"

  "Oh, I was intensely attracted to all of them. I thought my second-grade teacher was incredibly sexy. I fell in love with girls in junior high, high school, teachers—everybody. It freaked me out and made me ashamed, but at least I knew I was different early on. It's not the same for everybody, of course."

  "Do you think you have to be born that way?"

  "No. In fact, I really hate it when people argue for gay rights by saying we can't help being the way we are. Because the implication is that we'd be different if only we could. Bullshit. I want people to be free to love whomever they choose to love. Feelings of love aren't exactly a choice, but acting on them is. And it's a gorgeous, wonderful choice that everybody ought to be free to make."

  Truby stared for a while into the blackness beyond the windows. "Well," she said, "I have to find out. Didn't you sleep with a couple of guys, just to make sure? What was that one's name, the one with the fur hat who wore his keys on his belt and—"

  "I don't remember."

  "I bet you don't. Well, I'm not going to be happy until I find out what it's like to be with a woman. And you have to help me."

  "I hope you're not expecting—"

  "No! Christ almighty! Here's what I want." She fixed me with her anxious, wide-set eyes. "I want to learn everything you know. How you date, how you get a woman to go out with you and understand where you're coming from. What's gaydar? What is it? How do I know if a woman might be interested in me? What are the mating dances? How the hell do you get a woman to love you?"

  "You think I'm some big expert on all this?"

  "Honey, you're the only expert I've got."

  Chapter 4

  I have to tell you, I was relieved. Relieved not to have to figure out how to prevent the syndicate from disemboweling Truby to find the gems, relieved not to have to shield her from an FBI assassination attempt, relieved not to have to help dispose of Theo's body. How hard could it be to coach her through her first lesbian experience?

  We talked late into the night, polishing off the bottle of Bordeaux and starting another. Finally, Truby revealed her plan.

  "You know the Dinah Shore championship, the golf tournament?"

  "LPGA hot spot. Isn't it always in Palm Springs?"

  "Actually, Rancho Mirage. It's always around the end of March. It's next week, and we're going."

  A brilliant idea.

  "Wouldn't it be booked up by now?"

  "Sort of," Truby explained, "but one of the admins at work was going to go, but—"

  "One of the whats?"

  "Admins." Emphasis on the first syllable. "Administrative assistants."

  "Oh."

  "This admin," Truby continued, "was going to go
, but her mother in South Dakota broke her hip, and now she has to go home instead. She gave me her pass."

  "All right!"

  "And most important, she gave me her reservation at the Howard Johnson's in Palm Springs."

  "Very good."

  "And before the last putt is sunk, I'm gonna get laid."

  I laughed. "How many times?"

  "Minimum four."

  "We'll need two rooms, then."

  "Well, we've only got one. We'll make do."

  "I guess we will."

  The Dinah. Lustiest of the annual tournaments held by the Ladies' Professional Golf Association—the LPGA. A gay women's fun fair on the magnitude of the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival. Thousands of dykes come from all over the country—from all over the world—to party down and root for their favorite golf stars, in the biggest of the tour's championships. I'd heard stories about the parties. Of course, lots of women on the pro tour are gay. Pretty deeply closeted, most of them. If you're fighting for equality in prize money, if you're competing to convince sponsors to sign you, you're reluctant to risk blowing it by coming out.

  Why is the Dinah such a magnet? I supposed because it stays in one spot, allowing the massive lesbian population of nearby Los Angeles to build, over time, an impressive social infrastructure. Because it was founded by a beautiful woman with one of the smoothest voices in the world: the Tennessee Thrush, Dinah Shore.

  I was old enough to remember her singing sentimental songs on television and radio. She was the embodiment of active, healthy womanhood: those sparkling eyes, that uncomplicated blond hairstyle, the good body, and always that sure, liquid voice. Chevrolet sponsored her TV variety show, and no one could have sung, "See the U.-S.A. in your Chev-rolet" with more verve. She was patriotic. She entertained troops during World War II and Vietnam. Bob Hope respected her. Bing Crosby respected her. Frank Sinatra respected her. Patti Page probably hated her guts, but respected her.