“A while back,” Dale said, “when all that gays-in-the-military foolishness was going on, I couldn’t help laughing. The military’s brought more dykes together than any of them silly women’s music festivals has.”
“Hey, I went to one of them once,” Honey protested. “It was fun.”
Dale shook her head. “Not my kinda music.”
“Not mine neither,” Mick added. “When Honey dragged me to that thing, I thought I was gonna die of heat stroke or boredom, one. All that guitar strumming and singing about sisterhood ... I had to play nothin’ but Allman Brothers records for a week just to get all that strumming outta my head.”
“You liked Glenda Mooney, though,” Honey said, playing with the collar of Mick’s leather jacket.
“She was all right. At least she played somethin’ that had a beat to it.”
“Say, Honey,” Sue said, “speaking of music, why don’t you put on that record Dale and me like?”
“Oh, lord, not that thing,” Mick grumbled.
“Don’t be rude, baby.” Honey rose, sorted through a stack of LPs, and pulled out one marked
“Love Song Canteen.”
“I’ll Be Seeing You” began to play, and Dale and Sue rose and began to dance. They held each other close and moved together in a light two-step. Dale led.
“Come on, Mi-ick.” Honey was trying to drag her girlfriend out of the recliner.
“This ain’t the kinda music I can dance to.”
Honey rolled her eyes in exasperation. “Damn it, Mick, there ain’t no can or can’t to it. It’s just hugging set to music.”
Mick knocked back the rest of her beer and reluctantly stood up. Soon, though, she was resting her hands on Honey’s ample hips, and Honey’s hands had disappeared beneath Mick’s black leather jacket.
On one level, it was comforting to be in a place where women could dance together — a safe place (albeit a hot and tiny place) where dykes could be dykes together. On a deeper level, though, watching those women dance just made Lily more aware of her own loneliness. Looking at Mick and Honey, she wondered what her life would have been like in ten years, had Charlotte lived. And looking at Dale and Sue only reminded her that she would never have the pleasure of growing old with the only woman she had ever loved.
The song “I’ll Be Seeing You,” a wartime ballad about how love lives on even after the loved one’s death, wasn’t exactly helping Lily’s emotional state. She wiped what she thought was sweat running down her face only to discover it was a tear.
She jumped when Jack nudged her.
“Say,” Jack whispered, “you wanna dance?”
Lily was grateful that Jack didn’t ask her if she was okay, which was an obvious question with an even more obvious answer. “Uh ... I don’t know.”
“I promise I’ll be a perfect gentleman, what with you being a married lady and all.”
Lily felt herself smile. “Oh, okay. What the hell?”
Lily stood up with Jack, who rested her hands on the small of Lily’s back. Lily draped her arms over Jack’s shoulders, and they began to gently sway.
“I haven’t danced like this since high school,” Lily said.
“Did you dance like this with boys?”
“Yup — pimply-faced little Beta Club boys.” Lily laughed self-deprecatingly. “I didn’t have a clue about myself back then. Once I got to college, though, I caught on pretty quick.”
Jack laughed. “I was different than you, I guess. I always knew what I was, but I had the good sense not to do anything about it till I was in college.”
“That was probably wise. I doubt that Faulkner County would be too tolerant of a sexually active teenaged lesbian.”
“Lord, no, particularly since that was, what? Twenty-four years ago?” She grinned. “Of course, I might have showed good sense waiting till I was in college, but as soon as I started dating, my good sense went straight out the window. I went out with anything with a pair of tits and a homosexual urge—all the way through college in Chattanooga, then through vet school in Knoxville. Sometimes I think the entire population of Tennessee consists of my ex-girlfriends.”
Lily laughed. “I guess you had to slow down after you moved back here.”
“Oh, yeah, that was probably the best thing for me, though. It made me grow up — have real relationships instead of flings. Honey and I were together for a while years ago, before Mick rode into town on her Harley.”
“Oh, yeah?” One of Lily’s favorite things about lesbians was their ability to turn ex-lovers into platonic family members —and to welcome the ex-lover’s new partner into the family as well.
“And then, of course, there was Sandy.”
Lily smiled. “You were her experiment, I believe?” “Yup, that’s me. And then she cast me aside like a frog she was finished dissecting.”
When the record of 40s music ended, Mick hollered, “Thank god that’s over! Honey, why don’t you put on some Allman Brothers — I’ve gotta get the taste of that sweet stuff outta my mouth.”
When the evening began to turn toward heavy beer drinking and rock ’n’ roll, Dale and Sue rose to leave. “Well, we’d better take off,” Sue said. “We old ladies like to get to bed early.”
Dale grinned. “Of course, that don’t mean we always get to sleep right away.” She ducked as Sue playfully slapped at her with her purse.
After they left, Lily said, “God, I guess it sounds condescending to call them adorable, but they really are.”