Holly Hughes: "This book is hot!"

"Kisses" for Leslie from S/HE

Interview with Minnie Bruce: "Femme, Poet, Activist"

Readers rave about S/HE

ALA Award Finalist

S/HE stories in German

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Perfume

House party, lesbian porn videos in the basement, and the butch I stand next to, watching, says, "Why does every woman in these videos have long finger nails?" All the women fucking femme to femme on the TV video are white, but the party is thoroughly mixed, the dance floor rocking with the sway of African-American, Latina, and white girl hips. Upstairs there's birthday cake with purple sugar roses, and a game being played. A cluster of femmes rate candidates 1 to 10 on a butch scale. One butch who professes ignorance about "roles" is pulled protesting into our circle in her tight white undershirt and her jeans, the keys at her belt jangling. She's awarded a 10 and wanders away, bemused. A femme explains to me about pedicures, stretching out her polished nails, hand and foot, like a luxurious cat. She and I look down and note that all the femmes have shed our shoes and are walking around barefoot, while the butches are still neatly shod in loafers, boots, or sneakers. My date gets a lower rating than she thinks she deserves and demands to be upgraded; she's granted a 10 for butch arrogance. One woman throws her shoulders back, swaggers her breasts, and proclaims that she is a femme "with butch attitude."

Downstairs, to "Real Love," I dance with a friend in a see-through slinky blouse that shows off her breasts. We move loosely, eyes accepting eyes, not looking to the side or down, but knowing who we dance with. She shows me how to work my skirts, stirring heat up around us. She tells me she's got a new perfume, spicy lemon, "So that when I sweat, I'll smell irresistible as fresh-baked poundcake." She urges me to buy the gardenia oil I've been considering. Our dates are sitting this one out, two square-shouldered women in slacks and loafers side-by-side on the dilapidated plaid sofa. I begin to flirt with my friend, wordlessly, letting my eyes linger on her silk-stocking ankles, on her powerful hips clearing a space around us, on the profusion of her coiled dredlocks and pendant earrings. I glance at some bit of her womanliness, then glance at her eyes, a visual kiss of appreciation. Soon we begin to laugh so hard that I say, "They are going to come over in a minute to see what we're up to." And just then our dates begin to squeeze through the crowd toward us, slightly anxious looks on their faces, as we dance call-and-response with each other, just beyond the reach of their hands.

Husband

At the March on Washington, the man sitting next to me on the grass asks "Is he your husband?" as I return from kissing you, as you step down from the microphone. On stage Peggy DuPont in beaded white chiffon is ferociously lipsynching and tailswitching a drag queen's answer to the introduction you have given her, praise from a drag king resplendent in your black-on-black suit. In the audience I hesitate over my answer. Do I change the pronoun and the designation of "husband"? Finally I reply, "Yes, she is." He hesitates in his turn: "He hasn't gone through the operation?" The complexity of your history crowds around me as I mentally juggle your female birth sex, male gender expression. I say, "She's transgendered, not transsexual." Up on stage Miss Liberty is reading, with sexy histrionics and flourishes of her enormous torch, a proclamation from a woman who is a U.S. Senator, a speech that trumpets and drums with the cadences of civil rights. The man blinks his eyelashes flirtatiously, leans toward me, whiskey on his breath, waves his hand at his companions, "We're up from North Carolina." Then, femme to femme, he begins to talk of your beauty: "He is perfect. If I ever wanted a woman it would be someone just like her." With innuendo and arch look he gives truthful ambiguity to what he sees in me, in you, something not simply about "gay rights." The queen whispers in my ear with his sharp steaming breath, "Don't let her get away. Hang onto him."

Mimosa

I can see a smear of rose dawn through the tent window when you kneel between my legs and slide your cock inside me. For a second I feel cool inside and out, cool breeze on my arms, cool silicone dildo sliding over labia, vulva, vaginal muscles and skin. You press deep, resting your full length on mine, surrounding and penetrating me with love. I begin to cry, to be so filled by you, without the cringing and fear that once rode inside me at this moment. You have come inside me because I have asked you to; you begin rocking inside me.

The birds are chattering, a mocking bird is floating the doublets and triplets of song over us. The sun begins to heat the air of our domed tent, sweat slides from your chest over my breasts. You heighten my desire with your stroking, stroking, and after a long ecstatic journey, after what you later tell me is perhaps an hour, I come to orgasm from your fullness, from your glancing against my clit. Again I begin to cry, wrenchingly, as you rest on me.

In ten years of marriage to a man, I never came to this from the pleasure of him inside me. There was always elaborate manipulation of me by him, contortions of fingers, penis, always the fear of possible pregnancy, always his fear of me. But you are excited by my desire, close to orgasm yourself. The birds have subsided into whispers. A sudden rain shower rocks the tent in the sun, and I lie safe in your arms.

You are a woman who has been accused of betraying womanhood. In my groans of pleasure from your cock, perhaps some would say I have betrayed womanhood with you, that we are traitors to our sex. You refusing to allow the gestures of what is called masculinity to be preempted by men. Me refusing to relinquish the ecstasies of surrender to women who can only call it subservience. Traitors to our sex, or spies and explorers across the boundaries of what is man, what is woman? My body yawns open greedily for what you are not afraid to give me.

We dress and unzip ourselves from the tent. Walking down the red dirt road muddy from the rain, in the sharp morning light, we pause to caress the mimosas of the sensitive plant, to draw our fingers along the tiny ferny leaves to see them fold up instantly, a spasm of motion at our touch.

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