Sometimes She Lets Me Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Introduction

  SOMETIMES SHE LETS ME

  SWEET THING

  LESSONS

  ANONYMOUS

  LIVE: BY REQUEST

  COP-OUT

  NIGHT CRAWLER

  DOES SHE LOOK LIKE A BOY?

  TAG!

  HOMECOMING QUEEN

  ROULETTE

  ANGIE’S DADDY

  VOODOO AND TATTOOS

  LOOK BUT DON’T TOUCH

  FEE FIE FOE FEMME

  THE BRIDGE

  GRAVITY SUCKS

  YOU CAN WRITE A STORY ABOUT IT

  1.

  2.

  3.

  GRAND JETÉ

  BUTCHES DON’T

  THE ROCK WALL

  Stone

  Quarry

  The Rock Wall

  Gravel

  BECOMING STONE - Sandra Lee Golvin

  THE DINER ON THE CORNER

  ABOUT THE EDITOR

  Copyright Page

  INTRODUCTION

  As both separate, distinct identities and identities in dynamic with each other, butch/femme has endured throughout lesbian history in all sorts of manifestations. But it was not that long ago that writers like Cherríe Moraga, Joan Nestle, Patrick Califia, and Amber Hollibaugh were explaining and defending butch/ femme to some feminists who criticized lesbians and bi women for “mimicking heterosexual roles” and “reproducing patriarchal constructions.” Thank god for all the queers who stood up to tell their stories, share their truths, and not be bullied into conforming to one certain model.

  In the years since the sex wars of the nineties, butch/femme has blossomed, morphed, and been reenvisioned in myriad ways. As identity categories, butch and femme have expanded and evolved: witness butch bois, femme tops, butch mamas, femme daddies, and genderqueers of all shapes and sizes. Although some people equate genderqueer with people on the masculine end of the spectrum, I’ve met plenty of genderqueers who queer gender throughout the spectrum. In fact, without the cultural language and theories of butch/femme, our understanding and expansion of gender—erotic and otherwise—would not be where it is today. Although we can see butch/femme as our experienced elder, it doesn’t feel old-fashioned since it’s constantly being tweaked and twisted.

  Butch/femme is a perfect centerpiece for erotica since it is recognizable and meaningful to many people. It’s also incredibly multilayered—creating opportunities for characters to play with gender in a sexual context, do unexpected things, challenge conventional wisdom and assumptions, and explore taboo desires.

  Butch/femme is erotic iconography.

  Butch/femme is sexual electricity.

  Butch/femme is power exchange.

  Butch/femme is bulging jeans, smeared lipstick, stiletto heels, and sharp haircuts. It’s about being read and being seen. Sometimes it’s about passing or not passing. It’s about individual identity and a collective sense of community. It’s personal, political. It’s performance and it’s not. It’s the visceral space between the flesh and the imagination.

  Tristan Taormino

  New York City

  SOMETIMES SHE LETS ME

  Alison L. Smith

  Last night her back was sore, spasms from the past, a high school injury, and I said that I’d rub it and then we could just go to sleep, and when I finished she asked me to massage her ass and I said yes but I could not do without kissing it, licking that white moon. I ran my teeth along the arc of it, biting, and her ass started to move under me.

  Then she rolled over and I pulled off her shirt and she let me touch them. They are secrets she holds separate from me, their roundness flattened against her chest all day. She does not like them, but I do. And sometimes, when she lets me, I fall between them and I breathe in. The tip of my nose measures their softness and the fine, white hair rises and she gets goose bumps.

  I took one of them in my mouth last night and the dark snail of her nipple grew under my tongue. Her pelvis moved beneath me, moved up toward mine when she let me. The moon was gone and the river lights outside her window reflected like stars, as if the sky moved beneath us, and she lay on her back for me.

  Her hip bones cut the air in thin circles and she tightened under me. She let me unbutton her boxer shorts. She let me take her in my mouth, press my face into her. I cupped her ass in my palms and she got hard for me. She dug her hands into my hair and shivered in the heat-soaked room and I watched her through the keyhole of her thighs.

  Sometimes she lets me and when she does she talks to herself. In a low voice, she talks the fear away. Like last night when her ass was cupped in my hands and she was in my mouth and she whispered and her hips circled faster and her voice began to rise.

  The dog woke, his pink tongue curling. He yawned. He circled once, twice, spread out beside us again and he watched his master’s face change. He watched her call out to the ceiling, watched her back arch, watched her reach over her head, her fisted hands knocking the headboard until her long body tightened and her voice grew hoarse.

  Then she begged me. She said Don’t stop don’t stop don’t stop don’t stop and she trembled under me and her hips pitched and I almost lost her and I pressed my hands into her ass to steady her until she came in my mouth.

  Afterward, she pulled the covers up around her. She curled into their soft protection and rolled away from me. She hid. The dog burrowed under the comforter, panting into the darkness. After she let me and she fell asleep on her sore back, the sound of her voice stayed in my ears. I watched her as she kicked the covers off in the night’s long heat. First her shoulders appeared, then her breasts, then the damp stain on her boxers where I had put my mouth. And I wanted to put my hands on her again, but I didn’t. I just watched. The old radiator cracked and pinged in the corner and light from a streetlamp bled in through the tall window and she slept and I watched and she let me.

  SWEET THING

  Joy Parks

  Watching Petey Ginoa knead bread dough is like watching a thing of beauty.

  Watching her do it when she doesn’t know anyone is watching her is even better.

  First there are her hands, which are large but not too large; peachy pink hands that get washed soft over and over again every day, strong with short square nails and slightly knobby knuckles, the kind you get when you crack them too much. And flour. I don’t think I’ve ever seen those hands when they weren’t covered in flour. Strong hands, but not rough at all. Hands that can shape delicate flutes on a tartlet crust or fix a tiny broken motor on the mixer or, I believe, unfasten a button so slow and perfect, sliding a finger down the space between breasts, sliding past a slight mound of belly, sliding down. I take a gulp of Fair Trade fresh-ground something or other to keep me still and watch how she grabs a hunk of sunflower rye or cornbread with organic red pepper slices, or whatever delightful concoction is in her bowl today, and drops it onto the breadboard, her hands dancing it into a perfect round, her fingers disappearing inside, then out, inside again. Kneading. Needing. I watch those fingers turn and poke and stretch the dough. I feel heat welling up between my thighs, try not to squirm. I watch her with my lips parted like I’m waiting for a kiss.

  And then she stops. I hold my breath. She pushes up the sleeves of the white shirt she’s wearing beneath her apron and begins to knead some more, flexing her perfectly shaped muscles, girl muscles but firm and healthy and strong looking. The kind of arms that make you wonder what it would be like to be inside the circle of her body, to feel those muscles tighten and press against you, what that would be like. That close.

  It’s warm in here and the windows are sweating from the steam of the kitchen; it’s still morning cold outs
ide. I should go. I should get up and walk out of here as best I can and get to work on time for a change; the walk would do me good right now. If I could just stand up.

  I could watch those hands for hours.

  Yeah, I know I’ve got it bad. And I don’t quite know what to do with it.

  Everyone back home told me I was going to hate moving to a small town even if it was the only place I could get a job. In a small town everybody knows everybody’s business and I’d have to watch my Ps and Qs, they said. Growing up in the city and having the natural luck to get away with a whole lot of stuff, I hadn’t had to work very hard at being discreet. Who was going to know and who was going to care?

  So I’ve been laying low, working at the library as the junior librarian in training, trying to make it look like I’m far more interested in learning how to organize the periodicals and start a community reading circle than I am in running back and forth to Petey’s all day to buy coffee. I can’t sleep most nights now. I don’t know if it’s all that caffeine or the fact that when I do sleep I keep dreaming about those hands on my skin and then I have to get up and drink a lot of cold water just to keep from melting in my own heat.

  But bless the gossips in town for helping me learn all about Petey. I guess since some of them saw me spending so much time in the bakery, they wanted to warn me so I could be on guard and not fall prey to her seductions. You’d never know from looking at me that I’ve dealt with plenty of seductions by women like Petey and enjoyed every single one of them. From the very first day I walked into her shop, if she’d ever even looked at me with half a hint that she might be interested, I’d have fallen on my back so fast I might have ended up with whiplash. It’s funny being femme. Sometimes you hate the fact that no one knows, and you have to go out of your way to make sure some butch realizes you’re available, ’cause you look too straight. But the good ones know. The smart ones. They can look past the heels you wear to work and the lipstick and the girly clothes, and love all that about you, know what you are beneath your clothes, not just any woman, but special. One who would fall on your back for them, let them touch you all over, let them reach inside your body, fuck you hard and tender and whatever it takes to make you both feel so good about what it is that you are.

  But since I’m not so obvious to normal people, I got the whole deal on Petey.

  Petey Ginoa is a legend in town. Everybody knows she’s a lesbian even though nobody’s ever seen her with any woman at any time. She’s too smart for that—to get caught. It’s a small town and she’s got a damn good business and she’d be crazy to take a chance on losing it all. Petey’s not her real name; it’s Pia, which is the name on the sign above the door. Her father named the shop that back when she was a baby. But everybody calls the place Petey’s. They eat Petey’s bread and take Petey’s cake home for birthdays and baby christenings and stop by Petey’s for coffee. Sometimes I think if not for her, the whole damn town would go hungry. Petey suits her more. That’s just how it is with some lesbian children; they outgrow the names their mommas gave them, grow into something different, someone different from what anyone could have expected of them. Taking a new name is like being born all over again into who they should have been all along.

  Not that Petey’s the kind of woman who’d think about it that way. She probably just realized she was becoming someone for whom a delicate name like Pia didn’t fit. It made her feel uneasy. So she gave herself a more comfortable handle. I get the feeling she’s the kind of woman who would do whatever she needed to do to feel okay about herself and not give a damn about what anyone might think.

  I wonder if any of her lovers—who no one’s ever seen—call her Pia.

  Wouldn’t seem right somehow.

  I want to be one of those women no one’s ever caught her with.

  I want those hands needing me.

  On a belt under her apron Petey wears a measuring cup that looks like it was made by Black and Decker. She wears clean, crisp, white pants that cup her fine ass just right and a white button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up to her elbows. She wears a full-length, white apron slung over her neck and tied real loose, and clean white sneakers that don’t make a sound. Her dark hair is cut short and loose around her face, which seems a little tanned. Even in winter that hair curls up at the back of her collar when she’s moving around the kitchen in the heat. That collar, those curls. I have to keep my hands in my coat pocket or flat, fanned on the counter, when I order my coffee. I look the other way when she slides the little waxed paper bag of cannoli my way; stop myself from reaching across the counter; stop myself from reaching out to touch her neck, smooth those curls. Touch her face real slow. I think her forehead would smell like butter, that her skin would be lightly glazed all over with a fine dusting of sugar, that if you put your mouth to her skin, you would come away tasting sweet.

  I’m thinking Valentine’s Day will be the time to make my move, ’cause that’s when everybody’s all crazed over romance and hearts and flowers and wanting to be loved. Petey can’t be all that different from anyone else. Can she?

  Today is Friday the thirteenth, and not a soul on the street fails to comment on it. I don’t feel unlucky, just a little racy knowing I’ve got just today to figure out how I’m going to pull off the seduction of the town dyke. I wonder if she has a girlfriend now, but only for a minute, because something tells me I’d sense it if she did. At this point I don’t think it would matter if she was dating my own best friend—if I’d been in town long enough to have one.

  When I hit the doorway of the bakery, I almost swoon. It’s the clouds of moist heat that gather inside, rain on the window, plus the scent of something sweet and deep, along with something fresh, like fruit juice, underneath it. And there’s Petey. She’s behind the counter, smiling at me. It must have been my reaction to the aroma that wrapped around me as I came inside. I wrinkle my nose like I’m sniffing for more and look at her grinning, as if to ask what’s making such a delicious smell. Her eyes are actually lit, wide and open, more so than I remember ever seeing them. She motions me over. I’ve never been that close to her aside from her pouring my coffee or taking my money when I paid for bread or muffins or those slices of all-natural Queen Anne’s cake with caramel-covered nut crust swirled with spidery feathers of toasted coconut. Or crème brûlée custard on a toasted almond crust. Or shiny pecan buns, moist and slippery as the flesh of my thigh right now. I’m weak. I don’t think she’s ever really talked to me. Specifically to me. And she still isn’t—talking. I step up to the counter and she’s still smiling and motioning me even closer. I move in like I’m in a trance, move in for a kiss, to touch my lips to her cheek, her lips. Desire bubbles up within my belly, there are tiny flutters inside my cunt. Like wings. I wonder if she can see down my blouse, see my breasts nestled in the pink, lacy, silk demicup I bought mail order from Victoria’s Secret just in case something like this ever happened. I catch myself when my eyes start to close. She raises a fork to my lips like a present, speared with a tiny piece of something pink and fluffy, like cotton candy covered in chocolate. Oh baby. She directs the fork toward my lips as I open them on command, take the gift inside. Something sweet and deep breaks on my tongue; my mouth wells up with wetness. I think about the pink of it, pink like the tender underside of a breast set free, pink skin of a vulva, all shower fresh and warm; my tongue roaming my mouth to seek out and find every touch of sweetness, the citrusy aftertaste a surprise. I worry about drooling. I swirl it around my mouth, take it in, inhale it. Most of your taste buds come from scent. I taste an orange cream chocolate like from the Whitman’s Sampler but warm. I want to tell her it’s like sex on a fork, but that’s too bold, too early in the dance. She’s close still, watching me, silent. I open my eyes wide now, finally able to open my mouth.

  Then she speaks real low, her voice deep but clear against the clang of coffee cups and beaters in the kitchen.

  “So, you like? It’s blood orange cheesecake iced with a bitters
weet chocolate glaze. Did them special for Valentine’s Day this year. It’s the blood orange that makes it pink. They’re in season right now.”

  She beams.

  Oh the pride in her voice. Hands in her pockets, shoulders dropped back, slight smile drawing tiny lines around her lips like a frame. She makes me want to leap over the counter, pull her head down into the pink silk of my too-far-open shirt, whisper, “You are magical,” wrap my legs around the clean white apron over her clean white pants, beg her to take me right there, right on the kneading board covered with flour and dabs of bittersweet chocolate glaze.

  It takes three more trips to the bakery for me to get up the nerve to do what I have to do. All that coffee and anxiety is making me feel dry-mouthed, and it’s now or never. So while she’s ringing up the roasted red pepper and cilantro quiche with butter crust that’s going to end up being my supper, I finally manage to find my femme courage and make my intentions known. At least to one of us.

  “So, what are you doing for Valentine’s Day?” I ask her.

  She looks down at the floor like I’ve caught her in a lie.