Warm and Willing

CHAPTER TWELVE

New Year’s Eve.

The touch-off party was at their apartment, just a handful of couples dropping by for a first drink or three to start the evening rolling. Peg and Lucia, Grace and Allie, Jan and Megan, Roz Merrimac and some nameless fragile blonde. There was a big party set for an apartment two gay boys were sharing over on Barrow Street, and they were just fitting in an opening get-together before they headed over there.

Rhoda played hostess. She mixed drinks while Bobbie sat in a corner and sulked. There was a lot of talk, a lot of laughter. Allie had just gotten back from Baltimore and she was giving a play-by-play of her reunion with her parents. They were very upset over the fact that she had not managed to get married yet, and were at the same time quite concerned that she was ruining her health in New York. Her mother thought she was leading an immoral life. “You mustn’t let men go too far with you,” she had told the girl. “If you lead them on too far, they’ll never marry you. But you can’t be cold, either, then they won’t be interested,” Allie imitated her mother’s voice. She had a talent for mimicry and everyone laughed.

Rhoda didn’t laugh. Neither did Bobbie. Rhoda went on being the perfect hostess. Bobbie went on sulking, hitting the scotch bottle a little heavy, and keeping to herself. Rhoda made a drink of her own and drained it quickly.

It was going to be one hell of a night, she thought. One perfect hell of an evening.

The day itself had been gruesome enough. They had stayed in the apartment, watching the Christmas tree-a skimpy two-dollar affair-lose its needles and turn slowly brown around the edges. The first flare of temper came before noon, some petty argument that she could hardly remember now. And the rest of the day followed along in predictable fashion.

“Are Jan and Megan coming?”

“It’s important to you, isn’t it?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you still love her.”

“The hell I do. I don’t-”

“You always loved her, damn you. You just took a flyer with me to hurt her. You don’t care who you hurt, Rho, do you?”

Or, “Bobbie, this is your party too, isn’t it?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You were the one who thought of it. You invited everybody.”

“So? Don’t you want them to come?”

“Yes, but-”

“You don’t like my friends.”

“I like them fine. But you just sit there all day while I’m supposed to get the place looking decent.”

“It’s about time you did something, Rho.”

“Oh, really? So you can sit around like a queen on your fat-”

“Fat!”

Each time they made up and each time they started in again flying at each other’s throat. Each argument got a little worse than the one before it. Once, when Bobbie absolutely infuriated her, she had her hand back ready to slap the girl across the face. She managed to stop the blow before it started, but she couldn’t avoid realizing what she bad almost done. The thought made her shake. She had come perilously close to hitting Bobbie.

And now the party was in full swing. This was an evening that should have been the ultimate in relaxation, in furious happiness. It was New Year’s Eve, the best excuse in the world for getting wildly drunk and staying up until dawn and having a perfectly wonderful time. But they were spoiling it for each other. Neither of them could relax, not the way things were between them.

She moved to join Bobbie. “Let’s put a lid on it for the time being,” she said. “Let’s have a good time tonight.”

“I’m willing if you are.”

“I didn’t mean the things I said, Bobbie.”

“I know it. Rhoda, I’m sorry-”

“I love you, Bobbie.”

“Right. And that’s what counts, isn’t it?”

She held Bobbie’s arm when the five couples walked in a body to the Barrow Street party. There was snow on the ground and more snow falling. Across the street, a batch of college kids were having a snowball fight. One of their shots was way off and came cascading down on the ten girls. Jan Pomeroy squealed and pressed her face against Megan’s coat. Roz Merrimac and her girl friend tossed a few snowballs back at the college kids. Everybody was laughing.

The party was in full swing when they got to it. The crowd was composed mostly of gay boys with a sprinkling of heterosexual couples who stalked around looking alternately daring and embarrassed. When the ten girls walked in, everybody looked their way. Bernie and Terry were there, and Bernie yelled out, “Here comes the Ladies’ Auxiliary!” Somebody took Rhoda’s coat, someone else pressed a drink into her hand. A girl she had never seen came over and greeted her like a long lost sister and wished her a Happy New Year. Rhoda drank her drink.

There was a momentary flash of jealousy when she saw Bobbie staring after a girl with long red hair. But there was no time to be jealous or moody or bitter. The party moved at too fast a pace. Things kept happening and people kept handing her drinks. A very thin boy with rouged cheeks stood on a chair and did a Bette Davis imitation. Terry Langer kissed her cheek and told her that his parents had gone home, finally. “They never suspected a thing,” he said. “You were wonderful. If only you were a boy, I’d marry you.”

A very fat man sat on the floor playing a guitar. There were jazz records going on a hi-fi in the corner. Two boys in their late teens came out of a bedroom smiling oddly. One of the straight males tried to ward off a pass by a camping gay boy without coming on too square. A husband tried to stop his wife from flirting with Peg. The fat guitarist stood up and began singing.

At five minutes to twelve someone shut off the hi-fi and turned on the television set. They watched the mob scene at Times Square. Rhoda slipped through the throng, found Bobbie. Someone was talking about the Times Square scene-“In the morning the police always come by with a wagon and clean up the debris. They always find underwear, piles of it. Bras and pants everything else. People do it standing up in the crowd with total strangers, they do everything. I almost went one year-”

At the stroke of twelve somebody turned off the lights. Everybody was shouting and screaming. She kissed Bobbie, a long, hard kiss with her arms tossed around Bobbie’s neck and their bodies pressed tightly together. They held the kiss a long time, and then the party was erupting around them, and everybody was kissing everybody. She kissed girls and gay boys, shouted Happy New Year at everyone, drank scotch straight from a bottle. A married man grabbed her and kissed her and tried to get his tongue in her mouth. His hand moved over the front of her dress. She pushed him away and got away from him. When she saw him later he was trying to get Megan to go in the back room with him.

She found Bobbie again and kissed her again. Her head was swimming and she was so much in love she thought her heart would break. It would work out between them, she thought. It had been a hell of a day but it was going to be all right now, everything was going to be all right. They were in love and that was all that mattered, Fights were just part of the way they were, and they could get over the fights and rise above them and learn to control them and just go on loving each other.

Fifteen minutes later she found Bobbie in a corner with a married woman, holding her wrist and whispering into her ear. She let out a yell and went for Bobbie, ready to strangle her. It took three boys to pull the two of them apart.

She was sitting on the edge of the bathtub and Peg Brandt was sitting beside her, stroking her forehead. She had just been very sick and her head was still rocky.

She said, “I hate her. She doesn’t love me. I hate her.”

“Easy, Rhoda.”

“Did you see what that bitch was doing? Did you see her?”

“She didn’t mean anything.”

“Didn’t mean-”

“She was a little drunk, that’s all. She’s very sorry now, Rhoda. Really she is. I know Bobbie, I’ve known her for years and she’s crazy about you. You know that.”

She didn’t say anything.

“Maybe she was just trying to make you jealous. My God, Rhoda, look at the merry-go-round Lu keeps me on. It’s the same kind of thing. Except she doesn’t just flirt, she has affairs. But she loves me inside, and I love her and we stay together.”

“Peg-”

“Bobbie loves you. And you love her, don’t you?”

“Oh, of course I do! But-”

“Just take it easy now. Bobbie wants to see you, she wants to apologize. Will you see her now?”

“Give me a minute. Oh, I must look like hell.”

“You look all right.”

“I’m a mess. And I feel rotten, I really do. I hate to get sick like this. I made one hellish scene out there, didn’t I?”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“They had to pull me away from her. Peg, did I hurt her?”

“No.”

“But I must have scratched her.”

“Bobbie’s all right. She just wants to make up with you.”

“Peg, why do we do things like this to each other? Why?”

“God knows.”

She waited in the bathroom. Peg left, closed the door. She fixed her makeup, freshened her face, washed her mouth out. Her head was throbbing. She found a bottle of aspirin and took two tablets. She went to the door, opened it.

Bobbie was there. She said, “Rho, I’m sorry. I was drunk I didn’t know what I was doing. Forgive me.”

They kissed. In the living room, the fat man was playing his guitar again and the hi-fi was competing with him. They went into the kitchen to get fresh drinks.

After they left the Barrow Street apartment they stopped at the Pam Pam on Seventh Avenue for food and coffee. Roz and her girl had wandered off to another party and Grace and Allie had gone home early. The six of them sat at a table in back. They were all pretty drunk. They had ham and eggs and drank a lot of black coffee. Megan knew a party uptown that she wanted go to, a crowd she knew from her work. Jan said she was sick of gay boys and wanted to go to an all-girl party. “The boys get on my nerves,” she complained.

Lucia Perry knew where there was a party. The six of them piled into a Checker cab and rode across town to a tenement on Saint Mark’s Place. It was the right address but the party had ended. The hostess, who’d changed her name from Claudia to Claude, was there with another girl. They had one round of drinks and left. Claude told them something was doing at a loft on First Avenue and they went there.

On the way, she said, “Every time I had to say her name I thought I was talking to our cat.”

“Claude the cat. I was thinking the same thing.”

There was a party. Rhoda knew some of the girls there, had run across them at other parties, and at Leonetti’s. She did a lot of drinking and didn’t remember very much of what was happening. She looked at her watch once and noticed that it was a quarter after two. The next time she looked it was twenty minutes to four and they were leaving the party.

Stretches of blackness And clarity: They were walking down a narrow street. A taxi sped past them, took a corner on two wheels. Down the block, couples were spilling out of a bar that was closing. Bobbie had an arm around her waist and she felt herself spilling over with love.

“I’m drunk,” she said.

“Rho-”

She thought she was going to be sick again, but managed to get control of herself and the feeling passed. She whirled around and kissed Bobbie on the mouth. She started to sway and Bobbie caught hold of her and drew her in and kissed her again, and Bobbie’s tongue was in her mouth and she held the girl tight against her and let the world go away and kissed her hard and gasped for breath. They were necking on the street like shameless tramps but she didn’t care, didn’t care, and it was too much trouble to stagger off into a doorway because she didn’t care who saw them, didn’t care, but she just wanted to be held and kissed, just wanted everything to be soft and rosy and good and sweet and “I’ll be damned!”

She broke away, swayed, stared. A man in front of her, his arm around the waist of a giggling blonde, was glaring and pointing at her. Bobbie had drawn away. She looked at the man and watched his face swim in and out of focus. The face was familiar but she couldn’t place it.

“Sweet little Rhoda,” he said. “Little Miss Hard-to-Get. Jesus, I should have guessed it, I should have figured it out. Jesus, the little frigid one turns out to be a dyke.”

And then she saw his face again, and this time she recognized him . Ed Vance. She drew back as if slapped and he came after her, not to reach for her but to jeer at her.

“You little dyke. You had me going, you know that? I figured you for a hunk of ice that old Tom never knew how to warm up right. Figured it wouldn’t be too hard to straighten things out. A few dinners, a few nights on the town to get you primed. And then I’d show you what it’s like to be a woman. Jesus, I don’t know how I missed it. Living with another girl-sure, sleeping with another girl is more like it.”

Get away, she thought. Go away, leave me alone. Go away from me.

“Tom know about you?”

She shook her head.

“He’ll get a kick out of this, he said. He threw back his head and laughed hysterically. The blonde detached herself from Ed and was looking oddly from one to the other. He turned to her, “Get this,” he said. “I was trying to make time with this dyke. I never even guessed. You imagine?”

The blonde didn’t say anything. Ed laughed again. Rhoda’s knees felt shaky and she couldn’t stand. Then Bobbie was taking her arm, hurrying past the man and the girl and on down the street.

She heard him calling after her. “Hey girls,” he yelled. “I mean fellas. Hey, fellas!” He laughed again, and she could hear the blonde laughing with him. “Hey fellas,” he called again. “Don’t do anything dirty.”

She didn’t remember the walk home. She had a hazy memory of his laughter, harsh and strident, following her down the street. Then there was a large blank space, and then she was in their apartment with Bobbie. She was being sick again, her stomach turning itself painfully inside out, and Bobbie was holding her and telling her that everything would be all right.

Bobbie made her take off all her clothes and get under the shower. The water pounded down upon her flesh and she stood under the spray like a statue in a rainstorm, barely feeling the water, aware of next to nothing. She was in the shower for a long time. Then she got out and Bobbie dried her with a yellow towel and led her into the bedroom. When she lay down her stomach started to bother her again and her head reeled crazily and she sat up. Bobbie lit a cigarette and gave it to her. She took a drag and closed her eyes and dropped the cigarette onto the bed. Bobbie picked it up quickly and gave it back to her.

“Oh, I’m sick,” she said.

“Easy, easy.”

“That was Ed,” she said, “Ed Vance. He was a friend of-”

“I know.”

“You do?”

“You told me on the way home.”

“I don’t remember. I don’t remember anything. Bobbie, I don’t feel good.”

“Do you want to throw up some more?”

“No. I drank too much. Why did I drink so much?”

“Everybody drank too much.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s New Year’s.”

She drew on the cigarette. She couldn’t stand to close her eyes because every time she did the moment on the street came burning back into her brain, the expression on his face, the words he used. She blew out a cloud of smoke and sat up straight in bed. Bobbie put a pillow against the headboard behind her and she propped herself up against it. She looked down at herself and saw that she was naked. She put her hands on her body and touched herself and looked at Bobbie.

“I’m ugly,” she said.

“Don’t be silly.”

“I am ugly inside and out. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Bobbie, what’s wrong with me?”

“Nothing. You’re a little drunk, that’s all, and you’ll feel better in the morning.”

“In the morning?”

“Well, maybe not. You’ll have a hangover, I guess, but it shouldn’t be too bad. You didn’t keep anything down.”

“I’m ashamed of myself.”

“Don’t be. Oh, Rho-”

“Did you hear what he said? Right in the middle of the street, and the way he was yelling they could have heard him in Vermont.”

“Forget him.”

“He’ll tell everybody about me. About us.”

“So?”

“But nobody knows.” That was the truth, she realized. Only other gay people knew the truth about her. The friends she had known before, Tom’s friends, didn’t know a thing. And now they would all know. Ed Vance would tell everybody.

“They’d find out sooner or later.”

“I suppose so, but-”

“Are you ashamed, Rho?”

“I-” She narrowed he eyes, searched Bobbie’s face. “Ashamed?”

“Of me. And of yourself.”

“Oh, no. Of course not.”

“Then what do you care who knows? What difference does it make?”

“They wouldn’t understand.”

“So?” Bobbie held her hand. “They don’t matter, Rho. Can’t you see that? The people who matter are people who understand. People like us, people in the same boat. When you’re gay your friends are your family. They’re the only ones who understand, the only ones who can really care about you. You can forget this Vance person, and the other people you knew, and your rotten husband. They don’t count.”

“I-know that.”

“So what’s the trouble?”

“Nothing.”

Bobbie got to her feet. “I’ll make some coffee,” she said. “We can both use some. I’ll be back in a minute.”

“Don’t go away-”

“I’ll just put up some instant. I won’t be a minute.”

She wanted to say that a minute was too long. But she stayed where she was and didn’t say anything and Bobbie went into the kitchen to boil water. She took a last drag from her cigarette and put it out, then crawled under the bedsheet. She didn’t feel sick now, at least not as much as before. But her head ached and she felt terrible inside. She didn’t know what it was that was bothering her. Bobbie was right-it didn’t make any sense to be so upset about Ed Vance, didn’t make any difference how many people knew the truth about her lesbianism. She was what she was, and you didn’t get any place worrying about that sort of thing. She was a lesbian, and she was not alone, and the opinion of straight people shouldn’t matter to her in the least.

Then what was it?

The whole evening, she decided. The whole rotten evening, and the fighting and making up and fighting again, and the crazy jealousy, and the way she and Bobbie struck sparks every time they brushed up against each other. And the parties, the crazy parties, with everybody trying to crowd all the joy and pleasure on earth into one hellishly artificial evening. And too much to drink, and too much laughter and too many tears, and then that scene with Ed as a capper.

Bobbie came back with the coffee. She accepted a cup and sat up straight again to drink it. It was too hot and she set it down to cool.

“I’m all right now,” she said.

“Good.”

“And I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“For ruining your evening. For ruining everything. Oh, darling, why did we have to fight so much? Why?”

“Rho-”

“I’m sorry for it. I hate to fight with you, Bobbie.”

“Oh, Rho, I’m sorry too.”

“No more fights. A New Year’s Resolution, all right? We won’t fight any more.”

“I-”

“We’ll start the New Year right and we won’t fight. And-oh Bobbie, what’s the matter? Darling, you’re crying!”

“I…can’t help it.”

“Did I say something? I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to. I just-”

“Rho, I love you!”

“Oh, Bobbie-”

“We won’t fight, you’re right, we won’t fight any more. I love you so much, Rho. We won’t fight, we’ll just love each other and build something good out of this.”

“Yes.” Her heart pounding wildly, her eyes misty with embryonic tears. “Don’t talk, darling. Just come to me.”

“My clothes-”

“Take them off.”

She hadn’t expected to make love. But love came quick and warm and very tender, clearing her head and taking the unbearable weight away. She buried herself in Bobbie’s love and let the sweetness of it bathe her and cleanse her, then lay close to Bobbie and floated in the afterglow of love until sleep reached for her.