Honey, I’m home,” Tamara announces as she bounds through the front door, then spots Barbara sitting on the sofa painting her toenails. “Last-minute pedicure before your trip to DC, Ms Martin?”
Barbara has packed two large suitcases for a week’s getaway. Tamara steps around them and around Songbird prancing at her feet. We both thought Rahn and Barbara would have hit the road by now, leaving us with the place all to ourselves. Bungalow bunnies—borrowed from Dirty Dancing—that’s how we’ve been referring to ourselves leading up to Barbara’s trip. Tamara and I are going to pretend we’re “bungalow bunnies” on vacation.
“Well, I don’t think I have the right sandals,” says Barbara. “I should have gone over to Buffalo to hit the Galeria yesterday. They have an L.L. Berger there. A big one.” My mother waves her arms in an arch to emphasize big. The nail polish wand in her hand almost drips fuchsia onto the upholstery. “Like, way bigger than the L.L. Berger in McKinley Mall. Plus, I figured out that we can take Walden Avenue most of the way. Duh. All this time I’ve been taking Thruway. I don’t know if you’ve driven the Niagara Thruway lately, but it’s shit. Potholes as far as the eye can see …” Tamara listens and nods graciously. I look out the front window, willing Rahn to get here faster. Like clockwork, his black BMW turns onto Loomis Crescent. Barbara hears him pull into the driveway and flusters, “Shoot, my polish isn’t dry.” She awkwardly eases on her wooden wedge sandals.
Rahn wisely does not comment on the two suitcases. He simply glides into the house and grabs both bags with his customary jubilant expression on his face.
“You’re sure you’ll be okay, Star?”
“I lived alone for years. I’m sure I can survive a few days without you.”
“Tamara, you’ll be checking in on her, right? It’s good to have a gal pal. A bestie. Star, I think you look pale and thin. Rahn, does she look pale to you?”
“Actually, she has a nice tan,” Rahn assures her. He has recently adopted Barbara’s habit of speaking about me as if I’m not in the room, except he has the decency to make direct eye contact with me in acknowledgement. “I would never guess she works graveyard shifts. It looks like she spends her days in the olive grove.” He wedges his foot in the front door, attempting to hold it open for Barbara.
“I spoke to Rose. She’s going to feed you breakfasts from now on. You’re spending all your time there anyway.” I can’t tell if Barbara sounds mildly resentful as she says this. “You are looking thin. Working those extended hours. You better be getting paid for your overtime. Rahn, do you think Starla looks thin? I swear she’s lost twenty pounds since she moved home. How can I call myself a mother?”
“She’s still an ideal body weight, medically speaking.”
“Oh? And what am I? An un-ideal body weight, eh, Dr Johnson?”
“Mom! The man is taking you on a vacation for Christ’s sake. I’m pretty sure he’s into your body,” I snap. I couldn’t have said a more perfect thing if I thought it through before I opened my mouth. Barbara has always wanted me to speak to her as if we were friends, for me to gush like her. She giggles coquettishly as Rahn guides her to the car, and lets him hold the car door open for her. I hear jazz radio sounds from their open windows as they zoom off.
“So long, lovebirds,” I yell after them. Tamara and I wave in the driveway. Songbird lets out a few pitiful barks.
“She hasn’t a fucking clue,” I say as Rahn’s car turns the corner. Tamara pats my shoulder. “For real. I’m in the middle of a supernatural phenomenon, and she thinks I’m just working overtime. She thinks we’re ‘besties.’”
“Have you tried to tell her?”
“No way. I tell her as little as possible.”
“She must know something. People are talking.”
“About the angel or me being a lesbian? What have you heard?”
Tamara has some dish. I’ve learned that our small-town strip club is a hub for scandals. But she gives me one of her caretaking shoulder pats and says, “You promised. Just us this weekend. No drama.”
We eat toast and drink coffee at the dining room table. I know Tamara drinks Coke as early as nine a.m. She eats Carnation Breakfast Bars and Pop Tarts. Sweet tooth. I offer her some of Barbara’s homemade jam. She dips her pinkie into the jam jar for a sample taste before she spreads some on her toast.
I want to see Tamara cover every inch of this place. Sprawled on the sofa like Venus. Soaking in the tub. Barefoot in the backyard. Back at the dining room table each morning or whenever breakfast falls between her shifts and mine. We promised each other at least one night in. No The Point. No helping finish the Ricky Esposito Memorial Gazebo. No supernatural shenanigans of any kind. It’s going to be a feat to block Etta from my mind, but I’ve got my stay-home date suggestions ready. I rented The Color Purple and I’ve Heard the Mermaids Singing from the video store.
After her last bite, Tamara suddenly pushes her plate away. She hops up onto the table, letting her legs hang and sway. She isn’t wearing underwear under her zebra-striped dress. She flashes me, bangs her knees together, and flashes again. My ears pop—she’s so fucking sexy, she makes the air pressure change. I already have Depeche Mode’s Violator album cued up in the stereo. Sex music. By the time David Gahan reaches the chorus of “Personal Jesus,” Tamara is curled into a fetal position on the table. My fingers remain inside her, feeling the pulse pulse pulse of her pushing out the tail end of her orgasm. The tabletop is a mess of spilled coffee and cum. What does it feel like to have a faultless body, to hold perfect pleasure like she does? Her thighs contracting against my wrist bait the words “I love you.” But I clench my jaw, warning myself that it’s too soon. Real couples, couples that last forever, wait, like, three months to say it, right? We’re almost there. The eve of capital-L love.
Then, later on the sofa, we listen to The Sugarcubes’ Life’s Too Good album. Björk sings about birthdays and smoking cigars, and I have the forethought to lay a towel under Tamara’s ass before burying my face between her legs. She twists my hair in her hands to keep me from eating my own hair to begin with, but soon she is guiding my head in small circles. Pulling me deeply, smotheringly into her, then easing the reins a little. My face, from nose to chin, is muzzled in her wet. I practice holding my breath until I am woozy. I’ve never let someone this close to me. For weeks, I’ve been taken aback by firsts again and again. I’ve never been as intimate, as unashamed, as sober, as clear, as ridiculously damn hopeful as I am with Tamara. But even as I think this, I know that we’re having sex on the sofa because Etta never comes into the living room. I try not to even think about Etta too much, nervous that I might unwittingly beckon her. More nervous that I secretly want to beckon her.
Tamara’s forehead and upper lip are sweaty when I lie down beside her. I should get up and turn the ceiling fans on, get us some water. I don’t want to be away from her even for a minute. “Have you been with many women?” Ugh. I sound like I’m in a movie. Isn’t that the question that celluloid lovers ask?
“Sure. I mean I work with a lot of beautiful women. I suppose it’s, like, there’s plenty of fish in my sea, or something.”
Should this confession bother me? I make sure my voice sounds steady, open. “When did you come out?”
“You don’t know?” Tamara props herself up on her elbow. “I thought my ‘coming out’ was broadcast across town? I was the laughing stock.”
An uncomfortable pause lapses before I say, “You mean the thing about you naked in the football field?”
“Yeah. For starters, the naked thing.” Tamara sits up. She makes no attempt to cover her body, just sits, unclothed, like she’s watching TV. I poorly timed this conversation, post-coital, her sitting naked while bringing up “the naked thing.” I sit up beside her. Resist the urge to cover myself with throw pillows.
“Do you want to tell me anything about it?” I ask.
“Fran DeRossi. Steph Dunn. David and Danny Gallo. Nancy Lew. Blake Munroe …” Tamara recites a list of the popular kids. I would include her on this running list. Her crowd. “Steph started it, I guess. It was her that caught me making out with a girl at Fran’s devil’s night out party. There was a bunch of us running around Crescent Park, all dressed in black, you know, drinking shit mix and Coke, egging houses, tossing toilet paper rolls. We met up with this other bunch of kids from Fort Erie Secondary. They had fireworks and pot. There was maybe twelve, thirteen of us altogether, smoking doobies and setting off Roman Candles in the street. Then the twins got this idea to go into that abandoned house. You know, the one on Ferndale? It’s still empty. Now there’s a “no trespassing” sign out front, probably because of us. None of us had flashlights. Steph had her key chain penlight, and a couple of the guys had lighters. We groped our way around. It was disgusting. Right out of a horror show. Graffitied walls. Big holes in the ceiling. Loose floorboards. The whole bit. Great location to kiss my first girl. I don’t remember her name; she was one of the F.E.S.S. kids. She kept hugging onto me, like she was all scared. She had whiskey in a flask. What high school girl carries whiskey in a flask? I doubt I’d even had whiskey before that night. I thought Malibu was sophisticated.
“When we kissed, we acted like it was an accident. Like our lips just bumped together in the dark. It was pretty hot in that teenage way, you know. Until Steph and her stupid keychain light caught us in the act.
“I told her I was drunk. Too drunk to know what happened. I told her not to tell anyone. Yeah, right. First it was little things, you know. Anonymous notes slipped in my locker that called me a lezzie. Guys making v’s with their fingers and doing the pussy-licking gesture at me. If I kept my head down, I bet it would have stayed like that. But you know me, I had to run my big mouth. I can’t remember what I said—something like, ‘Yeah, and I liked it too.’
“After that, Steph and Fran totally turned on me. They said they’d only keep being my friend if I did stuff for them, like stealing bags of chips and cookies from the cafeteria. Dares like that. I went along with it at first. I guess I was worried about my reputation.
“When I refused and started standing up for myself, they threatened to out me to my parents. They prank-called my house. That was really bad because … because my dad was fucking dying at the time. Lung cancer. Lung cancer is living hell. The nosebleeds and face swelling. Throwing up blood. And the phone was ringing at eleven o’clock, midnight.”
Songbird runs into the living room to lie at Tamara’s feet. Even the dumb dog can detect the sting in her voice. I wrap a chenille throw over our naked bodies. Find her hand to hold under the blanket. “I wasn’t a smooth talker back then.” Tamara tries to laugh. “The more I pleaded with them to stop, the worse it got. The naked thing happened right after Steph and I got into a fight. The guy she liked had just asked me to the end-of-year dance. Boy, she was pissed. So she dared me do it. ‘The naked thing.’ And the whole gang egged me on. If I didn’t, she’d go to my house and personally tell my parents. By then, it was more than about how I had kissed a girl. There was all this other bullshit gossip, like that I was stealing girl’s bras from the gym change room, and sleeping with the school counsellor. I was sick of it. So I let them win. I let all of them win. I stripped down and walked outside. They expected me to run, to streak the football field as fast as I could.”
“You walked slowly,” I say.
“I took my sweet-ass time. I’m surprised I wasn’t suspended. My mom gave them some sob story. Said I was seeking attention because I was so upset over my dad. Principal LaPoint didn’t even give me detention.”
“I thought I had it bad. You were bullied way worse than I was.”
“Maybe that’s true. Or maybe I just hung out with different people. Meaner people.”
“Yeah, the popular kids were assholes. It’s such a cliché,” I say. “I wish we had known each other back then. Like, known known each other.”
“Are you kidding, I was intimidated by you.” Tamara cuddles into me, teasing. “You were always wearing those Doc Martens steel-toed boots and tons of black makeup. Even after ‘the naked thing,’ I was still trying to fit in. I was a Polo shirt and Bass loafer girl right up until I moved away. I thought listening to that Violent Femmes song was totally rebellious.”
Of course, I have the Violent Femmes’ first album on vinyl. And I have a record player. Tamara is impressed when I pull out my transistor portable player from the ’70s. We dance naked in the living room, yelling out the lyrics to “Add It Up.” “… why can’t I get just one fuck …”
It is only 11:45 in the morning. I watch Tamara close her eyes and thrash her black hair as she dances. We have four whole days together to play house, to be bungalow bunnies, to fall into the greatest love of all time.