In Every Port Page 6

  "Maybe if I give you one more example. I'm working with a software company right now. I've been asking existing clients why they went with the company's services, trying to weed out those decision factors that relate exclusively to sales techniques. Well, I've also talked to clients the company lost. One of them told me that he decided not to go with the company because the sales rep didn't know what she was talking about.

  "That explanation really surprised me, because the company prides itself on its really excellent training for all salespeople. So I talked to the rep in question. It took me about two seconds to figure out what had happened. She had fingernails so long she made a lot of mistakes when she used a keyboard during her product demonstration. The client interpreted her clumsiness as lack of product knowledge, probably while he was thinking her fingernails looked great. Her attractive hands cost her the client, and the company lost the account."

  She saw the light go on in several faces. She hid a smile while several women surreptitiously examined their fingernails.

  "In my observation, men generally want us to dress in one of two ways. One, they want us to dress sexy so they're constantly aware we are women. That gives them the perfect excuse to go on treating us like wives and mistresses, not equals. Or, on the other extreme, they would like us to dress so they are able to forget we are women. I guess some men prefer us sexless, along the lines of mothers, daughters or sisters, so they can rest assured that their hormones, which have no place in the business relationship, won't act up. Personally, I don't think either extreme guarantees success for any but a few exceptional women. There must be at least a third way for the vast majority of us to dress, a way in which we can still have the respect and trust of those we deal with without sacrificing our female selves.

  "Let's start with something simple. The way we stand, especially in heels. Everybody stand up and we'll learn how to unlock our poor mistreated knees." The speed with which the women stood was gratifying and Jessica was inordinately pleased.

  By evening, she was riding high, not even minding her aching feet or tired throat. Exhaustion would catch up to her on the plane trip home as it always did but she had tonight and another session to manage. She would get through both all on adrenaline as usual.

  "How are things with you?" Marilyn asked quietly as they strolled side by side through the crowds on the Riverwalk after dinner. "I meant to ask yesterday, but somehow we didn't talk very much."

  "I noticed," Jessica said with a smile. "I'm doing just fine. There are another two engagements next month and I'm negotiating with a publisher for a book."

  "You've decided to publish at last?"

  "At last ... it seems the thing to do. Actually I decided to do it because almost anyone with a degree is getting published these days, and a lot of the advice is pure garbage. In some cases it's downright damaging. One book I just finished stated categorically that women should never wear long hair and never wear anything lighter than dark charcoal. The list of 'don'ts' was worse than in Dress for Success. I'm tired of books telling women they always need to dress, think and act like men to gain respect."

  "I'm glad you're going to write your theories down. Your mind is what first attracted me to you, you know. I thought I'd find out what kind of lectures we were having in our hotel and slipped in. You were talking about assessing situations and using particular methods to resolve conflict. I've used some of them."

  Jessica was profoundly pleased. "Why, thank you. That means a lot, coming from you. Anyway, the publisher wants me to keep politics out of the book. We're negotiating that. I'm perfectly willing to leave public policy out of it, but the publisher's definition is really the politics of female/male relationships outside of the workplace. I don't see how I can just ignore the other two-thirds of women's lives."

  "You can't. The way you operate successfully in business, making your expectations clear, setting performance standards for yourself and your co-workers, listening to others and compromising, doing what's expected of you — all that applies to home just as much as the office. If it's an equal relationship," Marilyn said firmly.

  "That's what I told them."

  "Hmmm. Maybe we should stay out of the bedroom altogether. I enjoy talking to you," Marilyn said seriously.

  "I enjoy talking to you, too," Jessica said with a sober smile. "Sometimes I wonder. . . ." Her voice trailed off.

  "Wonder what?" Marilyn asked when Jessica hesitated. "Come on, you've given me lots of free advice over the past year. I've enjoyed knowing you, both in and out of bed. Talk to me." She leaned against a stone wall between the walk and the canal and looked directly into Jessica's eyes, serious, waiting for her to go on.

  "You're going to think I'm an awful fool," Jessica said. "I think I'll slip in your estimation a little. After all, I'm Jessica the answer woman." Marilyn just smiled slightly and waited for her to continue. "Just recently I've come to realize my only sexual desires are... for… well, you know."

  "No, I don't," Marilyn said. "Jessie, you're not going to tell me something disgusting about animals and peanut butter, are you?"

  Jessica laughed. "No, I guess it's really not that bad. I love women."

  "Yes?"

  "Well, I just figured out what that makes me. I never thought of myself that way before."

  "Jessica!" Marilyn turned to Jessica and took her hands. "You're a lesbian, like me, like the women you've been with! Haven't you ever come out?"

  "No." Her voice was just a whisper. "I'm scared, Marilyn."

  "My God. I have been marveling at how you've made a very special relationship with women a part of yourself. I wanted to be more like you," Marilyn said. Then, in a wondering voice, she said, "And you've never come out?"

  "Those are the major buzz words these days, coming out. What do they mean, Marilyn?" Jessica asked with a mixture of bitterness and bewilderment. "What is coming out? What will be different? What's going to happen to me?"

  "Coming out is what you make it. Look, when I came out it was, oh ten years ago, in sixty-eight. I had just broken up with my long-time beau. I decided my life was not going to include men. I was going to be a loner. I was going to build an incredible ivory tower and live in it. Well, I found out there is a lot of pressure when a pretty woman decides to be alone. I was immediately treated like some sort of freak. I don't think plain women have that problem. It's both easier and harder on them."

  "I think I know what you mean. Beautiful Marilyn gets asked why a pretty woman like her doesn't like men. Ordinary Jessica, on the other hand, is probably unmarried because she hasn't gotten lucky. I'm an object of pity, but not a freak like you."

  "That's it," Marilyn said. "That's what I run into all the time. Well, it was pretty hard to take being called a freak just because I wanted to be alone. I found myself drawn to other solitary women so I wouldn't be thought of as a loner anymore. And one day I admitted to myself that I wanted them, these wonderful, vibrant women — to be part of their energy, to share my own. That was the day I came out. I just told myself officially what I'd suspected for so long. You don't have to take out a full-page ad."

  "I'm not sure about what I want," Jessica said, a little despairingly.

  "Nobody will know better than you. My God, I just can't imagine you're what you are, as incredible as you are in bed, and you haven't realized it's your life."

  "I know, Marilyn, I know I was just kidding myself about someday finding a man and settling down. It was an illusion of normality I clung to — a remnant of my upbringing, I guess. I just lived my life without ever saying I want to be with women. But I'm still afraid, tied up in knots."

  Marilyn led the way further along the Riverwalk. "Tell me about your fear."

  "Like I'm afraid right now someone will overhear us and whisper about me and point and stare. That clients will stop using me and associations will stop hiring me to speak."

  "I understand that kind of fear. But you must be what you are. Can you really go through life limited, just half
of yourself? You're secure in your profession. Don't you owe other women who aren't as secure your commitment to prove you can overcome society?"

  "But you don't advertise you're a, a… lesbian." Jessica found it very hard to say the word.

  "Of course not. Unfortunately, saying lesbian puts your sex life on the table, and I think talking about sex with casual acquaintances is in bad taste. If I thought people would understand what lesbian really means — I mean it's more than just sex, so much more — well then I'd tell everyone I meet, in the same way you'd tell someone you're married, or you're Catholic or a vegetarian. It's a… sureness, a philosophy."

  "I wish I could be like you, so unafraid," Jessica whispered, stopping to look over the canal. The raucous music from a Mexican bar drifted in the air, giving Jessica a feeling of being at carnival. Nothing was real.

  "Down here I run into an occasional jackass who insists I'm some kind of freak." Marilyn took a deep breath. "It makes me angry, and frightened, and I usually bundle myself up in sunglasses and a leather jacket and go to our dyke bar and get drunk. There actually is one in San Antonio. This isn't San Francisco, we don't have a gay… what's his name, Harvey Milk, on the City Council. Our council pretends our bar doesn't exist. And while I'm drinking I think to myself, that asshole doesn't know the half of it. Wouldn't he die if he came here and saw all these strong women? And I laugh to myself. Someday, we'll break free and remake this world of ours. Someday!" Marilyn made a fist and Jessica felt a strange thrill.

  She remembered her first speech long ago, during college.

  She had been called an activist, a libber, a bitch-on-wheels, and it hadn't mattered. She'd had friends, and the women's center. And now she didn't. Was that the difference? Was she just feeling very alone?

  "What brings up this question now?" Marilyn asked. "You've lived this way for years."

  "I don't know. I suddenly realized people could be calling me a name I didn't understand and had never applied to myself. Instinctively I think of lesbian as a bad word. But when I look at my life, your life, I think we're beautiful to be free." Tears in her eyes, she shook her head. "But I've been realizing I'm not free from the world and responsibilities to my — kind. I'm feeling very alone. I've unintentionally turned my back on a world I desperately want to be a part of."

  "Well, let's go, then," Marilyn said.

  "Where?"

  "To the Queen of Cups bookstore. It's not far." Marilyn set off back toward the hotel.

  They drove around the block and Jessica saw the sign as Marilyn parked the car. QUEEN OF CUPS BOOKS. A WOMEN'S COOPERATIVE.

  "Marilyn, I can't," Jessica said.

  "Nobody's going to take your picture. Besides, it's not a lesbian bookstore, it's a woman's bookstore. If you're on the front page tomorrow, you can say truthfully that you are a woman."

  "Uh —"

  "Come on," she said. She got out of the car and went around to Jessica's door.

  Jessica got out and put her hands in her pockets.

  "You look as if you're going in front of a firing squad," Marilyn said.

  "That's what I feel like."

  They went in the front door. Marilyn said hello to the tall black woman who was reading In Our Own Words as she sat next to the cash register. I wonder if she's a lesbian, Jessica asked Herself.

  "This way," Marilyn said.

  They wandered among the shelves. Science fiction, philosophy, poetry, child rearing, medical guides — and everything oriented to women. Jessica stopped occasionally to look at a book.

  They turned a corner and Marilyn came to a stop. "Take your pick," she said.

  Lesbian books. Books about making love, books about coming out, books about being Lesbian mothers, books about self-awareness. Slowly, Jessica pulled a book off the shelf.

  "Jessica, the last book you need to read right now is The Well of Loneliness," Marilyn said firmly. "Put it back."

  "I read it in college," Jessica said.

  "Look for something a trifle more self-affirming," Marilyn said. She drifted away to the other end of the shelves.

  Jessica's finger ran over the spines of books. Desert of the Heart. She had heard of it. She pulled it off the shelf and read the flyleaf.

  "I really enjoyed that," someone said. Jessica jumped and whirled to face the speaker.

  It was the black woman from the counter. She smiled pleasantly at Jessica. "If you liked that, you should try this one," she said, pulling Patience and Sarah from the shelf.

  "Thanks," Jessica managed. I'm talking to a real, live, admitted lesbian, she told Herself. She felt her face flush bright red, right up to the roots of her hair. Her mouth opened and closed like a fish.

  The woman looked at her in concern and put her strong, supporting hand on Jessica's arm. "I'm sorry —"

  "Don't worry," Marilyn said, joining them. "It's her first time."

  "Oh," the woman said as comprehension dawned. She smiled broadly. "Well, it has to be your first time some time."

  Jessica hid her face behind the books, laughing. "Christ, but I'm being stupid."

  Marilyn hugged her. The woman said, "It's okay. Contrary to popular belief, not all of us were born gay. It takes a little getting used to."

  Jessica laughed again and peered at Marilyn from behind her books. "I think I have two books I want," she said.

  She paid for her books, thanking the woman again, and they drove back to the hotel. Marilyn guided the car gracefully into her parking place.

  "Well, what did you think?"

  Jessica took a deep breath. "I wish I'd realized this sooner, come to terms with it sooner. Maybe then you and I —"

  "Jess, don't," Marilyn said with a sigh that had a gulp in it.

  "Why not?" Jessica turned to Marilyn and caught her hand, smiling, feeling lightheaded. "Maybe we didn't screw up a perfectly wonderful friendship by making love that first night."

  "Darlin'," and Marilyn's voice grew very soft, very tender, "I thought about you for a long time last night. And I asked myself what might have happened if we'd become friends first, gotten to trust each other, become really involved with each other's thoughts and lives, and then made love. Maybe I'd be trying to open another hotel in San Francisco and not New York. Maybe everything would be different." She pulled the keys out of the ignition and stared at them, avoiding Jessica's eyes.

  There was a hard, painful lump in Jessica's throat. After a while Marilyn got out of the car. Jessica followed her into the hotel and up to her room. When the door closed, Marilyn kissed her lovingly.

  Jessica pulled back. "Is it too late?" she asked, her throat aching, her voice scratchy with emotion.

  "Our lives are too different."

  "And yet so similar," Jessica whispered back.

  Marilyn held Jessica against her and then sighed deeply. "I've done something to you I don't believe in, and I couldn't help myself," she said sadly, her drawl becoming more pronounced. "You're the sun, Jessica, and I wanted to bask in you. But, I… I'm very much in love, as I understand what love means, with another woman. And I'm here with you, adoring every minute, even considering how I might be with you more often."

  To Jessica, the room seemed to go dark. For a moment she was violently angry at being cheated and lied to, and then she just felt empty. Marilyn was one of the women in her little black book. She had never expected any of them to be faithful — they were all one-night stands. She went to the bedroom to bury her face in a pillow, more distraught over her sudden emptiness than at anything Marilyn had said.

  Marilyn followed her saying, "I'm sorry, Jessie, but it's the truth. I shouldn't be here with you, not by all that's sacred, but I am, and even as we talk I'm thinking about loving you again."

  "Don't, Marilyn, please don't. I'm so confused. Just hold me," she pleaded and Marilyn lay down on the bed with her, rocking her, stroking her curly hair, murmuring nothing in particular.

  "I know I'm not in love with you," Jessica said with an air of finality. "I was blinded
by a beautiful picture of loving someone so much that we could always be together. I don't even think you were in that picture. It was so radiant and I think —" she drew in a long, shuddering breath, "I've discovered loneliness."

  "Oh, darlin'," was all Marilyn said as she kept rocking Jessica.

  "What's she like?" Jessica asked a little later, trying to draw out of the despondency she could feel taking over her. Okay, now that I've decided I'm a lesbian, and now that I've decided I want a permanent relationship, what am I to do? Herself was silent.

  "Tall and lanky, completely unlike you. She's gentle and quiet and she teaches children and is so very good to me. She lives in Corpus Christi and I go there on the weekends. We've been seeing each other for almost four years. I know she wishes we could be together all the time, but I just can't bring myself to ask her to move in with me, even though I know she would give up her life in Corpus Christi in a second if I asked. I treasure my freedom too much, and I don't know if I can accept that kind of sacrifice from her. But I do love her. I look forward to every weekend. When I can't make it there I fret, when we come together after a few weeks apart it's as if we're rediscovering our love."

  "And yet you want to be with other women?" Jessica asked in confusion.

  "No, I want to be with you. Even when I call you I feel as though I'm cheating on her. I told you, you're like the sun," Marilyn said gently. "I feel as if I have the seven year itch. I try not to think about it at all."

  "I try that too. When I'm home, I don't think about Chicago, or Boston, or San Antonio. I just think about my work. But it's impossible to be schizophrenic all the time. I've got to start being what I am."

  "I know, I know. I love her, I really do."