Beggar of Love (10 page)

One fall Saturday night Margo was out of town, lecturing at a Canadian university again. She couldn’t help but wonder if Margo had a student in every port. As it happened, Lily Ann’s date was a no-show. They went downtown together through an autumn chill as crisp as a McIntosh apple, to see an old movie in a Fred Astaire retrospective.

“Hey,” she said with some excitement as they exited the building, her fists in the pockets of her quilted down vest. “I had no idea you were an Astaire fan.”

“One or two of you pink folks can dance pretty fairly.”

“Kind of you to notice,” she replied, then, as they turned onto Greene Street, hunched against some lively breezes and spurred with enthusiasm brought on by the dancing in the film, she flung her arms out and swung around and around, singing “Isn’t This a Lovely Day?” She danced the short way to the corner, then back to Lily Ann and bowed.

“Lovely day? I am freezing my ears off, you fool,” Lily Ann said, stamping her feet and breathing puffy clouds from her mouth as she spoke.

Jefferson said, “I have a solution for that.”

“What, a pair of earmuffs?”

She put her always-hot hands over each of Lily Ann’s ears and sang “Dancing Cheek to Cheek.”

Lily Ann laughed until Jefferson thought she was a bit hysterical, so she danced in front of her, leading her friend by her covered ears. Lily Ann laughed herself into Jefferson’s arms. It was only a minute before their cheeks really were pressed together, with one of Jefferson’s hands still warming Lily Ann’s free ear.

“Ooh, you’re toasty,” Lily Ann exclaimed.

Jefferson put her arms around her and swayed them to the music right there under the lamplight of Greene Street. When she let Lily Ann go, they hurried to the subway arm in arm.

Jefferson had no plans, but she couldn’t think of anything to say to break their silence except, “You want to see our place in town?”

“You have a place in town and you live at the dorm?” asked Lily Ann, who had been fascinated by Jefferson’s description of her parents’ and grandparents’ large homes in Dutchess.

She felt guilty about her family’s financial comfort. “Really, the place is small and they don’t want me around when they come to town.”

Lily Ann stretched out her long legs. “Sure. I’d love to see how the other half lives, J.”

“We need to switch at Times Square to go up to the West Side.”

“I was going to have to do that anyway to go on home. I’m surprised your place isn’t on the East Side.”

“It’s my grandparents’ apartment. They got it before World War Two.”

The train hummed beneath them. The subway stops were fluorescent possibilities. The intense anticipation that thinking of making love instilled in Jefferson was beginning to bud. Nothing brought her into focus more than a woman who wanted her. Something about being desired, having someone want her gay self made her light up inside like the Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center. She was sexual energy incarnate by then, driven to give Angie or Margo or whoever appealed to her the greatest pleasures of her life.

What would Lily Ann be like? She imagined her to be a passive powerhouse who could go as long as she could and give as much as she did—a passionate woman of few words, like herself. Margo always wanted to talk about how a new position felt, what they should do next. She had the
Kama Sutra
and showed Jefferson pictures. She wanted to try everything, by the book, and to experience things inside her that Jefferson, if she could have bought them, would not use. Margo was queer, she said, because she didn’t like the way men were made.

Why was Jefferson so sure Lily Ann wanted this? She couldn’t say. She’d had the same instinct with Angela and Margo. Her breathing was shallow. She felt a little sick to her stomach again, but more like she was scared or overexcited. Nothing else in her life gave her this sensation. Was it some kind of lesbian chemistry? Was she afraid Lily Ann wasn’t reacting the same way? Was she thrilled to death that she would be making love again? Did it matter who with? Did other gay women experience this state of excitement? She couldn’t ask a lover. She’d tried to find information in books, but no one had written anything, and she had no lesbian friends to question.

By the time they shuttled over to the A line, the next symptom of seduction appeared: she was trembling. She was physically uncomfortable but never felt better emotionally than at moments like this. Her storm clouds vaporized. Her anticipation was better than drinking, better than the actual sex. She was a wire pulled taut, strung over the canyons of the city, vibrating. She wasn’t trembling so much as vibrating.

Her mind shut down. She was only her body. Out on the cold street again, as they strode, two strong, tall, free women, she caught Lily Ann’s handball-callused hand, larger than her own. Lily Ann let her and she wanted to crow. They shared no nervous chatter, no hesitation. Lily Ann seemed to know Jefferson was hers that night and she was Jefferson’s. At one point Lily Ann stopped and pointed up. The moon was a bright half circle with one star its companion. Jefferson breathed so deeply the cold air tore at her throat. She pulled the scarf from around her neck and wrapped it around Lily Ann’s. When they walked again she didn’t need to take Lily Ann’s hand, but as they turned the corner, Lily Ann slipped it into the crook of Jefferson’s elbow.

In the elevator, she smiled at Lily Ann, so they wouldn’t lose the connection. She couldn’t read her face, but her eyes were golden with some kind of light she’d never seen in them before.

The apartment was dark. She lit only the small lamp in the foyer. She hung their coats in the closet, weighing the risk of putting an LP on the hi-fi. She didn’t know how committed Lily Ann was to what they were about to do. She had to avoid missteps or the mood could vanish.

Lily Ann had moved through the dark living room to look through a window at the corner of moon that peeked above the roof of a new high-rise.

“Lil.” She used her softest voice. “Shall we dance some more?”

Lily Ann wore a soft-looking sweater the shade of fiery orange sunsets. She held out her arms. She was light and followed Jefferson’s hummed rendition of “Dancing Cheek to Cheek” as if an orchestra was playing. It was amazing how feminine a six-foot woman could be.

Jefferson danced them to the big bed in her parents’ room. The moon seemed to be craning over the high-rise to light their way. Jefferson, both of Lily Ann’s hands in her own, guided them into seated positions on the edge of the bed. She’d never had to reach up to kiss a woman before and was very aware that Lily Ann was probably used to men taller than herself. Certainly the men she’d seen her with on campus were at least her height.

With the tips of her fingers, she felt the bones and soft flesh of her friend’s face. Lily Ann tipped her head back, eyes closed, and moved slowly into her fingers until the palms of her hands cupped Lily Ann’s cheeks and she could pull their faces toward each other. Lily Ann’s lips were wide, soft, infinitesimally responsive to her own hot but restrained kiss. And then they fell back onto the bed, legs immediately entwining, breasts to breasts, lips to lips.

She hadn’t realized how very much she wanted Lily Ann. Bits of their nearly all-night conversations came to her as they kissed, barely breathing, then gasping between kisses, for a marathon amount of time. She remembered how intense their communications sometimes became, how they’d laugh together until they were immobilized with mirth, their eyes running tears. And now, as always when she first made love to a woman, a kind of exaltation brimmed up in her. The people who thought gay love was awful would never imagine how spiritual she felt at these moments, how outside herself yet merged with her lover and with some universal power that dwarfed them and gave them love’s energy.

During lovemaking, Jefferson still tended toward silence. Margo got boisterous; sometimes the neighbors banged on the wall. Angie had been chatty, joking and laughing during foreplay and immediately after orgasm. Jefferson’s own silence came from focusing on them, on the ecstatic dance of giving them pleasure.

Lily Ann was silent too. There was only the sound of kissing and, now, the rustling of sheets as Jefferson guided her into a more accessible position. That was when Lily Ann hesitated.

“What’s going on here, J? I think I like this. It never occurred to me that I might.”

“Kind of surprised me too,” she answered, meeting her eyes.

Now that it was happening, who else, she thought, but a best friend would she be drawn to? Lesbians might have greater access to women, but men did not have to make a secret of being who they were and for sure didn’t have to hide their desires. It was expected, demanded, that a man make a play for a woman who vaguely appealed, and men seemed to desire them all, including Jefferson, who turned down requests for dates with incredulous laughter.

Society, she thought, says I’m not supposed to have these feelings. How can anyone dictate what feelings I should have? Lesbians, she concluded, could be parched, perishing of desire, and were compelled to lock their longing inside themselves where it ricocheted around, bruising heart, ego, and soul until, she thought, it was no wonder so many killed themselves or went a bit nuts.

It hurt to swallow her own desires. They became toxic and she felt guilty all the time about them, as if she were contemplating something enormously more appalling than attraction—mass murder, perhaps, or matricide. Not love. The feelings were immutable and had been there long before she had a name for them.

She remembered, again, the excitement of watching Emmy prepare for evenings out with her father and the thudding of her heart as she sat in the tunnel of bedclothes she’d made with Cynthia before their mothers forbade it. So when something like this happened—Margo, Lily Ann—the emotional release, though shallow with Margo, was powerful enough for her to confuse it with her hormonal drive. She thought she was feeling love, but sometimes suspected that unbearable desire was a trickster in love’s clothing.

Was she in love with Lily Ann? Was she doing her harm? Was she put on earth to introduce lesbians to themselves? One by one, the bodies were piling up, and she carried both great guilt and great pride that she had been chosen to be gay, each emotion engaged with the other in unceasing warfare inside her.

“Does this mean,” Lily Ann asked, “I’m, you know, queer?”

Jefferson smiled, still not touching her. “That remains to be seen.”

“You know I’m a virgin.”

“You never told me, Lily Ann.”

“Are you?”

“You are gorgeous, Lil. You know that?”

“It sounds to me like someone is changing the subject.”

She laughed and smiled in her confident way. “It’s not something I ever cared about. I wouldn’t think so.”

Lily Ann laid her head on the pillow. “Can someone lose her virginity to a woman?”

“You’re asking if my fingers can go that far?”

Nodding, Lily Ann avoided her eyes.

This time, her lack of experience was like a punch in the gut. Who, who could teach her? She couldn’t bring herself to look like a kid in Margo’s eyes by asking questions; she wanted to be her Casanova, her Valentino. A minute ago she’d been in heaven; now she struggled not to thud all the way back to earth. “I honestly don’t know. But we don’t have to do that.”

She watched Lily Ann struggle with herself. Half an hour ago virginity, a husband, and chastity had been, from what Lily Ann had shared in their long talks, important to her. Now she had to make a decision. The heat rising from her body told Jefferson that Lily Ann Lee was about to complicate her own life beyond what she could imagine. Brown skin and a woman lover, was it fair to put this burden on her friend?

She began to straighten up, planning to stand, selfless, and withdraw, but Lily Ann’s cry of “Jef, Jef,” like warmed maple syrup, full of sweet promise, announced her decision very clearly.

Lily Ann tried to pull her down and Jefferson resisted slightly, briefly, her own desire returning in a rush stronger than she’d ever experienced before.

They grappled more than caressed each other. She learned the meaning of tearing her clothes off.

“Go inside me with your fingers, J. Do it now, quick, I want that.”

It took Jefferson a moment to find her opening. In doing so she brushed Lily Ann’s little hooded area and the woman gasped. From there Jefferson knew where she was. She was inside a Lily Ann so wet she had to smile to herself in the dark. Oh, yeah, she thought, talk about being ready to come out. In a flash, first with one finger, then with three, she plunged and twisted her hand to feel every wet surface and to give Lily Ann the sensation her quivering, twisting, sweating body demanded.

At one point, Lily Ann tried to touch her. Jefferson deflected her hands. “It’s most exciting for me,” she said, “to see your excitement. If you turn the tables, I feel less of a lover.”

Lily Ann, as if in compromise, left her hands on Jefferson’s breasts the whole time Jefferson’s fingers, at a gallop now, filled her, withdrew, filled her again. Without warning, Lily Ann was squeezing her nipples and drawing in air like fire, growing large around Jefferson’s fingers, then clamping down on them as if her walls held them in a passionate embrace. Lily Ann was as much a woman as Margo, while Angie, sweet Angie, had been no more than a girl.

With that recognition came the knowledge that she, with Angie, had been a girl too and that now, fingers being sucked into yet another woman’s vagina, she had entered her own womanhood, had started her own, fully lesbian, life. In a moment, Lily Ann had her on her back and was kissing her, tongue roving her mouth, right hand exploring her amazingly wet self and bringing her to the climax that Angie and Margo, as many times as they had tried, had never given her. She thought she would explode into a million star-like pieces, all over Lily Ann’s strong, dark, sweat- and juice-slicked body.