Chapter 3

“Me?” I put my hand to my throat, “um, no.”

“Imagine in your wildest fantasies that some famous actress has the hots for you, who would be your gay crush?”

“Pippa from Neighbours.”

“Gee, that was quick, mine is Emma Watson or Angelina Jolie.”

“So what does that make me, a curious straight?”

“It makes you normal,” she replied, “one of the things that impresses me about Tess is the fact that she doesn’t have the need to shout it from the rooftops, she’s gay and she just goes about her day to day business without a care in the world.”

“So what are you saying?”

“Just that sexuality and sexual orientation is more fluid than we thought. Go back a few hundred years when IVF was unheard of, if you wanted to make a baby you needed a man and a woman, but if you just wanted company then what did it matter? We’ve made it such a big thing with coming out and our own personal identity that I think we’ve lost some of the magic. I mean I had sex with a prostitute in Berlin and the walls didn’t come down. I kind of looked at Jackie in a different light but she was with someone and I wasn’t about to come between them. I realised that sex with a woman was just another way of loving.”

“That sounds too airy fairy,” I frowned, “does that mean if some guy catches Tess’s eye that she’ll be with him instead?”

“Possibly but with Tess I think she’s accepted that she finds women more attractive than men, but the point I’m making is that it’s all about love, not identity. Politicising something is almost always a bad idea, take it from someone who’s lived in the Middle East.”

Still it was a leap to go from that conversation to a week later when I wore that blouse for the first time and as fate would have it, Paula had Sunday off. She rarely had Sundays off because one of her colleagues was also a Christian and she and Paula had an ongoing arrangement to switch shifts, but that Sunday, Mandy decided to work instead of going to church. The curious thing is that Paula was taken by surprise.

“Mandy is very enthusiastic about her Christianity,” she tucked the blouse into her skirt, “not that I’m bothered by it but she just told me that it was time I had a day off work,” she frowned and turned her back to me.

“I think I’m stuck.”

Her zipper was caught on her blouse and I reached out to work it free.

“So, what are your plans for the day?”

“Um, I was thinking of going to the Baptist church,” I finally managed to work the fastener free and pulled the zipper down, “why don’t you come with me?”

I grasped the skirt and pulled it out a little as I pulled the zipper up.

“What, like a date?” Paula glanced over her shoulder.

“Um,” I looked at her in the mirror and smiled crookedly, “yeah, I guess so.”

“Okay, it’s a date,” she replied, “it’s been a while since I went to church without my mum,” she looked at us in the mirror, “and we are both dressed for the occasion.”

I was wearing the blouse Tess had made for me. It was a white, silk blouse with puffy sleeves and an elegant pussybow tie under a pink cardigan, I was also wearing a brown three quarter length skirt and dark brown boots.

“You look very eighties,” she turned and looked at me, “very elegant too,” she tugged at the ties and then her eyes shifted, “I might put in an order myself, then it’d be your turn to watch me strip down to my undies.”

Paula was wearing a two-tone tan blouse, the bodice was a dark tan with silk-covered buttons, it was buttoned to the top, the sleeves were a much lighter tan. She wore a pair of wool-blend trousers with the blouse and had accessorised with a long brown, beaded necklace, belt and shoes. Because it was the middle of winter we were both wearing coats. I felt a slight tremor of anticipation and looked past her as the images rose in my mind’s eye, I finally managed to recover and came back to her. Paula was smirking as she looked me up and down.

“Definitely fuckable,” she pinched my breast lightly, “come on, let’s go see what the Lord has to tell us today.”

They say that God is omniscient, that he sees everything at once, the past, present and future but he never saw that playful gesture and if he did then he didn’t tell the minister at the church we went to that morning. Christian churches are known for their homophobic teachings, it’s almost become a prerequisite for joining a church. Are you bigoted against homosexuals, check, do you believe that some mythical God planted his seed inside a virgin, check.

However that morning the minister did mention homosexuality. Apparently, his brother had come out at some time in the past but just recently had begun to ponder the deeper questions of where do we come from and where do we go when we die? The minister had spoken at length with him and come away with a profound sense of injustice, he realised that certain bible passages did speak out against it. But one of those was buried in old Hebrew texts and the other was out of Paul’s letter to the Romans. What if we were simply misinterpreting bible verses? If we took the verse, be fruitful and multiply from Genesis out of context, it would justify infidelity.

Things needed to be put back into context he told the congregation, we were all different. Some of us supported rival political parties, different football teams, the differences went on and on, but we were all united in our love of Christ, we were all one family. Could it be abhorrent to a God of love if we reached out with love to the LGBTQ community? He didn’t come to any grand conclusion, which was significant because that left the question dangling out there for those who might snatch it up and take it further.

“Well that was different,” Paula mused as she leaned on the steering wheel an hour later. We were parked in the multilevel carpark at Eastland, having decided to have lunch in the new alfresco dining area.

“You’re not wrong there but it makes sense, what if we got it wrong?”

“Well I guess if God is a god of unconditional love then he can’t go putting conditions on his love, it means he’s not capable of unconditional love, doesn’t it?”

We lunched at Hunky Dory, a Greek-themed restaurant where the conversation drifted to other topics before coming back to homosexuality.

“If I did it with a woman, it’d need to be someone I trusted, not someone who just wanted a notch on her belt,” I casually announced.

“Women are different,” she propped on her palm, “with us it’s more of a relationship, we adapt and change to suit the situation. It’s part of our physiology. When we get pregnant our bodies change, right from the moment of insemination. When something grows that fast in the human body, our immune system should kick in and try to destroy or contain it, but a signal is sent out to leave this growth unchecked. The foetus moves into the womb and grows, our bodies nourish this strange thing and nine months later we expel it through the same orifice it entered.”

She looked past me at the passersby.

“It takes a whole nine months as well, we experience all kinds of changes, nausea, diarrhoea, an aversion to certain colours or foods, binges, feeling uncomfortable and so on, but we weather all these changes and give birth. You could take that same concept to just about any area of a woman’s life, from career changes to personal changes. We adapt to a changing environment far more quickly than a man. We can love a man without spreading our legs for him because we have different levels of emotional commitment. I mean I love my brother in law dearly but I’d be shocked if he came onto me, likewise with certain male colleagues but others I might take things further.”

She looked at me for a moment.

“Speaking of taking things further,” she smiled, “I fancy going to the movies now that I’ve got the whole day off.”

“Okay, what’ll we see?”

“How about you choose? If we can’t agree on a movie then there’s not much chance we’ll make it as a lesbian couple.”

The movie we saw was The Hunger Games, not exactly the first choice for a romantic movie but this wasn’t a date, we were just two straight women going out together. However, it is about female empowerment, a topic we’d been discussing earlier. We were about halfway through the movie when she reached out and clutched my hand for a particularly dramatic scene and after it was over she did look down but didn’t let go. Thus, the first time Paula and I held hands was when we saw The Hunger Games. I only let go as the credits were rolling and people were getting up to exit the cinema, our eyes met and I saw a nervous smile on her face.

“Sorry,” she finally spoke, “I don’t know why I did that.”

“That’s cool,” I shrugged, “my hand was cold anyway.”

She chuckled at that and in the spirit of the moment, I slipped my hand into the crook of her arm as we headed out of the multiplex cinema.

I released her arm as we headed into Eastland itself. We had no grand plan for the rest of the day, but the shopping centre was full and there are a lot of stores in the centre. I’m a fastidious shopper, I’ll have several similar items in my hands at the same time and examine each one before I make up my mind.

That afternoon however I was even more fussy, trying on clothes and getting Paula’s opinion, I think I did several wardrobe adjustments in the space of two hours. Then we headed to Dan Murphy’s for a few bottles of wine, once again I couldn’t decide between the white or the red. When I finally chose the red I had to select the right red, which is impossible unless you’re a wine connoisseur and I’m definitely not one of those!

One thing I was conscious of a few hours later was that I had lost my concept of personal space between us. I was forever bumping into her or backing into her, it was clumsy but I felt almost as if something had taken over my body.

However that kiss in Paula’s car was definitely not planned. She’d reached back to grab the purse out of her handbag and as I looked down I saw her blouse opening slightly to reveal her bra. Remember when I mentioned about memories rising suddenly to the surface? I recalled that scene from Neighbours, Bailey’s coming out party, Caroline and Tess kissing on the couch and felt the urge to kiss her. When she moved back with the purse in her hand she turned at the same time so that her face was inches from mine. She had a crooked smile on her face, as if she was just waiting for me to make a move. I felt a slight hesitation and then I did the unthinkable. I leaned closer and kissed her on the lips. Paula dropped the purse on the back floor and I felt a sudden twinge of fear at the look in her eyes and started moving back but then she grabbed my hand.

“If you’re going to kiss me, do it properly,” she murmured.

I didn’t move for a few seconds, I was aware of a couple passing behind us and when they were gone I grabbed her necklace and pulled her forward. Our lips met in a tender kiss that set my pulse on edge, we were in a public place but for the first time in my life I didn’t care. I was hungry for physical contact with another human being.

It was a stolen moment of intimacy. No one saw us and yet it was as if we were in our own little world, I felt both guilty and aroused at the same time. I was also fearful, not knowing what would happen next. Paula had a slight smile on her face as she looked down at the floor and then our eyes met as she drew her finger slowly up the front of my blouse.