She would sit and gaze for hours at the girls in the bars or passing in the streets. She wanted to talk to them, see what they were like. She was often drawn to one enough to daydream about her, but she never mentioned it to Jack. Still, she was eagerly curious about the Lesbian mores and social codes. The gay girls seemed so smooth and easy with each other, talking about shared experiences in a special slang, like members of an exclusive sorority.
Beebo, watching them as the days and weeks passed, became slowly aware how much she envied them. She wanted to join the in-group. And she would watch them longingly and wonder if their talk was ever about her. It was.
A few of Jack’s friends, who had met her in his company, would come up and talk with her, and knowing for certain that they were Lesbians gave Beebo a vibrant pleasure, whether or not the girls themselves were exciting. Looking at one she would think, She knows how it feels to want what I want. I could make her happy. I know it. Even the word “Lesbian,” which had offended her before, began to sound wonderful in her ears.
She shocked herself with such candid thoughts, but that was only at first. Little by little, it began to seem beautiful to her that two women could come together with passion and intelligence and make a life with and for each other; make a marriage. She dreamed of lovely, sophisticated women at her feet, aware even as she dreamed that she hadn’t yet the savoir faire to win such a woman. But she was afire with ambition to acquire it.
She would walk into a bar, order a beer, and sit alone and silent through an evening. In her solitude, she seemed mysterious to the laughing chattering people around her. They began to point her out when she came in.
At first, ignorance and inexperience kept Beebo aloof. But she quickly understood that her refusal to be sociable made her the target of a lot of smiling speculation. When she got over being afraid of the situation, it amused her. The fact that she attracted girls, even ones she knew she would never pursue, was almost supernaturally strange and exciting to her. She submitted to their teasing questions with an enigmatic smile until she realized that one or two had worked themselves up to infatuation pitch over her.
There followed a period of elation when she walked into Julian’s or the Cellar and saw the eyes she knew had waited all night to look into hers turn and flash in her direction. She always passed them by and went to a seat at the bar. But each time she came closer to stopping and answering a smile or asking someone to join her in a beer. And still, she couldn’t find Mona.
The only wrong note in the tune was a boy, slight and fine-featured, who watched her and seemed to have persuaded himself that he loved her. He fell for her with an awkward crush that embarrassed them both. Often, at the end of an evening when he was pretty high, he would approach her and timidly offer to buy her a drink.
Beebo kept turning him down, kindly but firmly. He always flinched when she said no, and she pitied him. He had a gentle appealing face, fair in the way of extreme youth. She guessed he must be a couple of years younger than she, and wondered how he could buy drinks in a bar.
“I’m sorry, I’m just leaving,” she would tell him.
And he would watch her go, wistfully. He looked tired and malnourished, and she wondered once if it would offend him to be offered a free sandwich. She never quite got up the nerve to find out.
At home, Jack did not press her. But her silence regarding her activities at night worried him and put a strain between them. She knew that Jack was waiting for her to talk about it, and she wanted to be honest with him more than ever. He had been patient, humorously tolerant with her. And she knew that he was a man of the world. He had made it clear that he enjoyed the friendship of many delightful gay women, that he approved of them, and that he thought she might enjoy their company.
But he had not said, “Oh, come on, Beebo. You’re gay. Admit it. We both know it.” He had, however, come closer than she knew to saying it. And it was hard for Jack himself to realize that his hints and jokes were couched in a language still foreign to her in many ways. Often they went over her head or were taken at face value; saved and worried over, but never fathomed.
So she found herself hung up on a dilemma: she was sure of his friendship as long as she was an observer of the gay scene, not a sister-in-the-bonds. But what would he say if she told him she had a desperate crush on Mona Petry with the long black hair? Or that she got dizzy with the joy of being in a crowd of gay girls; near enough to touch, to overhear, to look and look and look until they whirled through her dreams at night?
Would he say, You can play with the matches but don’t get burned? Would he pity her? Turn on his wit? Would he—could he—take it with the easy calm he showed in other circumstances?
She thought he could. She
