Baked In Seattle Read online

  Now the warm August breeze was perfect for a bike ride and here I was with this prize. Pick me, pick me, my heart kept leaping up.

  I wanted sex, frankly, since a relationship with Diane might be a bit much to bear. Diane was a women’s community pillar as owner of the lesbian totem store, Womyn’sWorld. Lesbian-in-a-box, I called it. Whatever lesbianism required was for sale there. One stop shopping for Everydyke, there were wide leather belts, dream-catchers, Melody Beattie books, key chain dangles, sage smudge sticks, decorative flashlights, Swiss Army Knives, signed Cris Williamson CD’s, temporary tattoos, “Dykes To Watch Out For” and “Life In Hell” comic books, “Off Our Backs” and “On Our Backs,” tool kits, camping gear, vibrators, dildo harnesses, dog collars, pocket combs, bumper stickers (“I’ve Seen You Naked At Michigan”), political lapel buttons (“Kate Millet for President”), Pat Califia porn, the free weekly with Dan Savage’s column “Hey Faggot!,” messenger bags and fanny packs. Enter simply curious and emerge an hour later on the street as---ta dah!---Power Lesbian.

  Being a trailblazer seemed a heavy burden for Diane to bear. She always carried an expression of extreme concentration even as we got ready for the ride.

  “Anything you want,” I demurred, swinging onto the big cruising bike behind her, hoping I didn’t weigh too much.

  I held her waist, burying my nose in the leather smell of her shoulder as we zig-zagged around the park. She put her left hand back on my leg, holding my knee, driving me to distraction.

  When we’d stopped down by the water, she shoved me against a big tree, her knee between my legs, leaning into my whole body, nearly making me come right there. She didn’t touch me, just looked deep into my eyes.

  “I want you,” she whispered, holding my shirt tightly by the lapels. I swooned into her hard body in reply. “But I’m not ready. It’s too soon. I promised my sponsor I wouldn’t use sex to medicate my process. I’ve got a lot going on I’m trying to deal with.”

  Her lips were inches from mine.

  “But…but…it wouldn’t be, really.” I had to think fast, sorting through AA-speak to tap into the right nerve. It wasn’t 13th-stepping since I was no newbie. “It would be an emotional release with a trusted friend.”

  “I’d know, though, and I hate secrets. Maybe later we can connect. Like Holly Near says: maybe if it happens once, it can happen twice. C’mon,” she said, pulling my shirt front down and smoothing it gently into place. “Let’s take you home, pretty girl, before I change my mind.”

  “How was the date with Motorcycle Irene?” Drake asked over nachos at Jalisco on Queen Anne. I still missed the one off 15th on Capitol Hill. The waiter there had remembered what I liked every time.

  “Her name’s Diane. It certainly didn’t go far enough for my taste. She makes my knees weak.”

  “Is it the power, Al? I mean, she does own Womyn’sWorld. Or is it the bike?”

  “Both. And her long fingers.”

  “Tomorrow is my second date with Thai Guy.”

  “Doesn’t he have a name?”

  “That’s his screen name—ThaiGuy. His real name’s Eddy.”

  “What are the knowns?”

  “That he’s slender and too young for me. He owns apricot labradoodles and he seems to have money. Not firm on that yet.”

  “Here’s hoping, darling,” I cooed, “maybe by next year you’ll be lavishly taken care of and have a chocolate cocka-poo of your own, and you can go out on walks together in coordinated outfits. He’ll make Thai noodles and you’ll bask adoringly at him. That will be your entire job.”

  “Sounds ideal. The law firm grates on me sometimes. Honestly, it’s like herding cats.” Drake sighed and swirled his gin and tonic. “We’ll have a little winter place in Fort Lauderdale, too, with his mother. He talks about his mother rather a lot. She’ll adjust her nipples poking through her skimpy halter top so they’re even. God, the old women down there with the leather tans and the white shorts. Ugh. Oh, did I tell you? I’m going to Mexico in the spring. I’m taking a week’s vacation and I’m going to Mexico City to see the art museums and swaddle myself in a glamorous hotel. There’s a little resort place I found in Queer Adventures where they do a wrap in heated grape leaves for weight loss, then it’s a hot stone massage while your fortune is told with chicken bones or something.”

  “Sounds ideal for you. And it’s near the gay bars, of course?”

  I knew the answer to this, since Drake traveled to be gay. Never a joiner, bar hound, dancer or theatre volunteer, he was the most isolated faggot I’d ever met. Independent of anything remotely “gay,” he was satisfied with foreign film, books, and his Judy Garland records, gay all by himself in his little apartment. Twice a year he ventured out, flying thousands of miles to Paris, London, Athens, Rome or Rio to be gay, gay, gay in a two-week flurry of friendly or rented indigenous peoples. He hadn’t had a steady lover since AIDS was called GRID.

  “Well, there are three within a four miles radius. It’s all in the central downtown area, very walk-able. I’ll bring you a little Mexican tchotchke, Al.”

  “I have Mishellina so she’s all the Mexican tchotchke I need. Spend your money on a cab. I worry about you walking around down there looking like an easy mark.”

  “You, Miss Jean Brodie, worry too much.”

  “How was the date with Thai Guy?”

  “I’m not seeing him anymore. Now it’s a trust-fund baby named Fred who has a place on Lake Washington or so his emails say. I haven’t met him yet. Very hairy-chested too, which you know makes me crazy.”

  “What happened with Thai Guy?”

  “Well, we had dinner at Wild Ginger and he was…less than fascinating after fifteen minutes. And do you remember I said he talks about his mother a lot?”

  “And his labradoodles.”

  “The dogs I could tolerate. But when he said his mother makes his underwear, well, that was it for me.”

  “His underwear? Holy shit, how do you even make underwear, and what the hell is his mother doing making it for him? He’s what, thirty-five?”

  “Precisely. Something wrong there. Next.”

  The Timberline country gay bar was a Lincoln-log lodge on the corner of Denny and Westlake, a scruffy industrial neighborhood of run-down warehouses. The area was fast becoming a glittering, upscale area with condos and a Whole Foods under construction.

  An adequate dancer, I only got by at two-stepping because Angel had patiently taught me for months. Others were sensationally versatile, able to lead or follow while I was strictly a femme, following whoever held my hand.

  Longing to be on the floor with the tough, smooth dancers like Diane, I’d ache, seeing them completely in control. I liked watching the dangerous-looking butches who had a little meanness in them.

  One of them was Babs, a prominent AA lesbian, who had announced at the Madison Beach meeting that she was moving out of state. A huge going-away party was declared, the Timberline was rented out, a DJ chosen, and the log cabin was decorated with streamers and a huge sign wishing Babs well. Because she had entered the program so long ago she’d been underage, she knew everyone who was anyone, making the party the social event of the season.

  I decided to give her myself as my going-away gift, figuratively speaking, dressing just for her that night. I thought about bringing Drake but I decided I didn’t want to go with anyone just in case Babs really liked my ensemble.

  Since dressing up to a Seattle lesbian is to iron one’s jeans, I risked extreme couture to get her attention. A good femme comes complete with sewing machine so black velvet was cut and fitted with 18-inch corset stays. When finished, my mini-dress zippered on in skintight, strapless, sweetheart-neckline perfection. The hem was eight inches above my knee, the décolletage eight inches below my shoulders. I looked like a black hourglass, cleavage poppin’ fresh to bursting.

  I found black over-the-elbow gloves, seamed black thigh-high stockings and since it was a cowboy bar, wore my black cowboy boots. Arou
nd my neck was a string of innocent white pearls while smoky dark eye makeup made my intentions clear. Grabbing a little metallic clutch, I was ready to go.

  A shock wave fluttered through the plaid-shirt crowd as I paid my cover and walked to the dance floor rail. My cheeks burned with the shameful excitement of being so openly provocative but I acted regal, bestowing my greetings on wide-eyed friends.

  Slowly I made my way to the guest of honor, her back to me seated at a table of laughing women. I stood still beside her, mentally willing her to notice me.

  “Wow!” Babs exclaimed, leaping from her stool and knocking it into the railing, her eyes all over me. Her fair skin turned brilliant pink.

  “This is for you,” I whispered, leaning in, my lips inches from her studded ear. “This is my gift to you.”

  “I’m honored,” she huskily replied, pulling me close in a sudden, tight embrace so strong I ached to bed her. We then awkwardly stood apart while balled lightning, I was sure, crackled visibly between us.

  Babs’ lover moved in closer, her jaw locked tight. Sensing danger, I moved along to the bar.

  Nursing cranberry juice, I found a table at the dance floor’s periphery just before the lights went down. A spotlight appeared on the bare wood floor, and the dj stopped the music, wishing Babs a happy journey and saying this was her day, her moment. Someone pushed her into the searching spotlight and we all applauded her for taking this big step to move away.

  “This next dance is for Babs,” the DJ said, “so she and the dance partner of her choice will be the only ones on the floor for this number.”

  Without the slightest hesitation Babs and the spotlight moved purposefully toward me.

  Her boots echoed on the polished wood as the buzz of the crowd in the cavernous bar fell silent. Stopping directly in front of me, her open palm beckoned me onto the floor with her, her lover be damned.

  My legs shakily raised my ass off the stool and as I reached for her hand, the entire bar went wild with applause. She had completely bitten my double-dare.

  Her strong arm locked onto my waist, pulling closer as we stood waiting for the music before she gently but firmly sailed me through three of the most glorious minutes of my life, colored spotlights swirling us along, couple number one alone on the huge polished dance floor. I never took my eyes off hers, wishing only for Babs to kiss me. Left arm held horizontal and high in classic two-step pose, her other warm hand gripped me as firmly as our steady gaze. Behind my waist her fingers ventured lower on my ass every time she reeled me in, pushing her fingers into my tailbone, pressing me tight to her pelvis. In that sliver of time there was more urgent insistent sex between us than I could have imagined possible while our feet double-timed in a glow of twirling light. Tongues of fire should have burst from the top of our heads, visible flame to our passion.

  Maybe Babs could tell you the song but the blood was pounding so loudly in my ears I didn’t hear a thing.

  Music over, the place whooped, stomped and hollered. I curtseyed and she bowed in the middle of the open dance floor. Babs courteously walked me back to my table then let go of my hand with a little head nod.

  The dj announced the floor was open.

  I sat the next few out, waiting for my legs to stop shaking, wishing I’d brought Drake after all.

  Babs’ lover never spoke to me again.

  .

  “Kyle just called,” Birgitte was sobbing into the phone. “That fucker skipped his court date and was warning me that the cops might come by looking for him. He listed this as his address, that asshole. Al, he hasn’t lived here since the boys were young.”

  They’d had a quiet wedding when the kids were six, and Kyle had been an upstanding husband for a while, working hard, adopting the kids, worshipping Birgitte. Something had shifted in the family dynamic and Kyle started drinking in earnest, staying out all night, wrecking a few cars. His easy-going manner slid away and he became instead a sneering, cynical master of manipulation, keeping Birgitte in a state of panic and self-doubt, trying desperately to change him. She’d had no interest in drinking with him; he had no interest in AA or therapy.

  Kyle lost his job, then another, then another. Home alone all day, he began to sit in the basement and drink. Birgitte got a second job then divorced him when he back-handed her into the china cabinet in a drunken rage, purpling her left eye and requiring four stitches through her pale eyebrow.

  His bouts with the police still haunted her, as did his terrible credit rating and her self-blame. She’d scraped together the impossible sum it took to buy him out of their house and he’d squandered it on a Harley and a year of drinking in Wenatchee with new skinhead friends.

  “Don’t get sucked into his bullshit, Gitta-girl. He just wants you to notice him. He wants attention. Don’t give it to him by falling apart and letting him have the emotional power. Did you suggest AA again?”

  “He’s not ready to stop drinking,” she sniffed, blowing her nose. “I’m about ready to go myself just to have people to talk to about it.”

  “Not a bad idea,” I said, as it suddenly occurred to me. “But you’d probably do better in Al-anon, for friends and family of alkies. I know there’s meeting by you in some Ballard church. I went to an NA meeting up there once. Want some info? I’ll get it from Shelly. She knows everything. It might be helpful to settle some of the screaming voices in your head.”

  “Yeah, sure, get me specifics. That fucker. I hate it when he does this to me.”

  “I need to date men again,” I told Malcolm over a hot-bacon dressing spinach salad at his restaurant, the Blue Canoe.

  The croutons were garlic and thyme, fresh from the oven, while the greasy spinach leaves warmed my insides after slogging packages in the rain all morning. Lunchtime for FedEx drivers was around two, after deliveries were done and before pickups started. Malcolm was free to talk by then, too, his lunch rush over and managerial duties relaxed.

  Today he looked stunning in a deep green Peter Max tie and black shirt with jade cufflinks. His hair was freshly shaved, the almost imperceptible fade perfect.

  I’d had no idea I wanted to date men again but when the words just came falling out, I realized it was exactly true.

  “Little girl,” he said gently, rolling his toothpick to the right corner of his mouth, “if you want to date the fellas maybe we should have a talk. I could give you some advice, help grease the wheel, know what I’m sayin’? I mean, I don’t wanna hurt your feelings and all but you might need some schooling on the subject.”

  “Talk on, brother. I’m open.”

  He smiled large and took a sip of his Jack and coffee. I envied the restaurant lifestyle, the drinking and drugs. I couldn’t wait until I was done with FedEx and the fear of random testing.

  “When’s the last time you had a man?”

  “Fucked one or had a relationship with one?”

  He smiled again.

  “That’s why I like you,” Malcolm said, patting my hand. “You all right, you know that? You just tell it like it is. I wish all women were like that. It’d make life a lot easier.”

  “That part of me you like? The up-front, brutally honest part? That’s the part that’s a dyke,” I smiled back at him.

  “Okay, well, keep that part, for sure, just…kinda….tuck it in for a while. Ease back, go gentle for a little bit. You want lessons? I mean, I could give you some, snag you a captain of industry. You could quit that fucking awful job…”

  “This fucking awful job pays my mortgage,” I stiffened. “And for this goddamn spinach salad at your restaurant.”

  “See? Right there. That look on your face when I said that? That hard edge you just got. Lesson number one. Lose that shit. Defensive and angry in a flash is completely non-productive. No second date after that comes roaring out. That shit shrinks my balls, girl.”

  “Okay, okay. I’m listening. I’ll eat. You talk.”

  “Well, wouldn’t you like to coast for a while? You’ve been a humping bea
st of burden for what…the kids are in college, right? And you got to Seattle when Miss Baby…what do you call her again?”

  “Peanut.”

  “…you got here when Peanut was still in diapers? I’d say fifteen or so years now you’ve been schlepping freight around, and didn’t you tell me last time we had lunch how much your knees hurt? And the rotator cuff thing, too. Your body could use a break. And I’m not even gonna start on how much you want to write. Wouldn’t it be the shit, girl, to have a man bringing down the chump change while you sit your pretty ass on the couch and finish that Great American Novel?”

  “But…”

  Malcolm put up his hands, palms facing me.

  “Hold up on the I Am Woman, Hear Me Roar speech. Don’t you always talk about being a femme, how all you wanted was to stay home and have babies, make organic whole wheat bread and love your family? Is that bullshit or are you for true? Can you just relax and let someone else carry the ball for a while? You bitch about how you want off the treadmill, to finally have time to create, do your art without worrying about the bills. Why not let a man in, sister-girl? We can find you a good man who would worship the cloud we’re gonna have you walking on, pay your bills, fuck you silly, meet your family and maybe even marry your ass. I can help.” He paused, twinkling eyes flashing. “You game?”

  Wrestling with my id, I stayed quiet, digesting.

  Malcolm watched my wheels turning, rubbing his thumb against the tips of his fingers, eyebrows raised, challenging me to walk my talk.

  Feminism and independent strength had taken me this far. Yet an arts sponsor to feather my nest while I create sounded great….while getting laid, too? Having a Saturday night date with a sharp-dressed man who loves me?

  Oh, hell yes. Sign me up.

  I smiled, giving him his answer.

  “Lesson one, as I said. Put the claws away. No one’s fighting you anymore. This isn’t the streets of Chicago, this is The Love Boat, baby. You need to purr a little bit, pussycat. We’re all on the same side. No more turf war.”