Stone Butch Blues

of a sudden, everything got real quiet. The cash registers stopped ringing and nobody moved. Everybody was staring at the jewelry department. There’s this couple—a he-she and a femme. All they were doing was looking at rings, you know?” Angie sat back and exhaled slowly. “Everyone was glaring at them. The pressure just popped those two women out the door like corks. I wanted to run out after them and beg them to take me

Angie glanced over at an older pro who was paying her check at the register. “You know,” she told me, “When I was a little girl I remember being in a restaurant with my mother and stepfather and I saw a woman who looked something like her.”

“Will you still respect me in the morning?” she demanded.

“Will you marry me?” I asked her.

We both laughed and hugged each other, but the sad thing is, I think we were each kind of serious

”

Angie shook her head. “It’s tough when you see it coming, ain’t it?”

“Yeah,” I said, “it’s like driving on a single-lane highway and seeing an eighteen-wheeler heading right for you

“She’s beautiful, isn’t she?” I said.

Angie looked at me and cocked her head. “You like tough women, don’t you, butch?” I smiled and stabbed my eggs with my fork

“Listen up now,” I pleaded, “this is serious.” “This ain’t serious, this is a drag show,” someone yelled.

“Yeah,” I said. “This is serious.” I realized what I wanted to say. ‘You know, all our lives they’ve told us the way we are isn’t right.”

I heard some murmurs, “Yeah!”

“Well, this is our home. We’re family.”

Strong to my enemies, tender to those I loved and respected. That’s what I wanted to be. Soon I would have to put these qualities to the test. But for the moment, I was happy.

Her face softened. “That’s kinda hard to explain. I guess being a good lover means respecting a femme. It means listening to her body. And even if the sex gets a little rough, or whatever, that it’s what she wants too, and inside you’re still coming from a gentle place. Does that make sense?”

After the bar closed we’d walk down the street, pretty tipsy, one of us on each of Jacqueline’s arms. She’d throw her head up to the heavens and say, “Thank you, God, for these two good-looking butches.” Al and I would lean forward and wink at each other and we’d all laugh for the sheer joy of being who we were, and being it together.

What I saw there released tears I’d held back for years: strong, burly women, wearing ties and suit coats. Their hair was slicked back in perfect DAs. They were the handsomest women I’d ever seen. Some of them were wrapped in slow motion dances with women in tight dresses and high heels who touched them tenderly. Just watching made me ache with need.

This was everything I could have hoped for in life.