When you first approached I had no way to understand. You, all Midwest blond, the wife and mother, legs long as prairie sky. Can you hear the longing for what I thought could never be mine? Me, the frog, my lipstick androgyny a cover for what only you saw living in stone.
You would chip away my protection bit by bit until I knelt naked before you in an attitude of wanting. I did not make your job easy any more than the stone yields to the chisel with the first blow. No, persistence was required, and more than that, desire. Inexorably you made me, a me who I did not know was there. Is the figure the creation of the artist or is it hidden there in rock, only waiting to be revealed? Am I now what you imagined, or was I always so?
It’s not only the change in clothes, the end of dresses and wide-brimmed hats. My hips have narrowed, my jaw grown more square, suddenly I know how to let my gaze linger on the pretty girl as if I might presume to know her. And my friends, those few who remain, do not recognize me. All of this I want to say you wrought. Lady of alchemy, Aphrodite of dreams.
Another one last night, another not able to reach you. You were in a Presbyterian hospital by the sea. You had given birth to our daughter. Things are breaking all around me. Things made of glass like the nautilus you brought me from Paris after you already knew you were done with me. (That week with your mother rendered me an impossibility.) Still months later I dream of you and my hand awakens hot, curled in on itself, bereft of you.
Jealous of my own fist. It knows something I never will. Your wet heat imprinted in traces at the grooves that mark the knuckles. My palm forever empty of the sweet, flat place at the base of your spine. My thighs that held the curve of your ass, lonely. I never held a woman that way before. Don’t you see?
I was your mother, your boylover, and you my midwife, my child.
There was A, for many years my man. I’d been faithful to her. You had your husband and two sons, your woman lovers on the side (you’d brought them out). For nine months I refused to be one of them. You always got what you wanted, on your terms. This time you wanted a real dyke. I needed terms of my own.
Then A went to Africa.
When the sculptor works with stone, a long time passes where nothing shows. There is a circling and a tapping, and it is all an act of faith. Then comes a moment, seemingly out of nowhere, in which what has been only surface and raw edges suddenly becomes the thing that was always there. The soul in the stone unfolds.
I don’t want to tell this story. Once it is written it is over. I can’t bear that. When the phone rings I still imagine it might be you. When it is silent I wonder why you do not call. How ridiculous I am.
The moment.
You didn’t come to class, and we exchanged angry messages. I remember I called you chickenshit. You gave it right back. Your temper opened up the place in me where violence fuels my sex. It felt good, the lust and the killing rage. Made it possible for me to say I humble myself and demand your presence at the same time. You liked that and came to find me at the beach. As I told you to do. In the parking lot I didn’t say hello, just pulled your head down to mine and gave you the kiss you’d been wanting. What I wanted was to fuck you there in public. I didn’t. I made you demonstrate your desire though, all the way back to my house, and a man on a bicycle rode by calling “Lovers, yoo-hoo, lovers” like an enchanted bird.
I made you wait on the blue couch while I searched for the poem. The one by Judy Grahn where Ereshkegal Butch Queen of the Underworld dares Inanna Queen of Beauty to face her secret want. This is you, I said, Queen of Beauty. And you were, too, so lovely in the shock of what you had provoked in me. I grabbed your hair, that blond mane, tight and read to you. Do you remember the words?
Strange to everyone but me that
you would leave the great green rangy
heaven of the american dream,
your husband and your beloved children,
the convenient machines,
the lucky lawn and the possible
picture window—to come down here below.
You left your ladyhood, your queenship, risking
everything, even a custody suit,
even your sanity, even your life. It is
this that tells me you have a warrior
living inside you. It is for this
I could adore you.
My fist is remembering the rough of your hair.
You cried as I forced your face down into my lap. Being a dyke isn’t fun and games, baby. It’s serious business. It’s warrior business. Like the poem says. I think you complained then, that I was being hard on you. You should thank me for that, I shook you, thank me for caring enough not to play your little secret on the side. For caring enough to try to bring you down here, to my world. To where you want to be. You cried some more. And then you thanked me. You did.
You were the most beautiful to me then, all your perfect passing prettiness stripped away by real grief.
Was that when you bared your belly, so that I could witness the site of your devastation? Not only the scars of childbirth, but the ravages of bulimia, the muscles destroyed by years of laxatives and vomit. I thought of napalm, dead places too poisoned for anything to live, and I believed I understood something about the price of your fortune.
You were a connoisseur, bred for private jets and crystal. I was proud you’d picked me. Cocky. At one point—not that first night, but soon—I put Mick Jagger on and danced for you to “Gimme Shelter.” We all need someone we can cream on, he sang. Baby, you squirmed with so much delight I thought I was king of the world. You had the power to put me there. And to take me down. You were the Queen of Beauty, after all.
I wouldn’t let you touch me. I don’t know how I knew to do that.
Not much happened that first night. You remembered your boys whom you’d dumped at a neighbor’s for a minute, not knowing I had other plans. I didn’t like it, you leaving in the middle of a scene. You begged for a return engagement the next night, and I said I’d think about it. In the morning you called, and I told you what to wear. A dress with a full skirt. No underwear. A more interesting bra. You confessed you’d thrown out all your sexy bras and bought plain ones because you thought that’s what lesbians like. Since you were trying to please me I forgave you. But I was clear. I wanted you in lace.
So cool and yet out of my mind. What was happening to me? My hands, my hands, my hands do all the remembering.
I put on my man’s suit. You swooned at the door. Trousers, you whispered, eyeing me in a way no girl ever had before. I said we’re going out in public. Your assignment is to let everyone know you are with me. That you’re mine. We went to the Pleasure Chest. We looked at dildos and porn. I said I need to know what you like. You fumbled, dropped your keys, acted silly. Then I took you to an upscale industry panel on gay parenting. The kind of thing I hate. But I endured it because I wanted you to see there were people like you with children and money. I wanted you to be able to imagine a life with me.
I think that was the night I danced for you. Yes, I’m sure of it now. You got on your knees in front of me, undid my slacks. It was a mistake to let you touch me. I knew it right away but didn’t know how to stop. You went home to your husband, and I raged all night, feverish to find my way back to that place of power I’d let slip away under the stroke of your fingers.
At 6:00 a.m. I telephoned, woke you. I knew he’d be gone already. Come to me now, I demanded. I’m not through with you. Of course you couldn’t comply, couldn’t leave your boys. What can I do for you, you asked. I said I need you to touch yourself. As if you were me. Now. And you did. Are you touching yourself? Yes, yes I am. Are you thinking of me? Yes, yes I am. Does it feel good. Oh yes. Do you want me to fuck you? Yes. Say it. Yes. Please fuck me. Now say this: I’m a dyke. I’m a dyke. I’ve always been a dyke. I’ve always been a dyke. I love women. I love women. I want to be fucked by women. I want to be fucked by women. I want to be fucked by you. I want to be fucked by you.
That afternoon you
told me you’d decided. No more lies. You wouldn’t come to me again until you told him. It was not what I expected. I didn’t believe you. That you would risk everything. Even a custody suit, even your sanity, even your life. To come to me. To come to yourself. But you had already made the plan to speak with him that night. I was in awe.
Walking the long stretch of beach miles beyond home I thought only of you and your courage. How I could hold you while you did this warrior thing you could only do alone. For three days and three nights I hadn’t taken in food or been able to sleep. Running on some other source, my body feeding on a part of itself I no longer needed. The detritus of my own passing. A fire burned. What becoming was happening to me? Then I remembered the poem, the invocation between us. How for three days and three nights Inanna hung on the peg of the underworld stripped to nothing. And when they stole into Hell to find the Queen of Beauty, they found Ereshkegal writhing on the ground beside her, out of her mind. Giving birth to Inanna.
Yes, I am the Butch of the Realm, the Lady
of the great Below. It is hard for me
to let you go.
When next you say “you bitch”— “wild cherry”—
and “it just happens”—
you will think of me
as she who bore you to your new and lawful
place of rising,
took the time and effort
just to get you there
so you could moan Inanna
you could cry
and everyone you ever were
could die.
You told him you were a lover of women. He said that’s okay, just tell me the truth. I slept then.
We had one more night before A returned from Africa.
You were waiting for me when I got home. I had on trousers. You wore a red dress. Tight so I could know you had nothing underneath. You had made me dinner. Up against the kitchen counter, I wrapped my hands strong around your rib cage. You said, You make me feel so female. You said, You’re my man. I think I died then. In that moment. Everything I’d ever pretended to be. Gone. With you in my hands.
I must have taken you on my lap then, on the blue couch, the sweet of you all over me, and I think I called you Baby, Baby. You must have moaned or I did and then my hand went looking for you. I remember my hand and the weight of you and my face in your hair. Jesus how you opened to me. Let me reach up into the wound, curl inside and fill your empty places. Did I do it? Did I ease the rawness for a moment? Is it sacrilege to try to speak of this? To describe the unnameable? Something eased in me, a coming home, a landing. Into a hot pink hyperactive stillness.
Who is screaming? My hand has not forgiven me for leaving. If I’d believed I could not return I would never have left. But I thought it was only the beginning, and that night I wanted you to have it all. So I strapped on the chocolate dick, lay you down on the carpet among the pillows, and knelt over your belly.
I traced the folds and pocks of that tender place with my fingers, a sureness in my hands that meant something about arriving into a knowing that was mine and more than mine—a birthright, an ancient lineage. I guess I was praying for a healing when I saw them. Judy Grahn and Pat Parker and other butch elders there in the room. I didn’t say anything at the time because I didn’t know if I was going crazy. You had taken me so far from all I’d been, I could easily have been out of my mind. They gathered around us to watch. And then I knew they were there to welcome me into a secret circle. Into the same sacred holy office they’d held for me two decades before in Berkeley, when I was trying to find a way into my life and their poetry was all I had to go by. I’ve never had a vision before, actually seen people not in the flesh. Even now talking about it I know it sounds like fiction. But those poet butches were there with us, and they were telling me what I needed to know. That I had descended to the underworld and now had to learn to live there. That it was not at all clear between you and me who had taken whom down. That this was not only your initiation, baby, but mine. That they would watch over me on the long rock road ahead.
That was the moment, really. You know the rest. How I left A to wait for you, how school ended, how you said you needed to not see me while you went through the process of divorce. I didn’t tell you how stupid I felt that last time you came by. Me in my new trousers I’d bought with you in mind. You asked me about them, as if you knew I was trying to look sexy for you. As if you knew how I needed you to find my way home. I knew better than to let you kiss me on your way out the door, but I couldn’t stop myself. If only I’d really done it, gotten on my knees and pleaded, in the attitude of the beggar you’d revealed in me. Chipped away, bit by bit, with your wild beauty.
Stone is a living thing. Only more slow moving than most. There are processes. Once in a great while eruptions come, fire, ice. It is in these moments that the stone comes to know itself as stone. Its limitations. Its capacity. Its longing.
You Know What?
Cara Bruce
I work in a place “nice girls” don’t usually visit. Starting about four in the afternoon I enter a black-covered doorway underneath a flashing marquee that reads: “live girls—all nude. ” I am a performer, a dancer, an exhibitionist. And I like it.
Sometimes I strip on stage, but mostly I work the booths. The booths in my joint have a tiny bit of glass at the bottom. They are open so I can see everything the john is doing, and he can see me. If a girl wants to make some extra money she can let the guys touch; there is also a security button if they get out of control.
I like it this way. I like to watch the men jerking off. I like to look right in their eyes as I shake my tits and move my shaved pussy up and down in front of their faces. Some girls hate to know what the customers are doing, but not me. I’m causing it; therefore I own the reaction. I want to know what I own. This is why I make the most money.
I don’t usually let anyone touch, I just like the watching. Just the two of us, making each other hot as hell in a space as big as my bathroom closet.
One day I was working the booths, it was pretty slow. A couple of guys came in, one just sat there, staring at me. I don’t like it when they just look. I want participation. Makes me feel as if I’m doing a better job. One guy jerked off, came in about two strokes. Made me feel as if I was doing too good a job. Then this woman comes in. Now sometimes we get lesbians or prostitutes with dates, and once in a while there are girls who come in with their boyfriends. Usually these women won’t even look at me, they look at the floor, their feet, their boyfriend, or they try to make out to distract themselves from the show. It’s like they’re embarrassed for themselves and for me. I always try and dance harder to force their attention. The couples never stay long.
So anyway, this woman comes in. She is hot. I look at her, dressed in her chic black business suit, little skirt, blouse, and matching jacket. And the first thing I think is that she might be a cop, but she sits down and puts some quarters in. The lights come on, and I can hear a faint beat of music from whoever is dancing outside, so I start to grind my hips and toss my hair.
The woman stares right at me, as if she’s daring me to show her what I’ve got. So I do. I look right back in her eyes and start fucking an imaginary body, real slow and sensual like. And she keeps looking. She drops more quarters in, and she spreads her legs.
She’s not wearing anything underneath, and I wonder if she went to work like this. Her legs are spread wide, and she’s shaved bare as well, giving her big and thick lips plenty of air. Now I’m thinking maybe she’s in the business, and I start sort of showing off for her.
I bring my cunt down right in front of her face, and you know what she does? She breathes on it. Real hot breath coming out and almost making me lose my balance. So I keep dancing, grinding real close to her face. She starts unbuttoning her blouse, no bra on. She lets her tits fall out, then she starts rubbing and pinching her own nipples.
She’s trying to outdo me, I think. I shake my head, that bitch is trying to steal my spo
tlight. So I reach down by my feet and pick up my prop: a big pink vibrator. I’ll give her something to feel herself about, all right. I take the toy and draw it slowly through my mouth, lubing it up. She licks her lips, still staring right into my eyes. I bring the vibrator down and tease my clit with it, knowing it’ll pop out hard and full, giving her something to stare at. So I start moving the vibrator around, turning it up a notch and breaking a sweat.
She has her skirt around her waist now, her long legs spread wide. She tilts her hips up, and starts jilling off.
She mimics me, each stroke I make with my vibrator she copies with her finger. It’s a masturbation duel, and I’m not sure if the objective is to come first or last. Without missing a beat she puts more quarters in.
I slide the vibrator up inside me. She matches this with her fingers. I’m squatting, using my palm to stick the vibrator up, then releasing my muscles to let it fall back. Her digits are diving in and out, with the same gentle rise and fall. I shake my head; I’m on fire now, this woman is making me hot. Her pretty head is tilted back slightly, her lips parted, her eyes stuck on mine.
Suddenly it hits me. I want to fuck her. I don’t usually do customers, but I want her real bad. I get up in her face, my whirring cunt is inches from her mouth, and I say, “You want me.”
She smiles, her hand never stops, and she says, “You want me.”
“Fuck me,” I tell her, and my voice quivers a little with the excitement, even though I’m trying to sound stern.
She takes the vibrator in her mouth, and she starts fucking me with it. I’m squatting above her, and she is fucking me with my own vibrator in her mouth. Meanwhile, her hand never stops moving. She’s getting lipstick all over my toy and juices from my dripping slit are sliding down and gathering on the corners of her red lips and she is still staring at me. My legs are trembling, because she is fucking the hell out of me and herself at the same time.
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