“I can’t believe I’m in a Dyke March,” Mason said, shaking his head.
“I can’t believe you are, either,” Harry said. Noticing Mason’s reaction, Harry explained. “No! It’s good! It’s just that most straight folks from small towns don’t join us. I wish more did.”
“So, what’s your story?” Mason asked Harry.
“Not gonna tell ya.”
Simi caught another rainbow necklace and put it around Harry’s neck while they walked.
“It’s your turn! You don’t have a story?” Hila asked, playfully.
“Nope,” Harry said. “I was spawned right here, just a few years ago.”
“Yeah, I heard that happens,” Mason said. “Ordinary folks come to San Francisco, accidentally wear one of these rainbow bead necklaces, and next thing you know, you’re gay and you can’t remember your life before.”
“You’re gay, now?” Simi asked Mason.
“Not yet,” Oceanna said, teasing.
Mason’s grin was cheeky.
“Seems like there’s more to that then you’re saying,” Oceanna said to Harry.
The March rounded a corner and headed north up the next street.
“Happy Gay Pride!” marchers called to people they passed on the street.
“There is,” Harry said. She looked at the other four in their little group, marching together side-by-side in the Dyke March. “You know, I normally don’t do this, but I’ll share with you. I’m lesbian—”
“No!” Oceanna teased.
“No way!” Hila gasped.
“No, really,” Harriet said, as if she didn’t get the joke. “Always knew it since I was knee high to a tad pole. But in Texas, you don’t say so, or not where I was, anyway.”
“Where was that?” Simi asked.
Harry looked at her. “Midland— You know, it shocks me when I hear people now and then tell me that prejudice is over for gays?
“What a crock,” Hila said.
“Some people may want to believe it—” Mason began.
“—Or lack-of-awareness,” Oceanna said.
“Or just plain denial, because how can you miss it? Buckle of the Bible Belt,” Harry said, pointing to herself. “What we had there was football and churches—a few toilets— They actually need a lot more toilets, because they’re full of—”
“Now, now,” Oceanna said, still teasing Harry.
Harry continued. “And if anybody ever thought about anything else, we also discovered we had tar and feathers.
“So I goes to college over at Texas A&M—”
“You’re an Aggie?” Mason asked.
“Yup. True enough. But somehow I survived it— You know they have an actual library there?”
“Really?” Hila said.
“True!” Harriet went with the humor. “But they had to close it because someone stole the book.”
Everyone chuckled.
“And when the book was returned,” Harry said, getting into it more, “they had to close the library again, ‘cause it turned out they’d colored it!”
Guffaws.
“Not that bad, really,” Harry said, teasing her old school. “But I can’t help it with the jokes.
“And after that, I got a job as a teacher up in Richardson, Texas, north of Dallas, which was fine, but then word kind of leaked out that I’m—hold your horses—a lesbian—!”
“You’re making this up! They don’t have gays in Texas!” Hila jested.
Harry looked at her like she was joking.
“Yes, they do, it turns out. But what they also got is this stuff they call ‘gay conversion therapy,’ or ‘reparative therapy.’”
“You had to do some of that?” Oceanna said.
By now some others in the march were listening, while they walked.
“So you’re not gay any more?” Hila asked, pretending. “Well, isn’t that remarkable?”
“No, I’m not!” Harry derided the whole concept. “So all the girlfriends I’ve had since then—and there were more than—”
Harriet turned her head and looked at Simi. “Not all that many, really. Two, three hundred at the most, not counting weekends.”
Simi slapped Harry on the arm.
“Are you kidding me?” Harry shouted. “THANK GOD FOR LESBIANS, WITHOUT WHOM I WOULD BE IN DEEP—”
Simi slapped Harry on the back.
“Some girlfriends don’t like me to cuss,” Harry said to her group, “but some actually do like it, so—I don’t know! What is it with you people?” Harry asked Simi.
Simi blushed again.
“She is such a fem,” Harry said. “Where’d you get her?”
“Happy Gay Pride!” people yelled to onlookers, as they marched.
“Happy Gay Pride,” Harry yelled with them.
“She found us, actually,” Oceanna said.
“She seems to be the person who started this little group.”
“Or you could say Oceanna did, because she found me on the internet,” Simi said.
“No, you found me,” Oceanna said. “So you’re still the instigator, here.”
“So—?” Mason prompted Harry.
“So,” Harry continued. “In school, it was made clear to me behind the scenes that if I wanted to get along, in a lot of ways, it would be good for me to go through this gay reparative therapy—so I go.”
“Why in God’s name?” Simi asked.
“Not to give up snatch, hon,” Harry said. “Look at her blush again?” She kissed Simi briefly on the mouth. “Just wait and see.”
Which made it worse.
Everyone laughed at Simi who covered her face with her hands.
“So I go to the thing, but NOT to get converted, because I know that is such bunk. It’s to try to get inside the head of the idea behind it!”
“Ah,” Hila said. “Espionage.”
Harry nodded and tapped Hila on the forehead with a finger.
“I’m going to get in there and show ‘em. So I took it for a while, but it drove me effin’ nuts, until finally I got so sick of ‘em all, that I got on my hog, one day, and just drove out of the effin’ state and wound up here, where I can be an actual human being,” Harry began to yell at the top of her lungs. “Without all the BLATANT BIGOTRY!”
People around them cheered her.
Harry’s presentation changed, comically, in a flash to a serene, pleasant, “Welcome to Gay Pride,” with a little, royal wave to spectators.
Simi laughed at Harry and stared at her.
“God, I hate all that—STUFF!” Harry shouted again. Then to Simi with a smile, “See how I said ‘stuff’?”
CHAPTER
13
The pink Saturday block party was beginning to rage. Blocks around Market and Castro had been set aside by the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence—“Nuns-of-fun”—no cars allowed. There were stationary food trucks, restaurants, bars, people milling around in the streets, dancing … It was like a giant house party, albeit one that would shut down by ten or so, so people could be fresh for the Pride Parade the next morning down Market.
Harriet grabbed Simi’s hand and ran down the street with her.
Hila laughed.
“Well, I guess that’s the end of that,” Mason said.
“We’re on our own this evening,” Oceanna said.
“What do you guys want to do?” Hila asked.
“Actually, I’m kinda tired,” Oceanna said. “It’s been a lot of running around these last couple of days, and I’m not as young as I was. When I was young.”
“I’m not as young as I was two days ago,” Mason said.
“My car is back at Dolores Park,” Hila said. “You guys want me to go? I’m not really in your group. I don’t pretend to be transgender, so I don’t have a group. So I don’t know if I should—”
“No need to be insecure, Hila,” Oceanna told her. “You’re in ‘our group,’ as much as anyone else. We all just met, you know.”
Mason looked at t
he street, blocked off for a major party, put his thumbs in his pockets and rocked back on the heels of his boots. “I recon I’m the only fifth wheel around here.”
Motherly, Oceanna put her arm through Mason’s arm and led them into a restaurant for some supper.
But the restaurant was impossibly busy.
* * *
Harry and Simi sat side-by-side in a booth in the back of a restaurant. It was noisy everywhere because of the several-blocks party. The Pride-related celebration was alive for blocks.
Simi’s gaze lowered into her lap.
Harry studied her ice tea, then her lap, then Simi’s face, back to the table, then back to Simi’s face. She opened her mouth as if to speak, shut it again. She leaned back in the booth.
Simi withdrew a little from Harry.
“No you don’t,” Harry said. She put her arm around Simi and drew her in.
Harry raised her eyebrows and coughed a little into her other hand. “I don’t know what I should say,” she said. “You—”
Harry looked at Simi some more. “You actually went through all that. How in the hell did you survive?”
Simi looked as if she withdrew again.
“Stay here, Simi,” Harry said to her. “You’re safe here. You’re with me.”
Simi looked like she considered that.
“Really,” Harry said. “Look at this. If a zombie attacked, I’d let him eat me instead of you. How’s that for caring?”
Simi chuckled at Harry.
“Or I’d fight him so you could get away. I’d bite him in the butt—even though he’s a guy—and get the zombie virus myself. Just to defend you. Don’t believe me?” Harry summoned a server over, not theirs. “Hi,” she said to him. “What’s your name?”
“Simone,” he said.
“Hi, Simone,” Harry said. “Would you turn around so I can bite your butt?”
“Honey! I don’t think you could, do you?” Simone gave them both a devilish grin and walked away.
“See?” Harry said to Simi. “That’s devotion. Even Simone knows I’d fight off evil. Probably superman knows it, because he and I used to work together.”
“You’re being silly.”
“We did! He was in reparative therapy with me for two weeks, before he blew the joint. Wrecked the whole place—big hole in the ceiling.”
“Superman is straight. He likes Lois Lane.”
“That’s as phony as Clark Kent,” Harry said. “I heard it in his therapy, next room. Turns out, he’s hot on the Hulk. Big, you know. He’s really the only one he could have sex with, so that little semen bullets didn’t kill him.”
Simi smiled at Harry. “I see what you’re doing. But, yes, I did go through all that. And yes, I’m messed up a little, but not as much as you might think. It actually was war, not personal.”
“Bullsh— Sorry. Baloney. But it shows more character than I’ve ever seen in another person,” Harry said, “to go through all that, suffer through your personal ordeal as well in life, survive, and come out smelling like a rose. Which you do, by the way,” Harry said with a smile.
“It leaves me a little wary though.” Simi took a sip of her tea. “Like, who are you, anyway? Really?”
“You don’t like me?” Harry’s smile was sinister. “I know better than that. We’ve kissed, and I can tell. Let me see again.” She bent over to kiss Simi again.
Simi pushed Harry away.
Simone made a cat call from three tables away.
“Your real name is what?” Simi asked.
“Okay.” Harry pulled out her little wallet from her left rear jeans pocket and removed her driver’s license, laying it on the table in front of Simi. “You mention my real name to anyone, and I’ll take you to the zombies myself.”
“Harriet?” Simi laughed. “You really don’t look like a Harriet.”
Harry looked vulnerable. “Shut up.”
Simi laughed at her. “You’re a girl?”
“Ha ha, smart aleck. You’ve already found out about that, personally. Harriet Alice Reinhold. No relation to Judge.”
“You’re Jewish?”
“Yes.”
“They accept you as gay in Judaism?”
“Never had a problem from them. Want to go to Temple sometime?”
“It’s not Shabbat, now. Saturday sun is down—”
Harry looked surprised.
“You thought I wouldn’t know?” Simi asked.
Harry chuckled at her. “Don’t underestimate you. But I’m not really practicing. It’s mostly just a cultural thing for me, though I go to Rosh Hashannah—Jewish New Year—sometimes. My parents were more into it.”
“You live— Oakland is that way, across the bay,” Simi said.
Harry nodded.
“Apartment?”
“Condo,” Harry said. “And here is my insurance card for my motorcycle, from Progressive. I had a claim once—another bike highsided through an intersection and caught me with part of it—and they handled it well. No problem.” She laid it on the table with the driver’s license. “And here is my Visa, my American Express which I got from Costco a few years ago. I don’t even use the Visa except at an ATM. It’s a debit card.
“And here is some other junk.” Harry laid out various cards and papers that had been folded into her wallet.
Simi picked one up. “Are you in Dykes on Bikes?”
“I’ve thought about it.” Harry looked at her. “What’s it like in Kingman?”
“I don’t live in Kingman,” Simi corrected.
“I thought you were just visiting here!”
“So you thought you’d take me out for a brief spin,” Simi asked, pretending embarrassment, “hoping I’ll leave soon?”
“Not on your life. I got Kingman from Mason back on the march.”
Simi pulled her cell phone with photos on it and showed some of them to Harry.
“Here’s me on my bike. Here’s me looking at my bike. Here’s me with the Fab Four—now the Fab Five.”
“Any of you in a dress?” Harry asked.
“You’ll never catch me in one of those. It would get between me and my hog.”
“You’d look good—”
Simi took out her wallet, as well, a little silk purse, from her right rear pocket. “And here’s my driver’s license. See: I’m from Silver Spring, Maryland, just east of Bethesda, where I was in the hospital. When I got discharged, I grabbed an apartment near by.”
“You going back there after the parade tomorrow?”
* * *
Walking southwest out of the Marriott, at the corner of 4th and Mission—a block southeast of the next day’s parade route on Market—Oceanna, Hila and Mason had to stop for at least a thousand men on bicycles. Police blocked off the intersection, and bike after bike pedaled happily by on their way somewhere.
“Where you going?” Mason called out to them.
“We don’t know!” a biker yelled back, disappearing ahead in the rush of bikes.
“Where you all going?” Mason asked another who was totally nude.
Oceanna laughed.
“Find out when we get there!” the nude man yelled, riding ahead with the other bikers.
“What is this?” Mason asked someone else standing on the corner.
The man appraised Mason with his cowboy hat and boots.
“It’s just San Francisco,” he said. “Once a month or so? These guys get together and ride to some place known only to the leader that month, and off they go.”
“Bicycling?” Oceanna asked the man
“It’s not just Pride weekend, but any time?” Mason asked, chuckling.
“Yes,” the man answered, chuckling with him.
The bicycles all passed through the intersection, police released the intersection and rushed after the bikers, and people began crossing the streets normally with the lights as if nothing was new, which it wasn’t.
“A city that enjoys life?” Mason asked for anyone to hear.
>
“Where are we going to eat?” Oceanna asked Mason and Hila.
“I’m easy,” Mason said. He looked around. There was a woman standing nearby waiting to cross the street in the other direction. “Excuse me,” he asked. “There any good places to eat around here?”
“Yes,” she said. “Try Tropisueno. Right over there. Nice Mexican food.” She left to cross the street the other way.
“Right beside the Marriott. Don’t even have to cross the street to get there,” Oceanna said.
“Mexican food okay with you two?” Hila asked.
Their food was half eaten, and all three of them were on their second cocktail. Mason had Makers Mark bourbon straight up, Oceanna had a long slow comfortable screw against the wall with a twist—
“What ever that is!” Mason said.
“Gin, vodka, kitchen sink, probably some battery acid,” Oceanna said.
“Nasty name,” Hila said, laughing. “I love it.”
—and Hila had a strawberry margarita, no salt.
“Now, a man would have salt on that,” Mason told Hila.
“That’s the beauty of it!” Oceanna said.
“I’m gonna have to find myself a man to drink it!” Hila said.
Oceanna laughed at Hila’s non-sequitur.
Mason laughed harder than what would have seemed indicated by the small joke.
“How’s it going?” the server asked with a broad smile.
They straightened up in front of her.
“Oh, wonderful, little lady. We’re having a good ole time. You oughta— Here,” Mason pulled up the one empty chair from a nearby table. “Have a seat with us!”
“I’d love to, but I’m working. Can I get you anything?”
“No, we’re fine, fine,” Mason said.
“Please tell me you don’t have desert in this place?” Oceanna asked.
“Oh, we do—” the server began to say.
“Then please tell me there are no calories in it?” Hila asked.
“Good stuff! Just all no cal?” Oceanna asked.
The waitress looked like she wasn’t sure she should answer that.
“Everything in here is calorie-free, Ladies! Tonight!” Mason affirmed, hitting his knee with his left hand and sipping some more bourbon with his right.
The server laughed at hm. “Uh, I’ll bring you the menu and you can see for yourself?”
“Good idea! What an idea?” Mason was a little boisterous. “Pick our own! I’ve got to take that back home with me. Can I have one of those menus for myself?”
The server gave him a smile and playful comment, then left to respond to another table.