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Episode Four:

Bonding

Adrian bent over with her hands on her knees, fighting for her breath; she looked up in time to see Jan laughing at her.

            “Fucking shit.” Adrian moved her right hand to hold her side where the stitch wasn’t getting any better. “So why didn’t I know Tammy was playing for the University basketball team until now?”

            “We are getting our asses trounced,” Jerry said.

            “Look at Jan and Chad just grinning at us like jackals,” Faye said.

            “Jackals?” Jerry added, “Honey, you’ve been reading way too many books.”

            “Milly’s mostly doing her nails,” Frances said. “I think I could get through her.”

            Adrian looked at the five-foot-four-inch woman incredulously. “And do what? Every time you try to throw at the basket it winds up against the fence.”

            “You are really bad,” Faye pointed out.
            “So?” Frances said with a smile and shrug.

            “She’s got a point,” Adrian said. “Let’s just get the slaughter over with.”

            “Why doesn’t Frances like get past Milly and then pass it off to Adrian?”

            “Because I’m about to pass out,” Adrian said.

            “Are you guys going to play or talk about it?” Milly yelled at them.

            “Oh, she’s going down,” Frances said.

            The play would have worked if Frances hadn’t thrown the ball to Chad instead of Adrian.

            They lost badly, so they had to pay for the pizza, which was the deal. They sat in Faye’s apartment because if you took pizza to the rec room everyone in the building magically appeared and you didn’t get to eat any of it.

            “Next time I get Tammy,” Adrian said, flopping in a huge leather chair and looking spent. They all laughed and then Faye called in the pizza order. It was Monday, so Rhonda’s employees didn’t have to work so they usually hung out together.

            “It’s nice to be so popular for a change,” Tammy said with a grin, taking the beer Milly handed her.

            “I seriously thought I was in better shape than that,” Adrian said.

            “Hey,” Faye said, hanging up the phone and moving to sit on the arm of the couch next to Frances. “I didn’t see anyone else running back and forth across the court like a spastic. We certainly weren’t because once again as I’ve said many times before butches are more competitive than we are.”

            “Oh so you aren’t a butch today then,” Jan teased.

            “Not today,” Faye said with a laugh. “I’d rather lose than burn my lungs in the cold.”

            “Should we invite Stella over?” Milly asked.

            “Toni’s in town,” Jan said, making a face. “Which means I’ll need either Adrian or Jerry to help me in the morning, because Stella’s a no show till about noon most days.”

            “I’ll do it,” Jerry said.

            “Toni’s back,” Milly said with a sigh. “Wasn’t she just here less than three weeks ago?”

            “She lost her funding and can’t finish her film,” Adrian said, a dark look covering her face.

            “What!” Milly shouted.

            “She doesn’t have enough money to finish her project.”

“Fucking beautiful. So she’s going to be stuck here for awhile and more bitchy than ever,” Milly said.

Adrian nodded.

            “Do you know exactly what happened? Why did they pull her funding?” Jan asked. Adrian shrugged and then they all turned to look at Faye.

            “I don’t know…”

            “Oh come on, Faye,” they all said.

            “Well, Toni was trying to get more money but apparently the guy that’s been footing the bill for her documentary on global warming wasn’t impressed with the footage she had especially since she had flown a team of twenty people into Greenland. She makes documentary and Indy films,” she explained for Tammy and Frances’s benefit. “Anyway, you know Toni, she was unapologetic, blew up in the guy’s face and accused him of not being happy with the footage because it didn’t prove what he wanted it to prove. Then she slung a thirty-thousand dollar camera at him. At one point while they were fighting Stella asked her point blank if she was back on smack, and Toni went ballistic.”

            “Do you really think she is?” Milly asked.

            “And more to the point if she is, does that mean Stella’s finally going to get rid of her?” Jan said with venom.

            Adrian was silent. “What?” Jan said, smacking her in the shoulder.

            “Nothing,” Adrian said with an unconvincing shrug.

            “Fuck you, Adrian! What do you know?”

            Adrian sighed. “Stella says she may go with Toni on some new project. You know Stella’s new book was turned in nine months ago and is scheduled to come out in a couple of months. Stella’s thinking of doing something with Toni while she promotes the book.”

            “God I hate that cunt Toni,” Jan spat.

            Their pizza came and they changed the subject.

“Come on, Frances, keep up!” Tammy screamed back at her as she ran down the trail that went around the small lake.

            “You seriously need to get laid,” Frances mumbled, and tried to catch up with her long-legged friend. “I’m taking three strides for every one you’re taking.”

            “Did you hear that baby crying?” Tammy asked.

            “No… fuck you, Tammy,” Frances laughed, determined to catch her friend now.

            Tammy stopped suddenly, running in place, and Frances almost ran into her. “What the hell?”

            “Hey guys.” It was Adrian and she appeared to be picking up trash.

            “Hey,” Tammy said, lacking the decency to be winded.

            “You get in trouble with the law?” Frances asked, bending over and putting her hands on her knees trying to catch her breath.

            “If you stop you’re going to freeze up,” Tammy scolded.

            “Oh fuck it jock girl, you go run and I’ll stand here and talk to Adrian.”

            “I’m actually walking. I just pick up trash while I’m doing it,” Adrian said.

            “Then you can run and I’ll walk with Adrian,” Frances told Tammy.

            “See you later.” Tammy took off.

            Frances walked along beside Adrian as Adrian occasionally stopped to pick up some piece of trash or other. She was almost as quiet as she was when Stella hosted the GLBT discussion groups once a month in the rec room.

            “You all right, Adrian?”

            Adrian forced a smile and nodded and then didn’t answer her question. “Stella and I decided we spent too much time in Stella’s house and Rhonda’s a couple of years ago, so we decided that once a week on Thursday afternoon we would walk around the park. It was filthy – trash everywhere – used rubbers, needles, crack vials. So we decided that we’d bring trash bags with us and walk around the park picking up all the trash, and every week when we’d come to walk there’d be trash everywhere and when we go it’s clean. We never really get to enjoy it when it’s clean which I’m sure is a metaphor for something.”

            Frances laughed then asked. “Where’s Stella?”

            “With Toni of course. It’s the second week I’m doing this myself. It’s not as much fun.” She smiled. “Stella and I – we make up stories about the pieces of trash – you know, who dropped it? Why? Was it an accident or on purpose and what sort of person are they, what they do for a living. Bet that just sounds stupid to you.”

            “Actually it sounds fun,” Frances said.

            “Are you serious about Faye?” Adrian asked, seeming to do a one-eighty in the conversation line.

            Frances sighed, “I like her, she’s a fantastic lover, I just…can you keep a secret?”

            “Honey, if I told every secret I know the world would dissolve into chaos or at the very least B Street would.”

            “I don’t know that I can connect enough with myself to make a real connection to anyone else. I don’t think I’m capable of the depth of feeling you need for love or even commitment. The only time I seem to feel anything at all is when I’m coming, and that’s mostly physical isn’t it? The more I get to know everyone at Stella’s house and the people who hang out at Rhonda’s, the more I think that comparatively I have nothing to bitch about. My parents didn’t abuse me verbally or physically or sexually. We weren’t poor. I’ve always had good schools and good friends. I’ve never lived through any real trauma or catastrophe. That’s why I don’t say anything during the discussion groups, not because I’m afraid to open up to everyone, it’s just that anything I say is just going to sound like some privileged brat whining over stupid shit like not getting hugged enough and not feeling loved and having to come up with scholarships in order to pay for college – all just bullshit.”

            “Sounds like you wish you’d had it harder,” Adrian said with a laugh as she bent over to pick up a can.

            “I wish…I wish I knew how to feel what everyone else feels.”

            “How do you know you don’t?” Adrian asked.

            “I see the passion in people’s eyes. I see it in your eyes.”

            Adrian laughed. “Oh how very romantic and very, very wrong. What you say you see in my eyes I see in yours, too, when you’re talking about something that interests you, or that you feel passionately about. Love, even hate, it’s not like it’s portrayed in books and TV you know.” She started walking again, getting off the trail when a piece of trash caught her eye. In fact she seemed to spend more time off the trail than she did on it. This time Frances just followed her. “No two people are the same. Some people are always going to love and hate harder than other people; it’s not necessarily something to strive for. In fact, most of your Buddhist types say that those sorts of strong emotions fueled by desire are the root of all evil, that they cause you to act in ways that diminish your soul. Maybe you feel at exactly the level that your supposed to and maybe the fact that you feel put upon and abused because of your parent’s disinterest shows that you feel more than I do because it does take a hell of a lot more than that for me to feel persecuted.”

            They were back on the trail again, and Tammy ran past them waving for the second time.

            “You have a best friend. If you were really as emotionally shallow as you think you are, someone as together as Tammy is wouldn’t waste time on you. And you obviously aren’t listening to everyone at those group discussions because some of the stuff they gripe about is pretty fucking petty. Hell, Milly and Marcella once got into a mini argument over Marcella leaving the cap off the toothpaste that escalated to Milly screaming at Marcella that she didn’t love her anymore. Over the fucking cap on the tooth paste! Someone’s always going off about some girl or boy they love that just had sex with them and now won’t call, bull shit stuff like that.”

            “So… do the women you’ve slept with ever corner you there?”

            “The girls I sleep with know the score because I tell them up front that it’s just going to be sex. Of course that doesn’t often work because I’m sleeping with women, and as long as you’re sleeping with women there is rarely any such thing as casual sex. Women tend to sleep with people to get love, and even if you give them that love – and sometimes because you did – they want some sort of attachment. Still the women I sleep with do know the score and even if they don’t like it they’re usually cool enough to remember that I didn’t promise them anything. A couple of times I’ve slept with girls who didn’t get it – that’s why Stella put me behind the bar as soon as she could because it makes it harder for them to bother me.”

            “Wouldn’t it be easier to find a girl and settle down?”

            “I’m guessing that you know the answer to that, so I’m going to pretend like you don’t and just say it wouldn’t be as much fun.”

            “Do you…” Frances let the sentence die; Adrian turned to her and smiled.

            “Do I what?”

            “Do you ever talk in the discussion group?”

            “No,” she said simply.

            “Why not?”

            “So…the little shrink wants to peel the layers away and see what’s inside my tortured head.” The smile had left Adrian’s face, but she still didn’t seem angry.  Frances got the impression it took a lot to make Adrian mad.

            She didn’t like the way Adrian had been able to get her to talk about something she’d never really talked about before, or the way she seemed to see right through her. “I was just wondering why you won’t do the same thing you said I should do.”

            “I didn’t say you should bare your soul in group. I said your perceived problems aren’t any more or less important than anyone else’s perceived problems. Listen, I have a standing in this community. I’m respected and loved by my friends. I’m glad when they can open up and just purge all the shit that they’re feeling. I know that it’s healthy, but I don’t have the need to do that. I don’t know maybe I need all my rage all my dark memories to stay right where they are. Maybe if it were out there it would be the excuse that people used for me when I fuck up. When I fuck up I don’t want there to be a moment of pity where everyone starts making excuses for me because of all I’ve been through. I want them to call me a fuck up if I am one, without worrying about what it might do to my gentle psyche. I’m sure it’s not the way one of your textbooks says people are supposed to deal with their pain, but I’ve put all the crap behind me and I just see no reason to dredge it up now. Maybe they’re all wrong and you really can run from your past.”

            Frances nodded. “Every day I sit in class and listen to my psych professor and instead of feeling like he’s helping me to understand the way people work I think he’s just talking in mechanical terms about the human heart, soul and mind – which aren’t mechanical at all. This causes that behavior and that causes this behavior and when people act this way it’s called this and when they act that way it’s called that and… I thought it was what I wanted to do with my life and now… Well I don’t know I’ve spent most of the semester going to frat parties, getting drunk and stoned and screwing everything that holds still long enough and I know I have to stop doing that because it’s actually soul sucking after awhile. I need to try to concentrate on my classes instead of sleeping off a party during them and actually reading what I’m supposed to read and… well I need to care about it but I just don’t because it’s not helping me figure out who I am.”

            “What about Faye?” Adrian asked gently.

            “I don’t know.” Frances sighed miserably. “We supposedly have an open relationship, and I’ve been sleeping with her, and I’ve slept with other people since I’ve been seeing her, and even though I told her I would I still feel awful about it because I know she’s trying to have a relationship with me. I like her and I don’t want to hurt her feelings, but I’m no good for her and I don’t want to be in an actual relationship with her.”

            “I can’t believe I’m going to say this.” Adrian looked around, then stopped and looked right at Frances. “Faye has a tendency to do this to people. She goes into it thinking that it’s all cool and she’s not going to get attached. But the minute she sleeps with a woman – usually ten minutes after she meets them, when there is absolutely no way of knowing whether they are in the least bit compatible – she decides she’s in love with them, and then she gets way too involved way too fast. Hell she even tried to do it to me. The best way to save her pain is to get her to break up with you, then you can act a little hurt but understand and you guys will be cool in a week or two.”

            “How?”

            “Well don’t take this personally, but Faye is a very, very gay woman. And lesbians, real lesbians, we don’t like the penis. It’s gross to us, and even though she told you it’s cool, Faye, like most normal women on the planet don’t like to share. Start talking graphically about the guys you’ve been screwing.”

            Frances made a face.

            “Hey you’re the one that’s doing it; all I’m saying is to talk about it.”

            “It seems a little cruel,” Frances said.

            “Believe me it will be better this way.”

            Frances nodded and they started walking again. “Wow, you really don’t like bisexuals.”

            “I don’t dislike bisexuals. People can do what they like. I don’t get it, but I don’t have any hate.” Adrian shrugged. “I’m sort of a disease-a-phobe. Men carry disease, they give it to women, and then bisexuals come and give it to gay women who wouldn’t be at risk otherwise. And the truth is I believe most people at least have some bisexual tendencies, but I don’t believe in actual bisexuality. I think someone like you screws women looking for that love and warmth they never got as a child. Then they don’t trust that love so they screw men because there isn’t any love or warmth, so you can just do it and leave without getting emotionally attached or having to worry about having to turn them off so that they’ll want to break up with you. You aren’t a bisexual. In fact, in some ways I think you hate the penis even worse than I do. You’re a lesbian; you’re just hanging on to the man thing because, while you’d never admit it in a thousand years, you still care very much about what your family thinks. If you could actually be with a man you could have a life they might approve of. You tell them you’re bisexual because you want them to react badly because bad attention is better than none at all. But you play bisexual in case you could marry a man and have a couple of kids and then your parents will love you.”

And before she could tell Adrian just exactly what she thought about her little burst of insight, Tammy had jogged up beside them to walk with them.

            “So has Stella said whether she and Toni are leaving yet?” Tammy asked.

            Yes! Rub some salt in that wound; thank God Tammy’s so oblivious. Adrian, psychoanalyzing me, telling me what I am and am not, the arrogant little shit deserves it.

            “No,” Adrian said, picking up another piece of trash, and then Frances noticed she was wearing rubber gloves so maybe she really was a disease-a-phobe. “At least for the time being she’s stopped screaming, and she and Stella are actually talking about taking a cruise, be gone about three weeks. I imagine when they get back Stella will make some sort of decision.”

Adrian heard a knock on her door and looked at the clock. It was 11:00 on a Tuesday. She had to work the morning shift, so she was damned if she was working the evening as well. It was too cold to work on the garden so she’d spent most of the evening here and she really just wanted to be left alone to brood and to paint.

            “Who is it?”

            “Faye.” She sounded distraught, so Adrian sighed put her paint brush on her palate and crawled off the ladder. She put her palate down on her coffee table and opened the door.

            “Come on in.” Adrian sat down in her recliner and took a sip from the beer that was sitting on the end table beside it. The beer was barely cold but still drinkable.

            Faye saw the palate and the ladder. “I’m sorry, Adrian, I didn’t know you were painting. I can talk to you tomorrow.”

            “Fuck that. I’m already down now. My ass was starting to hurt from sitting perched up there anyway. There’s beer in the fridge if you want one.”

            Faye went in the kitchen, came back with a beer and sat down on the couch facing Adrian. She took a deep breath and then let it out. “I just had the weirdest thing with Frances.”

            “Really what happened?” Adrian asked innocently.

            “Well while I’m giving the bitch head she starts telling me all about this guy she fucked last week. Last week! I know we aren’t really in a relationship, but I thought well you know. Any way she starts talking about his dick slamming into her pussy harder and harder till he’s squirting cum all up in her, and she’s obviously getting really aroused talking about it, but...well that was it for me I almost puked and…damn you for putting all that disease shit in my head because I’m going to get tested for everything I can be tested for when I get to work tomorrow.”

            “What did you tell her?”

            “I told her she was a really nice girl and I want to be friends, but I can’t get down with that stuff and don’t really like sharing. I even – god help me – used the, it’s not you it’s me line.”

            “How’d she take it?”

            “She looked a little hurt, but said she understood,” Faye said.

            “You all right?”

            Faye took a deep breath and let it out. “Why am I so fucked up?” She looked near tears.

            “Hey you’re talking to the chick who never does bi's remember?”

            “You know what I mean, Adrian… I just want someone so bad I grab anyone who comes by and try to make them that someone. Jan Shears! Damn her, you would have thought I’d have learned my lesson after what happened with Jan.”

            “You really loved Jan,” Adrian reminded gently. “I love Jan, too, but what she did to you sucked, Faye.  She knows that now – if you’d give her another chance…”

            “To do what? Break my heart and humiliate me again? No way.”

            “I don’t think she would.”

            “But you can’t be sure she wouldn’t do the same damn thing, because as fucked up as I am, Jan is even worse.”

            Faye was right; Adrian couldn’t promise her that Jan wouldn’t do the same thing. She didn’t think she would, but she couldn’t be sure and Faye was her friend, too. She just remembered how happy her friends were when they were together. She missed them together and happy.

            “You miss her?” Faye asked carefully.

            Adrian didn’t have to ask who. “It’s only been a week,” she said with a smile.

            “And?”

            “Yes,” Adrian said, and took a long sip of her beer. “But it looks like Toni isn’t going to disappear, and I’m sure Stella’s going to go off with Toni as soon as they get home, and…nothing’s going to be the way that it was. First Marcella’s gone and now Stella, and it sucks and there just isn’t anything that I can do about it, so I’m doing a little more painting and drinking a little more beer these days.”

            “It’s sure going to be weird not having Stella here.”

            “Yeah.”

            “Is that all you’re going to say, Adrian?”

            “Yeah,” she shrugged. “I’m not going to just spill my guts about how I feel about it, about her, what would be the point? You know how I feel. Everyone does. It’s not something I’ve ever done a very good job hiding.”

            “I tell you everything, Adrian, things I’ve never told anyone.”

            “And I keep your things to myself, just like I keep my own crap to myself.” She got up taking her beer and walked across the room to have a look at her painting. “Something’s missing I can’t put my finger on it.”

            Faye got up and walked up behind her. She wrapped her arms around Adrian’s waist and rested her head on her back. “Your heart’s broken.”

            Adrian swallowed hard. “Yeah, I think that’s it.”

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