Outsiders. Part 29

Billy Joan sat in her car in front of his house for two minutes after killing the engine. She knew he was listening for her to come to the door, knew that it would be open, and it was. He had his hands in his pockets, and he smiled at her with just his lips. Billy, she recognized, was sad in degrees of that smile. If it opened fully and made grooves in his cheek, he was delighted. If it came on slowly and peaked at half-mast, he was pleased. A quicksilver grin was a bark of laughter, combined with the left raised brow it was a snort. A smile with mostly the lips, but a hint of teeth-veiled, unveiled, turning away-was shyness but still happiness. The feral canine fest of his killing smile, replaced by the side flash of congratulations on a kill well made. These she had seen, savored, cataloged. This, the small, sad smile, lips closed, hands hidden, was new. Billy thought that she was breaking up with him, that her spending time alone, or wanting to, was an automatic sign of disaster. As social as a puppy, it would never occur to him to be alone in pain. He might not want to speak about or examine or even acknowledge it, but he would ease it through company. That would be important to know.

"Hi."

"Hi."

"I'm glad you decided to come over." Joan started the car.

"Yeah, well, you never asked before, so I thought I should say yes."

It was hard to get a proper shrug executed sitting down, constricted by the shoulder belt, but Joan admired his try.

"It won't be the last time I ask."

"For real?"

"Yes."

They were quiet the rest of the way. It was a companionable quiet now, not a fearful one. Antic.i.p.ation, rather than dread, filled the background.

Joan lit a few candles and set them on the mantle. Billy sat on the couch, watching her, alert, but slouching. The bottle of scotch, squat, brown and unlovely, sat on the end table next to a pair of Dixie cups adorned with a red and blue superhero. Joan thought that cast the right mood. Billy reached for them, but Joan stopped him.

"Let me. We're going to talk a little, and then we'll see if you want to do any more pouring."

"Is it time for speeches?"

"I think so, yes."

Joan poured out two fingers into the waxed-paper cups and handed Billy his. The stopper was ancient, carved into the shape of a stag and lion, parallel, facing opposite directions. Joan tapped it back into the bottle.

"My father left me this when he died. I'm not sure how he got it, but he had it for ten years when he pa.s.sed. That was fifteen years ago. When we first hung out, you said that we would make a new memory for scotch." Joan looked at Billy and sipped at the Dixie cup. The superhero flexed his chest on the cup, bullets bounding off like grains of rice off a bride. "I'd like that, Billy. I'd like more too."

Billy held his cup tightly, making the edges concave, starting to smile his pleased smile.

"Hear me out before you start grinning, honey. I've thought this through and come to the conclusion that you can't think everything through, you have to feel and experience as well. I care for you, Billy. I think you know that. I'm attracted to you too, you handsome imp. This makes things all kinds of complicated, but I'm not convinced we couldn't work through those complications. You are also, and this isn't negligible, twenty-four. That makes us strangers of a kind. Yet what we do have in common is deep, and ancient, and rare. We have to acknowledge that most relations.h.i.+ps between people with our age and other differences end eventually. This may end sooner or later. I think we can agree to make the absolute most of it, for as long as it lasts. It is worth more to me than all the rest to keep you as my friend. If you like, I'll be your lover as well."

Billy's eyes got very round above the Dixie cup. "I'd like that."

Joan smiled. "Good. No more speeches."

Billy held out his cup, and they touched waxed rims with a kitten's delicacy. "No more speeches! It gets too Buffy Season Seven." He drained his cup and then slid over next to Joan on the couch. She set hers on the floor.

"I can give another speech about how you don't have to spend the night, or if you'd like to, I can make up the couch for you. It's a good speech, runs about forty-five minutes."

"If it will make you feel better, but I'm sleeping in your bed."

"So it's that sort of memory we're making. More scotch?"

Billy took the bottle from her, deftly plucked the stopper, and poured for her. He grinned at her when he handed her the cup, daring her to respond.

"Thank you, Antinous."

He smiled his face nearly horizontal, his cheeks bunching with delight, muscling back his lips, thrilled to the bone. "Anytime, Hadrian."

It wasn't like being in bed with a girl. Billy and she laughed and wrestled the way up to her bedroom, and didn't stop just because the kissing had started. He was stronger, but she had leverage and experience and knew enough not to put all her weight on her back leg, so she hooked his knee and dropped him on the bed. From there they met in the center, kneeling, dare sparking in her eyes. He met it without hesitation, and tore off the first of his t-s.h.i.+rts. She matched him, removing hers. Then they lost the thread, and started removing one another's clothing, or trying to help in a way that didn't help at all.

They were at the border again, on the wall looking east into the great primeval forest, hoping that the Gauls wouldn't come. Joan halfway expected Billy to charge over, leap like a stag across a brook in the dappled sunlight, with no more effort or hesitation. He did not. The pace changed; Joan felt it, attuned to this music. Billy was looking at her, with eyelids heavy, slowly lowering them like a pleased cat. Light caught the absurd blue, s.h.i.+elded now, taking on the mystery of another sullen, beautiful boy. She knew. He was her sidekick, her beloved, her partner, her warrior, her favorite. She, his lover, his partner, his warrior, his emperor. So she took the gift from him as soon as he offered it, knowing the emotion of this moment from a thousand summer imaginings, long ago, when honor was still a word she believed in, and friendwas the most beautiful word she ever knew. With the stillness of perfect conviction, she stripped him bare, so he lay beneath her, her boy. Joan felt something crack open in her that could be heard, she was sure, in the living room. On the street. Crack like bone, crack like ice. She swallowed to try and get around the emotion, but there was no way around it, it was everywhere. He guided her and she was inside him, he bucked up under her, her colt with springtime in his legs, prancing, tossing his proud head, unbroken but open to her. She held to his hips with the muscular effort of rising and falling with him. She took his c.o.c.k in her fingers, reaching around, and he groaned, sensitive, larger with the testosterone. Caught between her hands, he was writhing, pinned, fixed, wings beating and limbs thras.h.i.+ng not to get away but to get closer, in agony to push away. She was baptized in his sweat. There was a groan that became a shout-here, here I am in the flesh and here I make my stand, exalted beyond and finally collapsed back into my own mortality.

Billy's head turned in profile on the pillow, mouth slack with pleasure, struggling to get enough control to smile. She s.h.i.+fted her weight, just a hint of movement of her hips that allowed a kiss of air in to his heated skin. She went to remove herself from his back, but he took her hand and kept her there.

"Are people supposed to be happy? Is that what this is? s.h.i.+t, why do we keep killing one another?"

"Are you going to suffer for the pains of the world every time we f.u.c.k?"

"I'm happy, you heartless b.a.s.t.a.r.d. Let me be flowery."

"While I am nailed to your body like a slave to a cross?"

"No, my Emperor. I can think of better things to do with the night."

Joan woke up slightly baffled, soaking wet, and underneath Billy. All in all, it was not a bad morning. Billy was facedown, sprawled on her, arms and legs akimbo. Joan slid carefully out from under him. Once she was free, he groaned, frowned with his eyes closed, and flopped onto his side. A mortar attack wouldn't rouse him.

Joan sat at the kitchen table, waiting for the coffee to be ready. What a night. What a week. They'd gotten out of bed to slay zombies, to cook, to walk in the garden barefoot, to watch gladiator movies, to go back. They'd also spent time talking. Somehow Joan had planned a potluck during that time without a great deal of help, understandably, from Carol. The potluck was tonight. Joan had noticed that Billy, though he tried to conceal it, got very quiet when she mentioned the potluck or the event or Michigan. He'd never commented, in fact. That silence was teeth closing on hard words. She resolved to ask him what was going on before the potluck.

It was easiest to put the coffee on a tray, slice some strawberries, and pull out some croissants and head back upstairs. She set the tray on the nightstand and crawled back into bed. Billy, she'd learned, was best woken by giving him a more pleasurable alternative to sleep. Joan crawled up behind him, still pa.s.sed out on his side, and started biting at the nape of his neck. This woke him up rapidly. The coffee was cool long before they got to it.

Billy sat with the sheets draped across his knees, back against the headboard. "I've never had breakfast in bed before."

"That is a crime and a shame. Perhaps you never earned it before?" Joan handed him a coffee mug.

A smile of triumph lit his face. "So I earned it. I knew it."

His torso twisted as he reached to the side and picked up one of his t-s.h.i.+rts and pulled it on. He usually did this immediately upon waking, if they'd slept without clothing. It was one layer in bed, two out. Joan had noticed that, while she was allowed to touch his chest, it was more for her benefit than his. Billy was, in effect, being accommodating to her. From smaller conversations they'd had, she knew he was looking forward to his top surgery, to chest contouring, to being able to go without a s.h.i.+rt. He didn't communicate hatred for his body, but there was a level of discomfort she'd noticed. He loved having his musculature commented on, loved being praised, loved f.u.c.king, loved being f.u.c.ked. He was, in all respects, her boy, beloved to her lover, as unconcerned with status in bed as out, willing her to take control, to be his Emperor. What was most marvelous to Joan was how they were with one another outside of bed. The camaraderie had continued, the companions.h.i.+p, but now, after slaying a zombie horde or arguing over Star Wars versus Star Trek, they would fall into bed laughing and f.u.c.k like teenagers, all energy and enthusiasm. They saved the high-flown romantic language for their out-of-bed time and only used it in context. The finest thing they called one another was friend.

Billy tore into the croissants. "These are good. Where did you get them?"

"I made them."

"You can cook? Really?"

"Hush. Just because we've eaten a lot of take out the last week means nothing. I believe I was distracted and kept falling into bed. I've also had to plan a potluck, thank you. Speaking of which, the tables and chairs are getting delivered today. Are you sticking around for the party?"

Billy nodded while taking a swallow of coffee.

"Good." Joan lay on her left side, propped up on her elbow, not unlike a man reclining on a supper couch in an Etruscan tomb painting. "May I ask you something?"

"Sure."

"This may be my perception. When I mention the potluck, or the Michigan Memories event, you always clam up. You don't say anything. Even odder, you don't smile. Is there something there?"

Billy put down the coffee cup. He rubbed a hand through his hair, scratched at the back of his neck. In a moment he reached for his other t-s.h.i.+rt and put it on as well. He'd never done this while still in bed. "Not everybody has the same memories of Michigan."

"Have you been?"

"Inside? No."

"Would you like to go? Sheila and I go every year."

"You know I'm having my surgery in August," Billy said, looking away.

"But if you weren't? If I asked you to go, would you?"

"No, I wouldn't go," Billy said simply.

"But you could go in. I see guys like you all the time," Joan said, feeling increasingly at sea. Billy wasn't making eye contact. They'd never departed so entirely from one another and been in the same conversation.

"The policy. Womyn born womyn only." Billy looked back at her.

The festival's official policy: you had to be born a woman and lived your entire life as a woman to get in. Transwomen were officially barred. Joan hadn't thought about it in years. There had been some flap about it in the nineties; there was that place across the way, Camp Trans? Some sort of protest.

"They want s.p.a.ce apart from men. I respect that, even if I think they are wrong about the policy. I think all women should be allowed in. But if my trans sisters aren't women enough, then I'm too much man."

"I've never heard you call yourself a man."

"I usually don't. Boy, sure. I usually feel more queer. This is a matter of honor."

The doorbell rang. Joan, being the one dressed, sprinted down to find the rental company there with the delivery. She had to open the back gate, show them in, shoo them out of the garden, then sign for it all, the piles of chairs and the large round tables. By then Billy was dressed and breakfast in bed a distant memory. The conversation stayed lost, subsumed in the preparation for the event. Billy helped her set up the chairs and tables, then pleaded a need for a shower and fresh clothing. He a.s.sured her that he would be back in time for the potluck, and he walked away.

There was plenty to keep Joan occupied: her own cooking, the setup, Sheila coming customarily at the friend-a.s.sistance stage, other guests coming later at the early-guest phase. Soon it was late afternoon and her backyard was filling up. Parking along the street got thick and compet.i.tive. The table groaned beneath dishes, summer cornucopia. Women's voices were heard in the garden exchanging greetings. Sheila took up a post at the table closest to the back deck and commandeered a s.p.a.ce for Joan as well, when the time came. For now, Joan directed traffic from the deck, organizing the food, letting the people choose their own organization. Sheila watched her from under the railing.

"Where's Billy?" Sheila looked to Joan's side as if the boy might be expected to pop out like a horror movie monster.

"Not here."

"Did you fight? You sound odd."

Joan abandoned her post and went and sat next to Sheila. Two other women were sitting across from them. "Not a fight, he pointed something out to me I wasn't looking for. Do you ever think about the trans policy?"

"Michigan? Sure."

"What about it? Isn't the whole womyn born womyn thing only in place to exclude transwomen?"

Sheila tilted her head, appearing to consider this. Joan knew that her friend's sense of justice was more finely tuned than her own and much better leavened with compa.s.sion. "No, I don't think it was at first, even if it is being used for that."

"What do you think? Is it right to keep transwomen out?"

"It is exclusionary," Sheila admitted.

One of the other women at the table, Belinda, cut in. "I don't think it's about exclusion. Womyn born womyn want a chance to get away and be in one another's company. Transwomen don't have the same life experience as women who were born female, grew up with a female body."

"It's about safety. How can you be safe when men are walking around the land?" Her partner Rachel added.

"Whoa. How did we get to men and safety? We're talking about women." Joan put up her hands.

Joan noticed, for the first time, that a crowd was starting to gather around the table. The chairs were pulled out, and people sat. Other women stood in a circle around them, listening closely and calling out.

"I know a woman who saw one of them walking around naked, saw his p.e.n.i.s and everything. That's triggering for survivors! How can we be safe with that invasion?"

"Can we please call transwomen 'she'? Using male p.r.o.nouns is an insult and not a clever one," Sheila said.

"They are still male."

"Don't Janice Raymond me."

"How do you know what I'm talking about?"

"Janice Raymond, The Transs.e.xual Empire. I've read it. Have you? It says all transs.e.xuals rape women's bodies. Raymond means MTF transs.e.xuals, who she repeatedly and wrongly calls men."

Joan cut in. "If the idea is all women born and having grown up female feel the same, have the same experiences, then I don't fit. I felt more like a boy as a child."

"You say so. You were a girl. You looked like a girl, you were raised as a girl, and the world treated you like a girl."

"Which is exactly why I turned out to be such a good woman, right? We always grow up exactly as we are treated. You're straight, right? Like your parents."

"You're afraid to be a lesbian, that's why you want to be a man."

Sheila's hand gripping her arm like an eagle's claw kept Joan from responding physically, though she was an inch off her chair when her friend stayed her, as Athena stayed Achilles by seizing his hair. Joan sat back down with a forced smile.

"I don't want to be a man. But I can understand people who are men, despite what their body looks like. Or who don't feel like men or women. I've come to see that as different from my experience, but allied. We're in the same community."

Joan looked up and saw Carol, now in the crowd, move forward to catch the exchange.

"Where is this sudden personal interest coming from, Joan?" Carol asked, sweetness cracking all along the surface of her voice. She would have informed everyone already that Joan was dating a boy. With this quip, she invoked that and disarmed Joan. So Joan faced the circle empty-handed. It was the moment before the Gauls charged, before the zombies poured forth from every door, the moment she wanted to be back to back with Billy, facing down everything that came at them. But that is a luxury; we are more often called on to answer for ourselves without warning or armor.

"You are right, Carol. It is a personal interest, something that a friend of mine pointed out to me. But it is worth looking at, no matter where the inspiration came from. Transwomen are women. Michigan is all about gathering together to heal, create, and recharge with only other women. That doesn't happen out in the world. It should be respected."

This calmed the circle some; Joan could see it. Good, the pause of breath before the jump.

"As curator of the Michigan Memories installation this year, I will be opening the submission to all women's memories."

The murmuring started again and kicked up fast as paper on a fire. It wasn't an angry sound, but there was complexity to it, fear at the base. It might all backfire on her; it might be the last she worked with this committee. Why not go out in a blaze of glory?

"Look, I know this is a difficult conversation, but we only benefit from adding more women's voices. Transwomen will be encouraged to submit their Michigan memories." Joan sat back down, satisfied to let the circle debate as it would. The first eye she sought was Sheila's.

"You throw a h.e.l.l of a party."

"I learned something about courage recently. My oldest friend taught me. How long has he been standing there?" Joan looked through the rail to the deck where Billy, just inside the gate, was watching.

"For most of your speech."