When We Were Outlaws

by Jeanne Cordova

  “I came for you.” I nuzzled my lips against the back of her neck.

  “That didn’t keep you at the Saloon.”

  “Don’t start. Please. That was work. Leaving had nothing to do with what I wanted.”

  Her body tightened and pulled away. “Listen to what you say, Jeanne. Don’t you even know yourself? Leaving to do the interview had everything to do with what you want. Politics is the life you want, that’s where your priorities go.”

  I stopped myself from launching into further defense. “I thought you’d understand. I’m sorry,” I whispered. In our silence, I traced the letters l-o-v-e-r on her back. “I didn’t realize my leaving would upset you so much. I’m an activist. The revolution is not going to wait until after we’ve had dinner and watched Ozzie and Harriet.”

  “The movement is your lover,” she said.

  The warmth from Rachel’s back, pressing into my chest, quieted my mind. I watched the shadows flicker in her curls. I hadn’t come tonight to talk about the revolution.

  “That’s what my father always told my mother when she asked him to spend more time with us,” Rachel said. “He’d say, ‘I’ve got important work to do. Can’t you see I’m earning a living?’ He had other priorities too. Eventually he left us altogether.”

  I gathered Rachel closer. “I’m not leaving your life, I’m entering it.”

  “I want a relationship with you, Jeanne,” Rachel said. “Not a fling.” She reached behind her and pulled my hair.

  I almost asked what she thought was the difference between a relationship and a fling. Two nights a week instead of one?

  Instead I sank back into my earlier thoughts, saying, “The stillness reminds me of praying. Look down there.” I pointed to the avenue below. “The street lights are the candles. The tiles of the roof tops are the villagers in meditation, the nuns at Chapel.”

  We were both silent. Our chapel radiated below.

  I leaned forward, my mouth an inch from her ear. “When I was fifteen,” I began, “I was backpacking in Yosemite with other camp counselors. We were up very high in the Sierras and one afternoon we walked into a beautiful mountain valley called Tuolumne Meadows. We made camp and then I wandered off by myself and walked far into the middle of the meadow. I took off my clothes, all my clothes, and lay down. The tall meadow reeds combed me like they knew we were going to do something sacred together.”

  I trailed off feeling my face blush. I’d never shared what happened that afternoon with another human being.

  “Go on.”

  “I lay there flat on my back, naked in the grass and prayed, ‘I dissolve into the earth; my cells let go of one another. I am home in the earth. I am one with God.’ And I kept repeating this...my dissolution prayer, over and over for hours. Time passed and I began to feel my body dissolve and become the dirt and the stones and the reeds. I lay there dissolving into the earth all afternoon. I thought about the last stanza in a poem that a nun I loved wrote, ‘I became God’s—And this began to be my only boast, and I guess shall always be.’ And, finally I understood what she meant. I felt a total surrender of identity. I was no longer separate. I lost consciousness and felt like I was sleeping inside the earth, having a meltdown of being.”

  Rachel shivered in my arms.

  “When I came back to camp, the sun was rubbing against the pines on the west ridge of the valley. So yes,” I said, rubbing the chill off her arms, “I miss the transcendent state that comes more often in religious life than anywhere. The longing never dissipates, no matter how much one doth protest.”

  “No, it never does,” Rachel said, reaching back and caressing my cheek. “I’m glad you didn’t stay behind a wall.”

  Her textured hands stimulated my skin like fine grain sandpaper; they felt like a razor’s edge bringing each tiny pore to life. Lowering my face to her neck, I breathed in her scent of patchouli oil and cupped her breasts in my hands. Rachel reached with both arms and clasped my neck, her chest opened up. “I love you, Jeanne,” she said, dragging out my name like it was a foreign word on her tongue.

  I took her nipples, pinching each softly between my fingers. Rachel’s breathing quickened and her fingers tightened in my hair. Pulling to one side, I studied her profile in the moonlight, watching her open mouth looking for mine. Gently, I released her breasts and eased my body out from behind her. I wanted the full length of my body on hers. I wanted to touch every part of her.

  I flipped the quilt over us and lay down over her, pressing my palms against the chilled cement to hold my weight above her. Rachel leaned back and I was on top of her, drawing her tongue into mine as I searched for absolution of my longing.

  Suddenly she gasped, “We can’t do this out here. Come to bed, Jeanne.”

  I propped myself onto my elbows but refused to break contact. “Go, go,” I murmured, my lips on hers.

  Staggering upright, kissing and dragging the quilt behind us, we made our way through the porch doorjamb, across the living room and into Rachel’s bedroom.

  Nearing her bed, she pulled open the snaps of my shirt. Moonlight through the bedroom window fell on her face and breasts as her robe slipped to the oak floor and I saw her through the sheer blue gown. Reaching into the shadows I scooped the small of her back with one arm, while my other outlined her mouth and the thin upper lip that I’d come to claim. I lingered at the barely defined cleft in her chin.

  “Everything in miniature,” I marveled aloud. Her freckles had dissolved in the darkness, but I could still see the light in her robin-egg blue eyes. I reached down, picked her up, and folded us onto her bedspread.

  “It’s a good thing my bed was only a few feet away,” she laughed quietly into the night. “This is so much easier than the stairs.”

  “I live to make things easy on you.” I pressed my body against hers.

  “I hope I’m alive to see that day.”

  “Don’t go back to that subject.”

  “Then come back here where you were.” She reached inside my unbuttoned shirt and clutched my naked shoulders. “We don’t need this anymore,” she said, flinging my shirt across the room.

  Untying the blue cotton ribbon in the front of her gown, I whispered, “This beats dying and going to heaven.”

  “Then I’ll give you some seeds to take to heaven.” Rachel kissed me delicately in each corner of my eyes as though her lips were planting. “There. Now, wherever you go, my seeds will be with you.”

  In the dark, my hands defined her body; she shuddered in my arms and would not let my fingers leave her. Later in the dark, she took my nipples in her mouth and sent me on my own spiral. I called to her, not realizing that her name would always be a part of this act. “I’m here, Jeanne,” she answered. “I’ve got you.” I could tell by her breathing that my rush had again prompted hers. I kissed her roughly and she didn’t hold back. Baez’s rhythms felt ragged compared to the fine joy of us coming together. I reveled in the moment, knowing again the holiness of Tuolumne, of dissolving and letting go. Worlds dropped away, leaving me to wander my own infinities.

  I try to call out again but no sounds come. I lie rocking on a double mattress bed in the ocean. I’ve gone down into the void, sunk through to the other side of the world and resurfaced, baptized, on another ocean. The double bed is covered with blinding white cotton sheets. The sun, hot and delicious on my naked skin. Yet, there is no glare. I see perfectly. The sheets yield against my back and sway with me. Pink and gray swallows play in the sky above my bed. They caw to each other, “Who is this woman who floats in our world?” Perched on the corners of the mattress, they wait with me. They are the companions of my original self. I await their absolution. Now I belong to them, the ocean, and what poetry my soul allows. The lull rocks me to sleep.

  “I’ve got you, Jeanne. I’ve got you,” a voice echoed from afar.

  Small, sharp pains encased in my shoulders. I opened my eyes to see walls. Shadows. A poster of Angela Davis flickering in the moonlight. The pecks
were Rachel’s fingernails, clutching my shoulders.

  “Whoa! Your nails,” I called out, reaching up to loosen her grip.

  “Are you back with me, babe?” Rachel’s voice asked.

  “I think so. Haven’t I been?”

  “I don’t know,” Rachel says. “I’ve been holding you. You cried for a long time.”

  Cried? I shook my head, trying to clear it and glanced around the room once more. Should I ask Rachel if she’d been to the double bed on the ocean?

  “Where did you go? Is something wrong?”

  “Wrong? No, no.” I smiled at her. “It’s been a long time since everything was so right.”

  “That’s wonderful.” Rachel smiled, her lids half closed. “Do you want me to plant more seeds?” I shook my head. “Then I’m going to lay right here beside you, skip work, and get some sleep.”

  She turned over. “So, hold me…” Her voice drifted off even as she spoke.

  I cupped her with my body, my ankles clutching hers, and wrapped my arm between her breasts. So many years after the mountain meadow, I felt like I’d dissolved again. “Rachel?” I whispered, breathing softly on the back of her neck, “I love you.”

  Chapter 17

  The Gospel According to Joe

  [Los Angeles]

  Early June, 1975

  I woke early to watch the first sunlight fall on Rachel. As always in her bedroom, the room felt utterly peaceful as though someone had pressed the mute button on the world. I savored her body, watching her chest rise and fall in sleep, noticing her eyelids twitch as she dreamed. Running my fingers over her breasts, I pressed my lips to her naked shoulder, inhaling her patchouli oil and the seclusion it offered.

  The phone rang. Damn! Jumping out of bed, I dashed to her living room to stop the noise. Instinctively, I picked up the receiver.

  “Córdova?” the voice asked.

  “Penny, is this you?”

  “I’m sorry I had to call!” My editor sounded upset. She had a list of my lovers’ phone numbers in case of work emergencies. “Didn’t you get my message? The FBI was here yesterday. And your Nazi is calling this morning.”

  “It’s Saturday, Pen. I didn’t get your message. What did the FBI want? What about Joe Tomassi?”

  “How quickly can you be here?”

  I looked through the bedroom door at Rachel’s profile. My lips tightened. Leaving her felt wrenching. For a second The Freep didn’t feel nearly as important as reveling in bed with Rachel. The revolution promised no ration book of joy.

  I heard Penny gasp. I’d never hesitated before.

  “You’re coming in aren’t you?”

  “Of course,” I said sharply. “Be there in ten.”

  Walking back into my mute world, I looked for my shirt. Rachel stirred. “Who was that?” she asked groggily.

  “There’s a problem at The Freep,” I said, kneeling beside her sleep-soaked body. “I’ve got to go handle it.”

  “Hurry back to me,” Rachel mumbled and turned over.

  Making for the kitchen door, I stopped to grab my Dyke-bannered briefcase. Some dyke, I thought to myself. I’d missed a call from my editor. Tucking my shirt into my pants, I looked around for a comb. A yellow legal pad was propped up on the kitchen table. A note read: “Good morning Jeanne. Couldn’t sleep. Wrote you this letter in the middle of the night. Please read it if you wake up before I do.”

  This time I wanted to leave a note as well. “My heart stays with you,” I printed in large letters, no exclamation mark. I propped the pad against her bedroom doorjamb. Grabbing her letter, I let myself out the door, jumped into Lionheart, and sped down Vermont to the 101.

  With the Freeway’s wind in my hair I started to feel sane. Now it felt good to leave Effie Street for more neutral ground. Gaining distance my heart stopped racing. Driving was the pause between the action, the commercial break, in my life. Had Rachel heard me whisper those over-the-line words “I love you” the night before, or had she been asleep? The words had pushed out without conscious permission. Sex with her threatened to dissolve the instinctual divide I’d kept when bedding previous lovers. In bed with other women, I’d always had a sense, even after climax, that I wanted to be on to the next thing. This was new territory for me. Lionheart changed gears, merging into the 101 North as I pondered a non-monogamous factor I called slippage. Slippage was the slick spot in the rapid gear-change of emotion often necessary in non-monogamous life. The goal was to change gears without hitting a slick that led to a wild swerve.

  Emotional gear-change wasn’t new to me. I was reared by a calmly consistent but emotionally distant mother, and a moody, rage-prone father. I’d had to learn to gear-shift often, rapidly, and with no hesitation—to develop a survivor-oriented split psyche in relation to those that fed me. But slippage in my adult romantic relationships was proving just as troublesome. Here, slippage was the gap between the spoken and the unspoken feelings toward one lover not fully revealed to the other. Here, slippage was slick enough to send my relationship car spinning out of control. This morning I’d allowed slippage by not telling Rachel, when she’d said, “Hurry back to me,” that it was Saturday, BeJo’s day, so I wouldn’t be returning to Effie Street. And before this damn day was out, I’d probably hit another slick. BeJo still thought I was seeing several women, not just one.

  Checking my speed, I braked slightly. Non-monogamy was hell on coupledom—even for butches like me who were naturally suited to the practice. It was hard on most of my lesbian feminist friends. Feminism taught that sexual exclusivity was a male invention. Women should take ownership of their own sexuality and dispense it as they chose, without restriction by government, men, or even other women. Coupling exclusively was imitating heterosexuality, colonizing a sister, and otherwise just plain wrong. Yet most of us had grown up in the 1950s. Feminism aside, non-monogamy still felt like cheating. Our political beliefs were contrary to our emotionality. What was a dyke to do?

  Ahead I saw the Hollywood Boulevard exit. Swerving Lionheart toward the far right lane, a minute later I pulled into The Freep’s parking lot. It was time to shift into work gear, to box emotion away. Rachel and I had simply been overwhelmed by chemistry. I-love-yous needed to be left to the night, where they belonged. I reached into the glove compartment, found a comb, and ran it through my rumpled hair. Taking a visual in the rearview mirror, I saw myself calm and collected, ready for battle. I’d almost blown my duty, but I wouldn’t let that happen again.

  Penny met me on the stairs up to Editorial. “Come with me, now!” she said, turning around and pushing me toward her office.

  Cornering me in the chair opposite her desk, she lit into me. “It’s a good thing I couldn’t find you because that means the FBI couldn’t either.” She stood over me, wagging a finger. “But they might be back with a search warrant.”

  “Searching for what?” I blurted out.

  “You, The Freep, and Donald Freed, our source on your story.”

  “Christ!” I whistled through my teeth. The paper had run my article last week breaking the news that some in the Weather Underground Organization apparently wanted to float their doubts about the future necessity of armed struggle. {1} The story was controversial. Heavyweights from the New Left had called City Editor Tom Thompson and Penny herself either singing my praises or questioning the paper and me as unacceptably printing false news about a core precept of the underground.

  “Two guys in suits came in late yesterday, demanding that we produce you,” Penny continued.

  “What did you tell them? Are they coming back?”

  “Not yet. They are talking to our lawyers today looking for grounds to pull a search warrant. We told them you weren’t here, which thank God you never are. And that we won’t reveal our source, go read the First Amendment.”

  I smiled at my editor, grateful that she always had my back. In the newspaper world that didn’t happen all the time.

  She studied me thoughtfully. “Córdova, have you
seriously considered what you’ll say and do when the cops or Feds do come with a warrant? With the kind of stories you’re doing for us now, that time may come. We’ll protect you of course, but have you thought about….”

  “Jail? No, Pen. I actually haven’t given it a moment’s thought. You know me. It ain’t happening unless it’s happened!”

  “Jail can be lonely, Jeanne.”

  “You’ll bring me magazines and chocolate, won’t you?” I laughed.

  Penny didn’t smile.

  “I hear prison is a good place to write a book. Maybe you’ll publish a second book of mine?”

  “I’m begging you. You need to take this seriously,” she said quietly, now calm behind her desk.

  “Maybe I’d make a special request to be thrown into the Daddy Tank at Sybil Brand,’” I joked. “I’d be right at home with the other butches. That would make a good book.”

  Penny didn’t appreciate my literary ambition. “Does anything scare you, Jeanne?”

  I twitched in my chair, anxious to be out of Penny’s office and this conversation.

  My jauntiness withered. “Actually, I am afraid jail will be cold. I lose my nerve when I’m cold.” The fear of being physically cold had haunted me since my birth at the Bremerhaven port of embarkation in far northern Germany.

  Penny stared, about to ask more.

  Thompson’s huge frame appeared at the doorway. “Phone call, Córdova. I think it’s him! He referred to himself as ‘Córdova’s Nazi.’”

  Praise be, I mumbled. I hadn’t heard from Captain Joe Tomassi of the National Socialist Liberation Front in weeks. I thought I’d lost the story.

  Dashing into my office, I picked up the blinking line. “Where have you been, Joe?” I said casually. “I thought you’d changed your mind about our interview.”

  “Ain’t no way,” the surly voice replied. “The LAPD got a little closer than I thought they would. So I had to lay low for a while. Get some things organized.” He muffled a cough. “You still up for meeting me?”

  “Sure,” I said. “But I’ll need proof, Joe. I just can’t write that you were behind the tear-gassing of the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium and bombing of the SWP offices on your say so.”