Katherine Forrest - Lesbian Pulp Fiction

After the light went on in the room, Mitch felt a flood of surprise in her stomach as she saw Leda. She shut the door and set Robin’s large empty suitcase on the floor. Leda sat up and looked at her.

“You’re going to pack now?” she said.

“Yes. I thought you’d be in chapter meeting.” She tried not to look at Leda, but she could feel the girl’s eyes piercing her, stopping her attempts to avoid those eyes, and she went to the bureau and began removing socks and handkerchiefs and scarves.

Leda let her click the suitcase open, and watched her while she placed the things inside it. She could feel the sharp edges of the letter against her chest there near her bra where she had put it before dinner. With her left hand she reached down and fished the letter out and stuck it under her pillow.

“I decided,” Leda said finally, “that the least I could do was to say good-bye to you.”

Mitch felt choked up and agonized with desire. She scooped out an armful of slips and panties and pajamas, and thrust them in there with the other clothes. Her lips formed the word “Thanks,” and she meant to say it, but there was no sound. On the floor of the closet there were fluffy swirls of dust near her tennis shoes, and she brushed them away with her hand. She tossed the shoes onto the bed, and took the chair from the desk over to the closet to reach the boxes at the top.

Leda said, “Want any help?”

“No. Thanks, though. I can do it myself.”

“You’ve got an idea,” Leda said, “that you can do everything yourself. I don’t know where you got that idea.”

“Sometimes it’s up to yourself,” Mitch said.

“You’ve got a lot of ideas, I bet. I bet you’ve got thousands of good ideas.”

The box slipped from Mitch’s hand and fell to the floor, spilling out two round hats, one black, one brown, both alike—round and plain.

“Someday you’ll find out that most of the ideas don’t work. None of them work.”

Mitch stopped tying the strings on the top of the box and looked up at Leda. “What are you trying to say?” she asked. “What are you trying to tell me? You never say anything right out. You always talk around and make it hard.”

“I’m trying to say, don’t go. Going isn’t the answer.” The tears came in her eyes, and Mitch looked away at the shoe bag on the closet floor. She thought of Robin, her friend, of the swimming team, of other years and anything to keep them from being the same, but this made it worse and the sob started low in her throat. Then Leda bent and caught her shoulder and held her, kneeling on the rug, listening to the stifled crying.

“Mitch,” she said, “don’t go. Don’t leave me, please.”

“But you know what I am. I told you what I am in the letter.”

“I don’t care. Mitch, I don’t care.”

“I can’t stay with you. I won’t feel right, I—”

Leda put her hand on the girl’s face and felt the tears. She turned her face and put her lips on the salty moistness. “Come on over to the bed,” she said. “Get up, Mitch, and come on over to the bed.”

Mitch lay down with her face buried in the pillow, and Leda sat on the edge, her hands stroking Mitch’s hair.

“Can you hear me, Mitch? Listen, it doesn’t help to run away. You don’t think it helps, do you? It doesn’t help.”

“No,” Mitch sobbed. “I can’t stay here. I can’t bear to see you every day and know what I’m doing to you.”

“What are you doing to me? What in hell are you doing to me?”

“I’m a Lesbian,” Mitch answered. “That’s how I feel about you, too. I’m not like you—with Jake and everything.”

“Oh, God, Mitch! All right, listen. I love you, you crazy kid. I don’t have to label my love, do I? Do I have to say that it’s Lesbian love? OK, then that’s what it is. It’s Lesbian love, pure and simple. Ye gods, I’ve known about myself for years. I didn’t run away. I didn’t walk out and run away. You gave me plenty of reason to. You were the first one to come along and blow up my little plan for hiding the way I am. You think you’re doing something to me! Oh, Mitch! If anyone’s doing it, I’m doing it. I’m doing it because I love you.”

Mitch brought her head up from the pillow and turned over on her side. “But you said it,” she said. “You said you couldn’t love a Lesbian. You said—”

“I said so damn much, didn’t I? You’ve got to understand, Mitch. I don’t like what I am. If Jan ever knew, I’d take a razor and slash my wrists. I couldn’t live with people knowing, and pointing and saying, ‘Queer’ at me. No one knows but you, and I guess I never would have told you if you hadn’t started to leave. Do you think it’s easy to admit it? It was different when I could say it wasn’t this way, that I was bisexual and all that rot. Bisexual—that’s sort of like succotash, isn’t it? Only this succotash hasn’t got any corn in it. It’s straight beans!”

“What about Jake?” Mitch blew her nose and sat up. “What about all the time you spend with Jake?”

“Maybe I’m trying to prove something to myself. Part of me is trying to say that I’m not what I am. That’s the part of me that everyone knows—the alluring Leda, the queen, Jan’s daughter, an apple never falls far from the tree. Out with Jake every damn day to keep myself away from what I really am. Want to know what sex with him is like? It’s like dry bread, that’s what it’s like. Like dry bread!”

Leda got up from the bed and reached for her cigarettes on the desk. She felt relieved, cleansed, as though her mind had been emptied and she was free. She walked over to the suitcase on Mitch’s bed and picked up the clothing, taking it in her arms to the drawer. “You want this all put back, don’t you?” she said to Mitch. “You won’t leave me?”

“No,” Mitch said. “I’m going. Robin arranged everything, and—oh, Leda!” They stood in the center of the room holding one another, their lips fastened hard, their arms strong around each other. Leda’s hand reached for the buttons on Mitch’s blouse.

“Just stand still,” she said. “Just let me take everything off and look at you. I want to look at you.”

The skirt fell to the floor, and the blouse. Mitch stepped out of her shoes and stood before Leda.

“I want to love you,” Leda said.

Her hands stroked Mitch’s body gently. She leaned over to kiss her lips and her forehead and the closed eyelids. She said her name and held her, feeling the fast beat in her pulse and knowing that she had almost lost her.

The blood beat furiously in Mitch’s throat and she could feel a mounting strength in her legs and arms. With the arrogance of a master, Mitch’s nails dug into Leda’s flesh as she began to pull the sweater and the thin blouse from her shoulders. She let her teeth sink into Leda’s neck.

“No, faster!” Leda cried. “Faster, Mitch!”

Leda’s gasp was one of pleasure and desire and it moved Mitch to more violence, pinning Leda’s wrists behind her back and jerking at her skirt.

Neither of them heard the door open.

They turned in time to see Kitten and Casey framed in the doorway, eyes big, mouths dropped, and they fell apart from one another when the door was slammed, and the sound of feet running down the hall was as loud and fast as the beating of their hearts in that room.

It was a long time before they talked. Mitch lay dumb with horror, never forgetting the look on their faces as they had found her that way with Leda, unclothed and wild like a fierce animal. Sitting with her head hung, her hands pressing at her eyes, Leda was the first one to speak after the minutes passed as they would in a slow nightmare when nothing is real.

She stood up and picked the blouse off the floor. “Look,” she said. “I’ll go and talk to Marsha. That’s where they ran to. I’ll go and straighten it out.”