But Dara hears no haunting tune. With the obedient one, she and I kept each other’s gaze. This time, we do not. I do not retreat, in this moment, to the embrace of my lover, who is caught outside, feeling excluded, reaching tiny tendril hands onto my thigh, little cat paws pulling at me, calling me back.
When we lie together, I am in the middle, my head supported by an unfamiliar chest, pale white skin. She rests against me, a little lone bird on a log out at sea. The twin beds have begun to split: she and I on one side, Mark on the other. “The abyss of gender,” Mark calls it.
I think: if only it were that simple.
FRUIT OF ANOTHER
Annette Beaumont
It was the same every time. She lay back in my bed, the features of her face now faded in my mind. Those details were diminished, but not the intensity of my desire. As I kissed her neck I heard her breathing quicken; her curves, soft and full beneath my hands, a reminder of this forbidden love. My mouth moved slowly down her body, exploring, hoping, coming alive with cravings. Her moans were soft, a whisper, trying to keep our secret. I lingered on her hips, feeling them rise to me, wanting me, wanting more. In my mind, the teasing was relentless, taunting her, torturing myself. I pulled the inside of her thigh to my lips, her leg bent at the knee. She moaned, louder this time. She wanted me, needed me, called for me. So many times I had heard her call my name and longed to answer. Though I would never be with her, the image of this woman dominated my fantasies, invaded my mind and left me helpless to forget. In the painful absence of her touch, I succumbed to my own, feeling the wetness that only thoughts of her could bring. Years passed and time and again I dreamed of this woman with a frenzy of desire, always the same woman, always the same dream, only to watch her float away before I could finally taste her passion.
More than a decade ago her face was still fresh in my mind. Her eyes were big and brown with smile lines that had come from years of happiness on the river. She was beautifully round, even slightly heavy, with womanly curves my tom-boyish shape had never known. Her natural ways enhanced her beauty. She had absolutely nothing to hide. Free from makeup and jewelry and attention to fashion she nevertheless radiated femininity. Her honesty permeated her appearance. She was modest, but not insecure. Her gestures, her laugh, her love of the nature that surrounded us were all quite genuine. She was simply beautiful to me. She had no idea that she held such beauty, and certainly no idea that I, of all people, appreciated it.
It was on the river that she looked most at home, and on the banks in the evenings, the sun casting its last rays on the canyon wall behind her, that I realized I wanted her. She was a bona fide river guide, with calloused hands and a faded life vest, skillfully rowing guests through turbulent class IV rapids, giving them a wet and wild adventure they would never forget. It was my job, on the other hand, to organize the trip, to plan and pack five days of rations and supplies: Bisquick and bacon, cold cuts and steaks, tents, sleeping bags and Dutch ovens. I would meet and greet the twelve anxious guests, help
orient them to camp life, and encourage them to pare down their new L.L. Bean wardrobes to stuff into their assigned dry bags. Both in our twenties, we embraced the freedom of life on the river, welcoming the constant sound of rushing water that drowned out the world and its expectations.
By the end of that summer on the Lower Salmon I was in the throes of my first lesbian infatuation, and I had the makings of a fantasy that would sustain me for more than a decade. We had spent months on the river and countless evenings around the campfire in the sand, no one ever suspecting my hidden lust. The end of each trip was marked by our small rafts floating peacefully into the larger flow of the Snake River, leaving behind the isolated, remote and hidden canyons of the Salmon. Just beyond the place where the two rivers meet, vehicles awaited to return our guests to the world they had only briefly escaped.
The confluence of two rivers, the legends say, is a magical place. I personally have known this to be true. That summer, however, every wish I made with each crossing of the confluence would need to stay forever secret. My longings would remain in the safeguard of the canyon walls we left behind, lost in the river’s constant whispers. No one could know what I dreamed that summer. No one could know because it had been exactly one year earlier, on that same river, that I had met my fiancé.
Eleven years passed since my heart was first tempted. Countless crushes followed. Unsuspecting friends, colleagues at work, fellow students in graduate school each touched a part of me that I was not ready to concede. The attractions were real. So, too, was my commitment to my marriage, to the man who was my best friend, the father of my children. He had known about my lustful attraction before we ever married. I loved him too much not to tell him. He dismissed it as natural and circumstantial. He asked me if I was in love with her. I replied, with clarity, that I was not. I simply wanted to sleep with her. The wedding had taken place as scheduled. Still, through the years, my very first love of a woman pervaded my fantasies, remaining the one place I sought refuge. I refused to abandon the one imagined encounter that made me feel whole.
Over the years, my longing for a woman was kept alive by my riverside fantasy and thrived just below the surface. As my marriage wavered, it didn’t take much for that hunger to invade my every thought. Playfully, without guilt, I found myself searching the Internet for someone to talk to. The anonymity of the computer and the absolute certainty that I would never act on my desires kept my conscience clean. I found a sympathetic ear on several occasions, and almost laughed at the distance I was able to keep between myself and these acquaintances. The game went on for months, and it was surprisingly fulfilling. Then, one unremarkable evening online, I by chance met a woman named Beatrice.
Even her name set her apart from the others, timeless and wise, resonant of a distant era. Beatrice was playing a game of her own. Only a few years older than me, she had already given up on real relationships, and entertained herself by corresponding with a host of women scattered across the country. She had a strict policy of never dating or even corresponding with married women. I will never know what compelled her to break her own rules that evening, but the decision sent both our lives in a direction we couldn’t have anticipated.
My first contact with her was less than appealing.
My name
is Anne and I’m kind of new at this. I am thirty-three years old, and I am married. I have two amazing kids, a little boy who is four and a little girl who is three. I hope you write back.
Stunningly, she did.
If you are married and have two fabulous kids, why are you writing to me?
I’ve longed to know intimacy with a woman,
I explained.
This is not a “bi-curious” phase, but a long-term, innate need to understand these desires. I don’t want to do anything about it, I just need someone to talk to. I’m not looking to date you, just to correspond with you. Trust me, we may never meet.
And so we exchanged emails. Over weeks that flowed into months, we shared an outpouring of thoughts that spanned pages and pages. Because neither of us was seeking a romantic relationship, we were free to be ourselves; free to think, divulge, explore anything, without the pressures or tensions that accompany a budding relationship. Unwittingly, we had discovered the lost art of letter writing.
Topics expanded from sexual orientation to personal histories, politics and literature, art and humor. Instead of getting to know one another through small talk and red wine, we used long letters to paint vivid portraits of ourselves, prompting each other to reveal ever finer brushstrokes. Her favorite color was black, her favorite food was chocolate. Her only brother was gay, her mother was ill. Her sarcasm was clever, biting. She adorned her apartment walls with Georgia O’Keefe and Ansel Adams, and her shelves were scattered with bones collected in the Southern Utah desert. Her bookshelves were bursting with worn copies of Carson, Leopold, Abbey, McPhee, Thoreau, and Tempest Williams; the greatest environmental minds standing shoulder to shoulder with Kant and Nietzsche. Her bedside table was overflowing with everything from Anne Rice to Ayn Rand. Her desk was stacked with legal textbooks. She dreamed of fighting for the civil rights of others, of the GLBT community, of the elderly, of those who had no voice. Without ever exchanging pictures, her beauty was most obvious to me. She was a songwriter. She was a poet. She was a student. She was a comedian. She was a cancer survivor. She was a musician. She was a philosopher. She was full of passion she didn’t even realize. Some of those passions we shared, like our mutual love of the natural world. With others, like her music, I could only sit back and listen in awe.
The game soon changed to a battle of wit. Creative energy flowed from our fingertips as if our souls were newly awakened. She shared her history and her ambitions, her past and her future, woven into stories that evoked tears of both sympathy and laughter. With every free moment, I would run to the computer to see if a musing from Beatrice had graced my inbox. For the first time in years I felt intellectually stimulated. My brain came alive. I was excited and inspired and filled with anticipation. I was writing again. I was feeling again. I was falling in love.
Eventually our physical distance, our anonymity, shifted from something we relished to something excruciating. Twice we made plans to meet. Twice we canceled them. Neither of us wanted to cross that line, to change or risk losing what we had. Both of us knew we were destined to.
Finally, one evening after work, Beatrice drove to my small town thirty miles from her home and waited in a local bar. I arrived with impossible expectations. I inched down the steps into the darkness and as my eyes adjusted I saw her in the corner on a sofa. She was dressed atypically conservative,
having come straight from work, her tweed suit and high collar catching me off guard. Her hair was unexpectedly coiffed and sprayed to hold it in place. Who was this buttoned-up woman? Where was my Beatrice? Where was the wild free spirit I had come to know so intimately online? Had I only imagined her? Had it all been an illusion?
I walked into the room and cautiously to her. Petrified, I sat a comfortable distance away from her on the sofa. I couldn’t look at her face. I had urges to run, to fly up the stairs and back to the safety of my house, of my marriage. I do not even remember our first words. I went to the bar and got us drinks, but when I returned I could only sit quietly, staring down at my glass, avoiding her gaze. She was talking, but her words were muted by the thoughts of escape spinning in my head.
I’m not sure how much time had passed when by chance I looked into her eyes. They were the bluest eyes I’d ever seen, shocking against her otherwise dark mane and complexion; glacial blue, like those of a cat, but full of mystery and danger, like those of a wolf. It was at that moment that I recognized her. Every word she had written to me, the secrets of her heart that she had dared to expose in her letters, the strength of spirit that her words had reflected, her hopes and passions and dreams and desires all at once came flooding over me, through me; an entire sea breaking as a single wave.
Like old friends we walked arm in arm down the street to the small but crowded Italian restaurant that I had chosen. We spent the evening lost in each other’s eyes; lost in conversation, laughing, learning, completely oblivious to the world around us. When we eventually looked up, the waiters were sitting at a table at the other end of the room with looks of amusement at our expense. The restaurant was otherwise empty. I glanced at my watch and realized that it was long past closing time. For hours we had floated in our bubble, sheltered from the real world. Table by table, the other patrons had paid their bills and left the place completely deserted. We had not even noticed.
I was parked right out front, and Beatrice’s car was several blocks away, so I offered to drive her there. During those brief moments, I was panicked at the thought of her getting into her car and driving out of my life. I was tempted to turn the wheel and head for the highway with Beatrice as my captive. As I pulled up beside her SUV and shifted into PARK, my eyes could only follow her hand as she reached for the door handle. In a flash, the door opened and she slid out of the car. The car door was already swinging back toward me when I managed to whisper, “Beatrice?” The door opened again and she leaned inside. “No kiss?” I asked timidly, knowing that she wouldn’t, knowing that the crowded parking lot in my small town was a dangerous location for my first lesbian kiss. She paused, smiled sheepishly, and climbed back in the car.
Beatrice stared at me in silence for a moment, an eternity. Throughout the evening her every thought, her every gesture, had been stimulating. Now, the eye contact was almost unbearable. I waited for her to explain that there would be no kiss; that she couldn’t, that we must never talk again, that we would never meet again. I knew deep down that she would be right. I was lost in those thoughts, waiting for those words when suddenly her lips were on mine.
So soft, so tender was her kiss, yet so unexpected. My body responded instantly. For a split second I stiffened, breathless, and then I slowly relaxed into her. As her hand brushed my face and her lips explored mine I knew that I had never really
kissed before. She playfully nibbled, and indulged me with the softness of her tongue…gentle, teasing circles. The taste of her mouth was intoxicating. Time passed and I was suspended. Again I felt the accidental brush of her hand, this time on my thigh, and I shuddered, drawing her closer, aware of her body, her curves, moving against my own.
With that kiss I was transformed. She awakened a part of me that had waited patiently for far too long, and the feeling was overpowering. The passion in her lips was genuine as she breathed warmth and renewal into my very soul. To simply describe the aching between my thighs would belittle the magnitude of my response, as every cell in my body simultaneously opened to let her in. Later, when I climbed in bed beside my sleeping husband, I knew I could never kiss him again.