Meet Kenza Beddaoui, a young Moroccan Muslim woman living in the environs of metropolitan Hull, Quebec. Kenza and her family moved to Canada from the Kingdom of Morocco over a decade ago, and she has adjusted fine to her new country. The Moroccan people are nothing if not adaptable, and Kenza saw Canada as the gateway to her dreams. For the wide-eyed young woman, everything seemed possible for the first time ever...
Kenza attended the University of Montreal, and moved close to the Ontario border in order to find gainful employment. The majority of Quebec residents who live near the border work in Ottawa, there's no getting around that simple fact. Kenza wants to work for the Canadian government, and found work with the National Call Center for Canadian Government Services or NCCCGC.
Why did Kenza choose to work for the National Call Center for Canadian Government Services? Well, unlike other call centers like the Bell-affiliated one on Lisgar Street, the NCCCGC actually pays well. Agents are paid twenty dollars an hour during their two weeks of training, then they get a five dollar bump in pay once they are fully fledged agents, three months later. For a recent grad like Kenza, this sounded like a good deal.
Like a lot of women the world over, Kenza is leading something of a double life. Kenza's husband Mahfouz Ali Beddaoui is a conservative Muslim man, and the owner of a chain of bakeries all over Hull, Gatineau and Aylmer. This outwardly friendly but privately insecure and controlling man would be quite surprised to learn that his sweet-looking and seemingly innocent wife is going around behind his back. What is this world coming to?
"My husband cannot know, not ever," Kenza said to her new pal and co-worker, Stephanie Sinclair, as the two of them dined in the food court at work. Stephanie Sinclair pursed her lips and sipped on her Pepsi before leaning back in her chair. Dressed in a dark gray vest, white silk shirt, dark gray Capri pants and loafers, Stephanie looked both professional and sexy. The tall, dark-skinned and curvy Afro-Caribbean beauty always carried herself in a regal manner. It's one of the things that Kenza admires the most about Stephanie...
"I get it," Stephanie replied, to Kenza's everlasting relief. A lesbian who makes a habit of getting involved with straight-but-curious women, or bisexual women in relationships with men, is just asking for heartache. The problem is that Stephanie finds her fellow lesbians stereotypically and boring, usually predicable and dull. She finds women in relationships with men more of a challenge. Everyone's got their kicks, and Stephanie Sinclair has hers.
Lots of lesbians are stereotypical, especially the ones adhering to the butch dyke aesthetic, and they tend to scare away lots of straight-but-curious women and bisexual women, the way effeminate gay men scare most straight-but-curious men and masculine bisexual men. For a person living in between worlds, who is curious about the other side, someone who looks, acts and sounds normal is probably seen as more approachable than someone who is totally unconventional and cannot blend in. Seriously, it's a simple fact. Stephanie Sinclair knows this, and she's an expert at blending in.
