The Vintage Book of International Lesbian Fiction

by Naomi Holoch

  The Same Person

  I went to the store, and, feeling sorry for the caged birds, I told the guy: “How can you sell animals?” He replied: “Aren’t you an animal too?” So I lowered my eyes and admired him.

  Weather

  I used to love the heat and, even now, the sweat. My sheets used to get wet and I, rolling on them, my body in ecstasy. I was then sixteen, or a bit more. I kissed the air of this town with passion and carried it in my arms. I couldn’t love a man because I loved the sea. Then, I went away, and the spell broke. The weather aged, got wrinkles, its bones and marrow became soft. It is nowadays like breathing mud. When it rains, I can’t feel happy for the trees. They do not exist. So I feel happy for the buildings. They get an imperfect bath. As for me, the eternal sun has worked like a siren on my brain.

  It has eaten up my intelligence. The dust has filed my nails. Cockroaches run over my paintings, and I get up at night to kill them and to keep them away at the edge of my dream. But the dampness is constant, and invisible amoebae constantly dance in the air. One feels always a bit swollen in Beirut. It is a pregnancy of bad omen. You have to go to a village called Sannine to start breathing properly. But you never stay too long up there. You miss the weather of Beirut.

  Place

  I left this place by running all the way to California. An exile that lasted for years. I came back on a stretcher and felt here a stranger, exiled from my former exile. I am always away from something and somewhere. My senses left me one by one to have a life of their own. If you meet me in the street, don’t be sure it is me. My center is not in the solar system.

  People

  This is the cruellest place. A man in a motorboat hit a swimmer and sped away. The skull was broken. A large space of blood covered the sea. Painters rushed to the scene to make a painting for sale. A girl was killed by her brother because she smiled to her lover. A house in the city was set on fire because they wanted the tenants out. A rebellion has started, the rebellion of the rich against the poor. Yes, to make sure that the latter do not multiply, and rather be dead, the sooner the better.

  My House My Cat My Company

  From every drawer, the blood of my spirit is spilled. My eyes, anguished by the light, have cruel particles of dust covering them. Noises come in as demons. No crime in the newspaper is as gory as the noises that surround my bed. It is an eternal beat.

  MAO is the name of my cat, who has been rescued from a friend. He sleeps on my left side, watches my heartbeats. At night, when he sometimes runs away, I have to go out and look for him. Most often, he runs out at about four in the morning, when the Koranic prayer fills the air and when its lamentation seems endless and fills me with sacred terror. That terror is communicated somehow to MAO, whose hair stands up. He shivers against me when we come home.

  One morning my breast was bare and he put his paw on it. It was a moment of perfection.

  So I gave him away, but he came back.

  I live with a woman who shares with me my passion for ants, from the day I told her that my father had taught me to watch them attentively in order to imitate them later in life. This was my education. I was told that ants had all the necessary qualities. They were tiny and carried weights bigger than their size. They never slept. Industrious, they stuck together, never doing anything alone. And when you killed them, they multiplied. So my friend fell in love with my father for having been so right. But he is dead. The ants keep me company, coming from under the flowerpots all the way into the closets, glasses, spoons. They stop at the door of the refrigerator. Their brain is tinier than the head of a pin. So angels must exist.

  I am a species all by myself. That’s why no fish comes to swim in my territorial waters. I have no enemies.

  I live with a woman who has a recurring dream: each night she goes to unearth Akhenaton and carries his coffin all over the house. The young king has a nocturnal journey on her arms. His solar boat had been shattered by his murderers. She weeps for him, sometimes, during the day too, but she does not go around like the women from America in pink slippers and bobby pins to the supermarket. No. She uses silverware, puts salt and pepper on her meat, and she tells me that she does not proceed from a source of light but from a source of shadows.

  As for me, I told her that I find my reason to be in the configurations of matter.

  I love the different objects I encounter with violence. I have a passion for cars. My spoon is to me what the angel used to be to Jacob: my moment of truth. People throw their fingernails away, and I look at these pieces of matter with awe: transparent like alabaster, tiny like African ants, pale as erased memories. I throw them away with a tremendous melancholy. I would like to be buried with “St. James Infirmary” playing. Or something like that, maybe a song by Oum Kalsoum.

  Then I would like to resurrect. Death would appear as short as the time for the batting of an eyelash. I am of those who like resurrection, and I am not alone in that; I hear people saying it, when I walk, and mostly in New York.

  …

  Weather

  Spring is deadly, like red roses.

  The weather always awakens in me the fear of death. I am of those animals who have a strong life instinct, but the forces of death, like huge tides, beat against me. I go from country to country and each time, the earth, under my feet, becomes an ocean. So I move on. Chasing each place’s weather.

  At noon, I visit buildings under construction, I look at the Syrian workers while they eat. There is always some cement on their bread. When they cut a watermelon, they count the black seeds in order to know how many days separate them from their own death. They don’t know what they are doing. It is for them like playing chess.

  Spring starts, here, in February. We faint on our desks. In classrooms. In rooms. A thin veil of sweat covers my face and my neck, runs between my shoulders, all along my spine. My nerves quiver. The heat grows. In June, July, August, I resemble a flat tire. Then, all kinds of amoebae stir in my belly. The heat is a culture bed, my body works like marshes, and in the green foliage of my insides flowers of some anti-paradise grow. Airplanes zoom above, and, because I am a four-footed animal, I stay on the ground, and even below. October in Beirut is the end of the road to hell. Dampness has reached its saturation point. By then one can hardly move. Tired bones, tired eyes, tired fingers. One by one my nerves go. The harbor is cluttered. So are the streets. In a dark and polluted air I act as if I were breathing. The year is almost gone, and the very short rains are waiting….

  Place

  My place is at the center of things. I am writing from within the nucleus of an atom. Blood beating under my ears. Some dry heat radiating from my nerves. A pressure trying to push my eyes ahead of me; they want to travel on their own. My place: highways, trains, cars. One road after another, from ocean shore to ocean shore. From Beirut to the Red Sea. From Aden to Algiers. From Oregon to La Paz. I keep going, prisoner of a body, and my brain is just a radio station emitting messages to outer space. Angels, astronauts all dressed in white, I would like some strange being to take me somewhere where no disease blurs my perception. I will grow wings and fly.

  Gina Schein

  The Australian writer Gina Schein represents a new generation of open and irreverent lesbian writers. In “Minnie Gets Married” (1993), the Sydney-born writer unabashedly carries the reader through a spirited disruption of a conventional social ritual. Schein’s playful use of dialogue and internal asides pokes fun at the absurdities of “normal” behavior. The author, who has written extensively for Sydney’s gay and lesbian press, nevertheless undercuts the heavy drama that usually surrounds the absence of heterosexual privilege. While not denying the seriousness of social struggles, this story’s humor promises new vitality and unrepentant victories.

  MINNIE GETS MARRIED

  ANN sat in the back of the car next to little Deb and Katie. Her dress creaked. Her nasal passages were clogged with the perfume that weddings are drenched with. Or maybe it was some cheap stuff that the twin
s had on. She breathed, quick and shallow, trying to clear her head.

  “You right?” The chauffeur turned his head and little Deb and Katie looked at her.

  “Yep. Sorry. Ha.”

  Little Deb looked up at her. “Will there be food soon?”

  “I hope so.”

  “Why are you so tall?”

  “Why are you so nosy?”

  “Just askin’.”

  The limousine purred on in silence. Ann examined her hands, which were nested in her lap, until the car stopped outside the RSL club. The driver stood at her window, opening the door, helping them out. The three bridesmaids looked beautiful out in the sunlight. Minnie’s parents, Mrs. Bellini and Mr. Bellini, stood and smiled at the two little cuties (Steve’s kid sisters) with the little rings of flowers around their heads. That tall Ann, little Minnie’s friend (it had to be said now that she was closer), actually looked the worse for wear after the service. Minnie’s brother Peter peered into her face, concerned. His face was raw from shaving.

  “You don’t look too hot,” he said.

  “I don’t feel it either.”

  He put a hand on her shoulder. “I’m amazed you did this.”

  “From this point on, I’m here for the alcohol.”

  Just as she was getting the hang of walking in those shoes over the grass, Mrs. Bellini scooped up Ann’s hand and placed it gingerly in her own.

  “Ann, in case I don’t get to you later.” Wait till I get to you, you little pervert! “I just want to say thank you because we do appreciate it.”

  “That’s fine, Mrs. Bellini.” Her hand was dropped.

  And then the MC positioned them in a subdued V shape at the club door. Her and the two littlies, their tiny hands thrust into hers.

  “Stand here until I call you.”

  He disappeared. Where was Minnie? They stood rustling in hot silk. Rooted to the spot, wavering uncertainly like three pulsating blue lilies.

  “Bridesmaids, Ann and little Deb and Katie!”

  The twins had to lead this huge lumbering woman, who clearly had no idea how to walk (how embarrassing for them), into an important event. Ann was expecting, hoping for semi-darkness, but it was incredibly, rudely bright. There was the Bellini family. Her own seat was next to Minnie’s tiny Aunt Luisa and her own partner Ian, who was Minnie’s cousin. Aunt Luisa craned to kiss Ann on the cheek and patted her down like a willful dog.

  “Well, Annie, sit sit sit….”

  Even when she had sat obediently, Ann towered over the diners like a mournful crane among merry-making, chattering sparrows. Aunt Luisa poured her some champagne.

  “Yuk. Soup!” the twins said.

  “And now can we please welcome…,” the MC boomed. “For the first time, Mr. and Mrs. Nikkaleiedes!”

  Minnie and Steve swept into the room. Clear across the room, Ann could see the snail trail of tears on Minnie’s cheeks.

  My Minnie, my sweetie pie. Careful kid.

  Aunt Luisa patted her hand. “They look wonderful, don’t they?”

  “One more kiss for the cameras,” the MC boomed. It was an order.

  Minnie stood with Steve at the door. Steve ran his hand over the back of his head again and again as though wondering where all his hair had gone. There was a storm of flashes while he kissed Minnie once, again, and then again, on damp cheeks. “That enough?” he asked.

  “The church kiss was longer,” teased the MC. “And more on target.”

  He was a devil! He’d always found that ignoring the tears was the best shot and so Minnie was led gently to a seat, a freshly crowned but bewildered princess. She was six places away from Ann. The littlies ran up and down behind the tables for the rest of the courses, too excited to eat. The soup was good. Little Deb and Katie had stored their bowls under the table but were playing a game with the croutons.

  For one moment or maybe two, Minnie caught Ann’s eye and smiled. Ann raised an eyebrow and smiled back, showing what she hoped was an elegant irony, as if to say “Look at this hand that fate has dealt us.” Then it was time for the telegrams. As in wartime, the arrival of a telegram could mean life or death.

  “Could we have a bit of shoosh please?” The awful MC handed over the microphone to the best man. The hand that held the telegrams shook.

  “To Steve, roses are red, violets are blue …” The mike was adjusted but the shaking hand couldn’t be helped. “… if you don’t get some tonight, then what good are you?”

  Har har! Steve’s dad was nodding in approval while a line of Bellini relatives pfffed and snorted into the hands and glasses.

  “To Steve and Minnie, best wishes from the class of seventy-nine.”

  So tame! Ann closed her eyes.

  To dearest Minnie, I love and lust after you but I don’t forgive you. I miss sex with you. What a team we were! Your loss, honey. Hot kisses from your bridesmaid, Annie.

  “More champagne, Ann?”

  “Thanks, Aunt Luisa.”

  After the cake was cut, symbolizing their first action taken together, Steve and Minnie danced the bridal waltz. The wedding party watched in polite silence as they shuffled back and forth. An unerringly flicked crouton from little Deb crunched under Minnie’s heels.

  Aunt Luisa felt that something was wrong. Her smile faded. She frowned. A sensitive radar seemed to emanate from her. Her head moved back and forth as though she were a psychic sniffing out the scent of the future. She gave a low questioning moan. She was tracking down a very clear signal. “What’s wrong, Aunt Luisa?”

  Ann looked at Luisa just as the same thought occurred to both of them: Minnie would not end up with this man, this Steve. And should not. Not at all! Aunt Luisa studied her plate, her dark brows knitted together. Ann smiled into her warm champagne. So all was not lost.

  “Good food eh?” Ian, who was adjusting his bow tie, belched. “We’re next.” He drained his glass because this was going to be tough, dancing with this girl Ann.

  “And the bridesmaid and partner, Ann and Ian!”

  Ann nearly jerked him off his feet in her hurry to get the dance floor and her little Minnie.

  “Take it easy!” Ian said. The girl was huge and gawky.

  “And little DebnKatie!” The MC could have been calling raffle winners.

  So now there were six of them in this circus. The little twins clutched each other, their flowers skew-whiff over their ears, and swayed in a parody of Steve and Minnie. Ian and Ann did a neat, precise lap of the floor. Ian had started to relax a bit when they approached the happy couple for the second time.

  “Minnie!” It was a restrained but urgent whisper that Ian could hear coming from right next to his head. Bloody Ann. Maybe she’d dropped something. He looked at the floor.

  “Minnie Min!”

  “Shut up!”

  “No!”

  Minnie was looking at Ann over Steve’s shoulder. Ian tried to dance Ann away from them but that made it worse. The next whisper was louder.

  “Are you sure, Minnie?”

  Minnie was whimpering, for God’s sake.

  “Are you?!”

  The MC had never seen anything like this stringbean girl who was whirling her partner around like a dervish. She seemed to be hissing at the poor little bride.

  “And now, ladies and gentlemen. When you’re ready to join these lovely couples, get up and have a spin!”

  Ian was about to suggest sitting down, now that there were plenty of other couples up, thank Christ, when he felt Ann melt away from him. Ann tapped Steve on the shoulder.

  “Excuse me. May I?” Quicker than a wink she scooped up Minnie, her little Min, around the waist. Steve and Ian stood and watched.

  “For fuck’s sake.” But Steve was as nothing next to her. A mere speck.

  She was dancing with his wife.

  Steve looked at Ian. “She’s dancing with my wife, mate.”

  Ian nodded. “Maybe that’s what you’re supposed to do. Do you want a drink?”

  Minnie tried
to look at Ann, but the overwhelming familiar smell of her, the feel of her body, was enough.

  “Jesus, Ann. Jesus!”

  “You signed my dance card, remember?”

  The stringbean and the crowned princess swirled around the floor, scattering little Deb’s croutons. Minnie was half laughing, half groaning with embarrassment. Ann was in full stride, now that action had been taken.

  “Remember when we came home from that party? Remember when we fell asleep on the lawn and your mother found us in the morning?”

  “Is this supposed to make me feel wistful?”

  “Yes. I want you to remember. Remember everything.”

  “Mum said we were perverted.”

  “No. She said I was perverted. You are still her baby daughter.”

  Other couples, looking and then looking again, were laughing. Little Deb and Kate waltzed past professionally.

  “When do we get cake?”

  Minnie smiled down at them. “Soon.”

  Little Deb watched them a bit more. “Why are youse dancing together? You shouldn’t be dancing together.”

  “It’s the tradition for women to dance together at weddings.”

  “Oh sure.”

  “Anyway, look at you two.” Ann turned back to Minnie.

  “Remember when we danced together for the first time?”

  “Whah yayes!”

  Minnie and her southern accent! It was a good sign. Inside herself, Ann crowed. Quick! More!

  “Remember when your mother found us kissing in the garden?”

  “Why did everything happen in the garden?”

  “The smell of hot lawn and your gardenias. There was something … labial about them. To put it quite frankly, they smelt of fanny.”

  “They didn’t!”

  “Yes, Min, I’m afraid they brought out the butch in me.”

  “Not in that dress, mate.”

  “See what I do for you? I cross-dress for you. Would Steve do that? I’ll even kiss you if you like.”

  “If we kiss, then this wedding is finished. My marriage is a sham.”

  “Then I will, definitely.”