The Milk of Human Kindness

by Lori L. Lake

  I smiled. “Don’t worry about it.”

  “Tell me more about your mother,” she asked.

  I winced. “I actually try very hard not to think about my mother when I’m kissing a beautiful woman,” I said, trying to lighten the total weirdness of that statement.

  Delaney brushed my fringe off my forehead with a slow finger.

  “But there’s a fine line for you, isn’t there? You really need that nurturing, don’t you?”

  I nodded, my tears close to the surface. The aching loneliness and skin-hunger had been a constant for me in recent years, seeming to gather intensity as I had grown older. She had found that void inside me in the course of one conversation. And had dived in.

  “Where does the need to be mothered stop and the attraction start?” I whispered. “And for me the line is not so much fine, as … hard to locate.”

  She kissed a stray tear from my cheek. “You worry too much about these things,” she said, not unkindly. “In the end, does it matter? You’re not in any doubt how you feel about me, are you?” She kissed the corner of my mouth, a feather-light contact that sent chills through me.

  “Not in the slightest,” I husked.

  A smile. “Good. And presumably, you don’t feel the same way about your mother.”

  “God, no.”

  “I’m guessing the feelings couldn’t be more opposite.” I nodded. “In fact, my guess would be that what attracts you in women like me is the possibility of finding the kind of nurturing that you never got from your mother. Would that be a fair assessment?”

  “Yes, Doctor. How much do I owe you?”

  “Another kiss.”

  “I can do that.”

  Our second kiss was longer than the first, infinitely more mutual, and every bit as wondrous. But the day was catching up with me.

  “You look exhausted,” Delaney said softly when we broke apart.

  I nodded. “Finger’s hurting like crazy too.”

  “Want me to go home and leave you in peace?”

  “No,” I answered, honestly. “But if you want to, I understand.”

  She shook her head and smiled at me. “I don’t want to. Why don’t you rest your head here.” She patted her leg. “And we can watch a movie together. If you fall asleep, great. If not, at least you’ll have somebody to help take your mind off the ache.”

  “Sounds wonderful,” I replied. “It’s been quite a day.”

  “It has, hasn’t it? Thank you for calling me.”

  “Thank you for answering.”

  ***

  ABOUT THERESE SZYMANSKI

  Therese “Reese” Szymanski is an award-winning author of ten novels, four novellas, six plays (four produced to great acclaim), and a whole lot of published short stories, essays, articles, columns, reviews and feature stories. She’s a marketing guru who has sold millions of dollars of products with her words and raised millions of dollars for various good causes with some of her other words. She usually writes for corporations, nonprofit organizations and freelance clients during the day while all her fun—and often sexy—writing takes place at night.

  Reese lives in Austin, Texas, and when she’s not writing, editing, designing, playing with her sword collection or committing other acts of mayhem, she spends time with her girlfriend, Stacia. You can find out more about Reese and her work at her website and catch her very silly LiveJournal about totally nonsensical things at Reeseszymanski.livejournal.com. When she gets around to posting there, that is.

  Disconnected

  Memoir by Therese Szymanski

  WHEN MY OLD friend Maria visited Michigan recently from her home in Alaska, she took a little road trip to visit me in D.C. and I did what I always do with out-of-town friends: I took her toy shopping. Fortunately for me, she came just before I had a deadline on a short story I was supposed to write. This one.

  “C’mon, growing up with Sally Sue and Roman, I’m lucky I ever got laid!” Maria said, referring to her parents, as we went down the escalator at the Dupont Metro. “I never saw them touch or kiss or anything. They were the most repressed people I ever knew.”

  “Are you totally forgetting my folks?”

  “Oh, yeah. Right. At least you knew your father had sex.”

  “Well, I didn’t discover that ’til years later.” Turns out that when mom stopped putting out, my father turned elsewhere—namely toward his secretaries. Or maybe that had started before mom stopped.

  Maybe Maria sensed my upcoming brood. She looked down at the bag in her hand. “I don’t think I would have believed anyone who told me we’d ever go toy shopping together.”

  “Just like anyone who said you’d wind up dating an Eskimo woman eleven years younger than you would’ve been nuts, eh?” Maria had just come out two years before with Nu, the daughter of one of her best friends. (Nu’s real name was some long Eskimo/Indian thing I could never remember.) Whenever I taunted Maria about robbing the cradle, she turned the phrase about, insisting that she was the seducee, not the seducer—so it was more that Nu had mugged Maria in the old-age home.

  Nu’s mother wasn’t happy about the relationship. Whenever she got drunk, which was quite a frequent occurrence, she would call and threaten Maria. Or else show up at her place and threaten her. Nu and Maria had decided that moving from Nome to the great Metropolis of Anchorage might add a touch of sanity to their lives.

  “Will you quit bringing that up, Reese?”

  I considered it for a moment before replying. “Nope, don’t think so. But of course, you keep saying it, too, so ya really can’t blame me.”

  Maria’s 33 and I’m 34 and we’ve known each other for 21 years. A few years earlier, just before she came out, she had called me several times for advice because she was straight, and a younger woman was making the moves on her. After all, I was her really queer (as in “professional queer” at the time, since I worked at a national gay rights organization) friend. I lived far enough away to be her real true advisor in potentially gay times.

  There were four of us back when we all got together in junior high—Maria and Jackie were in the seventh grade, while Ethel and I were in the eighth grade. If we had been in a teen movie, we would’ve been the geeks, and that’s why we were together. Well, that and the fact we were all in the band. Which I guess automatically qualified us for the nerd squad.

  “IF MY PARENTS had kids, I wouldn’t be here today.” Jackie was the adopted one in our group. She’s also the proof of nature over nurture, because her also-adopted sister, Stephanie, grew up to become a drug abuser. Stephanie’s birth mother, whom Stephanie met once, was also a drug abuser.

  Jackie never looked for her own birth mother. She never felt the need for such a thing. She found the parents who raised her to be all the parents she ever needed.

  Jackie is now a high-school teacher in Kalamazoo, Michigan. A few years ago, one of her students asked during class, “Ms. Lemanski, can I ask you a question?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well...you own cats, you ride a Harley, you live by yourself, and you say boys are icky. Are you a lesbian?”

  “Would it really make a difference to you if I was?” she asked.

  He thought about it a moment before he finally replied, “No.”

  She can pull stunts like that because, although she would love to be a lesbian, she can’t stop drooling over boys’ bodies (per her own words. Not that she has anything for underage types, I think she just uses the word to display the condescension she has for the sex.)

  She also knows lesbian teachers, and wants to help them.

  A few years ago she was quite happy to take me and my lover to our first Michigan Wimmin’s Music Festival (giggling all the while that we were the virgins, and she was the experienced one). Every time I visit her, she takes me to the local gay bar.

  It’s almost like she’s a member of the family.

  ETHEL’S PARENTS WERE both high school teachers. She and Jackie had the nice parents, whereas Maria and I ha
d the freak shows that put the dys in dysfunctional. Since Ethel and I went to the same school, we took a lot of the same classes and made fun of the same teachers. We were geeks-in-arms, together in the honor society, Mu Alpha Theta (the math club), and eating lunch in the library.

  Ethel got her Master’s in Art history and now teaches at some small Michigan college. What I noticed at our 10-year reunion, just before she got married to a boy, was that she was toning herself down to fit with him, to make him happy. Where we would be the outspoken ones always cracking jokes and acting out during high school, she was now allowing him to take the spotlight.

  I wonder if she was following in her mother’s footsteps, or just doing what’s expected of her.

  When I told Jackie about Ethel’s personality and attire at that event, Jackie said that was a major reason she dated bikers—so she wouldn’t have to tone herself down for them.

  The idea of Ethel in a cocktail dress cracked up everyone I told.

  MARIA WAS THE one most likely to be grounded when we were growing up together. The one most likely to have false accusations thrust upon her. While my parents ignored what I did, hers watched her like a hawk.

  She had one brother, a half-brother, who was older. I never knew just how much older he was, though it was at least a decade from what I could surmise. He was the fruit from her mother’s first marriage. Literally. He died from AIDS when we were in high school. Her parents did all they could to cut off communications between Maria and her brother when he came out, and when he died, Maria was not allowed to attend the memorial.

  I only learned about her brother when one weekend she was acting all whacked, and Jackie gave me the 411 on the situation. Maria couldn’t tell me herself.

  There are some key moments that define relationships, just as there are some things that you clearly remember years later. I remember that, when we were in high school, Maria was once apparently not listening to her mother, so her mother did the only reasonable thing she could and threw a grapefruit at her—with amazing accuracy.

  At least mine never did that.

  But my father did slam me out of my chair one night during dinner when I was fourteen. He had been repeatedly sticking his finger in my face, lecturing me throughout the meal. I finally asked how he liked it. And I stuck my finger in his face. He didn’t care much for that.

  I stopped eating with them after that.

  “I ALWAYS SEEMED to get along well with everyone’s parents,” I said to Maria Friday night, while we were drinking the night away in my apartment. “But then I think they saw my evil side—”

  “No, actually, my mother needed to blame someone for the fact she and I weren’t getting along. You were an easy target.”

  “Well, there was the time Ethel’s dad asked her why half the family car’s hood was clean, while the other half was dirty. Before she could come up with some excuse, he said he knew it had to do with that ‘Polack.’”

  “Oh, hell, he was always a trip! Wasn’t that after the night we went through the McDonald’s drive-thru with you on the hood? In the middle of the winter?”

  It was a really cold, Michigan night. “Yeah, it was. The night before I was gonna start managing there.” I took another sip of my beer. “It did start that job with a bang for me. At least I wasn’t labeled a goody-goody for a change.”

  In other words, Maria and I were taking a drunken trip down memory lane. Remembering the times when we were each other’s best friends, confidantes...family.

  JACKIE AND MARIA went to a private Catholic girl’s high school and grew apart after a while. Maria was in track and other running sports, while Jackie was more involved with theater.

  Ethel and I went to the local public high. She was my closest at-school friend—and even after we four split to different schools, we still got together a bit.

  My senior year of high school, my best friend was a co-worker at McDonald’s. So much of my time (40 hours/week) was spent at work that my old friends weren’t with me so much. Plus, I had it bad for a girl, Donna, who was a green-eyed blonde with a wicked sexy grin.

  ETHEL AND I made the mistake of rooming together our frosh year at University, and since then, we haven’t been in touch. (I can’t remember what tossed us off—if it was the fact that she was a total slob who left all her used tissues behind the couch; maybe her falling in with a crowd who had her searching through all my private stuff, including my desk; or maybe it was that everything of mine was up for share-time, while her stuff was hers, and hers alone. I guess no matter how much she bitched and moaned, she really was mama’s little girl.)

  We four were all writers to some extent. When Ethel and I were in the ninth grade, the four of us started doing an annual writing project (The Books of Weird and Demented Things) for fun. We bonded through our geekiness—that we never really fit with others. Occasionally, some folks hung with us a bit, but they’d fall away because, well, they weren’t quite nerdy enough for us. After all, there’s many different types of otherliness.

  For instance, my pseudo-boyfriend Tom hung with us for a bit. He came into our group because his parents bought the cottage next to the one my folks had.

  Now, whenever my mother asks me about Tom, wondering whatever happened with him, and why I don’t go back to dating him, I don’t remind her about the many times she stopped our dates. Instead I look her right in the eye and say, “The last time I saw him he was snorting a line of Coke in the women’s room of a gay bar.” One must be direct when dealing with my mother. Nope, no namby-pamby stuff for the wicked old Polack without emotion.

  MY PARENTS WERE 45 when I popped out. When I was eight, my mother started telling me I was a mistake—that she only wanted four kids.

  I have three brothers and one sister, all older. My sister and one of my brothers are my godparents. We’re a good Catholic family. Five kids, and the nearest in age from me is six years my elder, while the oldest is 18 years older. In some ways I might’ve been an only child, but nothing can ever be easy.

  My parents mostly noticed me when I was an inconvenience. In so many ways I was simply an object to them.

  When I was 13, I developed the linguistics to properly reply to my mother’s blaming my existence on me. I stood at the bottom of the stairs and yelled up to her, “Actually, mom, you fucked dad one day, and I’m here because of it.”

  My friends of the time would have been amazed to hear me use the F word. One day Ethel complained to our Trig teacher that my parents didn’t even look at my report card, and hers would corner her and ask for reasons. A few days later, I got a test back with a B at the top and replied simply that I’d have to work harder the next time. Mr. McAleer looked at Ethel and said that’s why my parents didn’t care about my report cards.

  But that wasn’t the reason.

  My mother may be 79 now, but she’s actually 9. When I was 11, my sister wanted to fly me out to New Mexico to spend time with her. My mother claimed I wasn’t old enough to fly by myself, so she had to come with me. But I was the one who had to lead mom, find the gates, and make sure she kept track of all her belongings (she still managed to leave her jacket in Dallas).

  When I was 18, my folks decided I could travel by myself. And I learned to never, ever let them pack my carry-on bag again. For that particular adventure, where I had a layover and all, they put five pounds of kielbasa, a six-pack of Stroh’s, and a brick into the carry-on I was carting across the country (it was a very nice brick—my brother’s belated birthday present—complete with a hand-made cover—but my bag weighed more than me!)

  When we moved into the house in Warren, my sister Sheila still needed a room. She had a little bit of college to finish. There were three bedrooms in the house—one for me, one for Bruce, and the master bedroom for the folks. Sheila didn’t want to keep me awake all night with her studying, so she camped in the basement, and dad built her a room down there.

  When Bruce’s room was being painted, he took my room, and I stayed in the basement beca
use there were spiders down there. Apparently I had more of a tolerance for them than Bruce.

  My mother’s sole reason for my existence was to take care of her when she got older. After I graduated from college, I couldn’t find a job in my field immediately. (All of my folks’ kids paid our own way through college. Mark lived in the family house for a while after college, until he got kicked out. The rest ran far away as soon as they were done.)

  Mom bribed me into moving back in with her. That lasted all of like six months, then I moved out. I couldn’t stand it. She didn’t fight my moving out because just before I moved out, I came out on the CBS evening news, and she managed to see it—as well as the previews, where they showed me saying, “I’m looking for the woman I can take home to meet my mother and say, ‘But Ma, she is my Mr. Right!’” while doing a three-snap.

  GRADUATING HIGH SCHOOL, and leaving the Schoenherr McDonald’s broke ties for me. Rather like leaving home does. I lived with Ethel my frosh year, and still kept in contact with Maria, Jackie, and Donna, my hottie co-worker at Mickey-D’s. But Donna and I fell off slowly that year, especially with the death of former co-workers and the relatives thereof. But the killing blow was felled when I came out and realized I loved her.

  It was kinda like being disowned by one’s family when one comes out.

  By my junior year, I no longer roomed with Ethel. And I wasn’t talking much with Maria or Jackie. And not a word with Donna, for the most part.

  IN 1991 I called my mother to tell her I was going into the hospital for a few days. (I had a bad incident with what turned out to be Cujo Cat—a cat that got in at least a dozen bites before we got him off me.) Turned out dad was going into their local hospital for a day or two as well. When I got released two weeks later and called them, dad was still in.