When I was well enough, we brought over the rest of my things, and I said goodbye to my bedsit. One late afternoon, I bunged my boxing gear into my white-and-green Exeter University bag and came downstairs in baggy silver boxing trunks. Melissa looked up from the book she was reading. Tagada Jones, a hardcore French band she liked, was playing on the stereo. “Well, don’t you look scrummy?” She laughed as I blushed.
At boxing, I pretended the heavy bag was the president’s face. Then I imagined Dick “my-daughter-is-a-lesbian-and-I’m-still-a-fucking-Republican” Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. I unwound my aubergine handwraps, wiped down my sweaty hair with them, and tossed them in my bag. I packed up my vinyl, hot-pink boxing gloves, and put on the fluorescent mint-green sweatshirt on which I’d stenciled “The President’s Brain Is Missing.” When I’d been at Exeter, there had been a television program I liked called Spitting Image, which featured big-headed puppets of Ronald Reagan and Maggie Thatcher and included a regular segment called “The President’s Brain Is Missing.”
When I got home Dodgy, a Britpop band Melissa liked, was playing on the stereo. I referred to them as “Oasis lite” just to tease her, which really wasn’t fair because I liked them and they had some great tunes like “Staying Out for the Summer.” As I turned down the music to call for Melissa, I heard water running in the upstairs bathroom. I got down the box of PG Tips and made two cups of tea. I tapped on the door and asked Melissa if I could come in. “I made you a cuppa.” I put hers on the closed toilet lid.
Melissa was taking a shower. “Ta, Amanda.” She sounded like she’d been crying.
“Melissa?” I listened to the water splash. “What’s the matter?”
“Leave it, will you?” She tried to sound annoyed, but her voice broke.
“You’re not alright, are you? Can I come in?”
“Do what? Oh buggery, bloody hell. Yes, come in. Why not? Bugger it.”
I put my tea next to hers, swished open the shower curtain and stepped into the tub, still fully clothed in tracky bottoms, sweatshirt, and trainers.
“What are you doing?”
“What’s the matter?” I asked, standing in front of her with the hot water beating on the back of my sweatshirt. She was so gorgeous I didn’t think I could stand it.
Melissa started laughing and crying at the same time. “What the bloody hell are you thinking?”
I sloshed a little closer in my drowning white Chuck Taylors and put my arms around her slender, naked body. “Come on an’ tell me what’s wrong.”
“I was thinking about you and me and how we haven’t—you know, haven’t. I shouldn’t make remarks, like telling you you’re scrummy, if I can’t deliver.”
I would have laughed if she hadn’t been upset. “I like it when you call me scrummy. You don’t have to deliver anything.”
“I can’t keep leading you on like that when I can’t—you know.”
“Honestly, Melissa, you aren’t leading me anywhere I don’t want to go. Will you please stop?”
“Anybody else would’ve gone spare by now.”
“I’m not like everybody else.”
“This is the first time you’ve seen me starkers,” Melissa said thoughtfully.
“I know,” I said, water running down my face. Her nipples puckered in the spray. “You’ve got lovely Bristols.”
She lowered her eyes. I held her against my chest and heard the beautiful, melodic dirge “Ride With Me” by the Lemonheads, from when they were still a punk band, in my head. “‘Jesus rides with me,’” I sang. I ended on the lines, “‘He’s in your hair. / He’ll forgive me my pain.’” I ran my hand through Melissa’s dark, wet hair. She kissed me, the shower spray drizzling between us. I could feel the warmth coming off her body like steam.
“Will you forgive me my pain?” Melissa asked.
“There’s nothing to forgive.”
She helped me pull off my drenched, heavy clothes.
“Ugh.” I peeled off my bra. “I wouldn’t give a bra the time of day if it weren’t for boxing.” I threw it over the shower curtain, and it made a splat on the floor. I watched the water travel in rivulets down Melissa’s smooth skin. “You’re so beautiful I can barely breathe.”
“Stop.” She looked away from me.
“Why? I’m just telling you how I feel.”
“It makes me uncomfortable.”
“Sweetie, face yourself. You’re a very beautiful woman.”
“I don’t know how to respond to that.”
“Just accept the compliment. It’s alright to be beautiful in front of me. You don’t have to be uncomfortable.”
Melissa raised her eyes and took me in. “You’re lovely,” she whispered solemnly. I wanted to put my mouth on her breasts and gently kiss each nipple, but I didn’t want to freak her out.
We got out of the tub and into her bed, snuggling under the covers. “This is the first time we’ve managed to be naked in bed together,” I said.
Melissa joked, “C’mon, let’s be having ya.”
I laughed and pressed her against me. I felt her nipples touching mine and stopped breathing. Her muscles tensed so I hugged her, looking at the view of her broad, lightly-freckled back and strong shoulders.
“I’m glad you think I’m beautiful,” Melissa said shyly.
“He didn’t rape you because of what you look like,” I said. “It’s got nothing to do with you.”
I held her and wondered what I would do if we ever ran into her rapist. I imagined the color running out of Melissa’s face and not knowing what to do.
I remembered how in ACT UP, at one of our meetings in the old church in downtown DC, someone had asked us to do an action in solidarity with people with AIDS in prison. Some people jumped right on it but a few of us, mostly the women, were uneasy. Finally an HIV-positive ACT UP bloke stood up and said what we’d been too intimidated by political correctness to say. He had AIDS, was poor, didn’t have health care, but he hadn’t killed anyone. Then I said my solidarity depended on what people had actually done. It was on a case-by-case basis for me. I couldn’t feel solidarity with rapists. After the meeting, we had to run to our cars because of the large rats that skittered out of the gutters and chased us across the road. And I thought about the wars we were fighting at home.
I’m sure that forgiveness is good for the soul, and I’d like to try it sometime. But some things I’m not ready to let go of yet, and I’m not sure I’m supposed to let go of them. I’m still angry and can only hope that my anger continues to spur me into action. I’m still loyal to what happens here on earth, even if it means spending another forty years wandering in the desert like Moses. In sight of the Promised Land, but unable to enter.