Or, Why Can’t Lesbians be Horn Dogs?
The first weekend I officially lived in Northampton, Massachusetts—futon squared against the wall and a few coffee mugs already forming rings on the window ledge—I got myself invited to an all-lesbian potluck. Jackpot! The stories I’d heard were true! Northampton was crawling with lesbians.
I stood over the milk crates I used to schlep my belongings, and tried to picture a sexy but entirely friendly outfit. I was horny, but somewhat shy. Earlier that day I’d noticed a woman in a coffee shop wearing nothing above the waist but a studded leather bra and a frothy pink scarf, but when she looked up to meet my eyes I’d frozen mid-stride, sloshing coffee onto my wrist. She certainly had nice cleavage, and seemed like somebody I wanted to sit next to—and ask, after a while, if it was okay if I pressed on one of her studs to see if it was as sharp as it looked—but when she locked eyes with me, I nervously spun around to examine the community bulletin board, ripping off the email address for a free yoga class with “hands-on assists.”
I dug in the crate with the tangled sweaters until I found my biggest belt buckle, one with a rodeo cowgirl stamped a little off-center into the metal, and after shaking out a nice regulation-black t-shirt, I slapped on some lotion from a free-sample I’d picked up at a mall kiosk. It smelled like sawdust, with a hint of vanilla. Perfect.
I didn’t really know the couple hosting the potluck, since I’d only met them at a coffee shop that morning. As I stood in line to buy a muffin we’d started up a conversation about Doberman Pinschers and the barbaric practice of ear cropping, and when one of them glanced out the window and saw the parking police standing next to her car, they both ran off, shouting the invitation over their shoulders.
When I pulled up in front of their apartment building, a group of women were gathered on the lawn next to a smoking grill and a picnic table flapping with a wrinkled batik tablecloth. I grabbed my bucket of KFC from the passenger seat and walked across the grass toward them, not thinking I hope I find a nice piece of ass today, because even in my own head I’m not usually that vulgar, but it is true that I pictured myself tugging off a woman’s top and tossing her (gently—it’s a futon, after all) onto my bed. I waved as heads turned toward me, and began scanning the group for the sort of top I had in mind—stretchy, uncomplicated by buttons, and bra-less.
“Hi!” a smiling woman said, stepping toward me and putting out her hand. She had a shaved head and long dangly earrings made from what looked like black electrical tape.
“Hi,” I said, smiling with only half my mouth, the way I always do when meeting new people, a habit I’ve tried without success to rid myself of. The woman’s hand was cold and thin in mine, and I squeezed it gently, leaning in a little, trying to make up for my weird smile.
“We were just talking about the times our mothers’ve found our dildos!” she exclaimed, throwing her head back to laugh. Two women looking on, both wearing their own black t-shirts and clutching beer bottles, smiled and nodded.
The bucket of KFC was comfortingly warm against my stomach, and I hugged it a little as I talked. “One time my mother’s cleaning lady gathered all the half-empty bottles of lube in my room and squeezed them into one big bottle,” I told them. I felt pretty confident this story would get a laugh—it always did. Especially when I added how our cleaning lady had used an old ketchup squeeze bottle, not removing the label first, and that my then-girlfriend always erupted into laughter whenever I pulled it out.
But no one laughed. The woman with the shaved head wrinkled her brow, like she was struggling to understand. “Cleaning lady?” she repeated. “How can you perpetuate classist privilege and subjugate your own sister?” Her eyes were wide and fixed on mine. I could make out a network of tiny veins at the edges.
I looked from face to face, and saw that this was serious. The happy chatter around us had cooled. “Well…she was my mother’s cleaning lady…I don’t, um, believe in that…” I shifted my weight to the other foot and glanced across the lawn toward my car.
The truth was that I didn’t care a hell of a lot about politics in that moment. I’d just broken up with my long-time girlfriend, and had spent the previous month sleeping in my mother’s spare room. I’d played Scrabble, talked to my mom’s friend Connie about her tomato plants, and gone with my mom to the senior center to help tie yarn onto looms, which takes many more hours than you would think, especially when the nice old lady you’re doing it for tells you a long story while you work, and you have to let go of the yarn to lean in and hear her properly.
I was ready to get laid. And a group of lesbians, by definition, should be up for that.
“You’re right,” I said, the breeze luffing the back of my t-shirt. “Having a cleaning lady is barbaric.” Then I held up my bucket of chicken and tapped the side. “Better get this to the buffet.”
I tucked my chin and headed for the picnic table. When I got there, the woman seated at one end, busy grinding something brown and clumpy with a mortar and pestle, looked up and watched me as I pushed bowls around to make room for my bucket. She stroked the ceramic side of her mortar lovingly, waiting for me to see her, and then held my gaze for too long.
“What are you making?” I asked.
“I’m pre-grinding these wheat berries so our bodies can more readily absorb the nutrients,” she said, her voice low and somewhat sexy. She lifted the pestle and waved it in a lazy circle, like a bra she’d just taken off. “Got this baby at a flea market. It’s my mano y almirez.”
As I’ve said, I came to this picnic looking for hot girls. Someone I could later, in a dimly-lit room, beckon to me with a come hither finger. Someone who would come, and not have anywhere to be for a while. But aside from this wheat berry lady, the women at this picnic were not in a lusty mood. They were pissed. Pissed that I had a cleaning lady, pissed—as it transpired—that I wouldn’t agree to eat a clump of wheat berry from a stranger’s sweaty palm, and pissed that I’d made room for my bucket of chicken on the food table, because, as the woman who came over to bulge her eyes at me said, the birds were kept in tiny wire cages and cruelly slaughtered. There was a chill in the air.
I tried putting the chicken back in my car, but the subject of animal mistreatment was already “out there,” and women standing in little groups all around me were now discussing the finer points of cattle slaughter, their spiked bangs and pink cheeks giving me the distinct desire to run for it. All the Frisbees had been grounded. Two women who had begun to playfully apply sunscreen under the straps of each other’s overalls snapped the bottle’s lid closed. The sun went behind some clouds.
I told myself I’d give it five more minutes. I had a history of over-reacting, like the time I jumped into a muddy lake when a bee landed on my shoulder, because I thought a whole swarm was after me.
I ate some free-range chicken off a skewer and got to thinking. Why did having the hots for women mean you might also want to lecture poor unsuspecting people about “the blinding of sweatshop children” when they accidently hang their Old Navy sweater over the back of your chair? All lesbians don’t do this, certainly, but lesbians did seem much more likely to discuss child labor laws and lecture people about not putting Tupperware in the microwave than, say, frat boys. Why did the fact that God made you a woman who wanted to unbutton another woman’s jeans with your teeth give you a good shot at also being the sort of woman who wanted to soak the labels off pickle jars and haul them on the back of a bicycle to the nearest recycling facility?
But don’t get me wrong. I want the little children to see. I want the chickens to run wild and free and everyone who punches a timeclock to pull in at least twenty-five dollars an hour. But I also want to get laid. And I might use aerosol “odor control” spray around the cat box before you come over so you can breathe through your nose when you kiss me. I might pull an injection-molded rubber toy out of my goody bag that will never, ever, biodegrade, not ever. When five hundred years from now someone goes walking across a landfill, they will discover its knobby little head sticking out.
There is a time for crying about sharks that were caught, had their fins sliced off, and then sank, unable to swim, to the bottom of the ocean to die. And it’s not while I’m trying to kiss you. It is not on this gorgeous day: the grass still new and soft under our bare feet, the sun so lovely in the sky. I want to hold hands and go back to my place, and not talk about the melting ice caps. I promise, we can talk about them later. I’ll take two plastic cups from the sleeve of five hundred I picked up at Costco, fill them with off-brand soda, and you can tell me anything you want. I promise, I’ll be listening. But pull on this lumpy brown sweatshirt just to be safe.
About the Author
Aileen Jones-Monahan is a writer living in Western Massachusetts. Her mother cut the cord off the television when she was a kid, so she spent a lot of time reading and fashioning "helpful" inventions from junk drawer tidbits. She enjoys these activities to this day. After the birth of her sons, she added napping and eating in bed with the door closed. Her essay "Cigarette Ash in the Frying Pan" was published in the last issue of Hip Mama, and she has work forthcoming in Green Prints and The Smart Set.
Check her out here: www.facebook.com/a.jonesmonahan