Life with a new partner.
‘K’ had previously run a small restaurant, a hamburger joint, in some little town up north with her female lover who was such a radical lesbian that she had recently broken up with ‘K’ and moved to a compound of like-minded feminists not far from ‘K’s ranch, so radical that they prohibited any man from entering their gate, at the barrel of a shotgun. ‘K’ told me bits about this fascinating partner and their ‘compound’ over the next few months as we sat together, alone in the otherwise silent hills, doing lines and sitting up late at a table dimly lit by one low voltage light bulb.
At first I’d ask questions but got vague replies. She was reluctant to share. But we came to a deal. I’d tell ‘K’ all the stories I could think of, of powerful women in history, women who rose in stature and character way above men, stories she loved to hear and was totally ignorant of. I started chronologically with the Greeks, the mythical Electra, Media, Antigone, the real Aspasia, then leaders like Zenobia and Boadicea, but also more recent exemplars like Lucretia Borgia, Marguerite of Navarre and Thomas More’s eldest daughter, Margaret, whom he educated so well she was one of the best Latinists of the age. I also described ‘George Sand’, Jane Carlyle and Jane Wilde, ending with Simone de Beauvoir, almost exhausting my whole encyclopedia of ‘femmes savants’, as we had nothing much to do but sit and talk. We didn’t play cards. All these women were paragons of beauty and intelligence and strength. I even loved retelling their stories.
‘K’ listened intently, visibly fascinated, soaking up every story and name, her eyes gleaming in the dim 12 volt lighting, her forehead in a sweat in the middle of the night, probably writing them down after I went to bed in the camper outside. She could research them as material and cannons, (or canons) for her own personal arsonal, and I bet she did. All stigmatized and abused people want examples of their type who rise above and successfully defy the prejudices of the world. But I doled these stories out slowly, (we were together there the first time for three weeks) and in return I asked for details of her radical partner and their life together, with each piece of information traded, (like cards) before the next was dealt.
She described her partner as short, trim and cute, with long, black hair which ‘K’ loved to comb each morning, after they showered together. Men were always hitting on her. There was no explanation for her radicalism, except a love of radicalism itself. She’d read books, many more than ‘K’, had gone to college and was a die-hard lesbian. But this ‘Waco’ Texas nonsense even ‘K’ couldn’t explain, because she loved her and their split up, sudden and without explanation, hurt deeply.
She was beautiful and that was a big part of ‘K’s infatuation with her, ‘K’ being much plainer looking, skinny and tall and blind without her glasses, but the ‘alpha’ in the relationship, being strong-willed. The only thing ‘K’ told me that made any sense was that her partner often talked about the planet being destroyed and men’s stupidity in managing things, their extreme screw-ups and ‘the end of days’ soon to come.
She lived with six or seven other women who wanted to make their compound totally independent from the world, with solar panels, a spring and a farm, growing all their food. They weren’t quite there yet and had money and sent one member to town on rare occasions when they needed something they couldn’t make, like a pump. ‘K’ had visited there once and declined the invite, as her girl was now in love with another, which she couldn’t bare to witness. She also told me the poverty and hard work on that farm would be too much for her. ‘K’ loved money and other things, one of them being cigarettes. That’s why she was working with me, to get rich and comfortable in something more than her present ‘shack’.
I wondered what books this female enigma had read. ‘K’ didn’t know, she only read magazines and it annoyed her to no end that the one subscription she received in her mailbox ten miles away was Ms. Magazine. She had copies all over the cabin and I would call them M.S. magazines (multiple sclerosis) and she’d scream back at me: “no, it’s Miss magazine”.
We had a curious friend-enemy relationship. First of all, she hated men. I equally disliked tall, skinny women who wore glasses. I know this is a strange prejudice in me but I hate glasses on a woman, (excepting sunglasses). It’s some quirk I never could shed. She had seven cats in her household and I hated cats. They’d bring in dead mice on a daily basis and drop them on the floor.
If she’d had more feminine traits and wasn’t such a radical lesbian I might have been in bed with her. I slept in a camper forty feet away from the house. Hers was a one room affair with her mattress in a corner, and always unmade, dirty sheets, not the most attractive love-nest. She wore old jeans and put her hair in a ponytail. Then again, her jeans were tight and she did have a lovely behind. But she was as unfeminine and unsexy (in all her mannerisms) as Judge Judy. Even her voice was harsh.
Our work required us to stay up late each night, thus lines and our long talks, which were civil and oddly enjoyable for the both of us. Our few snide remarks and bouts of sparing just livened them up. She’d never had intimate talks with a male before, full of rich and fascinating knowledge which she hungered to learn. And what I did on the counters next to us, getting up every few hours to check on things, was making us piles of money. She knew that all too well, so she was as nice as any man-hating feminist could torque herself to be, always trying not to show it. I was her teacher all this time and she my pupil. The fact that I never made advances in those predawn hours only added to the strangeness of the scene, because I knew I very well could have and she so compromised as to have to agree. But once again, Don Quixote and Seneca and Johnson prevailed. I chose the higher road.
This situation was filled with so many ironic twists that I did take some spry and perverse advantage of it. I didn’t care a hoot if our project worked or failed. I had money and she didn’t, or at least not nearly as much as she wanted. She also wanted my skills with such a passion she could barely hide it, with almost a lust in her eyes. I could dispense or withhold critical details as I pleased and she knew it. If she displeased me I could walk out at any time and leave her with nothing. I’m sure she wondered long and hard why I made no sexual advances, (as she thought all man-beasts would). She must have been secretly pleased and relieved at this continence on my part, but probably wondered equally hard if it was something in her, if she was so unattractive that I nixed the thought.
