Karen was relieved to have something to distract them. She only pretended to listen to the attractive girl on the little stage. Instead, she glanced rapidly from Paula to Pat, trying to conceive a love restricted to women. She had felt tremendously attracted to Pat from the first. And Pat was a lesbian! No wonder other girls met Pat, then fled from her when they found out.
Karen leaned back to listen to the second page of the blunt, sensual poetry Paula was reciting. But she could not concentrate. Once having decided to take Pat's admission with a degree of casualness, Karen was at a loss to explain the peculiar sensation of excitement she still felt. She imagined her-self poised on the swaying edge of a fascinatingly distorted world. She no longer felt like the lonely, frustrated young wife whom nobody understood. Now she was urgently being asked to understand someone else! Karen studied Pat's beautiful face fondly. Then a sudden vision of Pat lying nude over the body of another girl passed before Karen's eyes. Her body started shivering uncontrollably. What was she thinking? Her gaze fell to Pat's naturally-colored lips. She found herself wondering how they would feel on her own…
'The poem I've brought tonight is still untitled.' Paula moved her papers again and started to read slowly.
'Days go by and she doesn't comb her hair… She stops nude in a doorway to examine herself, her brain the sudden familiar prophecy of antennaed fingers…'
Karen experienced a quick flash of anger at her husband. He had done this to her! He had allowed her to feel so unloved that the suggestion of warmth from any source, even one so far removed from normalcy, was preferable to none! She had found so much to detest in her husband's bed that Karen was unable now to imagine herself in another man's bed.
'Dead eruption in the stomach. A pulsating mouth continuously breaking, endless rows of gleaming white soldiers. Their heads like hats…'
Karen found her stomach turning slightly as she listened to the last few lines of the strange poetry the girl was reading. '… heads like hats…' she thought, remembering a time shortly after her marriage when Allen had looked down at himself proudly before coming naked to her. The little man with the hat wants in… he had said. Karen shivered.
'Freckled-faced little boys who didn't grow up and marry her. The mischievous angels of childhood, their grubby little hands under the covers at night. Now I lay me down to play…'
Karen wondered if it was a few unhappy relationships, like the one she had with Allen, which made Pat and girls like her the way they were. Did they find what they wanted with other women? Then Karen wondered if Pat found her attractive, if she wanted her. The thought was strangely disturbing.
'I pray the Lord my nucleus to keep, secure with the light on in the hallway. And Mom and Dad fornicating in front of the television set. We couldn't have known then that none of us would have a choice. Once wings of boyhood flew out of her thighs. Leaving only a narcissistic leg to put in or out of the tub.'
It never really seemed to occur to Allen that he could do anything definite about her unhappiness… Karen wondered if two women together wouldn't be more sensitive to each other's needs, if the other's needs, in fact, would be their own. She looked again at the clear beauty of Pat's face and a small thrill passed through Karen's body. She had been so lonely and frigid… and now she was finding herself almost titillated by the undercurrent of sexuality emanating from the body of another woman. Karen no longer cared about the why! She was suddenly too grateful just to be feeling anything, anything at all.
'And the lonely fondling of one's own breast…' Paula looked up slowly from her papers, acknowledging the approval the room full of people showered on her with a nod of her head. She moved off the stage leaving it empty and the room too quiet until the vacuum was filled with the sudden chorus of unrelated voices.
'Isn't she too much?' Pat demanded enthusiastically. 'She has real talent. Better than most of the stuff.' Pat examined Karen's flushed face. She liked the way the blond hair made the brown eyes sink deeply into the face. She reached out and touched Karen's hand gently. 'Are you terribly shocked? I won't try to rape you, you know.'
Karen felt the heat from Pat's slender fingers. 'Don't be silly!' She felt immune from shock. She wished she were as immune to the growing excitement in her, or to the way she felt from Pat's light touch.
Pat's normally husky voice lowered still more. Her full lips were naturally moist. 'I could make you happy, Karen. I'd like nothing more than to try. Now are you shocked and ready to run?' Pat let one of her long legs straighten out and come to rest against Karen's bare calf.
A sharp awareness shot through Karen's body at the words and touch of Pat's denim-covered leg against her. She did not try to understand her reaction to this strange girl, this part-time prostitute, this full-time lesbian. She only knew that Allen had never excited her in this wild, delirious way… that for all her husband's passionate molesting of her body she had never before felt so desirable. Karen made herself notice the time. It was late. 'I'm not shocked, and I'm not ready to run away, either.' Karen forced a smile. 'But since you mention it, it is late. Very late. I have to go home. Al will be home from school soon. He'll be furious if I'm not there.' She had said the wrong thing again. Now she was making Al sound like a slave driver and a tyrant. Poor little Karen, she thought. Want the nice pretty lady to dry your eyes?
'I am scaring you away,' Pat stated positively, with a small, dejected shrug of her shoulders. 'I didn't want to do that. But before you go, I hope you'll let me tell you a few things… and not be mad.'
'Of course. I'm not mad! Honestly, I have to go because Al will get angry and we fight so much…' Karen felt the leg shift slightly on her body. She wanted to close her eyes, but had to settle for just pretending that it wasn't happening. Yet, she knew she didn't really want it to stop, the leg or this night. She wanted to stay here with this girl who told her crazy, exciting things. This girl who seemed to understand her even better than she did herself…
'Poor baby.' Pat's eyes rested sympathetically on Karen's pretty face. 'You're unhappy with your husband. You could be happy with me, you know. I'm sure of it! My apartment is big enough for both what am I saying?' Pat smiled sadly. 'You must think I'm nuts. Well, I suppose I am. But that's the way I feel. I felt it when I first looked at you. It's better that you know it. I just couldn't act casual around you, Karen. I know you're not like me, but at least you know how I feel. Don't hate me for what I cannot help.' Pat hoped that didn't sound too hammy.
'Don't say that,' Karen begged, genuinely touched by Pat's sadness. She wished she had the courage to tell Pat that no one, no man had ever been so tender with her. She would have liked to stay on with Pat, now, if only to show the girl that she was not running from her. She felt alive in every pore of her body. 'I would stay, if it were possible. I'm going because I have to go. I want you to believe that. It's late,' she added apologetically.
'Where do you live?' Pat felt the softness of the knees which parted slightly to allow her own to slip between them in a casual but intimate embrace. She wanted this girl more than she had ever wanted any other person.
'In Santa Monica. It's not too far.' Karen felt the knees inch up the insides of her legs. Her body was tingling unbearably. She felt the mature tips of her breasts harden and begin to throb.
'It is late, Karen. Let me walk you home. You shouldn't be walking alone around here at this time of the night.'
'Why would it be less safe for me than you, Pat?' Karen asked, a bit delighted and yet a bit amused by the older girl's protectiveness.
'Simple, my sweet,' Pat answered smoothly, getting up and fishing in her pockets for some change to cover their coffee. 'If you were to be raped on the street you would mind terribly, wouldn't you?'
'Why… why, of course!' Karen smiled suddenly at Pat. The wild-eyed girl had the power to delight, confuse, heat and startle her all in the same conversation.
'Well, that's the difference. If I were to be raped, it wouldn't hardly matter at all. I would forget it as soon as it happened. You don't understand that, do you?'
'No, I don't. How could you forget something like that?' Just the thought of a strange man taking her body sent a chill down her spine, cooling the warmth Pat's presence stimulated in her.
'That's what I meant when I talked about the inner search, baby. Nothing matters except what you want to matter to you. I could forget the horrors of being molested by some filthy scum, but I could never forget this excitement I feel just by being with you… Because the first doesn't mean anything in my life, but the second means everything!'
The walk home seemed very short. Karen hardly heard what Pat was saying to her. Her comments about the true meaning of life seemed less vital to Karen than the fact that Pat was walking beside her. They reached the
