THE PROBLEM WITH THE LESBIAN ART SHOW WAS THAT EXCLUSION was oppressive, and who were we to judge, replicating systems of value that had excluded, et cetera—so said some of the steering committee, which operated on consensus. We would be inclusive. Unable to bear it, or the hours-long meetings that had stretched weeks into months and pushed the show back to October, I quit the forever-stalled steering committee. It was the manual labor that made me happy: printing, postering, building up the space. We’d masked the windows of our makeshift gallery on Northwest Everett with sheets of butcher paper, and to unlock that door, or to knock and be let inside, was to enter the good kind of secret—one I couldn’t wait to share.
For the weeks leading up to the show, I would let myself into the space for hours before and after I put in full days at Artifacts or shorter shifts at the record store. A couple of the Mafia organizers had rented the warehouse on Northwest Everett on the cheap. The yeasty, roasted smell from the brewery blocks drifted in through the creaky iron-framed windows. Behind us, a crane dangled. The developers were trying to name it “the Pearl District,” starting to buy up auto shops and warehouses, ready to erase the open sky with condos that didn’t seem plausible yet. When I could, I brought Bullet to the space to hang out with me. At night, we liked the company, and it felt safer to have a pit bull with us, even if she was as vicious as a lamb. I loved being in the big raw room, with drywall dust on my hands and knees, the sweet pine smell of cut two-by-fours and the slick tang of new white paint, the decisive hammers and whining drills, the advance copy of the Gold Stars CD echoing from a boom box on a folding chair.
On opening night, First Thursday, the clouds burned off into a bright fall afternoon. At Artifacts, I paced all day. There had still been so much to do when I left the warehouse that morning and I hated missing out.
Meena picked me up with Robin and Topher’s new housemate, Marisol. Fresh out of Southern California with a BA in women’s studies, Marisol was new in town and had answered their roommate ad in the Willamette Week. Tonight she wore burgundy lipstick and wedge boots and her soft young cheeks still held a coppery glow. You could tell she hadn’t lived in Oregon long—she hadn’t paled and moldered and gone woolly. No job yet, but she was sunny with optimism. I envied her. “Welcome,” I said. “Good luck. Let’s hurry.”
Outside the warehouse, the blue hour turned the windows’ glow gold. The space was huge, with concrete floors. We’d erected low walls throughout and repainted everything white. The art was all hung and installed. We had actually pulled this thing off. If you stood back and took in the whole space, it looked like a real show. Legitimate. Three bartenders served wine in plastic cups and everything.
Ted showed up with a fellow antique dealer, a tall silver-haired guy with wire-rimmed glasses and a skulk. On my way to the bar I found them, standing in the center of the first room, doing a slow scan. I looked at them looking at us and got a weird feeling. “Stop it,” I said.
“What?” he said. “Congratulations, by the way.”
“You’re judging.”
“Of course we are,” said the other dealer. “Aren’t you?”
“Just . . . stop male-gazing,” I said, and Ted laughed gleefully.
“Excuse me,” he said, “I have to go delve into the world of lesbians, uncensored. I can’t wait.”
I hit him on the arm. “Ted.” I launched into the burden of representation, but he cut me off at the word society and said, “Good work here, Andrea. Give me the lecture tomorrow at the shop.”
“Ignore the shitty stuff,” I called to his back. Two nearby women shot me an offended look. “You too,” I told them.
You couldn’t avoid it entirely, though a few of us had conspired to group the weaker pieces together and hang them toward the back so they wouldn’t contaminate the stronger work. Summer stopped in front of a watercolor of two women entwined, surrounded by runic symbols. “Is this by that woman you sort of went out with?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“How did that make it in?” Lawrence said.
“All lesbians are in the Lesbian Mafia. Therefore all self-declared lesbian artists are in the Lesbian Mafia art show.”
Meena said, “The downfall of Portland art is that it’s too fucking democratic.”
“Everyone’s got an opening,” Lawrence said.
“Come on,” I said, “let me show you Ginger’s rabbit prints. They’re amazing. Unspeakable things done with carrots.”
“Oh god, I can’t even look at that wall,” Meena said, turning her head away. “I actually can’t.” It was a display of feathers and bones and paintings on leather arranged in a quasi–Native American aesthetic. The artist was, naturally, a white woman, the girlfriend of an organizer.
Summer rested a hand on my arm and asked me confidentially if I had seen Flynn’s contribution yet.
“It wasn’t up yet when I left for work,” I said.
“Do you want to avoid it?”
“Of course not,” I said defiantly. “Let’s go look.”
The photos were medium format, square, hung in a four-by-four grid. But they were not, as I had feared, full of Vivian or any of her other lovers. They were full of me.
There I was, tiny in a field, back to the camera. Me at the coast, lying in dune grass. Me waist-deep in a river, bare back. Me surrounded by tall, dark, wet trees. A shot of the back seat of my hatchback with a tossed-aside harness and a rumpled Pendleton blanket.
Flynn called the series Queer Nature. Her description said, I wanted to take the queer subject out of the urban environment, where we always suppose they are. I wanted to represent queer as part of nature, as natural.
In the photos I was always alone, but the gaze of the camera was so careful and intimate that you felt the presence of two. Take a few steps back, Andy. Look down. My face looked so young, cheeks still full with youth, no circles under my eyes. I had been more photogenic then. So willing. I had looked at the camera with no self-consciousness. Looked at Flynn. Just look at me. Not the lens, my eyes. Good. That makes me want to fuck you. My eyes had smoldered a little, and click.
I felt him before I saw him—a touch at the dip of my back.
I flinched. I hurried to compose my face. “I didn’t know you were here!”
“I’ve been here twenty minutes,” Ryan said. I’d figured he might show, but the sight of him there among every lesbian I knew was like seeing a cat in an airport: two worlds that ought never intersect.
Summer, now a few paintings down, gave us a glance. I stood a little straighter.
“That’s you?” Ryan nodded toward the photos.
“That’s me.” We stood and stared at the me of a year ago, two years ago.
It was jarring to look at my own face, to know now what I didn’t then. This was the me who had been loved so much. Had loved so much. The edge in my throat now was not regret, but knowing what the younger me didn’t: that one day I would look at photos of this time, of this hopeful, love-lulled me, and it would exist only behind glass.
I could feel Ryan next to me. I did not know how to look at him.
“Come by tonight,” he said in a low voice. “You still have the key, right?”
“Do you need it back? I can drop it in the box.” My eyes darted to Meena, only a few feet away. She leaned into something Marisol said, laughed, and adjusted her tie.
Ryan’s eyebrows tightened. “Ah,” he said. “Are you still on tour?”
“This is my real life,” I said. “Actually, it’s more like you were my tour.”
The look on his face.
“I didn’t mean for it to sound like that,” I said.
“No, I get it,” he said. “Now you’re home.”
What could I say but yes?
Ryan turned and left and the only thing I could do was let him go.
Meena came over and rammed me with her shoulder. “Hey, sad-eyes. Why are you still looking at those?”
“I’m not.” All I saw now were the frames.
She sighed, misunderstanding, and slung an arm around my neck. “Let’s move on.”
“Oh, I have moved on.” I caught sight of Flynn across the room, dressed sharp in a tie and man’s blazer. A voluptuous brunette with baby bangs slunk alongside her in a bright vintage dress and an army surplus jacket I recognized as Flynn’s. Meena and I looked at each other. “Let’s turn this corner,” I said, and we veered around the wall.
In the corner was a narrow, black-curtained booth. I hadn’t seen it yet—someone else had installed it. Meena went in first. She came out a minute later with a stricken look and motioned for me to go next. “I need a smoke. Find me outside.”
I stepped into the dark little space. Headphones hung on the wall above a placard with the title (Im)possible Future: For Brandon and Lana. I slipped the headphones over my ears and peered through a tiny window into a lit-up diorama of a miniature bedroom.
“Nebraska” by Bruce Springsteen played low through the headphones. The wallpaper was a photocopied map of the southeast corner of the state, with all the routes out of Falls City, Nebraska, highlighted in red pen. I followed the highway off the left edge toward where I knew it would eventually lead to my own hometown. I felt a flare of territorial indignance. What Portlander was making this art about Nebraska? Nebraska was mine.
The sheets were rumpled. On the bed a toy suitcase was open, packed with clothes. A tiny first aid kit rested atop them. On the floor, a stuffed duffel with a jacket thrown over it. On the dresser, a little handmade desk calendar was flipped to December 30, 1993—the day before Brandon Teena died, I realized. Outside the frost-edged window, a toy enameled pickup truck waited, packed, a tarp pulled down over the back.
The room looked as if he’d just stepped out—had gone into the kitchen for a glass of water, maybe, or out to warm up the truck—but would return any minute to click the suitcase shut, load it up, and go.
The weight of it sank into my chest and filled my eyes. They’d come so close to making it out alive. I didn’t even know yet about Matthew Shepard, who only yesterday had been discovered tied to the fence post in Wyoming where he’d been left to die, and who at that moment lay in a hospital bed, still living, barely. All I knew was that for all our art, for all our writing, for all our self-defense workshops, for all our banding together in our cities and oases, queer survival was still not guaranteed.
When I came out of the booth, the room teemed wall to wall but Ryan was gone.
I found Meena outside and she offered me a smoke. My fingers trembled as she lit the cigarette for me. “That hit a little too close to home,” I said.
“I’m so glad you got out of Nebraska,” she said.
“Me fucking too.” I inhaled too sharply and coughed out a ragged cloud of smoke. “But I also feel guilty that I bailed. Maybe I should have stayed to fight for the queers who are still there. Maybe I could do more good there than here.”
“You can’t do much good if you’re dead,” Meena said. “Or totally fucking miserable. You should have seen yourself when you came back from there.”
“It’s been almost four years,” I said. “Can you believe it?”
“Best four years of your life, I bet.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I’m in no hurry to go back.”
She waved her hand at the bright windows of the warehouse and the loose crowd filling the sidewalk and spilling into the street. “I mean, could you have done this in Nebraska?”
I shook my head and couldn’t speak for a moment. It was the first time I’d had a chance to step back and take in the whole scene.
“You have plenty of work to do right here,” Meena said. “We all do.”
Of course, she was right. I had left Nebraska and it didn’t miss me. Nebraska wasn’t mine just because I was born there. Nor did Brandon Teena own or belong to the place that claimed his life. He wasn’t Lana’s, he wasn’t his mother’s, he wasn’t Nebraska’s. He was all of ours now. Because he was killed for being one of us, he became ours. We claimed him. Maybe he would love that, if he could know. Or maybe all he needed was to belong to himself.
I woke the next morning with a white-wine hangover like some suburban divorcee. From my bed I thought I had hallucinated the smell of coffee, but there was Summer in the kitchen, in the morning(!), stirring the French press with a chopstick. The layer of grounds was thick as chocolate cake.
I sat down on a chair and laid my cheek on the smooth Formica table.
“Morning, lamb chop.” Summer poured me a deep cup of coffee and ruffled my hair. I sat up and leaned toward her hand—I loved to be petted—but she was already reaching for her cup.
“I thought you’d be at Marcy’s,” I said, trying to sound neither relieved nor petulant. I had thought I would love living mostly alone, but now that it was fall I would get these night-blooming orphan fears. Evening would slide in earlier and earlier and the house would grow too dark; I’d turn on the lights, and then it was too bright and empty, a still life. The indifferent murmur of the radio was no comfort.
Some touring band was camped out all over Marcy’s house, Summer explained, so Marcy had popped a Benadryl and spent the night here. Summer leaned against the counter and settled back with her mug in both hands. She took a long languid sip, looking at me over the rim. My legs tensed: Summer walked fast, talked fast, and drank her coffee fast. Something was up. “So,” she said offhandedly, “what on earth did you say to that guy at the show?”
“What guy?” I said through a shallow yawn.
“The one you were talking to over by Flynn’s photos.”
I studiously rubbed the sleep from my eyes. “I don’t remember.”
She took another slow sip. “Huh.”
Heat in my cheeks. “What?”
“You should’ve seen the look on his face when he walked away.”
“What do you mean?”
“He looked—stunned. He kind of blinked, like this.” Trouble must have flickered across my face, because Summer straightened up. “Did he say something to you? Did you tell him off? What’s the story?”
I said there was no story. “That’s Ryan. He and Flynn used to work together. He’s the guy who cuts my hair.”
“Oh,” she said, disappointed. She looked for a bright side: “Gay? Topher would think he’s cute.”
With a strategic note of uncertainty, I said, “I don’t think so?”
Marcy sauntered into the kitchen, braless under her loose black T-shirt, her graying hair rumpled. Summer leaned into her as she poured the rest of the pot into Marcy’s mug, and Marcy kissed her temple. Oh, to wake up with a person you like and have coffee, still pajamaed, in your own kitchen. It was a luxury you could not buy.
I claimed a need for fresh air and zipped my down vest over my pajamas, pulled on a wool hat. Out on the front porch, I sat on the top step with my black coffee. The sky was pale and soft, fog dulled the edges of the dark pines, the porch lights across the street still burned uselessly. The orange cat from next door skulked up from under our porch and wound around my feet. I pulled her into my lap and she melted into me, dense and warm and vibrating. The cat had gotten skinny, her fur a little ragged.
The beauty of a new affair, I thought, is the illusion it affords you that everything you do is great. You each get to invent the other as the person you most want them to be, and yourself as the person they most want.
But the invention had broken. I didn’t get to be that person anymore. The disappointment surprised me, a knife edge in my throat.
A screen door banged as the neighbor emerged to grab the Sunday paper. I called out, “Hey, I think I have your cat over here.”
“Not my cat,” he said.
“I thought she came from your house.”
He waved the paper toward the front door. “She belonged to the downstairs tenants. But they moved out last month.”
I rubbed her collarless neck. Under the fur, it was so thin. “Did they leave any forwarding address? They must be worried about her.”
“Well,” he said, “they had a baby.”
“Oh.” We knew what that meant. You saw it any time you went to the Humane Society under Reason for surrender. “Assholes.”
“Tell me about it. The baby’s bedroom was right below mine. I had to sleep in the living room to escape the crying.”
The last thing I could afford right now was another mouth to feed. I rubbed the cat’s downy cheeks and she rammed her head into my hand with pleasure. She gave my palm a delicate, rough lick. Her mouth was, I reasoned, a small one.
I would just feed her until I could find her a home. Maybe this good deed would make up for my bad behavior. Hail, cat, full of grace, please accept this can of by-products, blessed is your ignorance, forgive us humans for the things you do not know we have done.