That night, Melissa took the roses upstairs to her bedroom. As we stood on the landing, she asked, “Why did you say I was the coolest straight woman you’d ever met?”
“Because you are the coolest straight woman I’ve ever met.”
She looked uncomfortable. “Usually you treat me like a person, not a category.”
I looked at my feet. “I didn’t want you to be upset I’d given you roses. I didn’t want you to think I meant anything romantic by it. That I didn’t respect your boundaries.”
“First of all, I can’t imagine ever being upset at a best mate giving me roses. Second, I know you respect me. I don’t have any weird ideas about lesbians being predatory. And if someone, gay or otherwise, made a polite pass at me and I wasn’t interested, I’d simply say so and leave it at that. I can take care of myself.”
“I didn’t mean to imply that you couldn’t.”
Melissa said awkwardly, “Do you still want to sleep in my room?”
She didn’t have to ask. It had become our habit. I felt warm, comfortable and safe with her. I think she knew that and asked because something had shifted between us. I didn’t know what that was, but I felt a subtle change, like one might feel a slight draught. She wouldn’t want to jeopardize my feelings of safety. “I’d like to sleep with you,” I said.
“It’s dead cold,” she agreed. “I’m being silly anyway. Why wouldn’t you call me straight? It’s how I behave. It’s how I live my life. What else would you call me?” She laughed self-consciously.
“That doesn’t mean I have to label you,” I said.
We sat on her bed. I studied Melissa’s face in the light from a street lamp that glowed faintly through the curtains. The graceful curve of her nose, her smooth skin and deep, lovely eyes. I didn’t often get the chance to stare at her so blatantly because I never wanted her to catch me at it, but she had something on her mind and didn’t notice. Melissa turned and brushed a hand lightly over my cheek. “Alright, love?” She sighed and lay on top of the covers. She looked at the ceiling. “Fucking hell, I feel mortified.”
“What’s wrong?”
“I can’t believe I’m going to ask you this. When you said you didn’t mean anything romantic, was it because you didn’t think it would be appropriate or because you would never think of me in that way?”
My stomach began to ache. I didn’t know how to reply. If I said I didn’t mean anything romantic because it was inappropriate, would she think I was pathetically lusting after the unobtainable straight woman? Would she think less of me or feel sorry for me? If I said I would never think of her that way, would it reassure her or would she be insulted that I didn’t find her attractive? I realized I was treating her like a stereotypical straight woman again, not giving her enough credit. She wouldn’t try to trap me with a question like that. She wasn’t that kind of person. She just wanted to know. But I still didn’t know what to say. “I meant that I would never want to hurt you,” I said. “Not for all the world.”
Melissa touched my cheek again softly. “Ignore me. I don’t know what I’m saying. Fucking ‘ell.”
“Tell me about it,” I said. “I don’t mind if we talk about whatever it is you don’t know that you’re saying.”
Melissa looked pained. “The words are stuck in my throat.”
“God, I know that feeling,” I said.
“Listen, you know you can trust me, yeah?”
I nodded.
“I can’t believe I’m going to tell you this. But you make me feel things I haven’t felt in ages. I thought I’d put that part of my life away. Do you know what I’m saying? No, of course you don’t because I’m not saying anything. Is it alright if I tell you this?”
Now that she’d so precisely not brought up the subject, I was gobsmacked. At least I thought I was. I was afraid I’d misread her. My heart shot into my mouth like an oversized cough drop and I was afraid to move. “What are you saying?”
“It isn’t Martin that I’m interested in,” Melissa said quietly.
Oh my God, I thought.
“I haven’t been honest with myself. It’s been donkey’s since I’ve felt anything. Darlin’, you’re shaking. Have I upset you?”
“No,” I assured her. “Sometimes I just shake for no reason.” God, I’m an idiot.
“Is it alright if I tell you how I feel? You don’t have to say anything. I just want to tell you. Then we can drop it. You can tell me to shut up. I haven’t felt romantic in donkey’s years. I go out. I occasionally have sex. It doesn’t feel like much of anything. That night you came over, pissed out of your brain, and I put you in a hot bath—I think that’s when it started. I couldn’t be mad at you. I felt happy being with you. When you told Nick—I know it’s none of my business—about having had problems with depression, I sensed this vulnerability in you that made me want to touch you. I’m sorry I’m saying this so badly. I’ve never felt this way about a woman before.”
“Oh my God,” I said.
“But I’ve got no idea how you feel.”
“You know how I feel,” I said.
“No, I don’t. Today the way you held my hand in the park, I thought, maybe. But then you said I was the coolest straight woman.”
I groaned. “I should be shot. Why do you think I asked all those inappropriate questions about you and Martin? Why do you think I was so concerned he wouldn’t appreciate you? Because I do. Because I appreciate you so goddamn much.” I was so emotional I let that Americanism “goddamn” slip into my speech.
“Is it alright?” she asked. She leaned forward and gently kissed me.
Her lips on my lips made my head explode. I just stared at her. A line from my favorite Patti Smith song, “Pissing in a River,” ran through my head. “What about it, I can’t live without you.” I felt ecstasy and nausea. Finally, I managed to say, “God, you’ve got bottle. How can you be so calm?”
Melissa laughed. “The reason I’m calm is because I have now left my body and am watching this from the ceiling.” I laughed, too. “Is this something you want to do?” she asked. “It’s alright if it’s not. It doesn’t change the way I feel about you as a mate. You can still sleep here like before. I wouldn’t—”
“You’re so beautiful.”
She looked embarrassed.
“Why would you want to?” I asked.
“Why would I want to what?”
“Sleep with me. I mean, you being so beautiful and all.”
“Are you completely off your nut?”
“No. I mean, yes. Am I? I mean—what does that mean again?”
“It means calm down.” Melissa smiled, creasing the delicate lines around her mouth and making me melt.
“I’m sorry. When I’m nervous, I babble like an idiot.”
“I make you nervous?” She had removed her “Remember Ian Curtis” sweatshirt and wrapped her arms around me.
“Are you kidding? I’ve got to pee.” I pulled free of her embrace and ran into the loo. God, I’m such a loser. Why am I such a prat? I cleaned my teeth an extra time while I was in the bog in case she ever felt like kissing me again.
“You’re lovely,” she said when I sat next to her again. She ran her hand down my cheek to my neck. And her touch made me tremble.
“You are an angel sent from heaven,” I said, and we both laughed. “No, really, you are.” I wondered if this would be a good time to tell her about the voices in my head. How I was sure that one of them was hers. Oh yes, good! I told myself. Maybe crazy is the new sexy.
Melissa brushed a stray lock of green hair out of my face. The unbuttoned cuffs of her shirt made her hands look even more graceful, like birds of paradise.
“The green makes your eyes look gray.” Melissa ran her fingers through the pink area of my hair. She smiled, and I couldn’t even think anymore.
Without warning, the incessant turntable inside my head dropped its needle on the song “It’s Too Bad” by the Jam. I whispered it into Melissa’s neck.
“Same old feeling every time I see you,
and every avenue I walk I’m behind you.
Your back is turned and your eyes are closed, girl.
You move in circles that are out of my reach now.”
“I love that song,” Melissa said. “What made you think of it now?”
It didn’t seem like the time to say, oh yeah, besides hearing voices, I have a twenty-four-hour jukebox in my head. “I think you were the one I always saw in front of me. The one who was walking in the rain just out of my reach in your long, beige coat.”
“That’s the sweetest thing anyone’s ever said to me. Why was I out of your reach?”
I wanted to say because you started out as a voice in my head. Because you started as a hope, a wish. I said, “Because you are the kind of person who never happens to me,” stealing the idea shamelessly from Edith Wharton’s novel The Age of Innocence.
“Oh, love,” she said softly. “Am I happening to you now?”
I put my arms around her neck. She gave me a long, slow, dazzling kiss. The taste of her, that sexy mouth on mine, made me dizzy. I kissed her back hard, caressing her tongue with mine. I felt like all my life I’d been choking on salt water and now, finally, I was given fresh water to drink. We lay down, and I stroked her cheek. “Every time I see you, you happen to me all over again.”
Melissa sighed. But then she said, “I’m not that special.”
“Have you met yourself?” I practically shouted. “You are. I knew it from the first time I ever heard your voice. Oh God,” I murmured, with her lips on mine, “you don’t know, you just don’t know.”
“Know what?” she whispered breathlessly.
“How much I’ve always wanted you,” I said before I could stop myself, but she didn’t pull away. I held her face.
Melissa kissed me more passionately. “Can I feel your skin?”
I shrugged. “It’s just skin.”
She held me and pressed her mouth to my ear. “I’m sorry. Am I pressuring you?”
“No, I’d love to feel your skin, too.”
She put her mouth back on mine, and I simultaneously wanted to surrender myself to her completely and run out of the room to have a good cry in the toilet. She touched me softly, slipping her cool hands under my faded Nirvana T-shirt with the lyrics to “Dumb” on the back. I thought I was going to pass out. I pulled the tails of her blue-and-black shirt out of her trousers and slowly unbuttoned it. When I put my hand lightly on her breast, I felt her tense up. “What’s wrong?” I whispered.
“I’m sorry.” She sat up and pulled her shirt closed.
“What’s the matter?” I sat up and pulled down my T-shirt, unfolding a picture of Kurt Cobain with unwashed hair on MTV Unplugged.
“I’m the one who started this, and I’m not ready.”
I could see bright tears held back in the corners of her eyes. “That’s not a problem,” I said. “We’re not in any hurry.”
“I haven’t been completely honest with you.”
“You’re really a man?” I suggested. Not that it even matters at this point, I thought.
A faint smile touched her lips. “Remember I told you I dated a bloke called Paul in the past? It wasn’t as simple as that. I didn’t tell you the whole truth.”
I waited for her to go on, but she didn’t. “Whatever it is, it’s okay,” I said.
“No, it’s not. It sort of, well, did me in.”
“Did you in how?”
“He–well, he—. Well.” She stopped abruptly.
“Honey, did he hurt you?” I’ll fucking murder him.
“He sort of—hit me.”
“He hit you.” The thought of anyone hurting Melissa made me want to throw up.
“I didn’t fancy it anymore. I wanted to break up. But he wouldn’t leave it at that. He followed me home one night. He said he wanted closure.”
“Don’t you love it when men use pseudo-feminist phrases to gain our trust?”
“And throw them in our faces,” Melissa said. “I let him in. To talk. The more I tried to explain that I wanted to be on my own, the more pissed off he got. He said, ‘You fucking cunt. No one does that to me.’ I told him to leave. To get out of my house.”
“And he hit you?” I tried to adapt my mind to this idea.
“Yes. I tried to fight him off. He raped me,” she said.
Oh, God. My stomach dropped to my knees. Even though I’d guessed where she was heading, it knocked the wind out of me. “He raped you.” I felt nauseous with rage and grief. “Oh, God. I’m so sorry that happened to you.” I wasn’t sure if she wanted me to hold her.
“I never told anyone. Not any of my mates. Not even Nick. I felt so stupid. I wanted to forget it ever happened.”
“What about your sister?”
“I tried to make myself ring her up and tell her, but I couldn’t. I was afraid she’d leave the band and fly home, and I didn’t want her to do that, to put her life on hold for me.”
“You went through the entire thing alone?”
“Yes. And don’t, just don’t feel sorry for me. That’s another reason I didn’t tell anyone. I don’t want your pity. I am not anybody’s victim. I’m still myself.”
“Of course you are. What happened to that piece of filth?”
“I got a gun, and I shot him. He’s buried in the garden.”
My mouth dropped open.
“I’m only kidding, love,” Melissa said, running her hand through my hair.
“I hope you shot him one more time for me,” I said, thinking of the way Patti Smith says that in her version of “Hey Joe,” the Jimi Hendrix song. “Seriously, what happened?”
“It’s not something I want to talk about now.” She lowered her head. “Alright?”
“Of course it’s alright.”
“What we were doing—about to do—brought it up for me again. I’m sorry, love.”
“Don’t apologize for that,” I said. “How are you feeling? Are you okay?”
“I feel self-conscious, and I wish we could talk about something else.”
“Oh, sure. Okay. If you could be any animal, what animal would you be?”
Melissa laughed and hit me with a pillow.
“What’s your favorite color?” I held up my hands to defend myself.
Melissa grabbed me and hugged me. “You’re brilliant. I’m sorry if I ruined your night.”
“Do you think that’s what I care about?”
“I’d rather flattered myself that you might.” Melissa tried to sound jovial.
“Be serious. You know I fancy you. And I care about you. All of you.”
“Don’t be so mature. I can take anything but brute maturity.” She smiled at me unhappily.
“You don’t have to do that,” I said. “You don’t need to entertain me. You don’t always have to be the strong one. You can break down, you know. You’re allowed.”
“I’ve cried enough about it already.”
“You’re always taking care of everybody else. You took care of Nick and me that night she was raped and you must’ve been feeling like crap, having it bring up crap memories for you.”
I did up the buttons of her shirt, and she started crying. “You’ve managed it.” She wiped her eyes on her shirttail. “You’ve made it safe enough for me to cry, and now I don’t think I can stop.”
“It’s alright,” I said.
“Don’t think you’ve got to sit here. It could go on for hours. You’ve got better things to do than watch me feel sorry for myself. In fact, I’d prefer it if you didn’t see me like this.”
“Don’t be silly,” I said. “And there’s nowhere else I’d rather be than here with you. Come here.” I held her as rain pelted the window. “God, I never realized before how empty my arms were without you.” I rested my chin on her head and rocked her. Quietly, I sang an old Dils tune called “Sound of the Rain” into her hair.
“I don’t listen to the cops, I wish they all were dead,
listen to the planes flying overhead,
listen to the sound of the loss and gain,
I just listen to the sound of the rain.”
I don’t know why in God’s name that song is comforting. But it is.