Here's my promised fourth story. It's later than I intended but various personal matters slowed the writing down.
Fiction writers are often asked: "Where do you get your ideas?" This question is almost impossible to answer as practically anything can trigger them. This story virtually came from nowhere. I had (still have) a germ of an idea for another tale and one evening I was toying with some dialogue I thought might fit into that story. I typed it out so that I wouldn't forget it then read it through. It came to me in a flash that those half-dozen lines of drafted dialogue gave me a quite different story, this one, and the characters were already clamouring to be let out. This is the result. It's a long love story—there will be sex but it takes second place to the plot. Whatever, I hope you enjoy it.
Characters in sex scenes are eighteen years old or over. All characters and places are imaginary—any resemblance to persons living or dead is coincidental.
Copyright © 2015 to the author
*****
For a start, let me tell you a little about my lovely friend Susie Edwards. She is gorgeous. I know it's a cliché but she's a real pocket Venus. Five feet and a whisper tall—don't forget the whisper, it's very important to Susie—with shoulder-length tawny hair, huge velvety brown eyes and a figure to kill for. Men and women both have been known to howl at the moon when they've seen Susie in a bikini. And she's bright with it.
And me? I'm Victoria Clarke, Vicki to most although always Victoria to my Mum, even when I haven't done anything to piss her off. I hate blowing my own trumpet so let's just say I'm way taller than Susie and leave it at that.
Susie and I have been best friends since we met in infant school, aged about four. And here we were, more than twenty years later, still best friends and both gay.
I suspected I was a lesbian when I was about twelve—whenever I watched a film, the actresses made me tingle all over while the male stars seemed a waste of space. I used to take sneaky glances at girls' boobs as they approached and their backsides swaying as they walked past but I wasn't the least interested in boys or the contents of their trousers. Susie said she, too, had recognised her gayness around the same age. We'd plucked up courage to come out to each other when we were fourteen or so, both of us admitting to a lot of soul-searching before doing so, each being afraid that our sexuality might drive our best friend away. It was a relief to find that we were both gay.
Occasionally other girls at school would ask why I didn't seem interested in boys or join in their swoony boy talk. I got round that one by pointing out that most boys of our age group were immature arseholes, not worth bothering with. I reinforced this by hinting at an imaginary older boyfriend, never around to be admired because he was a trainee merchant navy officer. That kept them all off my back.
Susie and I carried on being besties and when we got to the age a little later when life was driven by libidos running rampant, when like most teenagers we were perpetually randy as hell, we sat down and discussed what this meant for us. I don't know if we were unusually mature or far-sighted or what, but we decided that romance and sex between us was a no-no. We loved one another too much as friends to risk destroying that friendship. Having decided that, we did something dramatic lifted straight from old-fashioned kids' adventure stories: we each pricked a little finger with a needle and pressed the tiny wounds together—we became blood-sisters. We were good girls too, both waiting until we turned eighteen before losing our virginity to a couple of older women who were only too pleased to help. Once started, though, there was no holding us.
Later on we came out to our families and I guess we were lucky because both accepted it. I have heard some real horror stories about bigotry in families, gay children being tossed into the gutter and the like, so I was glad that tolerance was the rule for Susie and me. I know my mum was a bit disappointed because she was looking forward to having more grandchildren but as my older brother and younger sister had provided her with five between them she couldn't really complain.
Susie and I were both single. It wasn't lack of opportunity and we both managed the occasional one night stand or even brief affair. It was just that each of us had experienced girl-friend troubles, the green-eyed monster and all that. We'd both had promising relationships break down because the other parties refused to accept that the love between Susie and I was strictly platonic. In the end we'd decided that for the moment, hoped-for true love wasn't worth the hassle and we settled for no-strings casual encounters.
About the only time in our lives we'd been separated for more than a week or two was when we went off to different universities. My talents leaned towards the arts and humanities while Susie was of a scientific bent. Obviously we kept in touch, either speaking to each other most days or texting. Susie used to take the piss out of my texting skills. While she wrote in text-talk, I was punctilious about writing properly (well, I was studying for an English degree). After graduation I went on to take a librarianship diploma while Susie gained an MSc.
We both managed to find work in the same city not too far from our home town. Now I had my dream job as a deputy librarian and Susie worked as a research chemist for a big pharmaceutical company. Things went along nicely for us. We'd been lucky about accommodation too. My elderly Auntie Edna had a big rambling old house in town that had been a boarding house before she bought it. Auntie Edna lived on the ground floor and the two upper floors were self-contained flats which were offered to Susie and me at a very reasonable rent. The two of us did what we could for Auntie in the way of shopping, laundry etc. and we were free to bring home guests as we wanted ("...nice young men.." as Auntie put it).
Fat chance. Between us, though, we did bring home a selection of "...nice young women..." Auntie was almost completely deaf which was just as well sometimes. Once, Susie brought home a 'guest' who turned out to be a screamer. I'm only surprised the police didn't come hammering on our door at midnight hoping to save someone's life. Afterwards it took me several nights to catch up on my shattered sleep. Susie looked a bit knackered after that encounter too.
One of our rituals involved trying to find a different gay club at least once a month. So at the start of my story, Susie texted me one Friday afternoon with the news that she had found a new (to us) lesbian club called Nancy's Nook on Feather Street. Susie didn't know Feather Street but had checked it on a street-map and it was fairly close to where she worked.
"c u l8r luv. szy. x"
On leaving the library that evening, I hailed a taxi and asked the grey-haired driver to take me to Feather Street. He looked at me askance and asked where in Feather Street.
"Place called Nancy's Nook."
"None of my business, love, but are you really sure you want to go there?" He sounded concerned.
"I guess... I don't know it. A friend asked me to meet her there."
"Oh." There was a wealth of meaning in that simple "Oh". It sounded ominous. It was a fairly short drive then the cabbie stopped and told me the fare. He nodded at a run-down building across the road. "That's Nancy's." I could see why the driver had sounded dubious.
Feather Street was in a rough part of town (I guess the feather must have fallen from a moulting vulture) and the grotty exterior of Nancy's Nook didn't make me feel any better. Several women were lounging about outside smoking and they all looked like off-duty navvies. Where the hell had Susie dug this place up from? As I approached the entrance I got several wolf-whistles and one woman, whom I swear had a cauliflower ear, leered as I passed. She waggled her tongue at me and said: "I'd like to get into your keks, petal." I shuddered at the thought. In your dreams, lady.
A small entrance lobby was guarded by an all-in wrestler with boobs and something huge sat by her side, a dog I think, giving me the evil eye. It was a cross-breed but cross-bred between what I couldn't guess—possibly grizzly bear and mountain lion. Barely looking at me, the woman thrust out a meaty hand and grunted: "Three quid!" I handed over several pound coins and she let me through into the bar where I was assailed by a hub-bub of noise.
My heart sank. It was a real spit-and-sawdust sort of place, crowded with women who seemed to be the off-duty navvies' big sisters. I looked around and there was Susie, trying to look inconspicuous at a corner table—some hope, even at a distance I could tell she wasn't a happy bunny. I could see several tough-looking women staring at Susie like hungry tigers licking their chops over a tethered goat. I squeezed my way through the mob to get to her and one or two copped a quick feel as I passed by. After looking at the gropers I didn't protest as I value my health too much. On the way, I caught some interesting snatches of conversation:
