Tell me now.
“Well she was saying she might give up her celibacy as long as it was thoroughly unimportant, a trifle, a guy she couldn’t respect, just something physical and cheap—”
EMMA said that?
“Well she was just talking, thinking aloud…”
No. No.
“Oh Gil, don’t worry, she’s not going to sleep with Tom. It’d kill Lisa to see her boyfriend act like such a jerk.”
Yeah, but Emma’s trying to break those two up. Maybe she’d lead him on, thinking she was doing Lisa a favor, then … then, really follow through. And start to enjoy it. And Tom spending money on her. And Emma will move out, Lisa won’t speak to her—Emma and Tom will get married and live on Long Island—
Mandy slapped my arm: “You’re getting carried away.” Mandy was staring out to the sea oddly.
What is it? Something more?
Mandy went on, preoccupied. “It’s odd you should say Emma was a lesbian. Ironic. I mean, Janet and I were talking about this—well, fighting actually—about this today, whether Emma had lesbian tendencies. You know I thought I wanted a celibate lifestyle and then discovered I was just lying to myself about my lesbian tendencies. Then Janet and I disagreed over some other stuff.”
About Emma’s maybe being a lesbian?
“No, about whether we should sleep with her if she is. Or try to seduce her. I mean, I’m an old-fashioned kind of dyke, a one-woman woman. Lots of women are into bringing in a third, sharing lovers—there’s this whole ethos of lesbians not being jealous of one another, not competitive like men. Rivalry is phallocentric. Panlesbianism is vulvacentric, all encompassing, no jealousies, lots of sharing.”
Do you go for that?
“I think it’s bullshit,” she said heatedly. “Janet however thinks like that. She wanted us to try to get Emma to have a threesome with us, and I said—perhaps a little jealously, I’ll admit—that she just wanted to sleep with Emma, and she said of course she did and what was wrong with wanting to sleep with women, and I said not when you’re with me sugar. And it was a fight. She thinks I’m immature and haven’t been ‘out’ long enough, that I’m still uptight. What do you think?”
Nothing wrong with being loyal, I said.
We walked back to the house, walked up the stairs, went out on the upper porch and saw Tom and Janet coming back from the other direction.
Mandy grimaced. “What are those two up to?”
I had a horrible suspicion: sharing facts.
Mandy whispered, “Quiet, I can almost hear them.”
When they got closer, we could hear them laughing about something. “Thanks Janet,” said Tom, “you cleared up a lot for me.” Janet told Tom he’d cleared up a lot for her too. Mandy scowled.
9:10 p.m. Emma and Chris and Susan go for a walk to town to get sparklers and illegal fireworks if they can dig them up. Lisa has come back from the store to make new blender drinks, most of her brand-new recipes resembling Purple Sludge.
“Gil, hand me the blueberries,” said Lisa, stationed at the whirring blender, not able to take her hand away from the top lest what she was making spray all over the place. “Tom said that you two had a nice little talk, man to man. What did you boys talk about?”
Uh, baseball?
“Oh you did not! Don’t fool me for a minute, Gilbert Freeman.”
Then what did we talk about then?
“Me, I suspect.” She winked, acknowledging the immodesty. She turned off the blender and put in the frozen blueberries. “I’ve got too much goo in here…” She poured some into another bowl for later pulverizing. “You probably gossiped about me which would only be natural. I just hope you said nice things, that’s all.”
All kinds of nice things.
“I’m in a better mood about this weekend. Emma likes Tom and I’m so happy. I thought she was making fun of him all night, but I see she really, really likes him.”
I didn’t have a pleasant look on my face.
“She says he’s a Greek god. And…” Lisa started giggling. “I went and told Tom she said that about him…”
Bet Tom liked that.
“Well he is a Greek god, isn’t he?”
(The man could not be the God of Kitty Litter, Lisa.)
“And you know what else?” Then she started laughing that kind of yuck laugh someone laughs when their lover does some silly crazy wacky adorable thing. “He said he was becoming liberated by all this countercultural company. He said he wouldn’t mind it if I had a lesbian affair. Get that! Wouldn’t be jealous or anything if I had an affair with a woman—I think that’s remarkably liberal. He said,” more laughter, “that he thinks Emma and I should hook up and we all ought to be a fun threesome—he’s just crazy! Imagine Emma and Tom and I in a threesome! He’s crazy!”
Tom, you’re public restroom filth. I swear before God you will NOT sleep with Emma—you got Lisa, I lost that one to you, but there is no way you will get Emma. She is mine all mine, and if she sleeps with anybody it will be me—
“Gil, can I see you a minute?” Mandy said, poking her head into the kitchen.
We got out of earshot. What was it?
“Janet told me what Tom told her and we’re in trouble now.” Mandy spoke seriously, as if responsible for a military mission. “Can anyone hear us? Let’s go to the porch again…”
We went to the porch:
“… Tom was asking Janet about lesbianism and whether it meant a woman couldn’t enjoy sex with a man because of it. Janet, who thinks life is her weekly column in the Womynpaper, who has no shame, who looks at every woman as a—”
Go on, go on.
“Sorry. Tom told Janet you said Emma was gay, and Tom then asked Janet if he should make a pass at Emma anyway. Janet, very kindly, said don’t waste your time and at this very moment is running into town after Emma, fixing to work her evil charms.”
Well tell Janet Tom was wrong and that I lied and made it all up …
“I did tell her.”
And?
“She said I was jealous and was making that up to keep her from going to find Emma. When I get my hands on her … Oh god, look. Here they all come.”
9:45. Chris and Susan and Janet and Emma return with fireworks.
I drifted toward the living room.
“Oh Chris you don’t think I will, but you’re wrong,” Susan was saying. “I dare you to skinny-dip too—I’m going to do it, just you watch. I bet Gil will go with me…”
I drifted away from the living room.
“Gil, come here,” said Emma, putting a sparkler into my hand, leading me back outside, down to the shoreline. “You’ll never guess who wants to sleep with me.”
Janet—I was about to say, but then caught myself. If I knew about Janet it meant that I knew etc. etc. and all that would lead to my initial lie. Who, I asked?
“Chris.”
WHAT?
“He’s been gay all his life. And he wanted to sleep with a woman because all his friends were women and—oh it was very sweet, you had to hear his reasons. Women were beautiful and he was an assistant designer of women’s clothes and he understood so much about them except them sexually and he thought perhaps we could have a small fling, just once, to see what it’s like.”
If he wants a woman, why not Susan?
Emma looked at me.
All right, all right, dumb question. But what did Susan have to say about Chris’s fling idea?
“She supports him. Remember she can’t overtly chase him because she’s still going around pretending to be a lesbian separatist, creating something-or-other within her own womanspace, you have to hear her newest thinking. She came along on the fireworks expedition to support Chris in asking me, help him tell me.”
What are you going to do? I asked Emma.
“Politely refuse of course. He’s a long way off from Elvis. Tom, after all, has at least got Elvis’s body, he looks a little like him around the eyebrows too—”
WAS SHE GOI
NG TO SLEEP WITH TOM?
“What is your problem, Gil?” she cried, stepping back, then smiling. “Don’t be so worried I’m going to have sex—it’s a big deal after not having it for two years, so I’m not going to have it lightly. When I have it, it’ll be with someone I can deal with—”
WHEN? The vocabulary up to this point has been IF, and NEVER AGAIN.
“Well that’s ridiculous, isn’t it? I mean eventually one day, inevitably, sometime I’m going to have to have it again. Just not now, not until I’m ready.”
Back to the beachhouse I stormed, frantic. Whadya bet Emma was going to be ready TONIGHT? Oh, all this comes from flaunting Monica (whom I’m not even doing anything with) in her face. Ah, I reap the reward here! Oh boy, here comes Susan from the house.
“What are you up to, Gil baby?” Susan toddled over, a Purple Sludge in her hand. “Did you get some fireworks?”
Yeah I got some.
“What’s wrong? Is Emma down there? I’m going to have a talk with that girl I’ve been meaning to have. It’s obvious, isn’t it? She’s a lesbian. Bound to be. And I got confirmation on this from Janet who thinks so too, knows so.”
Yeah I think so too, I said happily. Why don’t you go down there and pursue this topic, Susan, as only two women can do? Take her away from the house, far far far far away and have a long long long long talk and show her what her true feelings are. You alone, Susan, could do this—she listens to you, she trusts you—
“She does?” Susan brightened.
Oh yeah. If you put it to her in the right way, gently, take your time, maybe she’ll see the light. Go, go to her now …
I went back up to the house.
In the living room Chris and Janet and Tom and Mandy were sorting out fireworks, lining up the most impressive for last. Lisa was wholly occupied making drinks, drinking most of what she made, getting drunk and being silly.
“Where is that Emma?” Janet asked, hand on hip. “She just slips away on us.”
“Yeah I was going to take a walk with her,” said Tom.
“Uh-uh Tom, I got dibs on her first,” Janet laughed.
Mandy formed a gun with her hand and pantomimed blowing Janet away without Janet realizing it. I went into the kitchen to talk to Lisa.
“I’m sooooo drunk, Gil,” she said, sloshing her current red drink onto the floor. “Here have one of these.”
I accepted it, tasted it, spat it out into the sink.
“Don’t like it?”
What the hell is this?
“I didn’t think the ketchup would work. But we’re out of mixers. I thought if I put enough sugar in it it would be like a Bloody Mary.”
WELL I GUESS YOU WERE WRONG.
“Yeah, guess so. Gil,” she began again, walking over to hang on me affectionately. “Guess what. I’m drunk.”
Coulda fooled me. Did she want to be put to bed?
“No, not before the fireworks at Asbury Park. Gotta set off the fireworks and all, don’t we? Where’s Emma?”
With Susan.
“If you were going to have a homosexual affair with someone of your own sex … who would the person of your own sex be? That’s the question.” She propped herself against a kitchen cabinet. She apparently expected an answer.
Uh, Jim Morrison in 1967.
“No, like now, like alive.”
No idea, I don’t have many male friends.
“I think I’d be a lesbian with Emma. Does that shock you? The idea of like lesbians and all?”
No actually, after tonight, I think the WHOLE WORLD is a lesbian—all the women, all the men, I’m a lesbian, my mother’s a lesbian, you name it, they’re lesbian.
Mandy came in, still a frown on her face. “What’s all this about lesbians?”
“We’re just having a discussion about sleeping with women, I mean women doing it with … I mean—”
“Yeah I know what lesbians do, Leese. Let’s get you to a couch and let you lie down. Before you fall down.”
Mandy led Lisa away to a sofa in a dark room, Lisa whining the whole way about fireworks, missing the fireworks. I went out to the porch.
10:45. Fifteen minutes until the fireworks.
Mandy came out and shared her newest tactic with me: “I think I better seduce Emma.”
I begged her pardon.
“No, I think it has to be done. I’ll show Janet how it feels to have your girlfriend run around and want to sleep with everything. If anyone is going to be lesbian with Emma, it better be me…”
Come one come all! The more the merrier!
If you had known, Emma, the intrigues, the drama, the Byzantine plotting and scheming all for you, all to sleep with, to win the affection of, to woo and court and seduce and make love to YOU YOU YOU, would that have satisfied you? Would it have satisfied you that everyone on the Planet Earth wanted to make love to you? With all the suffering and all the self-induced misery, I’m just curious if it might have made a difference if we all had had one Big Bicentennial Orgy with you—would it have gotten through your head, Emma? That people loved and cared about you?
“I’m going to kill you Gilbert Freeman,” said Emma, barging up the porch steps, hands out ready to throttle me.
What did I do? (Better question: Which of the many things I’ve done did you find out about?)
“You sicced Susan on me. Do you know what it is like fighting her off, her propositioning me, crying, every hysterical trick in her book, trying to get me to neck with her on the dunes? There was less fighting on the sands of Iwo Jima, for christ’s sake. And when I asked what had gotten into her she said YOU, you Gilbert Freeman, had put her up to this.”
Nonsense, Emma. You believe everything Susan says?
“Can I have a sip of your drink?”
Emma borrowed my glass and finished it off.
“You’re looking tense, Gil. Is something going on in the house?” Emma looked at her watch. “Almost eleven. Just enough time for that walk I promised Tom—”
DON’T DO IT.
“Why not?”
He wants to sleep with you, throw Lisa over for you. He told me so.
Emma smiled. “You’re kidding.”
What do you expect? You run around telling him he’s a Greek god—
“What do you want? A few hours ago you were begging me to go up and be nice to him. I told Lisa he was a Greek god. He’s not a Greek god, Gil. Body’s not bad but—”
You’re going to sleep with him, aren’t you?
Emma was laughing now. “What are you so worried about? Why Gil, you must be drunk—why are you so upset about…” And then she started laughing, and I felt she was laughing entirely at me, which she was. “Gil, you’re not … you’re jealous, aren’t you?”
NO. ABSOLUTELY NOT.
“Yes you are. Or perhaps it won’t bother you if I sleep with Tom?”
DO AND YOU’RE A DEAD WOMAN.
Emma was giggling now. “Gil, you are so drunk! This is a scream! If I think he’s vile for Lisa, why would I accept him for myself?”
Elvis’s eyebrows.
Emma was still laughing, shaking her head. “You’re too much. I’m sure he doesn’t want to anyway.”
I said: Look, I don’t care if you have sex all the time and don’t have it with me, but if you’re not going to have sex at all and then have it with … with TOMS, then I object. I think I should be included.
Emma smiled at me as if I was a twelve-year-old and consequently I felt like a twelve-year-old. “Look,” she said in turn, “it’s the thought that counts right? Actual sex means viscosities, and you know how I feel about viscosities—”
We know, we know.
“So accept the fact that in an ideal world we would sleep together. You can tell anyone you like we have already, if that’s what you want.”
But I wanted more than that. Or did I? As I thought about this, a giant red firework burst to the north over Asbury Park—the display was beginning.
“I promise you,”
Emma continued, “you wouldn’t want to make love to me now. You’d hate every minute of it.”
Really? I said, if I made love to her now I might see fireworks. Gil, always with the jokes.
“Fireworks!” yelled Chris. “It’s time! Everybody out on the porch!”
Tom ran out with a box of matches, fireworks of our own and a bunch of small American flags he got in town. Mandy and Chris and Janet absently waved them, cheering facetiously, but soon got caught up in the fireworks, giant red explosions, then giant violet-blue explosions, and then blindingly white explosions, accompanied by lots of gold frilly twinkly things fluttering down in between.
Everyone but Lisa was out on the porch and Chris suggested drunkenly we sing the National Anthem.
“The National Anthem sucks,” said Emma. “No one can sing it anyway. Let’s do ‘God Bless America.’”
And it was so uncool to sing “God Bless America” in 1976 that suddenly it seemed that it might be cool to do it, and we sang it—archly at first, overdoing the vibrato, sending it up—but by the second rendition of the one and only verse, we were singing normally and it would have been hard to say whether we meant it or not.
Lisa stumbled out to join us. “Fireworks,” she said blearily.
“Come lean against me, hon,” Tom said and she went beside him and held his hand, teenage couple-style.
Mandy flitted about pouring more sludge into people’s glasses. Janet had put two American flags down her low-cut swimsuit, a flag for each breast. Chris had a good tenor and led us in “God Bless America” again.
We stood on the balcony, craning our necks, occasionally looking beside us to see each other illuminated in greens, blues, infernal reds. Lisa dropped her glass and picked it up, stumbling. “This is my for-all-time favorite holiday ever,” she said.
“I want more,” said Emma quietly.
And to our surprise, there were more—from the other direction. Just as the Asbury Park fireworks ended at 11:30, the Sea Girt fireworks began and we jumped for joy as if we were in kindergarten. I was drunk. Emma was getting drunk. Everyone was drunk. In the lulls between firework displays, we sang, louder and sillier than before, waving our flags. The people in the beachhouse next door came out on their porch and raised their glasses to us and then they started singing; this middle-aged crew, leathery tanned women, doctors with a paunch, shirtless in ludicrous Bermuda shorts, waving a cocktail glass at us, rich drunk people our parents’ age looking over at the young folks having a good time. Who could complain to the police about us? Young people singing “God Bless America” at the top of their lungs. And finally the last of the Sea Girt fireworks finished, in an identical blur of red, white and blue. And there we were, suddenly aware we were there saying nothing.
Emma Who Saved My Life Page 16
