The Peach and the Poppy

by Caesar J. M. Kauftheil

  April

  April, who wore her hair short, far from feminine, but not boyish, crops of black hair protruding forward with buzz-cut sides. April, with smeared eye-liner over her hard brown eyes, if any makeup at all. April, with her mouth which could be so soft and gentle one moment and loud and sharp-tongued the next, usually shouting something along the lines of "What, you've never seen two girls kiss? Get the fuck out of here, pervert!" April, who had a petite and feminine form, but made up for it with an overstated bad-ass attitude, piercings in her septum, labret and eyebrow, one-inch gauges in her ears, and "DYKE" tattooed on her knuckles. April, who called her "Babe" or "Blondie"; the latter had caught on among some of their mutual friends, and so she spent about a year and a half as Blondie. Still better than "Pippa," she figured.

  They had signed up for the same sociology course during Poppy's first year at college in the Surf City of Santa Cruz. Poppy had noticed April well before they actually met, brought together halfway through the semester by a group project, but it was hard not to notice April. She dressed as expressively as she was outspoken in class, and in nearly all facets of life, as Poppy would find out—a trait, she claimed, she picked up from her Mexican mother. She had a bad reputation among most of the other students in the class, who found her obnoxious and unnecessarily abrasive, but Poppy harbored a secret admiration. It was an extremely liberal school, she knew it was, and she was an adult, out on her own, but she still didn't feel quite comfortable expressing her sexuality publicly—so unlike, April, who Poppy couldn't help but imagine with her rainbow belt hanging impractically loose around her hips and her black shirt with "Rug Muncher" written in bold white text.

  She remembered when the professor explained the team projects, providing the class with a variety of social causes to tackle and create presentations on, due at the end of the term. April had, of course, jumped on the topic of LGBT issues, and consequently, their peers had avoided the subject like the plague. Feeling bold, as well as sympathetic toward April who would otherwise being doing the assignment on her own, Poppy joined April. No one followed her lead. April seemed unfazed by either of these things.

  They met after class, and as they both had clear schedules, they agreed to go to the library to start fleshing out some ideas. They found a secluded area of the library, and Poppy took a binder out to take notes. "LGBT issues" was a broad subject, and they had to choose a direction to go in. This is when April looked at her and said, "Well, what shit have you faced being gay?"

  Poppy just stared at her with a blank expression, not quite sure how to answer the question. She didn't think her homosexuality was so apparent.

  "Don't pretend you're not gay," April said, levelly.

  "How did you know?" Poppy asked. She had never been so quickly outed before—in fact, most people didn't guess she was into girls.

  "It's just obvious," April said with a shrug. Poppy admitted that she hadn't faced much backlash to her sexuality… in fact, she had very little experience in realm of homosexuality, struggling or otherwise…

  "Wait, have you ever been with a girl at all?" April asked, not the least bit shy about asking such personal questions. Poppy blushed, and shook her head. "Have you done anything with a chick?" Poppy looked down, and shook her head again. "Fuck, you don't know what you're missing."

  The next hour was spent in heavy discussion, the project at hand entirely forgotten. Poppy learned a lot, however, about April, who had been dating girls since middle school. Her parents had given her shit about it, her Hispanic Roman Catholic mother telling her she was going to hell and her white father just being an asshole and using her sexuality as an excuse to berate her. April's parents were the opposite of those of Poppy's first love—where Lindsay's were overbearingly attentive, April's could care less about her, and considered her a mistake and burden from conception onward. She would be the first in her family to get a degree, but she treated it more as a 'Fuck You' to the people who had born her and insisted that she was wasting her time, rather than an achievement in and of itself.

  Poppy felt she had little to put forth in the conversation after April opened up about her experiences. Her life as a lesbian had been so uneventful compared to April, who had grown hardened and rebellious from being called "lesbo," "fag" and "dyke" by both peers and family for years. Poppy's parents had been extremely accepting, and though there were rumors around her high school about her sexuality, it had never created an ugly situation—just background talk that she ignored. For lack of a greater struggle, Poppy explained her heartbreak with Lindsay, the straight little Christian girl she had wanted for so long, before she even knew she wanted her, but had never attained.

  "That's cute," April said when she finished the story, with an inflection that was uncharacteristically sweet and sincere. There was a look in her eyes that captured Poppy's, which was unfamiliar but somehow easily understood. The silence grew heavier and heavier with each passing second, until the gravity of the hushed moment began to pull their faces slowly together. Their noses were almost touching when April closed her eyes, and Poppy followed suit. The first brush of April's lips sent a jolt of electricity through the entirety of her nervous system, and her body stiffened, relaxing immediately as she melted into the full, firm press of the kiss.

  She solidified and melted with each new sensation: fingertips running up the back of her neck and cradling her head, a hand clutching her thigh, sharing her mouth with another's tongue...

  Oh, and the tongue ring. How could she have forgotten the tongue ring?

  Poppy wasn't sure what to do with her hands, was barely figuring out the rhythms for moving her lips, and was clueless as to how to use her tongue, but April's acceptance—embrace, in fact—of Poppy's awkward amateurishness assuaged her nervousness, and allowed her to be guided into the new, thrilling world of kissing. April responded to Poppy's timidity by not so much inviting as insisting that Poppy take liberties she had never known. A hand wrapped around Poppy's wrist, and led it to April's chest, filling her palm with a soft, full breast: the first bosom she had ever touched that was not her own, shortly followed by the first hand of another to clutch at her own chest. Time flew by unmeasured, immeasurable, leaning unto April's ceaseless lips, her hand attempting tirelessly at the Sisyphean task of grasping all of April's massive D-cup mammary (at least, that would be her bra size if she had ever worn a bra) in one handful, while April's fingers barely had to crook to eclipse Poppy's tit.

  When they finally separated, Poppy was flushed with the gratification that been delayed for years. Much too long, and she had realized that April had been absolutely right—she didn't have a fucking clue what she had been missing. April looked at her with piercing darkness in her eyes and a wry smile on her lips, and told her "Not bad."

  Poppy found herself presently blushing, thighs squirming from the memory. She was still on the first page of the book in her hand, and realized she had been staring at the same sentence for minutes on end. She crossed her legs, and placed her elbow on her knee, propping the book up at eye level to hide the redness in her face.

  March into April's Embrace

  Her mind began weaving through the rest of the evening—because though they had entered the library during daylight, there were only the faintest traces of the sunset left in the sky by the time they left. April invited her back to her place, to Poppy's relief; she wanted the night to continue as long as possible, but she had yet to tell her dorm mates about her orientation, and bringing April back to the shared living space probably wasn't the best way to broach the issue. Poppy started in the direction of the dorms, but April led her toward the parking lot, finally arriving at a beat up car that was probably older than Poppy. She hadn't considered up to that point that April didn't live on campus, and small fears played out in the back of her mind that maybe this woman was as dangerous as she seemed outside of their intimate moment in the library. April coaxed those anxieties away with the tender caresses along Poppy's leg as she drove one-hand
ed through mild traffic.

  They arrived at a house, and Poppy followed April, taking note of the swagger with which she walked. Poppy wondered if she walked in a similar way, and if that was how April had detected that she was a lesbian, but she didn't feel she did. Upon entering the house, she was hit by the pungent smell of weed and heard music playing behind a closed door.

  "My roommates are home. They won't bother us, though," April told her, as she guided her to her bedroom. Poppy hadn't been sure where exactly the night was headed or if she'd be ready when it got to that point, but the prospect was thrilling. Poppy had watched porn, read stories… she felt like most of the things that happened between two girls wouldn't be too overwhelming for her in her virginal state—much easier than the experiences straight girls had to go through with men and their parts. She shuddered… she hoped April wasn't going to whip out a dildo or some weird sex toy.

  "You want something to drink?" April asked.

  "Sure," Poppy responded, glancing around the bedroom walls, adorned with posters of bands Poppy wasn't familiar with. Then again, she had never moved too far from the realm of Classic Rock she had grown up with.

  "Soda? Beer?"

  "Beer," Poppy said, almost immediately. Though she was eighteen, beer and booze weren't too difficult to attain—there were always friends-of-friends who were twenty-one or liquor stores in a nearby city with a reputation of selling to minors. And alcohol wasn't a forbidden fruit at her home, either—her parents had allowed her a glass of wine at dinner every now and then since she was fifteen. She wanted a beer now, not for the thrill of drinking—and definitely not for the taste—but to subdue the nerves that were creeping up on her.

  April returned with two cold, brown bottles and cracked them with a bottle opener attached to her keychain. Poppy took large quaffs of the beverage, having yet to develop a tolerance for the flavor of cheap beer. They sat together on April's unmade bed, drinking their beers in a sort of awkward silence. Poppy felt April's eyes on her, and she turned her head to meet their gaze.

  They began kissing again, the games of tongues and lips growing more intricate, of hands and breasts more involved. Poppy squeezed the neck of her bottle with one hand as her other grasped the fleshy breast before her, her mind enraptured by the intensity of the kissing. After a while she broke away to catch her breath and replant herself into reality after feeling like she had been floating.

  "This isn't too much for you, is it?" April asked. For someone who constantly wore an attitude of not giving a fuck what anyone thought of her, she seemed very concerned with Poppy's comfort.

  "Not at all," Poppy said, with a smile. "It's just all really new to me. I feel like my head is reeling."

  "Just want to make sure. You're new to this, so I think we should just keep it to kissing for tonight… save the rest for another day, if, you know, you want to do this again." Poppy smiled, both at what April was saying, and that it probably wasn't too many people that actually got to see this tender side of her.

  "I'd like that. A lot," Poppy said, placing her beer on the dresser near the bed. Driven by excitement and lust, she flung herself onto April, both girls falling backward on the bed, and Poppy found herself lying on top of April, who had her legs wrapped around Poppy's waist. Hours passed in a tangle of kisses, clutches, gropes, and nibbles, resulting in a breathless, pleasured Poppy, and a very wet pair of panties.

  "It's late," April said, checking the time on her phone. "You're welcome to stay here with me… I can drive you back to campus, if not… Either way is fine." Whether she didn't have class the next morning or she did and has chosen to blow it off was a detail that no longer existed in Poppy's memory. She had fallen asleep cradled in April's embrace that night.

  Brits and Pieces

  Poppy was interrupted from her thoughts at that point and relieved of the act of pretending to be reading the novel by a large, middle-aged woman, who had sat down next to Poppy and obviously thought of the books surrounding them as more of a conversation piece than reading material.

  "Wow, I wonder where all these books came from," the woman said in the direction of Poppy, speaking with a mid-Western accent. An American accent.

  "I don't know," Poppy responded, politely. She had a feeling that this was the vapid, overweight, uncultured example on which many Europeans based their idea of Americans.

  "I tried bringing my husband to this place—he's here with me, we're on a group tour across Europe—but he didn't think a bookstore would be very interesting." It was clear to Poppy that this woman thought it was interesting to think that books were interesting. She lifted her cell phone up to take a picture of the literature on two of the walls, likely to show her husband and her friends back home the mass of books they had all missed out on seeing. "Why do they have all the beds in here? Do people sleep here?"

  "Actually," chimed in a new voice from the other side of a woman; the owner was female, a little younger than Poppy, and British. "Historically, writers have been allowed to board here and work for their wages. At least, that's what I've been told.

  Poppy leaned forward to look at the owner of the voice: a lanky, brown-haired girl in her early twenties who smiled at her. "Where are you both from?"

  "Nebraska," the woman said, proudly adding, in case the European stranger couldn't tell, "that's in America."

  "California," Poppy said after, having a little more faith in the girl's understanding of foreign geography and picking up on dialects.

  "Oh, brilliant. I've always wanted to see San Francisco. I'm from Surrey, but I'm going to Uni in London. That's in England," she added, a small side statement to the woman between them, who didn't seem to notice the pointed remark. "I'm Kathleen," she said, reaching out to shake both of their hands. The woman from Nebraska insisted that Poppy take a picture with her and her new international acquaintance on her phone, and satisfied with the souvenir, said she had better get back to her husband.

  Once the woman had left, Poppy took the opportunity to introduce herself, feeling slightly ashamed for being associated by nationality with the woman who had just left.

  "So, what bring your to France?" Kathleen asked. "Vacation?"

  "Yup," Poppy said. "Yourself?"

  "Business and pleasure. I have some time off school, so I decided to spend a few days in Paris. I came to Shakespeare and Company because I figured I could get some first-hand experiences for one of my classes," Kathleen said, hands clasped in her lap, one black corduroy-clad leg over the other.

  "Oh, are you taking a class in French architecture or something?"

  "Not exactly," Kathleen said, tilting her head to one side. "It's a course on the 'Lost Generation' of American expatriate writers in Paris." Poppy gave her a slightly lost look. "We're learning about writers such as Hemmingway, Fitzgerald, Stein, who moved to Paris after the First World War."

  Poppy gave an apologetic shrug. "I wasn't really an English major in college." The conversation led into Poppy's education in animal sciences, which relieved Poppy of trying to keep up with another wordy intellectual. People in Europe seemed to be interested in her career, and she wondered if it had anything to do with ridiculous notions of Cowboys and Indians in the Old West… but, she had to admit to herself, prior to arriving in Paris, her concept of the French population was people in striped shirts and berets, sipping coffee by the Eiffel Tower and carrying baguettes around. Then again, she was half right.

  "I'm actually quite famished," Kathleen said, after they had been talking for a quarter hour or so. "Would you care to join me for lunch?"

  "Sure," Poppy said, beginning to feel rather hungry herself. They walked together out of the bookstore, leaving behind the mass of books which, to the Nebraskan stranger, were of baffling origin, and to Poppy, a California native, a reminder of a first kiss.

  A Moveable Feast

  Poppy hadn't realized when they were sitting, but Kathleen was nearly six feet tall, and she took extremely wide, rapid steps that Poppy had to speed-wal
k to keep up with. Londoner, Poppy thought—the fast paced walking must be a city thing, and was a little exhausting for Poppy, who preferred a casual strolling pace. When they passed before a restaurant far enough away from the American-marketed establishments on the Left Bank, they stopped, shrugged to one another, and stepped inside.

  Poppy perused the menu again, frazzled by trying to interpret the French descriptions of foreign items. She looked up to Kathleen, and asked "Do you know French?"

  "Unfortunately, no," Kathleen said, shaking her head at her menu. "I learnt German when I was in secondary school.

  Fortunately, their waitress—who, Poppy couldn't help noticing, was very attractive—spoke English. They ordered, talked, ate, talked. Kathleen was nice enough, but a somewhat dry conversationalist. She was pretty, in a way, but not drop-dead gorgeous. She was foreign, but not exotic.

  What Poppy was really getting at with all these acknowledgements was that Kathleen didn't hold a match up to Rochelle.

  The conversation veered toward alcohol at some point, with Kathleen discussing the pub scene in London, and Poppy talked about dive bars, which she figured to be the American equivalent.

  "Americans drink their beers chilled, don't they?" Kathleen asked, to which Poppy nodded with a smile. Kathleen made a grimace before expressing, sardonically, "We actually like to taste our ale in England."

  Poppy simply smiled politely. The idea of going to a bar and getting a warm beer made her cringe internally. There had only been one time in her life that she had actually enjoyed drinking warm beer, and that was back in her college days, before she really understood anything at all about drinking. Those were the evenings of when she and April would drive out to one of the beaches in Santa Cruz to watch the sun melt into the horizon and sit on the cooling sand as night followed the bars of orange and red that sank into the ocean, always on a weekday so they could have as much of the expanse of sand and waves to themselves as possible, and they would sip from the still-warm bottles from April's trunk, which had been heating in her car all day. Yes, she had actually tasted those beers, and they tasted awful, but it was about having the beer, not enjoying it.