Dearest readers
Here's something short, sweet and
sex-free
to, hopefully, entertain you while I try to finish something more substantial. (If you want something short, hot and full of sex, try the stories on
this list
.)
Many thanks to Mykymyk2 for editing.
Much love
T x
__________________________________________________
"Forget Ian, Michelle, he didn't deserve you," Fran said from her spot on the floor.
"Huh, tell me something I don't know." She took a sip of her cider, elbows propped on her knees.
I'll say this for Michelle, that girl never lacked self-confidence. Probably why she had the most exciting, but complicated, love-life of the six of us.
"Yeah, but it's going to be hard to forget him when they share two classes," I said.
"And, that's helping how, Ramona?" Jenny gave me the evil eye from where she sat rubbing Michelle's back on the sofa
"Sorry, just..." I blushed under my weave.
"No, give her a break, Jen, she's not wrong. I'm just going to have to suck it up. Only two more months anyway and the exams will start. So, it won't be for much longer."
"My God, don't be reminding me," Dora huffed from her place next to me. We were slumped together on a big bean bag against the wall. Michelle and Jenny shared the sofa opposite, while quiet, calm Tara sat in the armchair, Fran on a cushion at her feet.
There was a collective groan.
"Quick, change the subject!" Jenny called.
"Yep, back to the disaster that is my love life!"
"Prost!" called Dora.
Dutifully, we all raised our cans and drank. Technically, we shouldn't have the booze here, of course. Our boarding school, weirdly, had a student bar for the sixth formers. If you were in the lower sixth, or still hadn't turned 18 (not a problem for most of us, apart from Jenny), then you were limited to two cans, which went on your parents' bill at the end of term. That way, it wasn't you buying it and the school got around the law. Obviously, for those of us who were 18, we could buy our own booze from the bar, but we were only meant to drink on the premises. But the death stares Ian and his mates had been sending Michelle's way had driven us to seek refuge elsewhere. Sneaking the cans back to the prefects' common room in the Junior Girls' boarding house, where Tara and Fran were the live-in prefects, could technically get us all suspended. Fran had lit some incense to cover the smell of cider, but it was Ms Rowan on duty that evening. She was cool. She'd pretend not to see, even if she came in and noticed.
Over the strains of Dido coming from the stereo, Michelle started listing her complaints again, about how Ian was pressuring her into things she didn't feel ready for, while we nodded and sympathised. We knew how that went. It didn't help that some of the girls in our class had lost their virginity quite shockingly young (I felt), which then made the boys think that girls like Michelle, who wanted to take things slower, were somehow frigid in comparison.
We nodded and made sympathetic noises, assured her she was in the right and she'd made the correct decision. We'd been over this with her several times over the past weeks. But, you know, listening to friends rant about boys was what was required now.
It was only because I was so close to them that I heard Fran and Tara's whispered exchange.
"Is your neck hurting, Fran?"
"Yeah, a little."
"Here, lean back."
Nodding emphatically to Jenny's affirmative reply to Michelle, I watched out of the corner of my eye as Fran scooched back between Tara's legs, resting her head on a cushion Tara had placed there. Tara's fingers went to the base of Fran's head, gently massaging her there.
"I mean," Michelle was saying, "I was happy with the stuff we were doing... you know, hands."
"Actually, we don't, Michelle, but go on," I quipped, taking another sip.
Jenny shot me another scathing look from over Michelle's shoulder. Michelle, however, hadn't really heard.
"But he had to keep wanting more and more and I'm just not ready. But, like, I get it, all the boys are like that."
This was met by a murmur of agreement and a loud "ja!" from Dora. I admired how she didn't mind throwing in words from home. Sometimes I wished I was brave enough to do the same.
"Even in Germany," she added.
"Right, but I can't really blame them, you know? I mean, all that music we listen to down the bar, all the TV shows, all the films, it's all sex, sex, sex, right? It's constant. No wonder that's what they think they need to have."
"Mmmmm. It's like they are all scared the others will think less of them if they aren't having sex."
"Exactly, Fran, exactly."
"So, now we're feeling sorry for the guys?" I asked.
"Yeah... kinda?" Michelle replied.
"Even Ian?"
"Oh no, he's still a pin-headed twat."
We laughed.
"Maybe it's time to swear off boys completely, Michelle," I said.
"What? And go gay you mean?"
"Well, I meant focus on your A Levels, but sure, why not?"
"At least you wouldn't have to worry about getting pregnant," Fran quipped.
Dora and I sniggered. Michelle nodded, almost thoughtfully.
"Plus, you know, if you are happy just keeping it at hands only, that's basically all girls do," I added.
"Urgh, don't be gross!" Jenny pulled a face from the sofa.
"Doesn't have to be just hands," said Dora. "Lesbians can do oral too."
"Urgh, no," Jenny put her hands over her ears, "lalala! Not listening."
I was a bit shocked. "What the hell, Jenny? It's 2001, not the fifties. Besides, Jenny," I let the sneer come into my voice, "how is it any different from giving a blowjob, huh?"
"Fuck off, Ramona, of course it's different!"
"How is it?"
"Well, you're not meant to do that with another girl. It's not natural!"
"Neither are blowjobs. Penises aren't designed to go in mouths," Fran pointed out.
"Blowjobs are icky. Icky, icky, icky," Dora added. She'd recently learned that word and delighted in using it. "Dick ist dick: hurts your jaw."
"Oh, like you'd know," Jenny shot back, her face red.
"Ja. I would." She shrugged, and took a sip of her beer, made a face, whether at the memory or the beer I couldn't tell. Probably both. Being from Bavaria, she was always scathing about the quality of beer available over here.
"But you would seriously try going gay?" Jenny was incredulous, pulling back from Michelle and looking around the room.
"Yeah, why not," I drawled.
The look she gave me told me that, rather than riling her as I'd hoped, I'd just given her one more reason to look down on me.
"Maybe," Fran piped up from the floor between Tara's legs. Tara's hands were now massaging her scalp. Fran's voice sounded blissful. "I mean, love is love, right? Sex is just a physical extension and expression of that. Or it should be. I mean, that's what I hope it is. So, you know, if I felt that way about somebody, I'd like to think that it wouldn't matter to me whether they were a man or a woman."
My eyes went to Tara's face, hoping to catch her eye, or at least be able to read something in her expression, but her face was impassive, unreadable, her eyes fixed on her hands in Fran's hair.
"What?!" Jenny sounded incredulous. Almost as if she'd expect that kind of thing from me, but never imagined such an utterance could come from Fran, blonde, willowy, delicate Fran.
"Mmmm." It was hard to tell whether Fran was answering Jenny or purring with pleasure at Tara's massage.
"Seriously, Jenny, why does that bother you? You laughed at
Ellen
?" I asked.
"Yeah, laughed, because it was so ridiculous. I mean. It's not a family. A family is a man and woman."
"Since when were you a bible basher?" I asked.
"Oi!" interjected Michelle.
"Sorry," I offered. Michelle was a believer.
"I'm not," spluttered Jenny, "but it's obvious, isn't it? Just Biology: you need a sperm and an egg."
"Well, that is easy to arrange when you have two wombs," Dora supplied, taking another sip and wincing again.
We all laughed again. I hoped the others were laughing at what she said, not how she said it. Jenny's laugh certainly didn't sound sincere.
"No, but, you know, what I mean. Two women, it's just not real," Jenny persisted.
I'd never really liked her, but she was Michelle's bestie and thus part of the group. She acted all superior though, as if somehow coming from Hong Kong made her better than us. I wondered if the others would start seeing it.
Dora waded in. "Look, it's like what we were talking about in Philosophy last week, Jenny - we've had the meme of a nuclear family implanted in us. It's there in every TV show, every film, every fairytale, every book we've ever studied."
"Yeah, and look how well that turned out for Griselda. Or Curley's wife," Fran added.
I'm glad she added the latter. I did Science subjects; I wasn't part of the English Lit crew, so had no idea who Griselda was.
"Exactly right. But this is just brainwashing. Stories for men by men. If we had grown up with different stories, we'd think differently."
Jenny was shaking her head violently, hugging herself now in the corner of the sofa away from Michelle, as if trying to distance herself from these thoughts.
But Fran had the bit between her teeth now and had kneeled up in her enthusiasm for the topic. Tara's hands fell away from her head now, but Fran, seemingly without thinking, reached back to bring one of Tara's hands to her shoulder.
"Yeah, I think you're right Dora. It's like everything; body image, gender roles, pressure to dress a certain way - the lot. It's all a fiction we live, right, and it doesn't benefit us girls at all."
Despite having the most naturally slender figure of us all, Fran rarely wore anything figure hugging, preferring baggy clothes to stuff that would show off her lithe form. This was a regular high-horse of hers.
"But yeah," she continued, "I can totally see how that would apply to relationships too. Men want us to be available and... and... Dora, wie sagt man unterwürfig?"
"Er... subservient," Dora supplied.
"Right, they want us to be subservient, and that's what we've seen at home, that's what we've seen on TV, that's what we've read about. But, like, with another girl, well, I guess that would be very different, like, I don't know how, but I just feel in my gut, it would be different, and maybe," her voice dropped a little and she paused, "maybe, it would be..." she looked at us all then, seeking something from us.
I could feel Dora tense against my arm. Michelle's mouth was open as she held her can in her hands, hunched forward, hanging on Fran's words. Jenny's face was filled with disgust, a sneer twisting her lips.
The CD was miraculously between tracks. A short silence filled and stilled the room. The incense smoke rose like a wavy thread from the coffee table and the abandoned game of cards there.
"It would be soft and wonderful." Tara, quiet Tara, poetry-writing Tara, had spoken, her voice low and balmy. "It would be soft and gentle and warm. It would be of equals. It would be full of understanding, because we would know what it was to be a woman, to feel like a woman, to need as a woman. I think it would be tender and compassionate. Slow, maybe. Gentle, sometimes. Strong, always. Sometimes it might just stop at kissing, because that's all that was wanted or needed and there would be no frustration at that. Especially if it was built on friendship. Friendship with somebody you were happy spending all your time with, even when you didn't always talk, just somebody you liked being in the same space with, just sharing time with, not needing to have a trophy to show off, though of course you would be incredibly, deeply proud of them, but just being happy the two of you sometimes and each of you being enough for the other. Then I think it would be wonderful. And warm. And soft. And also strong."
I didn't dare to move. I willed Jenny to stay silent. Please let her not speak.
A stillness settled on the room. Still the smoke rose in its thin plume, fragile and delicate.
Dido was singing gently in the background.
Oh, just to be with you, is having the best day of my life.
I risked a glance at Fran's face. Her eyes seemed far away, as if looking at some distant imagined horizon. Her lips were parted slightly.
