Discovery

by Radclyffe

  The complex choreography required precise coordination between the two dancers, and Yuri’s role was especially athletic as she repeatedly dropped to her knees or to the floor only to be swept onto her feet again. But even with her bad ankle, Yuri could handle the intricate steps and the heavy physical demands of the routine without much difficulty. The real problem was something far more challenging.

  One of the aspects of the Takarazuka Revue that made it so appealing to its fans was the rampant gender bending; the dashing, handsome women sang in deep alto voices, marching around the stage in sharply tailored suits while wooing the smaller, daintier, emphatically feminine actresses. Occasionally a director tried to thrill the audience by taking this gender play a step further, and the dance Jack and Yuri were to perform was one such example. Many of the moves were tantalizingly erotic—torrid embraces in which Jack slid a hand passionately from Yuri’s thigh up to her breast, sensual lifts as Yuri wrapped a leg around Jack’s waist and was carried through the air. They rehearsed each step over and over again, their heartbeats and respiration increasing, sweat breaking out on their faces and shoulders. And despite her best efforts, Yuri could not help getting caught up in the fire and exhilaration of the music, and the raw sexuality of Jack’s body writhing against hers.

  As they neared the end of the routine, the young boy lay dying of battle wounds in the Spirit’s arms. The Spirit was to bend tenderly over the boy and kiss him at last, drawing him out of his mortal body. Stage kisses were simulated with a well-positioned hand hiding the actresses’ lips from view of the audience, and so Jack had taken Yuri’s face in her palm and leaned forward, bringing her mouth a few centimeters from Yuri’s.

  What had happened next had been Yuri’s fault. She was supposed to tilt her head back, close her eyes, and pause just long enough to titillate the audience with the suggestion of a kiss—a kiss even more sensational than usual, since both characters were ostensibly male. But as Yuri lay panting in Jack’s arms, her blood pounding in her ears, all she could see was Jack moving toward her. Perspiration glistened across her sempai’s forehead, unruly strands of hair sticking to her neck, her expression one of rapturous desire as she remained perfectly in character. And instead of closing her eyes, instead of surrendering, Yuri sat up just enough to actually meet Jack’s lips with her own.

  If that had been all, if it had stopped there, perhaps she could have brushed it off with an embarrassed apology and the excuse that it had been an accident. But the instant their lips touched, Yuri lost all capacity for rational thought. The taste of Jack’s mouth, the velvety warmth of her tongue, the soft, deep wetness suddenly open to her… Yuri felt as though something inside her had shattered. She could not stop. When Jack finally pulled back with a gasp, Yuri could barely breathe.

  And then, horrified by what she’d done, she’d scrambled to her feet—and ran.

  *

  Now Jack’s guilt made Yuri feel even worse. What had happened was entirely her fault; she was the one with a history of deviant desires. Now her demons had managed to poison her beloved friend as well. Yuri dug her fingernails into her palms until she could feel the skin part beneath them.

  The teakettle whistled sharply and Jack straightened, wiping her eyes and going to the kitchen. She removed the kettle from the heat and the whistle quieted.

  “I’m going to make it right, Yuri, I promise. You shouldn’t feel that you must leave because of me. Tomorrow I will go to the board and announce my retirement.”

  “No!” Yuri exclaimed. “You mustn’t, the troupe needs you. You’re our top star!”

  “It doesn’t matter.” Jack’s hand trembled slightly as she poured the boiling water into the teacups, releasing clouds of steam. “My behavior was inexcusable. You love Takarazuka more than any of us, I think. You told me once that you would die if you could not dance. You have worked so hard to be here, and you do not deserve to be forced out by your foolish, clumsy sempai.” Her smile was probably meant to lighten the mood, but it only increased Yuri’s suffering.

  “No, Kazehiro-san, I won’t let you do that.” She went to the kitchen counter opposite Jack. Sliding the teacups out of the way, she took Jack’s hands and stared her directly in the face. The anguish she saw there turned her stomach. Yuri closed her eyes. “They weren’t just rumors.”

  “What?”

  “The things you’ve heard. They weren’t just rumors. They’re true. Well, most of them, anyway.”

  “Yuri, you don’t have to tell me…”

  Yuri opened her eyes again and her voice shook. “You need to know. It wasn’t your fault. None of this is your fault.” Their faces were too close together, and her gaze drifted uncontrollably to Jack’s lips, that soft, sensual mouth just centimeters from her own. Her breath hitched for a second before her brain took over. Backing away quickly, Yuri released Jack’s hands. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’ve always been this way, wanting things I shouldn’t. It’s already cost one friend her career. I won’t let it take yours as well.” She began to pace as the words spilled out.

  “My second year in TMS I was assigned to supervise the three first-years who cleaned the north cafeteria. One of them, Ayako, began to follow me everywhere when we weren’t in classes. She would tease that one day we would be partnered as top stars together. She was a cute girl. I liked her, so I did what I could to help her. Some of her classmates were jealous, I think, because she got so much of my attention. One day they dared her to kiss me.”

  Yuri could not look at Jack, and her cheeks burned. “So she did. Not a stage kiss like we’d learned, but a real kiss. I liked it far more than I should have.” The admission was embarrassing. “Ayako would have done anything I asked, and I couldn’t stop thinking about her after that. I was far too bold then, far too sure of myself. And she didn’t know any better. We…” Yuri struggled with the words. “We became…”

  “You became lovers.”

  Yuri’s head shot up, but she detected none of the condemnation she would have expected in Jack’s tone. Jack was watching her intently, her dark eyes full of unexpected sympathy. Yuri nodded. Jack picked up the teacups and returned to the couch. She settled in the far corner, placing one of the cups down on the table. “What happened?” It was a gentle question, without accusation or judgment. Her relaxed tone calmed Yuri’s nerves slightly.

  “Well, you can’t share a dormitory with two hundred other girls and keep a secret like that forever.” Yuri gave a short, mirthless laugh. “We were caught. The school committee wanted to expel us both, but…”

  “But you were at the top of your class. Too valuable to lose.”

  “It wasn’t just that.” Yuri sighed heavily and joined Jack on the couch. “My father has powerful influence with the Takarazuka board. He makes large donations to the Revue every year. They did not want to risk angering or shaming him by expelling his daughter for…indecent behavior. But Ayako was not so fortunate. She came from a poor fishing village on the southern coast, and the committee decided that expelling her would be punishment for us both. I didn’t even get to say good-bye. She was just… gone.”

  The memory was still unbearably painful. Ayako had told Yuri all about the years she had spent training before the entrance exams, learning ballet from self-instruction videos and books since her parents could not afford formal lessons. She failed the auditions two years in a row before she was finally accepted, thanks in large part to her sweet singing voice and likeable, engaging manner. Takarazuka was, she often said, the greatest thing that had ever happened to her. And Yuri had robbed her of that dream before she’d even been able to set foot on the stage.

  “I won’t let it happen again,” she declared abruptly. “What happened between us”—a light tremor ran unbidden through her body as she remembered the kiss—“wasn’t your fault. I don’t know why I do this to people. I can’t help it.” She couldn’t bear to meet Jack’s eyes. “I can’t even be in the same room with you without wanting to touch you. It’
s all I can think about, how beautiful and strong and clever and kind you are.” She heard Jack’s sharp intake of breath and rose to her feet quickly, humiliation scorching her face.

  “I’m sorry, Kazehiro-san. I have no right to say any of this to you. But this is why I have to leave Takarazuka now, before I hurt anyone else. Please don’t blame yourself.” She stumbled around the low table and gave a brief, polite bow. “It is late. I will bother you no longer.”

  “Yuri-chan.” Jack rose to her feet and placed her hands on Yuri’s shoulders.

  Yuri squeezed her eyes shut and wriggled away. “Don’t touch me, sempai, please don’t.”

  “Yuri,” Jack said again, her deep tones suddenly authoritative, “you are not leaving until you listen to me. Sit down.”

  Yuri sat instinctively. Jack used that commanding voice in rehearsals and she was accustomed to obeying it. Jack knelt by her feet, looking up at her, and Yuri turned her face to avoid eye contact. “First of all, you didn’t make me do anything I didn’t want to do. I kissed you because I wanted to.”

  Yuri shook her head. Jack lifted Yuri’s chin with one hand. Her eyes were bright with tears. “You captured me with your sadness from the first day I saw you. The way you danced, as though your heart would fail to beat if you stopped.” She brushed Yuri’s cheek softly with her thumb. “You shrank from everyone like a shadow, but onstage you suddenly burst into a thousand stars. I longed to see you carry that smile with you offstage as well.”

  “Jack…”

  “I wanted to be near to you, to get to know you. And once you came to trust me, Yuri-chan, I found so much passion and life behind your shyness. When we danced together I felt like I was a part of that passion. I was honored that you would open yourself to me…and I kissed you because it was the only way to express my feelings.”

  Yuri could not believe what she was hearing, and she shook her head vehemently. “No, it’s not true. It can’t be.”

  “Why not? If you can have these feelings, Yuri-chan, why can’t I?” Jack’s rebuke was quiet.

  “Because you weren’t meant to have them,” Yuri cried, backing away. “It was me, I…”

  Jack caught Yuri’s face between her hands and laid a finger to her lips. “Shh. Listen to me. Do you really believe that out of six hundred Takarasiennes, you are the only one attracted to women?”

  Yuri’s lips parted in astonishment. Wasn’t she? Jack’s hand traced the side of her face, tucking hair behind her ears. “Are you surprised? The board is anxious to preserve the image of Takarazuka. It’s something no one speaks of, but we all know it is there. You have nothing to be ashamed of, Yuri. And you are not alone.”

  Unexpectedly Jack leaned forward and brushed Yuri’s lips with her own. Yuri whimpered and closed her eyes, fighting back the wave of desire and longing that flooded her body, but it was too much. Jack’s kiss was tender and impossibly soft, and Yuri felt like she was melting inside. Jack pulled away slowly and Yuri opened her eyes to see the beautiful troupe star gazing at her earnestly.

  “Aishiteru, Yuri. I love you.”

  “Jack…” But she did not have the chance to say anything more, because Jack suddenly took Yuri into her arms and kissed her again, more insistently this time, pressing Yuri back into the couch. Yuri could not help herself. She entwined her fingers in her sempai’s choppy, bleached hair as Jack trailed a line of searing kisses across her jaw.

  “Please don’t leave Takarazuka, Yuri-chan,” Jack mumbled into her ear, nuzzling sweetly against Yuri’s neck. “Please don’t go.”

  As Yuri ran her hands along Jack’s solid, muscled back, pulling her even closer, she found herself thinking that perhaps her rebellious heart was not such a curse after all.

  Gifts - Lee Lynch

  LEE LYNCH has been proudly writing lesbian stories since the 1960s when she was a frequent contributor to The Ladder, the only lesbian publication at the time. Since then she has published a baker’s dozen books, her stories have appeared in a number of anthologies and magazines, and she has written reviews and feature articles for The Lambda Book Report and many other publications. Her syndicated column, The Amazon Trail, has been running since 1986.

  Her novels include: Beggar of Love (2009), Sweet Creek (2006), Toothpick House, Old Dyke Tales, The Swashbuckler, Home in Your Hands, The Amazon Trail, Sue Slate, Private Eye, That Old Studebaker, Dusty’s Queen of Hearts Diner, Morton River Valley, Rafferty Street, Cactus Love, and Off the Rag.

  Gifts

  Lee Lynch

  Their first Christmas Angela made a gift of herself. While Tam showered, she’d put on a white lace bra and silky white panties under a red sateen robe and tied a red ribbon around one wrist. She’d arranged the wrapped gifts around her body as she slid partly under the Christmas tree.

  She’d been twenty-two, Tam eighteen. She’d bought Tam a fringed leather vest, a heavy peace symbol necklace, and an olive fatigue jacket from the Army-Navy store. Her own new underwear was for Tam too. She wasn’t sure Tam would like the other gifts—they were so new as a couple she didn’t know enough about her, but Tam wore bell bottoms and sometimes, a paisley bandana rolled into a headband. With all the long-haired men around, Tam, short-haired, could have been one of them. And to see her among the gay guys when they went down to the city—the men themselves said Tam would have made a beautiful gayboy.

  The shower stopped. She gave Tam time to dry herself, then called to her. This gift she knew Tam would like.

  “I’m not dressed yet!” Tam answered, moving toward the bedroom.

  “Tam?”

  It took Tam a minute to locate her. Tam was wrapped in one of their too-small, faded bath towels and Angela promised herself that she’d style some hair off the books to buy them luxurious towels soon.

  “What’re you doing under the tree, Angie, peeking at presents?” asked Tam, laughing.

  Angela held up her left wrist and displayed the red bow. “It looks like Santa left you a great big present.”

  By then Tam was on her knees, looking at her in her bra and panties. “Oh my gosh,” said Tam, who came from the hill on the other side of town where they were too good, or too rich, to let their kids curse.

  She’d thought Tam would help her move the gifts aside and they’d go to bed, but Tam, smelling of her Halo shampoo, radiating the shower’s damp heat, had jumped her already, was kissing her and running her hands along her arms and sides and up into her hair. The girl was all heat, sucking her nipples though the lacy bra until the fabric was soaked. Angela swung her arms and legs as if to make a snow angel in order to push the packages away, in the process feeling an amazing amount of wetness soak her panties.

  Tam was reaching down her stomach. It wasn’t often that Tam groaned, but this morning, under the Christmas tree, when her fingers found Angela’s heat, she groaned, shaking right along with Angela.

  “Take my panties off, Tam. Please, take them off me now.”

  Tam got cute and pulled them down, first the left side, then the right, with her teeth. Angela found herself lifting up, her mons seeking Tam’s mouth. Tam was still trying to roll Angela’s panties down her thighs. Her towel was long gone. While Tam was off balance, Angela turned her onto her back, away from the tree, took off her panties, but not the bra, spread herself open, and mounted Tam’s thigh, all hard muscle from biking up and down that hill on the good side of town. She snaked her hand between Tam’s legs and moved the flat of her fingertips against Tam’s prominent clit to the rhythm of her own movement.

  “Angie,” Tam said with the quiet, urgent voice that signaled she was ready to come, but Angela was too close herself to reply, to worry about the tree, the presents, the neighbors hearing them. They were pleasure stripped of self: no Angela, no Tam, just a melding of two crazy hot bodies that left her limp with adoration. Tam turned her on by doing nothing but being herself.

  Five years later, Angela was spending her first Christmas alone; Tam was, as usual, with her parents and grandparents, while
Angela had put her foot down. She wanted Tam home with her, like their first Christmas, and she was staying home to prove her point. The night before, she’d gone over to her parents’ apartment behind their candy store on Cannon Street and dropped off their gifts. She’d also called them this morning, before they went to the big shindig at Aunt Rosa’s. She thought her mother would cry—their first holiday without Angela! Tam, clearly tense and avoiding her eyes, exchanged gifts with her, then left to spend the rest of the holiday with her family on the hill. The Thorpes would keep her as long as possible, bribing their innocent lamb to stay away from her life on the other side of the tracks with that penniless young hair person who knew a good thing when she saw it. Though she owned the shop, Angela didn’t make much money yet and she felt as low as they made her out to be when Tam left her for holidays. Someday they would swallow Tam alive and she just plain would not come home.

  Idly, she went to the television, but the programs were all about the holiday and the Soviet Union shipping rockets to North Vietnam. Thinking about the guys she knew who were fighting over there wasn’t going to help. She made herself imagine the hours stretched ahead of her as a special treat, not a bleak and lonesome holiday. It was only noon. She changed into tall boots and a car coat and went outside.

  The sky was a cold blue, with perhaps a dozen small, high, benign clouds, but with no wind off the Hudson to speak of, she was comfortable. Small mounds of snow were left over from two weeks ago. The down-at-the-heels first-floor flat she and Tam rented—in the only section of Roosevelt they could afford with all the commuters moving up from the city—was two blocks from the marina. In summer, the boat slips were filled and boaters’ cars were parked well up past their place. While Tam studied on Sundays, Angela watched first the fishermen, then the sailing crowd, and later in the mornings, the yacht owners, lug their gear. The weekly newspaper, printed at the shop where Tam worked, had been full of some developer’s plan to level these old houses and pave a parking lot for the boaters. Meanwhile, the area had been home for five years and Angela loved its ramshackle quality: the porches used as storage, kids’ new Christmas toys left in the yards, scruffy dogs and children who greeted her like a long-lost friend. And she loved the memories, like that first Christmas under the tree.