Author’s note: Warning! This story contains a mild drug reference. If this offends you, you’ve been warned. We join the story again with Audrey Porter on the previous day. Unlike the previous two parts, this one will be in third person. This is my attempt at actual character development… sex included, some assembly required. :D
Phylicia was gone. She had apparently woken up first and left in a hurry from the house. Audrey sat up in her bed, struggling with this concept for a while. She also struggled with the fact that she had just had sex on that bed. Not only sex, but lesbian sex. Both, in fact, were a new experience for her. And now, for whatever trained expression she had on her face, inside she was a tornado of thoughts and questions.
The first and most obvious question was why. Why in the world would she want to be with a woman? She had liked men all her life. She had always expected to have a traditional wedding with all her family at a nice church in her home town. Doves would fly alongside their car after the ceremony. Family and friends would hurl rice into the air as she and her newlywed husband would laugh together and dream about their future. They would both enjoy a beautiful sunset for their honeymoon, in some tropical paradise, far, far away. Suddenly, all of that was impossible. Her father wouldn’t pay for a gay wedding. She stopped thinking about that.
The second question, perhaps even more eluding, was how. How in the hell did she manage to seduce, or be seduced by, another woman? She couldn’t even really remember how it all happened. One minute she was doing homework with a girl from the field hockey team. The next, she was in some lustful trance giving oral sex to this same girl. It didn’t fit. It didn’t fit at all. And now she had to make sense of it. She had no idea Phylicia swung that way. It was hard to tell just by looking at her. Perhaps, she thought, it was that way with all dykes.
Audrey shook her head. This was irrelevant. She was frustrated thinking about the situation, trying to rationalize it. With every problem laid a reasonable answer and explanation. Every situation you could dream up, you could also analyze it. That was how she thought. Or, at least, how she tried to think. Sometimes though, she thought, it was tougher. She didn’t feel like thinking about it. But, she knew what she did feel like doing.
She stood up from her bed and stretched. No problem was so bad it couldn’t be dealt with one way or another. She thought of how Phylicia might be handling it right now. How she might react if she was told that this whole mess was a big mistake. She would probably be very upset, Audrey thought. For a second, she imagined that Phylicia wasn’t a lesbian, and that perhaps something similar was going on in her mind. The thought passed.
Outside, her butane lighter made its usual sound. Its blaze lit up the inside of the marble bowl; then followed with the usual sound of her breath, inhaling almost violently. It really was a beautiful pipe, she thought. Her cousin had bought it for her in Mexico. Its rigid tube was made to be the stem of a flower; the bowl portion was fashioned like the bloom. The workmanship on it almost made you forget what it was intended for. She was becoming more relaxed already.
Marijuana hadn’t been part of her vocabulary for very long. Stuart had introduced her just last summer during a family camping excursion. Her cousin lived in Windsor and only visited one or twice a year with the family. During his stay, she’d caught him several times in the little gully behind their house. At first he denied it, then tried to get Audrey to smoke after he’d admitted what he was doing. Of course she was reluctant at first. But eventually self-discipline gave way to curiosity.
Besides, it was fun to have a secret from everybody, as long as it wasn’t being gay. She chuckled at that, and, for a second or two, pondered what her father might be angrier about if he ever found out. Suddenly the situation didn’t seem so bad, and then, the familiar relief came flooding back to her mind all at once. She was lifted above her problems for now, except for ridding this awful smell. Concentrating hard, she stowed the pipe and remains into a plastic bag, then into a thermos.
Later that night, after dinner, and homework, she sat watching T.V. and remembered her mother for the first time that day. Clenching her teeth, she tried to concentrate on the commercial. To no avail however, this was tougher. Gently, she wept, thinking about what her mother might have said about her beautiful flower pipe.
The next day was gorgeous. The sun rose beautifully, cloudlessly. The morning was chilly and March still brought frost to the car windows and ran down the gutters of the house. The ground was frozen, and Audrey sat on her roof, watching. The sun rise was early, 6:22 AM. She wouldn’t miss it. For some reason, the sun rise was important today. Her father was still off on business, and she figured she’d be back inside before kids started to pass the house on their way to school. Some things were tougher.
She decided not to go to school, for better or worse. She still needed some time to think. This wasn’t like her at all. She hated sitting around, and she hated being stuck even more. Usually the problem would’ve unraveled itself in her mind already. Instead, her brain stammered. Now, she envied herself from yesterday, with her biggest problem being from chapter seven, somewhere in the mess of textbooks downstairs.
And, whatever it was worth, she thought after a time, Phylicia Spelman had given her an unclear lesson of EMF.
The sunrise came and went, and Audrey Porter descended her roof. Inside, she put on the kettle. For some reason she’d be having cravings for tea. It seemed to fit now, she thought. And as she dipped into the living room to turn on the fireplace, she was startled by a familiar voice.
“You’re up early,” her father’s heavy Norwegian accent filled the room. He sat on the wicker rocking-chair in the corner. Looking up from his newspaper, unrocking and silent, his eyes pierced into his daughter.
“Father,” she hid surprise, “I thought you weren’t back until tomorrow.”
“I cancelled the last conference,” the important man turned his gaze to the fireplace, “I was able to catch a connecting flight last night. I was in early this morning.” He looked back to the paper and shuffled in his chair.
“Why’d you do that?” Audrey usually didn’t ask about the work.
“Aren’t you happy to have me home early?” His eyes remained locked on the politics section of the paper.
“Yes, of course,” she replied lightly, smiling.
“How did your test go the other day?”
“Fine.”
“That’s good Audrey,” his voice trailed off as he became suddenly more interested in whatever article he was reading. Audrey returned to the kitchen to attend to the water. Malachi Porter, who had married young, had his wife taken from him eight years after Audrey was born. His past and present life was practically a mystery to his daughter. He never told, and she never asked.
“I’m not feeling very well at all today,” she returned with her tea and sat down on the white loveseat.
“Ah, you’re not sick,” he reassured her, turning a page.
“No Dad. I think I really am. I was throwing up last night,” she lied. Audrey cuddled her tea against herself, reached for a blanket.
“Well if you say so,” he looked above his glasses at her, folded the newspaper, “I’m going to get ready. If I’m lucky, I can get in a full day at the office.” He left the room with his paper, and headed upstairs to the shower.
Audrey finished her tea. She went to her room feeling inadequate. She half-slept the rest of the day. Early in the afternoon, she dreamt about Phylicia and her mother playing field hockey against her in the state tournament. She lost. Phylicia and her mother won. And her father laughed at her from the stands, smoking a flower pipe.
A 15-minute walk away, at roughly the same time, another girl was dreaming about Audrey. She held a vegetable and a hose-style shower head, and was very much awake. She was enjoying herself. And just as Audrey saw her father laughing in the stands of the state finals; Phylicia was climaxing, accepting, after a short ordeal, being gay…
