Another Kind of Love (17 page)

B
abs nodded toward an imposing-looking woman who was somewhere between forty and forty-five. Or, as Dee guessed wryly—a very beat thirty-five or a well-preserved fifty. Hard to tell in this era of highly touted beauty aids, when even your hairdresser doesn't know. The woman looked up suddenly, and in that one unguarded moment Dee caught such an expression of loneliness and defeat that she turned away in embarrassment. She felt like an eavesdropper in a confessional. That look so nakedly revealing: I'm tired; this isn't what I wanted, but it's the only way to reach out to a life I don't really want . . . don't really understand. And it's too late to change.

Dee shuddered and blinked her eyes hard to shut out the oppressive vision. It was too close to home—and she didn't want to be reminded. She wanted to turn and run, but it was too late.

The woman had caught her glance, and the uncertain smile on her face was too vulnerable to refuse. Dee had always been a sucker for strays and underdogs.

She made her way slowly toward the stranger, unsure how she would approach her. But she smiled charmingly and extended her hand. “I'm Dee Sanders, ambassador of good will, pleasant tidings, bits of nonsense, or what-have-you. At least for the moment.”

An uncertain flicker, then a slow, deliberate smile spread across the woman's face. “Hail. You speak English.”

Dee bowed. “I try. I don't use double negatives, but I sometimes say ‘ain't.' ”

“You're entitled.
Noblesse oblige
. . . or something. My name's Eileen. I came with the blonde who
is
having a good time.”

Her voice was warm and pleasant, and Dee found her earlier uneasiness dispelled. Dee sat down on the uncomfortable foam mattress placed on what should have been a door. “Blondes are supposed to have a good time, aren't they? At least, that's what the ads say.”

“Madison Avenue hogwash,” said Eileen, emphasizing the remark with an airy gesture. She turned to Dee with a look of confident intimacy. “Nobody else here does,” she whispered.

“Nobody else here does what?”

“Speak English.”

Dee nodded in grim appreciation as a young man tripped by, handing each of them a cocktail and going on to a cluster of three well-dressed older men.

“They
say, ‘Wasn't it a camp,' and ‘Dish me, honey'—a cross between a Cub Scouts' outing and a short-order cooks' convention.” Eileen raised her glass in a toast. “To fringe life—and benefits.”

Dee shook her head and smiled. “I can't drink to that—it's an admission of defeat.”

She wondered how much Eileen had had to drink.

“Then drink to roses and springtime and love. You go to your church and I'll go to mine. Do you think I'm drunk?”

“I've been considering it,” Dee said lightly.

“You're right. First time in three years, too. I'm in A.A.”

Oh, brother! Dee thought regretfully. Wonder if that's why no one would talk to her? But no. It wasn't that. Eileen wasn't the type to talk to just anyone this way. Besides, it was not uncommon to encounter A.A. members among the gay crowds. She was plainly miserable and had simply found someone who might possibly understand.

From the corner of her eye, Dee saw Rita making her way toward them. She dreaded what Rita's intrusion might do, but to stop her now would only be misunderstood and insulting to Eileen.

“Hello, sweetie. Having fun?” Rita's cool glance encompassed Eileen, categorized her, and dismissed her.

“Meet Eileen.” Dee made the introduction as casual as she could without encouraging Rita to sit down and stay.

“Just checking up on you.” Rita smiled, leaned over, and kissed Dee briefly on the forehead so that the perfume from her breasts floated seductively to Dee's face. “See you later, darling.”

She knows every trick in the book, Dee thought as Rita walked away, leaving her with a twinge of excitement she could not deny.

“Yours?” Eileen's voice brought her back.

“Yes. As much as anyone ever is.”

“A bitch?”

“Yes.”

“Welcome to the club.” Eileen finished off her drink carefully and set it down with a small sigh. “Why is it we always end up with bitches?”

Dee shrugged. “I don't know. Maybe some of us are just born asking for trouble. Misery hunters. Masochists.”

“Christ! You sound like that damn head-shrinker who writes all those books about what's wrong with the homosexuals. Dr. Krugler, or somebody like that.
Injustice collectors
—that's what he calls us.
Garbage collectors
is more like it!” The drinks were obviously having an effect. She was slurring her words, but her focus was still sharp. “Ah, well, live and let live, I always say. Or do I?” She broke into a sudden bitter laugh. “Hell! Let's forget the unrespectable aspects of our lives. Let's talk shop. What do you do? Out there in the straight world, that is. I'm a respectable writer.”

“I'm a photographer,” Dee said briefly, not wishing to discuss herself more than necessary. It was safer to get Eileen to talk. “What do you write? Today, I thought, all writers were supposed to be respectable. Except the Beats, of course.”

“Not so. Not so at all. Do you know”—she leaned forward whispering as though she were imparting a great and valuable secret, her pray eyes bright with mockery—“that at least half of them drink . . . and smoke . . . and that untold numbers of them are queer?”

“Shocking,” agreed Dee with a wry grin. “Do go on.”

“And I hear tell some of them even take dope. To say nothing of the awful influence they've had on suburbia. Minute a writer gets successful he heads for the country . . . and poof! There goes desecration.”

She laughed hugely at her own joke, slapping Dee's shoulder for emphasis.

Dee winced under the force of the blow but smiled. “Well,” she said carefully, “I suppose in this era of conformity some ritual must be observed to show distinction.”

Eileen nodded. “You are so right. And you know how I achieve it? By being respectable. You can't hardly get that kind no more. In a world that's reeking with payola, Madison Avenue double-talk, expense account call girls, someone like me is a freak. What they call a square.”

“It's nice to know there are a few left. I thought I was all alone. But you still haven't told me what you write.”

“Okay. You asked for it. Children's stories.”

Dee's eyebrows shot up.

“Don't laugh,” said Eileen. “It's the truth, so help me. I've been doing it for fourteen years. Before that I was a teacher. Would you believe it?”

“Yes,” Dee answered quickly. She began to warm to this tough-surfaced but strangely vulnerable woman. Almost automatically she began to analyze her face in terms of portrait angles. It was a good face, really. Intelligent, strong, yet somehow wistful. A low shot would be best. It would minimize the long nose without losing its dominating effect. “What kind of children's stories? Not fairy tales, I trust.”

“No wisecracks, please. I write just plain children's stories. Sensible. Like English walking shoes.”

The young man came back gingerly. “Another drink, girls?”

“Naturally. Do I look like a spy for A.A.?” Eileen raised one eyebrow and stared at him with exaggerated solemnity. “Martinis on the double.”

The young man gave her a startled look and then giggled. “Oh, you are a camp!” He wiggled off toward the bar with a dexterity that would have made a burlesque dancer envious.

They watched him in silence for a few moments.

“I really can't stand them,” Eileen said. “Faggots. Or the dykes either. They're just as bad. Guess it's because I really hate myself. But I'm not going to push it. I'm stuck with it and that's that.”

The young man returned with the drinks just then, and Dee was spared the task of commenting. He deposited them somewhat nervously on the small coffee table beside them. “Here you are, dolls,” he said in a sweet, girlish voice, and disappeared into the crowd.

Dee looked after him thoughtfully, wondering if he was really as swish as he appeared to be, or if it was part of an act. In a place like this it paid to swish.

She turned back to Eileen, wondering whether to encourage the confession that was about to spring forth. She had no choice. Eileen pinned her with a sardonic look and asked, “When do you intend to ask me how long I've been gay and how long my girl and I have been together?”

Dee opened her mouth to answer, but Eileen didn't bother to wait. “I've come to look upon such questions as standard procedure in a gay crowd. Funny, isn't it? Where else in the world do two strangers make idle conversation about their sex lives as a form of introduction? Almost like a password.”

“Why not?” Dee asked lightly. “We are . . . well, underground, aren't we?”

“Touché!”
cried Eileen. “And very diplomatically put, but I must say I detect a tone of definite resentment. Don't tell me you're giving in to respectability, too. Better watch out. The respectable ones—they're the worst kind.”

“Why?”

“Because they're so damn guilty, that's why. Like you.”

Dee suddenly felt irritated with the conversation. She didn't want anybody prying into raw spots, opening old confusions. It was painful enough to do it herself. “What makes you think I feel guilty?” she asked sharply.

Eileen took a long sip of her drink and measured Dee with a long, shrewd look. “You simply ooze with the need for atonement—it sticks out all over you. You didn't walk through the door when you came in—you sneaked in.” She grinned impishly. “Why don't you go straight?”

“Whatsa matter,” Dee snapped back, deciding to make a joke of it, “you one of them religious fanatics or somethin' ?”

They both laughed uproariously. Dee was beginning to feel her drinks, too.

“Y'know, you just may have something there,” Eileen remarked. “As a matter of fact, I'm beginning to think so.” She laughed again, but this time there was a desperate quality to it. “I'm the reverse of what's-his-name in
The Rains Came.
You know what I did this week?”

Dee shook her head.

“I brought that young blond kid out . . . gave her a first-class introduction to the big wide, wonderful gay world.” Her lips thinned to a bitter grin. “What do you think of an old dyke like me doing something like that?”

Dee's mind raced through a number of answers, frantically trying to pick out a reasonable and tactful response. But once again she was relieved of the responsibility by Eileen's compulsive need to unburden herself.

“She knew I was queer,” she blurted without waiting for any comment from Dee. “She knew it and pushed and pushed and wheedled and seduced until I couldn't stand it anymore . . . until I thought I'd have a nervous breakdown if I didn't . . . until . . .”

She stopped abruptly and turned toward Dee. Her eyes were tearless but glistening with backed-up misery. “Say something quick or I'll cry.”

Dee took her hand and held it tightly. Eileen recited along with her:

They went on that way for a few minutes, repeating half-remembered lines from old childhood poems, nursery rhymes, nonsense limericks. Dee wondered what people would think if they could overhear, but she didn't really care. It wasn't anyone's damn business. Slowly Eileen began to recover. Dee watched the muscles in her face relax; then she let go of her hand carefully.

“Thanks,” Eileen whispered, flashing a grateful smile.

“Nothing at all,” Dee said brightly. “Any friend of Robert Louis Stevenson or Old Mother Goose is a friend of mine.”

“Dee!” Rita's voice shrilled toward them. “C'mon, darling. We're all going downtown for a nightcap.”

She glided toward the table, then surveyed them with ill-concealed impatience. “You going to hide in a corner all night yakking?” She was being rude and she knew it, and didn't care.

Dee could see that she was quite drunk already, and had a sudden urge just to get up and slap her. But she sat quite still, looking at her with silent fury.

Rita ignored the warning in her eyes. “Hurry it up, will you? You can talk all night long some other time.”

Dee glanced quickly at Eileen, half ashamed to leave her this way—yet honestly relieved. She had had enough of other people's traumas for one evening. Still, it was a hell of a thing to do.

As though sensing her conflict, Eileen waved her away with a smile. “Go ahead. I'm all right now. Besides, mine'll probably be along here any minute to drag me along, too.”

Dee got up and tried to make as graceful an exit as possible, with Rita tugging at her sleeve.

When she turned at the door to wave good-bye, she saw Eileen dancing with her girl, laughing. If it hadn't been for the way Eileen was dancing, she might possibly have never thought of her again.

But there was something unforgettably touching in the way she managed to make a current rock-and-roll tune look like the Lindy.

T
hey hadn't been at the night club ten minutes when Rita stood up to dance with Bunny, Babs's girlfriend, and even from the table Dee could see she was knocking her brains out to be amusing. She would succeed. She always did. Dee briefly considered being jealous, but she just couldn't.

Jealousy. Such a peculiar and illogical emotion, Dee thought, despite the loud music and constant babble of voices. And in this kind of life, she had seen it take many faces—doubly frightening since every gay kid had to fear both sexes instead of one. She considered her own attitudes toward Rita with a momentary detachment. If she's out with a guy, I'm jealous. When we're out with gay kids, I'm not. At least, I don't think so. However, she had to admit that she did get angry when Rita flirted with girls . . . and sick, sometimes.

She signaled the waitress for another drink and looked around the filled room. It was too dark, really, to make out anything farther than ten feet away, but she tried anyhow. The young girls in tight pants with the trim boys' shirts and the inevitable cufflinks. There was something faintly obscene about wearing cufflinks; it was so nakedly symbolic of the homosexual confusion.

The women between twenty-five and forty varied the most from the traditional garb of the gay bar: a statuesque blonde wearing jodhpurs and carrying a riding crop; the petite brunette with the doe eyes wearing a frilly dress and a floppy hat. The costumes varied until the “past forty” stage.

Then, sprinkled in among them all were the subtle ones—the ones who would go unnoticed in the straight world except to the most discerning eye. Career women who, for social or economic reasons, needed to “pass”—the chameleonlike ones who took on the protective coloring of whatever group they were with.

And inevitably, the “bull dykes”—heavy, thin, tall, short; but all dedicated to the task of proving themselves just as good a man as any creature born a male.

“Dance?” A young girl suddenly appeared in front of Dee.

She looked up and immediately felt like taking the girl over her knee, spanking her, and sending her home . . . with a skirt on.

“Well? You can't sit there all night scowling.” The girl grinned boyishly. “I've had my eye on you. But you wouldn't look back.”

She was really quite pretty, Dee thought. “Sorry,” she said. “I've been philosophizing.”

“Here?” the girl laughed. “C'mon, honey. We'll chase your blues away.”

The girl's laugh brought a smile to Dee's lips, and she stood up, feeling suddenly reckless. “No jitterbugging and no cha-cha-cha—understand ?”

“You're the boss.” She stood still a moment. “Tall broad, aren't you.”

“No. Not at all. You're just standing in a hole.” Dee took her hand and led her to the cramped dance floor. She pulled the girl close to her and was amused to realize that she felt no response to the girl's breasts pressed against hers. It was too much like her college days, when all the girls danced together and it didn't mean a thing . . . except for maybe one or two who would make Dee very nervous and she would always find a way to excuse herself without knowing why.

Being gay was something comparatively new to Dee. She had always known about such things, of course, but it had nothing to do with her. After all, she had fallen in love in her second year of college—with a musician, of all things. He was intense, brooding, dark, and treated her with an unbearable indifference. His thin face with the questioning eyes was intriguing and fiercely romantic—then. If she saw the same type of man on the street today, she'd think he was an overage juvenile delinquent.

She missed a step and quickly apologized to the girl.

“My fault,” the girl replied. “You don't talk much, do you? I like that.” She pushed closer so that her pelvic bones were jabbing Dee in the thighs.

Oh, God! Dee thought. What will I do with her?

“Actually, I talk a passion-purple streak when I get going. I'm just antisocial.”

“Philosophizing again?” the girl asked coyly.

“Not really. The truth of the matter is that I have to count with the music or I can't dance. So conversation is out.” Dee smiled.

“You're nice,” she laughed. “What do you do for a living?”

“Secretary,” Dee replied quickly with her standard answer. Bar frequenters had big mouths, and she needed her job. She glanced around the room again from her new vantage point. The decor was a sickly imitation of the plush Roman era, with flat black ceiling and wall panels. Off-white imitation candelabras clung to the center of each panel, and the same white-painted semicolumns separated them. The Formica bar tables seemingly grew from the floor like grotesque toadstools in a complete clash with the room decoration, and the jukebox was an unspeakable effrontery.

“May I break in?” Rita's voice chimed lyrically.

Dee turned quickly and smiled into Rita's eyes. “Hello, darling. Which of us do you want?”

The young girl's head plainly took in all of Rita with one motion, and a low “wow” sound came from deep inside her throat. “Yours?” she asked after a moment.

Dee smiled tolerantly. It was the second time tonight the question of possession had come up—but it was often asked, anyway—and she was beginning to feel like an art collector.

Rita bestowed a graceful pat on the girl's head and pushed herself between them, placing both her arms around Dee's neck with a soft caress. “Run along, darling. We haven't danced all evening . . . mind?”

“No. No, not at all.” The girl took two steps back and then stopped at the bar.

“Hello, darling,” Rita said softly. “I've missed you.” She pulled Dee's face close to hers and nuzzled nearer to her.

“I thought you were having a good time . . .” Dee answered, with a light smile to show she wasn't picking an argument.

“I was,” Rita answered with a thin sigh. “But they begin to bore me after a while. You know how it is.” She kissed Dee on the lips softly. “How did you ever get stuck with that midget?”

It was the kind of comment Dee didn't appreciate, but she let it go. Rita seldom said anything kindly or with genuine humor.

“Guess who I have a chance to meet,” Rita continued.

“Who?”

“Martie Thornton!” she said exuberantly.

“Who's he?”

Rita clucked with mild irritation. “Not
he. She!
One of the best nightclub singers in town. She's gay, of course. But Babs—dear old Babs who knows all and tells more—just happened to mention that her old high school chum was now a singer. You'd think she would have said something before now, wouldn't you? I mean, knowing how important it might be to me to know someone like Martie?”

Dee winced. It was “Martie” already. “Well, maybe they just rediscovered each other.”

“Oh,” Rita said with a condescending wave of her hand, “Babs gave me some silly story like that . . . just recently ran into her, or something. I don't believe her, of course.”

“Why on earth not?” Dee asked sincerely.

Rita smiled to another girl on the floor.

“Because one simply doesn't lose track of someone as important as that!”

“For heaven's sake, Rita. Maybe singers aren't that important to Babs. It's a very plausible explanation.”

“Oh! You'd stand up for anybody. I thought you didn't like Babs.” Rita pouted.

“I'm not standing up for her, and I don't feel much of anything about Babs—either way. It's the principle. This habit of yours of always thinking people are out to do you in or purposely withholding information is dangerous. You're going to end up a paranoiac if you're not careful.”

“Stop lecturing, Dee. I'm not in the mood. If you don't want me to have a career, just say so. Doesn't my happiness mean anything to you? Don't you want me to get ahead?”

“Of course I do, silly.” Dee took a deep breath and, cautioning herself to go easy, asked, “So when's the audition?”

She wondered if she'd ever be free of having to watch every word she said.

“Oh, I haven't wrangled that part yet, but I will,” Rita answered with secretive exhilaration. “Martie's doing a show at one of the East Side supper clubs, and Babs and I thought . . .”

I bet, “Babs and I thought,” Dee exclaimed to herself.

“. . . that we'd just sort of stop by one evening this week and invite her to the table. Cute?”

“Very cute,” Dee answered. “What night?” She was already sure of the answer.

Rita smiled sweetly. “Like tomorrow . . . maybe?”

It was a trap and Dee knew it. “Sunday?” she asked anyway.

“People still eat on Sundays.”

“Why not Monday?”

Rita sighed. “Everyone knows the right people never go to a supper club on a Monday—even if it's open.”

“Well, why don't you and Babs go alone?”

“It just wouldn't look right. Besides, it's so impressive to introduce you as a big editor.”

“Just a photography editor—there
is
a difference.” It was a lost fight. She was just making a better show of it.

“Tomorrow!” Rita smiled sweetly.

“It seems I have no choice,” Dee smiled back.

Rita's eyebrows lifted, and her lavender eyes glistened with twinkling triumph. “None whatsoever.” She tightened her grasp around Dee's neck and clung closely to her every step. “Let's go home now, darling. Let's get to bed early,” she whispered.

“Want to be pretty for tomorrow?” Dee asked huskily.

“Something like that,” Rita replied, breathing in Dee's ear.

Dee smiled slowly. “It's a good thing I'm not a spy,” she commented.

“Why?”

“I'd give away all my secrets to you. . . .”