Chapter 2

“And I want you to meet my girlfriend from Australia and her partner.”

“Oh,” she replied, “okay, when?”

“I’ve kind of said tomorrow but I’m flexible.”

“Tomorrow I have an afternoon shift,” she replied, “but perhaps the next night would be good.”

“Ja,” she replied, “I will meet your girlfriend, what is her name?”

“Tess and she’s the one who helped me through the chemo.”

“I cannot wait to meet her then, where are we going for dinner?”

“Um, I’m not sure, I have to get back to Tess and ask her.”

“Okay, call or text me and thank you.”

I stared at the phone for a full minute after she hung up and went back over that conversation because it sounded like something a sixteen year old girl would say. Rie came into the room at that point and saw me looking at the phone.

“Um, nothing,” I sighed, “I think I just made a fool of myself.”

“I just asked Anina out for dinner with Tess and Karin,” I closed my eyes.

“Fantastisk,” she beamed, “so, you and Anina?”

“Ha ha,” I grimaced, “more like beauty and the beast and I don’t even know if she’s gay, let alone if she finds me attractive.”

“I think you would be good together and who is the beast?”

It came out in fits and starts and I know now it’s because she wasn’t that close to me, even though we’re cousins but I let it all out, the hidden torments and the feeling that deep inside a part of me had been taken. And yes I knew that part of my anatomy had to be removed to save my life but it’s the part that enables you to carry a child. Whether we like or not we women tend to judge ourselves on our ability to produce life and when it’s taken from you there’s a profound sense of loss and I’d look at mothers and their children knowing full well that I could never be like them. When you added the loss of a boyfriend into the mix it was surprising I hadn’t spiralled into depression and I admitted as much to Rie.

“You should not make such a big deal out of it,” she mused, “and I am not being trivial. When you finished your therapy what did your doctor tell you?”

“Did he tell you that you were cured?”

“No, she told me that it was a day to day thing and that I shouldn’t set my expectations too high,” I replied and Rie nodded serenely.

“So it is with Anina or with anyone else. Do not put everything into this. You are taking her to meet your friends, you are not embarking on a world cruise.”

The simplicity of that statement brought a lump to my throat and she patted my hand.

“Tomorrow we will go see my friend, Bodil. She is a hair stylist, we will get you ready for your big date and afterwards we’ll go shopping. It is my treat.”

Bodil had a salon off Strøget, which is one of the longest pedestrianised streets in Europe. Bodil is a twenty seven year old university graduate who started her own salon after falling out with her boss and for the last three years she’d seen it grow in leaps and bounds. What she did with my hair was impressive, it’s always been somewhat thin and my treatment hadn’t helped but she took a little extra off the length and layered it, making it seem like I had more hair.

“If you keep it shorter for the next twelve months you will find it grows thicker.”

After my hair appointment it was off to do some shopping and Rie found me the perfect dress in a Red Cross shop. At first I thought the red too bright but once I had it on and could look at myself in the mirror under muted lights it seemed a little darker.

“It focuses her eyes on you,” she tugged at the material, “this is a come fuck me dress.”

“You think?” I stared at myself in the mirror.

“Trust me, I know and if she doesn’t want you I know plenty of gay women who would.”

I had to laugh at that because twenty four hours ago if you’d said I’d be contemplating sleeping with a woman I’d have said you were crazy and I actually told her that as we exited the shop.

“It is sex, in Denmark you have sex first and make a decision afterwards. Would you buy a car without test driving it first?”

I spent the rest of the day with Rie and if you’re going to experience Copenhagen you’ve got to be on a bicycle, we went all over the city from the Little Mermaid to the National Museum and a few places in between. If only Melbourne was as bicycle friendly! At night we went to see more of my cousins out in Vesterbro, once again on the bike and Auntie Åsa was pretty impressed with my red dress because she had a surprise when we got back home.

“These shoes do not suit me.”

“You just bought them last week, mor,” Rie frowned.

“I know and I was going to take them back for a refund but we are the same size and in answer to her daughter’s upraised eyebrows she went on, “I checked, is that a problem?”

“I’ll pay you for them,” I spoke up.

“No, it is fine,” she replied, “it is a present.”

Thus that next night I turned up at Mama Rosa in a red dress and nude-coloured shoes and yes, I did ride the spare bike to the restaurant, much to everyone’s amazement.

“You’re almost a Copenhagener,” Tess chuckled.

Anina turned up a few minutes later and there was a moment or two where she looked me up and down.

“If I had known it was a formal dinner I would have worn a dress too, you look beautiful,” she glanced at Tess and Karin, and it was only then I realised I hadn’t mentioned that Tess was married to a woman.

“This is Tess and her partner, Karin,” I introduced them, “and this is Anina.”

“Hvordan har du det?” Anina greeted them with a smile.

“We’re great,” Tess returned the smile, “so, you are the angel of mercy.”

“I was doing my job,” Anina’s smile remained fixed, “even though I was off duty.”

“Even so,” Tess grinned, “my dad was a cop and when he was off duty you could shoot someone in front of him and he’d pretend he didn’t see it.”

“We have people like that at work,” her eyes flickered to me, “so, how long have you two been together?”

The story of how Tess and Karin got together took the better part of half an hour and by that time we were tucking into pizzas and beer although I stuck with the Coke because I needed a clear head and I still didn’t know which way Anina swung or if I could swing that way too. Everything felt a little surreal and to heighten the oddness Anina kept glancing at me as if trying to come to her own conclusions. After the dinner we opted for coffee out at Nyhavn, which has to be one of my favourite parts of Copenhagen and it was there Anina surprised me.

“I read your thesis last night.”

“Huh?” I looked at her, “all of it?”

“Every word,” she grinned, “you are quite the writer.”

“Now that’s something even I haven’t done,” Tess admitted, “and I’m her best friend.”

“Facing up to the fear of the other,” Anina mused, “it was the theme that struck home. I remember back in high school one of our teachers decided to pair us with different people for a week. My best friend was paired up with someone from Pakistan and I was paired up with a gay girl who was also a high functioning autistic.”

“And how did it go?” Karin spoke up.

“It was an education,” she grinned, “Mette never slept with me but she helped me realise that the reason I avoided sleeping with boys wasn’t the real reason. I mean I liked guys and I still do but I don’t want to sleep with them.”

“I was the same,” Karin nodded, “we had something like that at school too but I was paired with a big beefy hunk who thought he could convert the gay girl. After that week I knew for sure I didn’t want to sleep with guys.”

Which left me feeling a little weird because I hadn’t come to such an understanding until Tess and Karin came to see me in hospital, I couldn’t call myself homophobic by any standard. I just didn’t have any close friends that were gay and I admitted as much as Anina and I cycled home.

“But that is not so unusual,” she remarked as we executed a right hand turn, “we are herd creatures and I am no different there. I do not hang out with alpha males because it is exhausting.”

She slowed to let me catch up before continuing.

“I did not know Tess was gay.”

“Sorry, I um, forgot,” I glanced over at her, “honestly I just got so used to it that I forgot.”

It sounded lame and almost forced but Anina didn’t press me on the issue until we we were outside Auntie Åsa’s house.

“Do you want to do this again?”

“Ja,” she grinned, “but just the two of us.”

“Okay,” I replied, “when?”

“Tomorrow,” she replied, “I will detour past your house and pick you up, it is a casual restaurant so don’t bother with fancy dresses.”

“Where is this restaurant?”

“Vesterbro,” she replied, “it is a folkekøkken.”

“Folkekøkken?” I blinked at her.

“The literal translation is people’s kitchen, it is a chance to blend in with the locals without breaking the bank.”

“You are welcome,” she nudged my hand, “thank you for dinner, now all I have to do is rescue more tourists and I can eat for free all week.”

You can’t say Danes don’t have a sense of humour!

The next day was a little more toned down, more out of necessity because I’d seen a lot of the city over the last couple of days I needed a day to come down and take everything in. Rie went out for the morning but she was back just before midday with her girlfriend, Donna, a delightful woman from Stirling, Scotland. Donna giggled at everything and seemed intrigued with my accent, which she described as beautiful.

“I used to watch Neighbours and Home and Away back home.”

Seeing Rie and Donna together did remind me of Tess and Karin, and by logical extension my crush on Anina and by then I’d accepted that this was a crush but as to where it went was unknown. Did I just sit back and let it happen or did I have to undergo some kind of intense self examination? It was with mixed feelings that I stepped into the shower about an hour before Anina was due to arrive and standing in front of the mirror some time later I tried to reconcile the image in the mirror with my own hyper critical self image. It’s true that we inadvertently take on the stereotypes pushed onto us by the mainstream media, we can never be too thin until we are too thin and then we’re told that we’ve fallen into a cleverly laid trap set by advertisers. It’s like we haven’t been given the option of actually thinking for ourselves.

I was disturbed in my reverie by Rie’s tapping on the door and I hastily wrapped a towel around my semi nude body before opening the door.

“Sorry, I have to piss,” she undid her jeans and pulled them and her knickers down over her hips before planking herself on the toilet seat.

“What are you wearing tonight?” Rie asked a few moments later.

“Um,” I blinked as I tried to focus, “not sure yet, I wore the red dress last night but this is casual so I might have to settle for a tee shirt and jeans.”

“You could borrow my white shirt,” she replied a moment later, “we are the same up top.”

“Almost,” I glanced at her, “your breasts are bigger.”

“They are?” Rie glanced down at herself and then up at me, “okay, but that is good because the shirt is a bit tight on me, I wear it when I want people to notice my bryster.”

“Bryster,” I frowned, “I don’t know that word.”

“Breasts?” Rie chuckled, “god, I could kill for a beer but I have promised Donna to wait until tonight, we are going out to a party,” she paused, “what do you think of her?”

“She giggles a lot.”

“And that is a bad thing?”

“No, on the contrary, you’re the serious one and she’s the funny one, opposites attract, how did you two meet?”

“We were Facebook friends for a year after we met in Copenhagen. She came back here to live when she got a job with Jack and Jones and we started hanging out together.”

“So, when did you get together as in, you know?”

“It was not until I was nearly nineteen,” she replied, “a few months ago, Donna always said she was straight and I just didn’t put any pressure on her.”

“I don’t know,” she replied a few moments later as she pulled her knickers and jeans up, “we were sitting in a pub singing along to Katy Perry’s, I kissed a girl and then she kissed me.”

“That’s almost, romantic.”

“It is,” she started washing her hands, “that’s what I like about Donna, she just lives for the day. She was going out with an English guy in Scotland at the time but when she slept with me she ended it and became my girlfriend.”

I found out more from Donna over the next hour as I got ready for my second date. Born in London, she’d been brought north to Scotland by her mother after her marriage ended where she’d been jointly raised by her mother’s three sisters and their mother. Thus, her outlook on sex and sexuality was markedly different to mine, she didn’t see herself as being less than anything. Her mother and aunts were all strong-willed women who worked hard and partied harder, something she admitted could be a little draining.

“Rie forces me to slow down and pay attention to work. I never paid bills until they were due but she pays them before they’re due.”

Anina arrived not long after that, having changed out of uniform at work and into a checked shirt over a tee shirt and jeans. We were watching Rita, a Danish sitcom and Anina ran a casual eye over the white shirt Rie had loaned me.