Secret #5
Betty was a beauty. Only, she was a woman who kept a lot of secrets. Let's recap her secrets, thus far, before revealing her 5th secret. Secret #1 Betty is insane. Secret #2 Betty works as a stripper. Secret #3 Betty was incestuously raped by her father and brother. Secret # 4 Betty is a lesbian.
Now, looking at Betty, no one would imagine that Betty was lesbian (not that there is anything wrong with being lesbian) and moreover that Betty was with Davis, especially Davis, of all people. Besides, what does a lesbian look like anyway? They could look like anyone. Only, if you saw Betty and discovered that she was a lesbian, of course, you would imagine her partner being as beautiful as was she. Perhaps, a tall blonde with big tits or an exotic Asian lover who was her East meets West compliment. Maybe, even, a mysterious Nubian princess, who had dark eyes like shiny coal and long, sinewy arms and legs, someone named Ebony. Never would you imagine Betty being attracted to someone as physically unappealing as was Davis. Yet, opposites attract and these two could not be anymore opposite.
Davis had a thing for two pocket flannel shirts, denim jeans, and suspenders. She smoked big, fat cigars and drank whiskey neat. If there was an odder couple than these two, I cannot imagine it. Yet, history is filled with weird friendships and odd looking couples, Laurel and Hardy, Abbott and Costello, George Bush and Dan Quayle, Lucille Ball and Vivian Vance, Jackie Gleason and Art Carney. Although most of my comparison's are comedy teams and I do consider Bush and Quayle a comedy team, if you were to see Davis and Betty together, you would think them funny, too.
The first time that I met Davis, I was more concerned for my safety than I was for Betty's welfare. Although she was good to Betty and obviously loved Betty, best you not make a pass at Betty while Davis was present. She maintained a jealous, controlling, and manipulative eye on her. They were always together. If you saw one, you saw the other.
I've witnessed Davis take on men twice her size and not only win but also beat them down and humiliate them. She was evil, vindictive, and apparently, just as deeply troubled as, it turns out, was beautiful Betty. Only, I dare say, that had Davis been a man, you would not consider her behavior abnormal, but normal. You would not blink an eye if Davis, as a man, was involved in a barroom brawl and a parking lot fracas, but because she was a woman, you were quick to derogatorily label her as a Dike, a Bull Dike.
Being lesbian and being with Davis was Betty's 4th secret, a strange secret that was only eclipsed by Betty's worst secret of all, secret #5.
When Betty hooked up with Davis, she told her something that she had never told another living soul. She told her about what her father and brother had done to her. To say that Davis was angry was to say that the Pope is a religious man. At the time, Davis was looking up a telephone number when Betty told her. She put down the telephone book to give her lover her full attention. She held Betty in her arms, consoled her, and wiped away her tears when Betty broke down in telling her the story.
As it so happens, Davis had a similar sad story, but did not share it with Betty. Her mother, a single Mom, late at night, would drive from her farm to the city and prostitute herself to support them. Once, a man, knowing that her mother was not home and that she was alone, had returned on the pretense that he was there to see her mother, entered her room, and forced him on her. She never told her mother that the man raped her and forced her to do every sexual act imaginable. She was too ashamed of her mother prostituting and over herself, at the time, for being weak, frightened, and at the mercy of a man.
Davis had just started attending the university and could not afford to live at the dorm. She depended on the financial help from her mother to help pay her tuition. Until her mother started bringing home her tricks, she did not know that she had been prostituting herself to pay her daughter's way through college. She knifed her assailant, but not fatally. She would have killed him had he not jumped up and ran out before she could stab him again. She left her home swearing that she would never again be a victim to another man. She hadn't seen or spoken with her mother in 10 years.
