Warm and Willing Read online

  The sex part did not improve. After the first time there was no pain, but there was no pleasure either. Tom would take her-at ever less frequent intervals-and he would move around on top of her like a stallion, while she lay beneath him, the joyless recipient of his passion. Sometimes she could make herself believe that it was his fault, that his ineptitude as a lover was responsible for her failure to enjoy lovemaking. Other times she could not escape the conclusion that the fault was her own. She was a cold woman, a woman incapable of passion, and that sort of woman should have the sense to remain unmarried.

  And yet she was not sexless. Sometimes she would be sitting home during the afternoon, sitting alone with a book, sitting listening to music, sitting perched in front of the television set while the monotony of a game show or soap opera went on in front of her. And a wave of desire would pass through her body, a rush of warmth that could only be the beginnings of lust.

  This never lasted, nor was it ever directed toward her husband. It lacked direction, this flow of passion-it was anonymous, aimed at nothing and no one, quickly over and done with. She could never feel desire for Tom or for any other man, but these occasional spasms of desire made her aware that she was a sexual being, somehow.

  “We never had much of a chance,” she told Megan. “Tom was a normal man. Maybe some men can live with a cold wife without caring. He wasn’t that kind of man. We bad fights, pretty horrible fights. He wanted me to go to a psychiatrist. I-I wanted to, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it.”

  Megan squeezed her hand.

  “I knew he was seeing other women. There was no reason why he shouldn’t. I was almost glad, after awhile, because that meant he wouldn’t bother me that way. We settled into this flat dead life. Sometimes he came home for dinner and stayed home, and we would watch television together or go to a movie. Sometimes he stayed downtown and didn’t get home until three or four in the morning. He would come home smelling of some other woman.”

  “Heavens.”

  “It might even have lasted. He never asked for a divorce, I think he hoped I would turn into a woman again.”

  “You are a woman.”

  “You know what I mean. He could still make love to me. I never refused him. That was one thing, at least. I never refused him. I thought something might happen, that it might change and it would be good for me. I couldn’t quite believe it, but I hoped so. Once I thought I was pregnant.”

  “What happened?”

  “I wasn’t, that’s all. I was terrified, because I knew that if I had a baby I was stuck, that the marriage would stay that way.”

  She crossed the living room, walked over to the window. The blinds were drawn. She opened them part way and looked out at a battery of lights across a courtyard. Megan was at her side but she did not turn to look at the blonde girl.

  “I’m running off at the mouth,” she said, “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be.”

  “Is it the wine? Why am I telling you so much?”

  “Because you’ve got to get it out of your system.”

  “You’re easy to talk to. You’re good to listen. Tom didn’t fight the annulment. He didn’t argue at all. It was something he would never have suggested, I don’t think. If he could stand living with me for two years like that, I guess he could have stood it forever.”

  “Rhoda-”

  “But he went along with it once I let him know it was what I wanted. He said he hoped I would be happy. He said I would probably like it better living alone, because then I could crawl into my shell and hibernate my way through life. He apologized for saying that. He was wrong anyway, because I don’t want to sleep my life away. I hate being lonely and I’m alone all the time and I dream bad dreams. The same dream, night after night. Running and being chased, that kind of dream.”

  She turned from the window. Megan was looking at her, infinite pity in her eyes.

  “What’s wrong with me?”

  “Don’t you know?”

  “I know.” A sigh. “I’m frigid.”

  “No.”

  “Of course I am. An iceberg. A female zombie.”

  “No.”

  “Then what?”

  Megan looked at her. “You really don’t know, do you? You really don’t know what you are.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “No, you don’t. You poor kid, you poor sweet kid, you don’t understand, do you?”

  And Megan kissed her.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Megan’s hands upon her shoulders, Megan’s lips against her own. She stood, stunned, and was kissed. And Megan ended the kiss and took a short step backward. Rhoda stared at her wide-eyed. She did not know what was happening.

  “Do you see?”

  “See what?”

  “Oh God,” Megan said. “God in heaven.”

  “Why did you kiss me?”

  “Because I wanted to. Very much.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you’re beautiful. Sometimes you move as though you don’t know that. You are beautiful, Rhoda.”

  “Why did you kiss me?”

  “Because I’m in love with you.”

  Her heart was pounding. She didn’t understand, did not even want to understand. She said, “That doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because…because we’re both-”

  “Yes?”

  “Both girls.”

  “So what?”

  “But Megan touched her shoulder. The contact was electric, slightly frightening. “You’d better sit down,” she said softly. “There are some things you have to hear.”

  They were sitting on the couch. Rhoda wanted a cigarette very badly. She took one from Megan’s pack and lit it and wondered why her hand was shaking. She seemed to be afraid but did not know what she was afraid of. Megan loved her, Megan had kissed her. She did not understand anything.

  Megan said, “There’s no way to say this. No way at all. I don’t know how to get started, Rhoda.”

  She waited.

  “Do you know what a lesbian is?”

  “Of course. I’m not a child.” And then suddenly she stiffened and the cigarette dropped from her fingers onto the couch. She snatched it up, drew on it, then leaned over to stub it out in the ashtray. She could not believe it.

  “Are you-”

  “Yes.”

  She closed her eyes. “Lesbians are girls who wear dungarees and men’s jackets,” she said levelly. “Lesbians have low voices and short hair and they swear a lot. You see them at night on Macdougal Street, walking along arm in arm. They have a mannish walk. They look like men, act like men.”

  “Some of us are like that.”

  “But you-”

  “I’m not that kind, no. I’m not a butch. But I’m gay.”

  “Gay?”

  “Homosexual.”

  “I can’t believe it. You’re not like that, you’re a woman.”

  “Yes, I’m a woman. So are you.”

  “But-”

  Megan touched her arm very briefly, then withdrew her hand. “Let me talk,” she said. “This is hard to say. Will you let me talk and try to get things straight? This isn’t easy.”

  She nodded.

  Megan said, “Not all people are the same. Ordinary people are-normal. Ordinary women fall in love with men and marry them and sleep with them. But some woman…some women can’t love men that way. Some woman fall in love not with men but with other women. They don’t have to be mannish to do this. They can be completely feminine, even as you and I.”

  She wanted to say something. All she could think was that Megan had said she loved her, that Megan wanted to sleep with her. This seemed to be a fact, a very definite fact, and yet it was so startling that she could not entirely accept it as such. Her mind fought with this thought, struggled with it, and she could not think of anything else. Megan loved her. Megan wanted to sleep with her.

  It was incredible.

  “That’
s the way I am, Rhoda. A lesbian. I can’t have sex with men, I can’t find them attractive, I can’t bear the thought of all those things the world calls normal. I know that they are normal, but they are not normal for me. For me, for Megan Hollis, sexual relations with a man would be a perversion.

  “Something quite different is normal for me. For me normal sex is sex with other women. Normal love is love for other women. Some people find this disgusting. Others are afraid of it. A great many people think that it’s morally wrong, a sin, evil. But I know that it’s right for me. It would be sinful for me to make love to a man, it would be evil and everything else. I am a lesbian.”

  She looked at Megan, at the blonde hair and fine features. She looked at Megan’s lips and remembered their touch when Megan kissed her. How had it felt? Soft, warm. How had she felt about it? She realized that she did not know. She had been too confused to react, favorably or unfavorably.

  “I think that you are like me, Rhoda.”

  “Oh, no.”

  “I think so.”

  “Why?”

  Megan lowered her eyes. “A feeling, partly. When I saw you I felt it. I wandered into your shop just by accident. I was looking for a gift for a girl I had been…very close to.”

  “A girl you loved?”

  “Yes, a girl I loved. You asked me if it was a wedding gift that I wanted. Do you remember that I smiled at the thought? And in a way it was a wedding gift. Not that Carolyn was getting married. Girls like us don’t marry. But Carolyn had been living here, and then she fell in love with another girl and left me, and that was my farewell present to her. A very appropriate one. A heart, jealousy-green, with red streaks like blood.”

  “Did you love her very much?”

  “Very much.”

  “And you came back to see me today because you wanted-to make love to me?”

  “Partly that. Partly because I liked you and I wanted to know you. I was surprised when I realized you weren’t an overt lesbian. And then I figured you out.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yes, I decided that you were gay without knowing it. The instincts are there. The way you reacted toward your husband, the way heterosexual relations did nothing for you. You were a lesbian but no one had shown you the way.”

  “Maybe I’m just frigid.”

  “No.”

  “You seem so certain. How do you how that?”

  “You know it yourself. You’ve had sexual feelings. You’re a sexual person, Rhoda. It shows in the way you talk and the way you move and everything else. It shows in your own awareness of your own body. You couldn’t possibly be sexless.” She smiled. “There are sexless people, Rhoda. I’ve met some of them, women with no feelings in their bodies. Some of them play with lesbianism when nothing else works for them, and lesbianism leaves them just as cold. They can’t love, they don’t have love living inside them. I’ve met them and I know what they’re like. But you’re not like that, Rhoda.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I do.”

  She lit another cigarette. Her hands were steadier now. She felt excitement percolating within herself, but she had no immediate fear, no odd feeling of anxiety. The discussion was a calm and cool one now. They were talking about her sexual impulses, analyzing her possible homosexuality in a slightly dispassionate fashion, and she was quite relaxed about it. The undercurrent of tension and excitement was not unpleasant or disturbing.

  “You were made to love,” Megan told her, “You tried to give that love to a man. You know how impossible that is. Why don’t you try giving it to me?”

  “I-”

  “You can’t bury it. You’ve been trying to do that. You know how it works out.”

  “It hasn’t worked out so badly.”

  “Hasn’t it? You have the same nightmare over and over again. You live a lonely life and you feel the loneliness of it. You’ve been trying to starve your own need for love and you need to give love and you need to receive it. It’s a stubborn force, Rhoda. It won’t let itself be starved out. It’s too real a need to be dismissed that easily.”

  She started to say something, to offer up some objection, then changed her mind. She smoked her cigarette and asked if there was any coffee left.

  “I’ll get some.”

  Megan brought back two cups of coffee. The coffee was hot and strong. Rhoda sipped hers, set the cup down in the saucer. She took a last drag on her cigarette and put it out. A line from Eliot- I have measured out my life in coffee spoons. In coffee spoons, in cigarette butts, in days awake and nights asleep. She had been measuring out her own life, parceling it out piece by piece. Years were passing, filled with nothing, and she was twenty-four years old and unutterably alone.

  How much was Megan offering her? And how much would it cost her to accept Megan’s offer?

  She sipped more coffee. “I’m all lost,” she said.

  “Poor girl.”

  “Poor girl. Yes. I had such a sweet time tonight. Dinner, the wine, being with you. I haven’t had an evening like that since I left Tom. Or since longer than that. I needed it, the friendship, all of it. I thought you would be my friend.”

  “I am your friend.”

  “I thought that was all you wanted.”

  “I want that and more. I want to be your friend. And your lover.”

  “My lover.”

  “Yes.”

  “What would we do? I don’t understand.”

  “Does it matter?”

  “I-”

  “I would make love to you,” Megan said, “I would make you feel like what you are, like a woman made for love. I would show you the dark side of the moon, I would make you laugh and cry. And we would be close and warm and nothing would matter, nothing at all.”

  “You make it sound beautiful.”

  “It will be beautiful.”

  “Will?”

  “Will. Because you can’t deny yourself the world, Rhoda. You can’t cut out a part of yourself. And sooner or later you’ll realize this.”

  “I can’t.”

  “You will.”

  “I can’t.” She lit another cigarette, nervous again now, afraid of what she might do, more afraid of what she might desire to do. She smoked nervously and missed the ashtray when she went to duck her ashes. She tried to scoop up the ashes and brushed them onto the floor in her clumsiness. Megan told her to forget it. She looked down at the ashes on the rug and thought that she was going to cry. She didn’t know why she ought to cry but she felt tears welling up behind her eyes and was afraid they would spill out momentarily.

  “I feel so funny,” she said.

  “Of course you do. Poor girl, you have to look at yourself all differently now. It’s a new world, isn’t it?”

  “I don’t know what it is.”

  “A brand new world. Right now it’s frightening because it’s so unfamiliar. When you learn to know it you’ll find out that you belong in it, that it’s the only world for you. The world of shadows, the twilight world. There are a great many cliches for it. But it’s my world. And yours, Rhoda.”

  “I feel like crying.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “I-”

  “Let it out. Don’t try to hold it in, baby, just relax and let it out. You can cry in front of me, Rhoda.”

  She cried. She couldn’t help it.

  “I have to go home, Megan.”

  She was standing now, her tears washed away, fresh lipstick on her lips. It was late and she was tired and frightened and she had to go home.

  “Stay.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Sleep here.”

  “Oh, Megan, no I can’t. I honestly can’t.”

  Megan was holding her arm. “Don’t go now,” she said. “It’s late and the streets are dark.”

  “I’ll be all right.”

  “And you’ll go back to a sterile little room and lie awake all night. Or fall asleep and dream bad dreams. You can’t be alone tonight, Rhoda. Too much has happened t
o you already. You need a settling time, a time to digest it all, and you ought to have somebody near you. Letting yourself cry was part of it. Being with someone is another part of it. You’ve had quite a night. You got drunk and you got shocked, and you’ve been forced to start seeing things in a different light, and this is no time for you to be alone.”

  “But I can’t-”

  “What?”

  “I can’t let you make love to me, Megan.”

  Megan smiled. “You silly girl.”

  “I-”

  “Silly thing. I in not propping you, honey. No propositions. I want you to stay here. That’s all.”

  “Is it?”

  “Yes” Megan turned from her, walked over to the window. She said, “I don’t want that kind of a seduction scene, baby. I’m not the rapist type, really I’m not. I’m no sex maniac. If I had wanted it that way I would have let you stay drunk. I wouldn’t have poured a bucket of coffee into you. I would have poured in some more wine, and before you knew what was happening I’d have had your clothes off and I’d have had my way with you, as the books so coyly put it.”

  Megan turned, faced her again. “But that’s not exactly my style. I don’t want to make sex to you, I want t make love to you. And I have to be honest. I’m not good at deception, not at all. I could have let tonight go by without tipping my hand at all, you know. I could have let a very firm friendship come first, and then by the time you found out I was a lesbian you would have been too emotionally involved to resist me. Believe me, I could have done that. But I’m not like that.”

  Megan smiled gently. “I want you to sleep here. That’s all, Rhoda. You’ll take the bed and I’ll sleep on the couch. It’s a comfortable couch. If you want to talk, I’ll be here to talk to. If you have bad dreams you can wake me and I’ll hold your hand and tell you that everything is all right. Whatever you want, I’ll be here.”

  She didn’t say anything. Her heart was beating furiously now. She felt choked inside. A lump in her throat, tremors in her hands. She swallowed.

  “Are you afraid of me?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Do you trust me?”

  “I trust you.”