Sapphic Embrace: The Housewife Read Free Page A

Well, damn..."
    "Are you at all straight?" Jim asked, the first real question he had asked all night.
    "Not a bit, honey-pie," Tom said, laughing. "I mean, I won't vomit at the sight of a vagina, but I might think about vomiting. I'm sorry, I'm all in favor of girl power, but vaginas are kind of gross if you think about it."
    "The buttsex has driven you insane..." Jim said, and I wanted to yell at him, sure that Tom would be upset. But Tom rolled with it and laughed, clasping Jim's hand awkwardly in his own.
    "What about you?" Tom asked me, "Are you 100% straight? Note that if you say yes, I'm going to call you a liar. There's no such thing as a purely heterosexual woman."
    "That's ridiculous, of course I am," I said.
    "You've never even thought about sex with a woman?"
    "No!"
    "You are a liar, a lying bisexual liar!" Tom said through his laughter.
    "Okay, okay," I said, scarcely able to believe I was saying this, "I had a dream about that female Iron Chef with the short hair once... It was a sexual thing." They all burst into laughter, even Kathy, who stifled it and wrapped one arm around my shoulder supportively.
    For a few minutes, I forgot that Jim and I hated each other right now, and that Jim didn't much like Kathy or Tom either, or that Kathy was just as depressed as me. Everything seemed right. We were like a group of friends who could be the basis for a quirky gay-positive sitcom, with the flamboyant queer, the butchy lesbian and the staid married couple to play the "straight" role and be targets of humor. I hadn't felt like I belonged so much since just after Jim and I got married, when we were still in the honeymoon phase.
    But like all things it didn't last. Eventually the alcohol got to us -- not me, I was the designated driver, but the others were all a little drunk. We called it a night around eleven, and dropped Kathy and Tom off at their places in town before Jim and I headed back to our house.
    Later, on the way home, Jim said he didn't want to hang around with Tom again. "He was touching me like a fag. He tried to hold my hand. I ain't a fucking faggot, and if he does that again-"
    "Don't talk like that, Jim," I said, annoyed. I had had such a good time, I didn't even notice the hostility that Jim must have radiated. I was a little sad to realize that my sense of camaraderie and belonging was one-sided.
    "Don't tell me how to talk. Tell that fag to lay off or I will lay him out!"
    "You were having a good time. He didn't molest you, Jim, just relax."
    "I hate it when you say that, I'm not going to relax, Betty. I'm fucking pissed off! That's why I'm shouting, because I'm angry. Do you understand that? My emotions are not a fucking switch you can turn on and off with a remote control-"
    "Okay, Jim, I get it. You're mad. You think he was touching you too much. I know all he did was hold your hand, but he could have started touching more any time, and that must have been scary for you. Thank god you're not a woman, by the way, you'd go crazy."
    "He wanted to touch me all over, I could see it in his eyes. If he thought he could get away with it, he'd rape me," Jim said. "Like if we was in prison, he'd rape me."
    "Don't be ridiculous. He would not. Flamboyant, lisping gay men don't rape anyone in prison."
    The argument didn't stop there. Every time I opened my mouth, I thought I was stopping the vitriol, putting an end to the fight and turning the other cheek to his cruel words. But somehow I said something other than what I meant to, or he interpreted it in the wrong way, and the fighting continued all the way home. He slammed the car door behind himself and went straight into his garage, where he had beer and a TV and cigars and porn and he wouldn't have to listen to my "stupid bitch face full of stupid bitch words".
    As soon as he couldn't see me, I burst into tears, my body wracked with painful spasms of sadness and loneliness. I ran upstairs to the bedroom that Jim and I used to share, picked up the giant