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Intimacy Not Bargained For
Pat and I order at the Indian restaurant in the Clubhouse and I excuse myself to go to the bathroom -- the same one, where I met the woman, likewise trying on items last Sunday. I push open the carved, dark, wooden door and witness the most exciting scene since my arrival in India:
A gorgeous woman is squeezing the white, capri-clothed thighs of another, who's sitting on the sink, legs dangling. The squeezer whips her head around and looks at me with deep embarrassment. I try to pretend I'm invisible as I slink into one of the individual rooms with a toilet.
I close the door, daring one more quick peek and then my antennae droop: It's a mother, comforting her teenage daughter, and trying to help her pull herself together in a British-from-Britain accent. And she looks at me with horror because she doesn't want any of the clubhouse members to see any of her family losing control of her emotions. Ugh.
I'm so gross. How could I have thought that they were a couple? No, I'm just so hungry for lesbian imagery. In the States, we can watch TV and see ourselves portrayed, and we can get together with any of several couples of lesbian friends and just be nearly ordinary. Here, I feel so rare. I do need to call the lesbian and trans couple who my friend connected me with when I was here on my own in 2005.
As I exit the toilet and head toward the sink, there's no avoiding the mother-daughter unit; the daughter shifts just slightly to the left to make room for me to wash my hands. She's sniffling and I go ahead and look right at her while applying liquid soap.
"A few weeks ago, at the Windsor, I was eating breakfast with tears streaming down my face," I say to her watery blue eyes. "I just couldn't cope anymore."
She looks at me with surprise and then a touch of gratitude. Her extra-gorgeous mother looks at me with pure gratitude for distracting her kid.
"Yeah, the croissant-server knew to stay away from me. I scared her."
The girl laughs through her tears.
"I hope you feel better," I say, tossing my paper towel into the bin. Her mother rewards me with a huge smile.
2 comments:
I had a similar thing happen during my first week in high school, sort of. It turns out there were a couple of girls, who were not consoling one another, but necking. And the other day, I walked past a couple of young teen-age girls, necking, on the outskirts of a playground in Park Slope, Brooklyn, an admittedly quite liberal, progressive neighborhood. I admit to doing a double-take in both instances, because they felt so out of the ordinary. The first time I remember feeling really confused about why there was a boy in the bathroom, then a moment later, about why two girls were necking in the bathroom.
Still, I wouldn't characterize these two events, separated by a distance of 34 years, as nearly ordinary. I've only witnessed such open lesbian PDAs twice in my life, except for on film, and in magazines of ill repute.
Yeah, I meant that due to the wonderful friends we've made and the TV shows that are increasingly available, in the States, we can surround ourselves with lesbian people and imagery, and feel nearly ordinary, rather than that public displays of any sort in any bathroom anywhere are nearly ordinary.
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