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From: Vulgar Argot <gekagekREMOVEALL@CAPShotmail.com>
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Subject: {ASSM} Untitled Exercise 1
Date: Sat,  5 Apr 2003 05:10:02 -0500
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Untitled Exercise 1
by Vulgar Argot
(Ff, FF, nosex)

This is an exercise I designed for myself to strengthen an aspect of
my writing. I wanted to see how I would do with a lesbian (more or
less) character from a first-person perspective.

It had taken me months to find the place, but from the first time I
walked in, I knew it was what I was looking for--a little bar off the
Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. My little Audi looked a little out of
place in the parking lot among the pick-up trucks, second-hand vans,
and mud-spattered SUVs, but not inordinately so. I parked it in one
corner of the lot, actually up on grass, where a half-dozen other cars
that might qualify as "luxury" clustered together, as if for
protection from the bigger, meaner cars.

I had come here once before, on a scouting mission. I had to see for
myself if such a place existed. There had been a few other women of my
type there, sitting at the bar, drinking mixed drinks and wine
spritzers, and talking to everyone but each other.

It was one of the first spots I'd found in my searching where I was
actually comfortable going inside. I'd spent less than ten minutes in
the Clit Club before making a run for it. I hadn't even gone inside
Meow Mix, surrounded as it was by pretty college girls dressed like
they could have been going to any club in Manhattan, travelling in
packs, playing at bisexuality for the shock value, always touching
each other like someone might mistake them for a closet homophobe if
they broke contact for a second.

I was a fine one to talk about playing at bisexuality. At home, I had
a new husband. Or, at least after two years of marriage, he still felt
like a new husband. The house was still impossibly clean, too--the
sort of clean that only a new house which has never had a child inside
of it can be--clean and white and quiet, our voices disappearing into
the high ceilings without an echo. When I am done with what I came
here for, I will go home to him, wrap myself around him, make love to
him, make the child I told him I wanted two years ago, that I do want,
but keep balking out of fear of what I'm leaving behind.

I like this place. I don't even know if it has a name beyond BAR, as
seen in pink neon block lettes, visible from the highway. It's dark
and smoky with the low ebb and flow of conversation and the sharp
clack-clack of a game of pool going on in the back. It's just like a
thousand thousand bars across the country, only there don't seem to be
any men here. Nothing keeps them out. There's no bouncer, no sign
saying "Y Chromosomes Stop Here" outside the door. I suspect men do
come in from time to time, maybe have a beer, then figure out that
they don't belong and leave. But, it's not a lesbian bar. There are no
lesbian bars out here. It's just a place that men don't belong.

Outside, it's brisk, just cold enough to crinkle my nipples through
the thin fabric of my blouse. Inside, it's much warmer, hot even, from
the press of bodies. People seem comfortable enough hanging their
jackets in the front hall with no coat check, so I do the same. I'm
wearing a tan, sensible skirt and cream-colored blouse that would not
have looked out of place at work. I debated dressing down a bit,
trying to fit in a little better. But, as I said, I am not the only
woman of my type here. Some people might not like the idea of being
pigeonholed, but I find it ideal. I have a type in within it, I am
anonymous.

I sidle up to the bar and order a beer. It is the first beer I've
drunk in years, but it feels right and tastes so good in the hot,
smoky darkness.

"You have a very pretty accent," says one of the girls sitting at the
bar. Her own English is heavily accented--Jamaican or Bahamian, maybe.
The speaker is dark-skinned enough to be from any of those places or
Africa for that matter, "Where is it from?"

Anticipating my answer to the question brings a little frisson of fear
to my spine, of misunderstanding and rejection, "South Africa," I say,
wondering if I am not deliberately clipping my tones, "Johannesburg."
My questioner's eyes widen a little. Against her black face and the
darkness, it's like a cartoon of something sinister peering out of the
darkness. I wonder if I am losing her, but I am a deal closer. I press
on, "I'm Kerry," I say, extending my hand.

With a momentary glance, she takes the hand I've offered her, shaking
it. Her palm is dry and faintly callused, her nails trimmed to a
functional length, "I'm Mariah," she says, "like the singer, only
prettier."

I smile appreciatively at the joke. Mariah moves in closer, taking the
stool next to me, turning in to face me, rocking back and forth as she
talks so that her knees occasionally brush against mine. Her voice is
rich and sweet and melodious, her body all curves. I don't know what
she would want with a woman like me, but I never understood that with
my husband either. Still, he loves me and pays homage to my pale, tiny
form as often as he can.

The conversation is a series of cues, signals that it is okay to
proceed. It doesn't last long. Our worlds are too different. She sells
sneakers in Bayside. I have not owned a pair of sneakers since college
and when I did, they were sneakers, not cross-trainers or running
shoes or any of the other phrases she uses while speaking about her
work as a pretense to making sure that I am on the level as I do the
same.

"I came here to dance," said Mariah, "Do you want to dance?"

I am on the level. Do I want to dance? I can say no, pay my tab and go
home. I haven't drunk too much to drive. But, I did not hunt this
place down and drive all of this way to give up and try again, "I
would love to dance."

It doesn't take long, once on the dance floor, for Mariah to start
touching me--not overtly like a man might do, but featherlight
fingertips on my belly and tailbone, her arms around me. She seems
content to lead, being three inches taller than me. I lean into her,
feeling her body pressed against mine. In the heat and the darkness, I
remembered.

This is what I remembered.

I am fourteen years old. It is summer and I have a fever. I lie in my
bed, drenched in sweat and writhing in discomfort. Somewhere below, in
the streets, there has been rioting and the pall of smoke tinged with
the acrid hint of tear gas reaches us even her. I call out in the
darkness for water. I am burning up. I hate the feeling of my
nightgown, damp and cold against my skin.

My father looks in on me wearily, his eyes rimmed with worry and
fatigue. He calls to one of the younger maids, a tribal girl who has
not much English or Afrikaans with which to communicate.

"Watch over her," he says grimly, "Make sure she has whatever she
wants." I know he would watch me himself, but his new wife and newer
baby have the fever too and all need care.

The maid looks in on me, her face querulous. I pantomime drinking
water. She gets me a glass. Then, unbidden, she fetches a deep bowl,
filled with cool water. In it, she dips a rag which she then wipes
across my forehead. The relief is immediate and overwhelming. I give a
little sigh of gratitude.

She smiles and says something to me in her strange language, obviously
meant to calm me. Her voice is so beautiful. Now, she wipes cool water
on my cheeks and chin. I lift my head so that she can get my neck. She
presses the rag to my flesh again and again, refreshing it with cool
water each time. With a second rag, she dries where she presses it.

With her free hand, she takes my nightgown, pressing the soaked fabric
between two fingers, "Water," she says, pantomiming disgust. I sit up
and feel the nightgown peeled off of me, over my head. She works her
way down now, cooling my flesh with one rag and drying it with the
other. I still burn, but there is a pleasure in this, a cessation of
misery.

She touches me nearly everywhere with the rags, even the tips of my
tiny, newly-formed breasts and the top of my public triangle. Her
touch is gentle, but clinical. When she is done with the front, I roll
over on my face so that she may do the back. Before she is much below
my shoulderblades, I am finally, mercifully asleep.

When I feel her weight lift from the edge of the bed, I wake up and
cry out. She makes a soothing noise with no words and turns out the
light before coming back to lie down beside me, fully dressed in the
grey and white uniform of our household. Later in the night, her
weight is gone again and again I cry out. She rushes back to my side,
shushing me and singing to me a song I do not understand.

When I wake a third time, it is preternaturally quiet outside and she
is sleeping easily at my side. Her dark skin is silvery in the light
of a gibbous moon. She has taken off her uniform to sleep and is as
naked as I am. The fever seems to have broken and I am cold. I curl
around her, pulling a sheet over us and go back to sleep.

My dreams are still fever dreams. But in them, I am kissing her rich,
heavy lips. It is not a sex dream. I do not really know what sex is
yet. I have not even kissed a boy yet. My school is very proper, a
haven for girls from the wealthiest families, akin to a nunnery in
many ways.

When I wake up, she and the fever are gone. I wash off the last of my
sweat myself in a proper tub. I dress and come down for breakfast. My
father is there, worry etched deep in his face. He can not hide a tear
of relief when I tell him I am feeling much better and perhaps I will
go to school tomorrow.

By the time I ask him which maid it was that watched over me, he does
not remember, if he ever knew. He had other things on his mind and
grabbed the first servant he saw. It is some months later by then and
she might not even be in our employ.

Later, I will enjoy healthy sexual relationships with a few men until
find one with whom I can share my life. I will never seek out that
sort of intimacy from a woman. But, I will often wonder what it would
have been like to kiss and be kissed by those thick, lucious lips to
feel those hands touch me in a less clinical way.

"Kerry?" Mariah asked. I looked up. At some point, her hands had
become bolder, not sexual, not yet anyway. She smiles down at me, her
pearly white teeth clearly visible, "You look like you're a million
miles away."

I smile, "I was just remembering," I say. Before she can ask what I
was remembering, I pull her head down to mine, opening my mouth to
kiss and be kissed. 
--Vulgar Argot
  http://www.asstr-mirror.org/files/Authors/VulgarArgot/index.html
--
"I've been accused of vulgarity. I say that's bullshit."
  --Mel Brooks

-- 
Pursuant to the Berne Convention, this work is copyright with all rights
reserved by its author unless explicitly indicated.
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