Romantasy—A butch-femme fantasy across time
Somewhere in the 90’s, Sometime in the Bay Area;
Billie Holiday sings ‘As Time Goes By’ and I think about Her. She’s a butch-love I haven’t yet met. Candlelight casts long shadows of my desk with pictures of my kids—one from a now lost butch-love. I’m not in the mood to go out, the outfit I was going to wear—black skirt, ribbed black tee-shirt that I’ve become fearless enough to wear bra-less, and black leather jacket hang on the door. I look around the room at my ‘femme-bear’, Ginger, given to me by that same lost butch-love, my rhino, Ripley, at the knickknacks and chatkes that decorate my space. I wonder about another time, another femme, and how she listened to this recording of Billie and I feel a connection reaching out across time. Did she long for her butch the way I long to find mine?
A candlelit room in Oakland, circa 195-. A young femme looks out her window and sighs. She’s missing her butch woman, gone back to Michigan to say good-bye to her father. Tough, like the steel that they use out at the Kaiser shipyards, yet soft and tender—like the feathers the seagulls leave behind when they are startled out at the beach. The beach, where they’d met while she was out for a party with friends. This woman she thought was a man in dungarees and white tee shirt. The hair combed over like that James Dean actor in the movies. She knows it’s wrong, forbidden, inconceivable that she, a black woman, could even dream to be possessed by this white woman walking her black dog. The butch slows and passes the group of brown skinned women sitting and laughing looking at the raw, feminine power of the Pacific. She spots the femme, smiles and drops the leash and the dog takes off—right toward her. The dog runs up and licks the face of the femme, she laughs. The butch smiles and then starts to walk over… It’s been two months since she last held me. Will I ever be held like that again? Ripley stares at me mutely. Her namesake could hold me and tell me that I would once again lie in the crook between powerful shoulders and soft breasts. But her namesake is just a character from a movie. My Ripley is just a stuffed rhino and she stares mutely. But something in her black-button eyes reaches out and speaks of hope. I look in the mirror at my lean brown body, going slightly soft, as I haven’t been to the dojo in months. Maybe, one day, another butch will squeeze my leg under the table of a bar where we listen to Dire Straits and Indigo Girls and Gladys Night over my beer and her Tequila. The CD ends and the next one in the carriage starts. I’m musically maudlin tonight and so I’m playing Dire Straits—long wailing phrases from Knopfler’s Strat floating across the room. I think about the way it was that last night. As I held her knowing I’d never wake to her arms again. How many times did I wake that night, listening to her breath like I did when my son, William, was just an infant? How many times did I stroke her short brown hair, gaze at the winter-pale skin on her back and at the nape of her neck? How many times did I stop myself from waking her to say, “I didn’t mean it. I don’t ever want to be apart from you”?
…she lights a cigarette, a Marlboro, with a silver Zippo. She puts the lighter in the front pocket of her jacket. It’s a black motorcycle jacket like James Dean and Marlon Brando wore.
She looks up and says ‘That’s my dog. His name is Butch. You can see he’s friendly.’ The butch looks over at the other black women who are staring at her in open hostility.
The femme looks up. “He’s very cute.” She says. She doesn’t add “and so are you.”
She can’t. It would be insane to. There’s no way this shorthaired woman could even pretend to want to give her the time of day.
“Come here my little ebony-love.” The butch speaks to the dog, looking directly at the femme.
Her heart leaps. She smiles. Her friends mention that maybe it’s time to go. She looks away from the butch. Towards her friends. They are all ‘funny’ like her. She wonders if they know.
“Do you have an extra smoke?” The decision is made. She’ll do the dance with this woman. Forbidden or not, she’ll dance.
The butch blushes. “Yeah…keep the pack.” She pulls the smokes out of the inner pocket. “I have another.” She finishes, then brandishes the Zippo with a flourish, flipping the cap up and lighting the cigarette.
“I better get going.” She picks up the leash. “Catch ya later.” She winks. She and butch walk off down the beach.
The femme stares at the pack of cigarettes. On the inner cover is a phone number. I put on the outfit I was going to wear the night before. I check myself in the mirror one last time before picking up my PowerBook, purse and briefcase and turning off NPR. I’m going to the bar tonight. Not to scam, just so I don’t come right home again. That’s too depressing. It’s all too clear when I park my car that I’m only coming home to my cat, Karma, and the stuffed butch-femme couple on my bed. Not that I don’t love them. But, need I say that it’s not enough? No, no need to rehash how insufficient warm fur and stuffing is compared to the warmth, roundness and muscle, flesh and bone of a butch woman. I get off work and toss everything into the back of the car. I walk in, carrying the laptop over one shoulder, purse on the other. I find a place, next to the fireplace, back to the TV and nearest the jukebox. I pay for my beer, take a seat, lay out the laptop and my research book and boot the computer. I pull out a cigarette and curse myself for leaving my lighter and matches on the passenger seat. Now I’ll have to put the laptop behind the bar and go back across Telegraph to where I parked the car. I close the lid of the laptop and grab my purse…
“Girl!” Shouts one of her friends, the thick Louisiana accent sharp like the razor that landed her last butch in a women’s prison. “Have you gone completely out your mind? Or you simply had too much to drink?”
She looks at her friend. She knew this was coming. They all share the forbidden desire but of them, only she wants that which is forbidden even among those who’s romantic transgressions have doomed them all to exile—here and in the afterlife.
“Look, I petted her dog. Got a cigarette and that was all! Not like I said I wanted to be her wife.” She ended weakly, knowing that it wouldn’t save her the attention but hoping it might turn lecture into teasing.
Teasing she could deal with. Having to defend her desire she wasn’t up for.
“Girl, that white woman’ll take your heart out of your chest, treat you real nice until some blonde come ‘round then she just throw it away like it was a rotting fish.”
Another spoke up. “Listen to Mabel, girl. White girls nothing but trouble. Anyway, they don’t want us. What you gonna do, make your hair blonde and bleach yo’ eye so they blue too?”
She wants to cry but she gives no one that satisfaction, just her butch. “No…” her voice trails off while she fights back the tears in her eyes and voice.
They’re right. She doesn’t stand a chance. She’s too brown, too Negro, it just can’t ever happen. There’s barely anyplace they can even go together.
“Look, hand me some more of that pop would you? And put a little more of the juice in it?” She looks down the beach…the butch is gone.
…a deep, smooth voice, rougher than my own , asks, “Need a light?” There’s the flick of a lighter and a pale, rough hand appears with a flame hovering above it.
I hold the cigarette to my lips and take a couple of long puffs.
“Thanks.”
“Welcome.” I look up.
The voice belongs to a butch in her mid-thirties. She’s wearing green men’s Dockers, a polo shirt and low-top Nikes.
“Nice little laptop. That a Mac?” She stands there, holding a pint of dark brown beer.
“Yeah. A 180. I hate Macs, really, but I could afford this and…” I take a drag. “why don’t you have a seat.”
She smiles and picks up a chair, turns it around and sits down.
“So, what you studying?” She sips her beer.
I notice the way her arms fill the sleeves of her shirt. “I’m not. I’m working on a piece for a feminist magazine.”
“You a reporter?”
“No. I used to be. Now I’m professional computer geek with writing as a sideline. What about you?”
“I’m a security guard manager. Today’s my day off.”
“Julia.” I extend a hand.
“Max.”
“Max." I whispered. I smile. She smiles back. Then we both blush and it begins again...
She stands at a pay phone on the corner of Telegraph and 17th Street. She circles the booth. Once. Twice. The third time she gets as far as actually entering the booth. She picks up the handset. Places it back in the cradle. An older man waits for her to finish outside the booth.
She exits "Go ahead." Her throat is parched from nervousness.
He makes his call. He exits the booth. "Are you okay, honey?" He is black coffee, like her father.
Her father, the Baptist deacon. Her father, the one who caught her messing with Linda Jackson when she was seventeen. Her father who beat her after catching her then kicked her out of his house until she 'found Jesus'.
"Honey, you okay?" He asks again. He places a hand on her shoulder.
"Yeah, I'm fine I just..." She tries to come up with a reason she can't pick up the phone. A reason that has nothing to do with women. A plausible excuse that doesn't mention butches, or short James Dear haircuts or...
"It's a sweetie, ain't it?" He asks dredging her secret out of her soul. "Look, it may not look like it but I used to be sweet with the ladies in my day. You pick up that phone. He'll be happy to hear from you. If you don't call, you ain't never gonna know that 'cept I just told you." He tips his hat and leaves her there.
"No white woman wants no black woman." "If you don't call, you ain't never gonna know..." The two voices reverberate around her brain.
She returns to the phone booth. Dries her hands on her dress, picks up the phone, drops in a nickel and dials for the operator 'Oakland 2567'. The operator asks her to hold. The phone buzzes in her ear. She holds her breath... I'm at the bar late. Too late. I get back in the car. I sing loud and off-key to Paul Simon 'I fall to my knees, I grow weak, I grow slack, like she captured the breath of my voice from my body and I can't catch it back'. I sing it loud. I feel the line. She has my breath. We sat there for five hours. My cat will be angry with me when I get home. I jump on I-80. I'm afraid to hope. But I do. Because I'm a romantic femme and we are a special breed. One butch woman and she's always around that next corner. Although I'm jaded at thirty, had my heart broken even when I wasn't deeply in love I keep coming back to the well to drink the intoxicating water. She talked of being a workaholic, of how she ate nothing but spaghetti from a can. I talk about my cat, the flower garden I want to plant if I ever get motivated, my writing. She works up the courage to touch my hand and when we've connected, when I'm hanging on each word as if it were the very essence of Truth, she walks me to my car. We've exchanged phone numbers, promised calls, smiled and hugged good-bye. At the end of the hug her hand slides down and brushes my ass. I get in the car. It was a slick move. If I haven't heard from her by Thursday, I'll call her. It's Tuesday night. I don't want to go through the weekend wondering if I'll hear from her. I almost get pulled over for speeding. I slow down. The cop blows past me and turns on his lights. He keeps going. I start breathing again. I'll get five hours sleep tonight. That'll be enough. Adrenaline and fear will keep me awake--along with a couple of cups from my famous coffee.
"Hello?" Her voice is rough, cautious.
"Hi, umm, my name is Pamela. We met the other day..."
"In San Francisco. Butch liked you. He thought you were cute. By the way, I’m Jo." The butch finishes for her.
"Yeah...umm, thanks for the cigarettes." Her momentary courage falters.
"You're welcome. So, I didn't think you'd call."
"When did you put that phone number in the lid?" She asks.
The butch comes back with. "I do it when I buy them....just in case."
"That's pretty cocky." She is shocked by this woman’s brazenness, drawn to her confidence.
"Yeah, I'm a cocky stud..." The butch pauses. "you know what a stud is?"
Pamela smiles. "Yes, I know what one is."
"Where are you? I'll meet you someplace. We can talk."
"Umm, corner of 17th and Telegraph." She replies.
"Okay, I'll be there in fifteen minutes. There's a little donut shop on 17th and Broadway. Go buy yourself a cup of coffee."
She nods. "Okay, sure." She notices she's breathing again which reminds her that she wasn't for a while.
"See you in a few minutes then.”
Bye beautiful." "Bye." She puts the handset back on the cradle. She walks up 17th street. It's a beautiful day suddenly--despite the low hanging clouds.
"You're a fool girl. It can only lead to pain." Blackie's words echo in her brain. She's beyond caring.
“…so if you’re not busy Friday night, I thought we could drive into the City, get some sushi in Japantown…” Her voice is smooth but I hear the fear behind it. “you ever been to Isobune?” She butchers the Japanese, pronouncing it eye-so-boon. “They have these little boats the Sushi goes round on. Then we could walk up to the Galaxy and catch a movie.” All this on my voicemail. “Anyway, call me and, umm, well just let me know if you’re into it. Bye.” She hangs up.
My heart leaps into my throat. I pick up the phone and dial her number.
She answers. “’lo.” I catch my breath.
“Max? It’s Julia…” I lick my lips again. “Yeah, sushi and a movie sound great.”
“Cool beans.” She says, I hear the excitement in her voice.
I remind myself that she really didn’t think I’d call. It always baffles me when I remember that she’s as afraid of me as I am of her.
“So, I’ll pick you up?” She asks.
“Okay. What time?” And we go back and forth and settle on seven o’ clock. It’s going to be a long anticipatory week for me.
Friday comes and I pick out my favorite black wool dress. I pull out the red velvet garter and bra set that my last butch gave to me and make myself pretty. I go to my roommate to ask her how I look. She whistles appreciatively. I smile. She smiles back. I look good. I pace back and forth, checking my e-mail because it’s a great distraction so I’m not noticing if she’s late or not. I don’t want to look anything other than utterly cool, collected, thoroughly empowered femme when she rings the bell. Bzzzt! It’s her. I go to the door. My roommate dawdles in the kitchen grating carrots for her iguana. I answer. She’s standing there in black jeans, Tony Lama’s, a blue denim shirt, and a cream-colored duster. She hands me two roses—one red, one peach.
“You were wearing peach flavored perfume the night we met and when I saw these I thought of you.” I invite her in.
She and my roommate butch-bond, kicking tires over the dog and I grab my purse and leather jacket.
“You two have a good time!” My roommate shouts after us.
“I’ll do my best to see that she does.” Max shoots back.
We go to her car. “Here, let me get the door for you.”
She reaches in her purse to pay for her second cup of coffee.
“Put your money away, I’ve got it.” Behind her a strong, low voice speaks up.
The woman behind the counter stares at the two women, her eyes speaking volumes of confusion. The femme turns and looks at the butch. She’s wearing blue jeans, a khaki button down shirt, workman’s boots on her feet. Her hair is slicked back.
“Hi.” The femme says softly.
“Want to get that to go? We can walk, talk and you can drink.” She gets her cup of coffee, pours creamer and sugar into it and stirs it slowly.
They walk out of the donut shop and turn towards downtown.
“Where you from? I mean, did you grow up here?” And they begin.
Pamela talks about her father, the Boeing factory during the War, lying so that she’d be old enough to work there, the first butch she’d met, their nights dancing in a juke-joint, how she’d been beaten when her love got too drunk. Jo tells of her time as an Army nurse, the insults from G.I’s, European and North African women, the rapes, the brawls, stealing away looks and kisses in the triage, the broken bodies of young boys torn up by the madness of institutionalized carnage. They go to the park. People stare as they sit and talk. It starts to sprinkle and it turns to rain.
“Let’s grab a cab. I know a place…” The butch begins.
They can’t get a cab. No one will pick her up. They get on a bus. The femme heads for the back. The butch looks at her.
The femme turns “Where are you getting off? I’ll get off there. It’s easier.” And it begins… Max and I miss the movie. We end up at a bar, overlooking downtown San Francisco, playing pool, and dancing into the night. We walk out holding hands. I’m glowing. “Should I take you home?” She asks? “Yours or mine?” I reply. “I suppose that’s up to you, now, isn’t it?” “Wherever you’re going to wake up at, that’s where I want to go.”
“Let’s go back to your place. You have a cat.” She opens the door for me. And we begin…
*
They come out of the theatre. Jo puts one hand in the pockets of her jeans and Pamela slips her hand through the crook of her love’s arm. Jo is passing tonight so they might only have one worry instead of two.
A young tough calls out to his friends. ‘Looka dat! Queers!’
Pamela feels Jo’s muscles tighten. “And a nigger loving queer at that!”
Jo begins to turn and Pamela pulls her back. “No, love. No. Not this. Not now.” She whispers.
The toughs follow and Jo breaks out of Pamela’s protective grasp. “We’re not about to have a problem are we?”
One of the boys brandishes a knife. Pamela says “Jo, let’s get out of here.”
Jo, not turning, just says. “Run.”
And her fists fly up and there is the sound of fist against flesh. They put fifteen stitches in Jo that night. It was always the same. Pamela escaped with nothing but a black eye, given before an off-duty police officer interrupted the fight, brandishing his black revolver. Jo cried that night, fists white-knuckled with her rage.
“You defended me, Jo. What more could you do?” She held her head to her breast, carefully avoiding the bruised cheek, the black eye, the swollen lips.
“And they hurt you despite all I could do—which was nothing.” Jo fights the tears in her voice, pushing them down with the same force that she was pushed.
“It’ll get better, one day.” Pamela whispered softly, kissing the top of her head. “We shall overcome…” She sang Jo to sleep that night. It won’t be the last time she sings her wounded warrior to sleep that way.
“Hey gurl! What has you smiling so?” Halle winks at me, her arms around her lover, Kris’, waist. I’ve met them at the park for lunch.
Kris looks up from unwrapping her sandwich. “Yeah, sistagurl, give it up! What’s her name?”
“Max.” I sigh her name happily. “It’s nothing yet…” I pause.
“How long you been seeing her?” Halle asks before taking a bite from Kris’ sandwich.
“A couple of weeks. We’ve seen one another a lot.”
“Oooooh. Here that, Halle? Sounds like little Julia here has herself a sweetie. Now maybe she’ll stop pining over that cop.”
“So, why haven’t we met this Wonder Woman, yet?” I don’t know what to say. How do I tell them that it’s another white girl? Everytime I’ve dated a white woman and it hasn’t worked out they’ve just been unsympathetic.
Halle asks what I know is coming next. “So, she white or have you learned your lesson yet?”
Ouch. I sigh. They look at one another.
“Julia, child, why you go after those white butches? They just break your heart all over the place.” Kris swallows her sandwich. “You know Halle and I got nothing but love for you, my sista and it breaks both our hearts to see you with a white girl. You would make some black butch a fine wife. Look, I ain’t saying that I haven’t had a touch of the jungle fever myself but that’s all it ever is and all it ever can be. You ever want to settle down, you ever want what she and I have, you gotta get over the fever and get with your own kind.” Halle nods.
I fight back tears. They ask why I haven’t brought Max around and then turn around and provide the answer to their own question. How could I bring this woman I’m falling for around them? Would they celebrate our happiness with us?
They walk into the tiny club in North Beach. Jo opens the door for Pamela and she walks through, her smile bright as the ruby-red dress she wears. Jo follows closing the door carefully behind her. They walk over to where a group of butches sit clustered around the jukebox.
“Hey Jo!” One of them wearing a black suit and fedora shouts out.
Pamela stands behind looking at the other femme’s looking at her.
“Pam, come here, I want you to meet Stacey.” She steps up close to Jo, slipping one hand into her pocket.
“How you do?” She says softly.
Stacey looks her up and down. Looks over at Jo, then back to Pamela. “Jo, can I see you in my office for a moment?”
Pamela turns and walks over to the bar. Jo follows Stacey to the women’s room. After what seemed like hours but was really only minutes according to the Coca-Cola clock above the door there is the sound of shouting and the clamor of a body hitting wood.
“She’s my woman! You don’t haveta like it. You don’t have to like ME! But don’t you ever use that word to or about her!” It is Jo’s voice.
Pamela starts toward the bathroom. An older, blonde femme who has the shadow of beauty, now faded with age, on her face stops her. “Honey. You don’t wanna go in there. You may love her. She probably loves you back. But there’s nothing you can do about this so you best either stay out here or leave if you can’t take it.”
Pamela stares back at the woman. “I’m staying with Jo. I’ll leave when she does.”
The older woman nods slowly. It’s the right answer. “Why don’t you come and have a seat so I can see what it is she sees in you.”
Jo comes crashing through the door of the women’s room, her lip split, her right eye already starting to swell shut. Stacey follows, looking worse than Jo. She’s holding her wrist.
“Stacey.” The older femme begins. “Can’t you see these two lovebirds just want to have a dance, a drink, some good times with friends?” Her voice is quiet, soft, reaching out to soothe the raging storm.
Pamela wonders if they were once lovers.
“There are places for her to go in Oakland.” Stacey thunders. “And folks should stay with their own…”
Jo’s fists tighten, her knuckles turning white. “She is with her own kind. Right here. Where we gonna go, Stacey? Tell me where we’re gonna go. This place, this bar, you folks that woman…” She points at Pamela. “That’s all I got in this world. So tell me where I’m gonna go.”
Pamela stands and runs toward the door. Stacey begins to laugh. As she opens the door, she hears the sound of Jo’s fists slamming into Stacey again.
Max is buying cigarettes and I wait outside the store, wondering if there was ever in time a night as magical as this.
A young Nation of Islam brother strolls up to me, his steps weary, a few papers in his hands. “My sister! Good evening. Care to buy…”
Max walks out and puts her arms around me.
“No, thanks.” I reply.
“Black woman! How can you let this devil-woman tempt you! You need a black man!” He’s young. He hasn’t learned, yet, that he can’t do this and be an effective minister.
I start walking, hoping that Max will follow. Max stands her ground. “She may not need me, but she has me. You I know she doesn’t need. Now piss off.”
I turn. My heart sounds like a drum. I wonder if they can hear it.
“Max…” I begin.
“Baby, he can’t talk to you that way.”
I want to protect her. I just want her to calm down and come back to me. She stares at him. She takes one step back, placing her right foot behind and perpendicular to her left. I know the stance. She’ll fight him if he doesn’t back off—I don’t know if she’ll swing first. He notices as well. He turns around and walks away from us.
“C’mon.”
The next day I tell my homegirl, Betty, about the incident over the phone.
“Babygurl, what did you expect, exactly?” She says at the end of my story.
“What?” I reply. “Gurl, you dating a white woman? What, exactly, did you expect? That people would be happy about it? See, I don’t know what you see in them white women no how. It ain’t like there aren’t some foine lookin’ sista-butches who really know what you need and how to give it to you.” I stay silent and she continues. She tells me of this white girl who asked her out. How they met at the bar. How she stayed for a while and then blew her off. There’s no guilt that she wasted this woman’s time because she was, after all, just a white girl. Like my girl—just a white girl. I keep silent.
Jo stands beneath the window of Pamela’s apartment and throws quarters up until she opens the window.
“We have to talk, gorgeous.” Jo shouts up.
“This is a mistake! Go away!” Pamela shouts back through her tears.
“No. I’ll stand here until you let me up or they can bury me right here under your window. But I’m not leaving, not ‘cuz of Stacey and not ‘cuz you’re trying to send me away just to make it easy on me.”
She closes the window. She runs down the stairs and sees Jo standing there. In her bare feet she stands on the porch.
“Okay, come on up….” She falters. “but just for a little while.”
Jo smiles, she’s lost a tooth, her lips are swollen. “I don’t need long to tell you that I love you.”
Halle and Kris’ house smells of baked chicken and greens. We walk in, Max carrying the bottle of wine we picked up on the way. They hug me in their turn and Kris shakes hands with Max. The two butches stare into one another’s eyes until their dogs, Zami and Shaka, run into the hallway and jump on us. I kneel down to give the dogs my love in their turn. Max looks down at me and I see the fear in her eyes. I silently mouth, ‘I love you’, to her. She smiles.
She turns to Kris and says “She really loves the dogs—like they were her own kids.” Kris stands silently for a moment then replies.
“Yeah. Why don’t we put that in the fridge and let me get you a drink. What you like?”
“Beer, if you have it.” Max looks up at me again.
“Only the best for someone my Julia’s sweet on.” They go into the kitchen where Halle has returned to fussing over dinner. I’m afraid to hope they’ll bond.
Gay Pride 199?
It’s the first time she’s gone to one of these since her butch has been gone, now ten years. Breast cancer did what race and homophobia (before it had a name) and drinking and recovery and fear and loathing could not—separate her from her butch.
She remembers her loves last words “No one believed. Not our friends, maybe even not me. But you kept the faith. You believed in me. In us. We did it, heart of my heart. You and me together…always.” And it was finished.
They’d never again walk as close to Bridal Falls in Yosemite, letting the spray mist their faces. There’d be no more bandages, no more sprains, no ice packs or aspirin in the morning. She’s long since given away the clothes, save the black leather jacket and the robe that she still wraps herself in some nights when it’s too lonely and cold to just be alone. She hasn’t taken another lover since she tried five years after Jo had gone and she couldn’t stop calling out her name in the middle of the night. She still sits in the chair at the formica table over her morning coffee like she did when Jo occupied the place across from her. She hasn’t stopped putting chicory into the coffee, the way Jo liked it. But it’s a rote now, something to keep the ember glowing. Her friends have stopped telling her to move on, to get over it, to heal. They know that she’s as healed as she’ll ever be in this life. But she keeps on keeping on and she continues her volunteer work because, as Jo kept telling her, she really wanted to save the world from itself.
She gets on the BART and spies a couple—butch and femme, black and white, just as she had been with her love forty years before. She looks the butch up and down, the way her arm protectively cradles her femme’s waist, the defiant stance. This is a butch of the old school, a breed she thinks may soon be gone, except that it stands in front of her so maybe there is hope. She looks at the femme, her hair in dreadlocks cascading down her back and they lock eyes. A moment of communication and she says with her eyes, her lips sealed “love that butch with everything you have to give, sister. There is no love more pure than what you experience now. You two have it so much easier than we did, don’t take it for granted because when it is gone, it’s really never coming back”. The train pulls out of the station, packed with revelers destined to pour out into the streets of San Francisco and for a brief moment forty years of history collapses into the looks of these two femmes, separated in time but joined by their persistent desire.
For all the butches I have known, and the femme-sisters that take care of them.
Adrienne J. Davis
Richmond, CA 1997
