Sapphic Embrace: The Housewife (2 page)

CHAPTER THREE

Betty: The Straight Role

Her lips on my nipples were so soft, so warm and inviting, I moaned, a low deep sound almost like a wail. Lust gushed through my veins like a roaring waterfall, and I felt as though heat and sexual fluids seeped out of me in equal portions, sinking into her body pressing against mine.

We were naked now. I had never been so close to another woman's body. There was so much more to it than I had been led to believe by movies and TV. Her breasts were nice, of course, but so were her delicate shoulders, tense neck and strong arms. I nibbled on her chin, rubbed her back and her belly, fingered her fingers and sucked on her wrist. She tasted good from head to toe.

She took the lead and put me on the mattress so that we could line up next to each other, her tongue in me and mine in her. It felt so familiar even though it was my first time, her taste was so right, the curve of her thighs and hips beneath my hips so perfect.

I don't know what made me think spending time with Jim would be better if I went with Kathy, who refused to go if she was going to be a third wheel, so she brought along her gay friend Tom. The four of us went out to a lowest-common denominator chain eatery, someplace totally forgettable, with themed decor and a colorful menu, and a name so publicity-conscious and inauthentic that I immediately chose not to remember it.

Kathy had no doubt chosen Tom because he was so flamboyant, so willing to be the center of attention and keep the party lively. He flirted with the obviously straight waiter, tried to get the elderly couple at the next table to make out and generally did anything to get a laugh out of us. Kathy and I laughed together plenty, sometimes at him, sometimes with him, sometimes about something completely different than what he was doing. But Jim sat there like a lump on a tit, morose, doing nothing but spreading his gloom to everyone nearby. He wasn't totally comfortable with male homosexuality, and I knew he hadn't liked Tom from the moment they met.

"So, Jim, you've been so quiet tonight," Tom said, "I gotta ask, are you straight?" Jim nodded. "Like totally 100%? Not even a little bit? Well, damn..."

"Are you at all straight?" Jim asked, the first real question he had asked all night.

"Not a bit, honey-pie," Tom said, laughing. "I mean, I won't vomit at the sight of a vagina, but I might think about vomiting. I'm sorry, I'm all in favor of girl power, but vaginas are kind of gross if you think about it."

"The buttsex has driven you insane..." Jim said, and I wanted to yell at him, sure that Tom would be upset. But Tom rolled with it and laughed, clasping Jim's hand awkwardly in his own.

"What about you?" Tom asked me, "Are you 100% straight? Note that if you say yes, I'm going to call you a liar. There's no such thing as a purely heterosexual woman."

"That's ridiculous, of course I am," I said.

"You've never even thought about sex with a woman?"

"No!"

"You are a liar, a lying bisexual liar!" Tom said through his laughter.

"Okay, okay," I said, scarcely able to believe I was saying this, "I had a dream about that female Iron Chef with the short hair once... It was a sexual thing." They all burst into laughter, even Kathy, who stifled it and wrapped one arm around my shoulder supportively.

For a few minutes, I forgot that Jim and I hated each other right now, and that Jim didn't much like Kathy or Tom either, or that Kathy was just as depressed as me. Everything seemed right. We were like a group of friends who could be the basis for a quirky gay-positive sitcom, with the flamboyant queer, the butchy lesbian and the staid married couple to play the "straight" role and be targets of humor. I hadn't felt like I belonged so much since just after Jim and I got married, when we were still in the honeymoon phase.

But like all things it didn't last. Eventually the alcohol got to us -- not me, I was the designated driver, but the others were all a little drunk. We called it a night around eleven, and dropped Kathy and Tom off at their places in town before Jim and I headed back to our house.

Later, on the way home, Jim said he didn't want to hang around with Tom again. "He was touching me like a fag. He tried to hold my hand. I ain't a fucking faggot, and if he does that again-"

"Don't talk like that, Jim," I said, annoyed. I had had such a good time, I didn't even notice the hostility that Jim must have radiated. I was a little sad to realize that my sense of camaraderie and belonging was one-sided.

"Don't tell me how to talk. Tell that fag to lay off or I will lay him out!"

"You were having a good time. He didn't molest you, Jim, just relax."

"I hate it when you say that, I'm not going to relax, Betty. I'm fucking pissed off! That's why I'm shouting, because I'm angry. Do you understand that? My emotions are not a fucking switch you can turn on and off with a remote control-"

"Okay, Jim, I get it. You're mad. You think he was touching you too much. I know all he did was hold your hand, but he could have started touching more any time, and that must have been scary for you. Thank god you're not a woman, by the way, you'd go crazy."

"He wanted to touch me all over, I could see it in his eyes. If he thought he could get away with it, he'd rape me," Jim said. "Like if we was in prison, he'd rape me."

"Don't be ridiculous. He would not. Flamboyant, lisping gay men don't rape anyone in prison."

The argument didn't stop there. Every time I opened my mouth, I thought I was stopping the vitriol, putting an end to the fight and turning the other cheek to his cruel words. But somehow I said something other than what I meant to, or he interpreted it in the wrong way, and the fighting continued all the way home. He slammed the car door behind himself and went straight into his garage, where he had beer and a TV and cigars and porn and he wouldn't have to listen to my "stupid bitch face full of stupid bitch words".

As soon as he couldn't see me, I burst into tears, my body wracked with painful spasms of sadness and loneliness. I ran upstairs to the bedroom that Jim and I used to share, picked up the giant stuffed walrus my grandmother had given me as a birthday present and dialed Kathy's number from memory.

When her voice came out of the receiver and filled my brain, my frenzied angry thoughts silenced, and my head was full of nothing but images of her smiling face.

CHAPTER FOUR

Kathy: A Five Percenter

The guy behind the counter at the dirty motel was named Wesley. He was cute and seemed nice enough, so when I decided that I didn't like any women enough to be successful as a lesbian despite my desire for women's bodies, Wesley seemed like my best best for a male partner. I was going to miss women, I thought, but Wesley stirred some passion in my loins, and I thought maybe I could make it work.

I know I'm butch, and Wesley probably could have gotten someone much "hotter" than me. But I wasn't ashamed about what I was doing -- I didn't care if he only gave me a pity fuck or had trouble getting hard. I wanted to be with someone and have someone else's body make me feel good, and frankly, I didn't care about the circumstances.

But when we got to back his place, and the kissing progressed to some light necking, and his rough manly hands slipped underneath my blouse, tweaking my nipples and caressing them, his slimy tongue moving from my mouth, down my neck to my breasts, I realized that this was simply not going to work. I was about as turned on as I would have been from riding a horse -- there was a certain physically stimulative effect, but I had no interest in going any further.

He didn't take it very well. He probably thought he could do better than me and was insulted that I didn't exult in his deigning to screw me.

"You're leaving?" he asked, astonished, his shirt on the floor, his face slick with his own spit. I buttoned my blouse back up, glad to cover my breasts from his leering gaze again.

"I'm sorry, Wesley. You're very nice," I said, "It's just... I'm a lesbian. I always have been. I thought I might be like 5% straight and I haven't had much luck with women lately-"

"Tell me about it..."

"I'm sorry, it's not you. I just realized I'm not even 5% straight."

"So that was it? If I had known this was the last time you were ever going to give penis a whirl, I might have tried a little harder. I feel like I let my sex down," Wesley said.

"Really it wasn't your fault."

"Was I really that bad?"

"No, it's not you. I'm a lesbian."

"I turned you off to men, forever."

"I was already turned off to men. You just made me... remember how much I don't like men."

"Thanks. I'm glad I could reaffirm your lesbianism. You could have told me. I thought you wanted to get laid. By a penis," he said

"Would you have still invited me to your place?" I asked.

"What? Of course. Even a 5% chance of getting laid is better than 0%. It won't work out nineteen times out of twenty, but it's still-"

"My loins are not a statistic."

"Well my erection is," he said, "And now I got blue balls cuz of you, you stupid dyke. Just get the fuck out so I can jack off alone."

I felt a surge of tears, but I didn't want him to see them, so I darted out of the bedroom and the apartment, slamming the door shut behind me. Men could be so disgusting, I thought. I wished I could go tell Betty what happened, she was always happy to commiserate with me about men, but I knew she away for the weekend, at a couples retreat with Jim. She had hoped to fix her marriage this weekend, and I couldn't interrupt that.

I wanted to go back to my hotel room, but the prospect of sitting there alone all weekend made me want to cry, so I drove around with no destination in mind. Without thinking about it, I ended up in front of our old home, where Christina still lived.

I wasn't sure if I was going to make up with Christina, didn't know if I wanted to or if she would even have me again. Probably not, I thought, but still, that didn't stop me from going up the walkway through the manicured lawn and onto the porch that she kept clean with daily sweepings.

I knocked on the door. There was no answer. I still had a key, and I wanted to see if she had changed the locks. She hadn't. The door swung open and I walked in.

"Hello? Christine? It's me... I just wanted to see you," I said. "Are you here?"

Everything was exactly how I remembered it. She hadn't changed a thing, and I even saw my clothes hanging up in our closet. I walked around the house as though it was old memories, though of course it'd been less than a month since I moved out.

Maybe I could be there when she got back. I could just be there, as though I never left. We could make up. Her quirks don't annoy me that much. I could just ignore them. I could tease her for them. That could be the way we were, just tough-skinned and loving and teasing.

But I knew that couldn't work. It was just me being desperate. I didn't want to be alone, and I was willing to be with anyone to avoid it.

Christine's computer was on, and I wouldn't have ever snooped in it, but there was an email open on the screen, which I saw as soon as I touched the mouse and the screensaver disappeared. It was from someone named Debbie Winters, and it was a confirmation of "our next date" today, now. I realized with a crushing sense of loneliness that Christine had moved on right away and already had a new partner, leaving me alone with no one.

I ran out of the house, sobbing into my hands. I had never felt so alone.

I drove away, again without a destination in mind. This time, I ended up at Betty's house, sitting in the empty driveway and looking at the darkened house.

I saw some mail in the mailbox, and I thought I should bring it inside. Betty had given me a spare key years ago, so I knew I could get in. She had asked me to check the house out while she was out of town after all.

Once there, I didn't want to leave. It felt good to be in the home of someone who cared about me, even if she wasn't there.

I looked around, grateful to be alone somewhere safe and private. I wandered around the house and happened to enter the bedroom, where Betty's underwear drawer empty, plain white panties sticking up in tufts like fresh-fallen snow.

I felt a surge of sexual energy, followed by frustration at her continued absence. She didn't owe me her presence of course, or anything else, but I wanted her there. More than anything at that moment, I didn't want to be alone.There was something there in her underwear drawer, and I pulled it out.

It was a vibrator, just a small clitoral stimulation device in the shape of a butterfly. I smelled it. It smelled like her, like comfortable old clothes. My heart-rate instantly increased, and my vagina moistened, my fingers slowly working their way into my pants.

It genuinely hadn't occurred to me that I liked Betty. She was straight, very straight -- you know how virtually all women under forty these days claim to be bisexual? Not Betty. She's the anti-bi. She so straight she makes me like men a little more.

But she also makes me like everything a bit more. Her and I could have fun at the dullest of spots, boring clubs and recitals, crappy concerts, anything. The lack of any possibility of mutual sexual attraction had blinded me to my feelings.

But this butterfly smelled just right. I knew it was wrong but I had to feel it on my own flesh.

I fingered the vibrator and turned it on, feeling it shake as I slipped it into my pants, and pleasure surged through me. It was designed to stay in place, its tip resting just in the right spot on the edge of my clit.

My whole body tensed and I looked at a picture of Betty, who suddenly seemed more gorgeous than I had ever noticed. I imagined myself in the same positions as Jim in the photos around the room, hugging and kissing her at Christmas, holding her on a camping trip, standing with her at an altar. But most of all it was that bed, and the smell of Betty in the room and on my body.

The butterfly whirred away, its power drilling an orgasm deep inside me. I reached one finger under my pants to massage it, moaning again as I did, so loud I thought the neighbors might hear.

It was a small butterfly, but it seemed to encompass my entire body like a lover's kisses. I wanted so badly for Betty to come home and fuck me that I wanted to cry at the impossibility of it.

But the orgasm broke through the sadness, as that powerful little butterfly rocked me to pieces. I screamed, soaking my panties and my jeans in climactic juices.

Thoughts of Betty rolling through my head, her imagined hand wrapping around my body, the smell of her hair on the pillow consoling me, I drifted off into the most contented sleep I'd had since leaving whatshername.