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Tandy is standing in the kitchen area uncorking a bottle of wine.
“Okay. Now tell me what she really said.”
I drop my handbag on the table and cross my arms. “What’s a pillow princess?”
The cork pops out of the wine bottle. Tandy puts it aside and shakes her head. “She called you that?”
“Yep. I don’t know what it means, but if I had to guess I think it would be someone who just like…lays there because she doesn’t know how to give pleasure.”
“That’s exactly what it means, but as usual, Inez is out of line and full of shit.” She pauses. “I’ll talk to her.”
“Don’t.” I take the glass of wine she hands me. “I don’t want to give her the satisfaction of thinking I’d told you. She strikes me as someone who thrives on conflict.”
“Yep, that’s Inez. She’s never forgiven me for leaving Club Cross. Now that I’m seeing you it’s something else for her to be butthurt about.” She grows quiet for a moment. “I dunno. Maybe it’s time for her to move on. I can’t have someone working here who disrespects my girl…”
“No,” I say. “She seems good at her job. I don’t want you to have to fire someone just because they don’t like me. It’s easier if I just avoid her.” It feels weird interceding for someone who has it in for me, but I understand why Inez is threatened and tell Tandy more of what she said. “She thinks I’m just in this for the novelty. Looking at it from her perspective, I can see why she’d feel that way, you know? I get the impression I’m not the kind of girl you usually bring upstairs.”
“No, you’re not. And it’s not because I haven’t had opportunities. I just told myself I wouldn’t bring anyone else here unless they were right for me.” She pours two glasses of wine and hands me one. “You’re right for me.”
Outside, Inez’s black Mustang roars to life and screeches out of the lot.
“Yeah, she’s pissed,” Tandy says.
“I’m sorry.”
“Stop that.” She points at me.
“Right.”
“You’re not responsible for Inez being like she is. She’s cynical even on good days. She’s also projecting. What she said to you about girls going gay to make their boyfriends jealous? She said that because it happened to her. It was this girl named Laura she’d had a thing for since high school. They’d even hooked up a few times, but Laura’s parents were not a whole lot different from yours. Total homophobes.” Tandy corked the bottle and slid it back into the rack before continuing. “Anyhoo, they pressured her to date some pre-law Ken doll type who cheated on her so what does Laura do? She looks up Inez and tells her she made a mistake with Ken doll because she loved Inez all along. Starts going to Club Cross and even let Inez collar her in this public scene. It was the only time I’ve ever seen Inez completely happy.”
I find myself feeling sorry for a woman who wishes I’d disappear.
“So, what happened?”
“Well, all the lesbian BDSM clubbing got her ex-boyfriend’s attention which I personally think was the whole point. I don’t think it was about making him jealous so much as it was about Laura making herself look like one of those girls who would do anything. She thought it would make her sexier in his and I guess it worked because he came and took her right away from Inez. They got married. Have a kid now. I see them around town. They look pretty miserable.”
“Jesus.” I take a sip of my wine.
“But look,” Tandy says. “Women like Laura aren’t the bulk of the community, okay? They just garner the most gossip. A lot of lesbians are like you; they don’t come into their own identity sometimes until later in life. One of my best friends was married and had three kids before she admitted to herself that she was gay. Now she’s married to a woman. Her ex-husband was like your ex-boyfriend. He kind of knew. Think of how women have historically been called frigid for not responding sexually to men. A lot of time it was because those men didn’t know how to please them, but an equally good chance that a lot of those women just weren’t straight.”
We move to the sofa where I sit with my legs curled beneath me. We talk about how fortunate we are to live in a time when women aren’t stoned or institutionalized for being gay, and wonder whether our great-great-grandparents were kinky, and if so how they acted out their fetishes.
We both laugh, then Tandy turns serious.
“We’ll act out our fetishes in their honor,” she says., “but first there’s that little matter of rules.”
I take another sip of wine. I’d completely forgotten that she’d asked me here to talk.
“I made a discovery this morning at your place, Bliss. I want you to know I wasn’t snooping. I wouldn’t do that. It was kind of by accident but what I saw I can’t really unsee or ignore, not without things getting worse for you.”
“Let me guess. The bill cabinet.” I run my finger around the rim of my empty wine glass.
“Bliss, why didn’t you tell me you were struggling so much?”
My face flushes. I don’t have an answer.
“You told me that other than being short for groceries, everything was okay. But that’s not true, is it?”
