Unlike Others (2 page)

CHAPTER 2

Richard Kauffman was waiting at the front entrance of the building when she came out at five-o'clock. She gave him a warm smile and raised her cheek for his kiss, aware that Gayle was directly behind her and couldn't help seeing. "Rich, you've saved my life. I was afraid you'd be out with a client."

"On Monday? Business should be so good." He took her by the elbow, beaming at Gayle as she emerged from the revolving door, enjoying this little comedy as much as Jo did. "I'm meeting Michael at eight," he said, "that gives us three hours. What's on your mind?"

"Oh, you know, I had a miserable weekend and I wanted to see you."

"I'm very happy you wanted to see me," Richard said seriously. He was a big man, tall, barrel-chested, with blunt features. A regular Babbitt, Jo thought, marveling as she often did at the way people hid behind their outward appearance. She said, "Rich, if I were on my death bed you're the one I'd want to hold my hand."

"You're good for another sixty years yet, darling. Except we all die a little at a time."

"Too true."

"Where do you want to go?"

"Oh, I don't know. Some place where we can talk."

"Life among the straight people getting you down?"

She gave him a weak smile. "You know how it is."

"I sure do," Kauffman said with feeling. "I go out to lunch with the guys from my office, and all they talk about is the girls they were out with last weekend, or how their wives behave in the sack. I feel like a foreigner.

"Well, you can't expect them to ask how you're getting along with Michael. How are you getting along with Michael, by the way?"

“Fine. Heaven forbid any of the shnooks I work with should ever ask that question. It's getting harder all the time to get unemployment compensation in this town."

Jo stood still, looking at him. He smiled. "Michael gets nicer every day. Also every night. I hate to think about its ever ending."

"Maybe it won't."

"That's a female idea. You girls really believe in faithfulness, don't you?"

Jo said carefully, "I don't think it's very probable, but I'd like to hope it's possible. Even if I'm leading a dull life right now."

"Look, let's take a taxi and go to the Silver Spike. It's nice and quiet there, and the liquor's good. Also, we can get something to eat if you're hungry."

"I'm always hungry," Jo admitted, "but I thought the Silver Spike was strictly stag. Are you trying to embarrass me?"

"No, we went one night a couple weeks ago, and it's about half and half now. Very nice. If you didn't know, you wouldn't even guess anyone was cruising."

"You know I'm not much for night life. Besides, they change so fast I can't keep up. They ought to advertise."

Rich chuckled. "I'd like to see it. A little notice in the newspaper, in the Classified. Gay bar, dancing, good cuisine. Girls, come and meet the Sweetheart of Sigma Chi."

A cab pulled up at the curb and he helped her in. She said, in a whisper that the driver couldn't hear, "It's easier for you. There's always the art museums."

"Also the men's rooms at the Parisienne."

"I'm afraid to go to the Parisienne. I went once with a couple of girls from the office, to see a foreign film. You never saw such weird types.''

"That's in the auditorium. I think all the hopheads on the Near North Side go there to sleep it off after they've had a fix. No, I'm just talking about the men's room. You wouldn't know what goes on down there."

"Well, hardly." She grinned at him.

The Silver Spike was down four steps, in what Chicago called an English basement. More basement than English, Jo decided, unless they were thinking about Charles Dickens and his ragged little boys. She got out of the cab three doors away and waited, clutching her purse, stirred in spite of herself by the familiar anticipation that always rose in her at the threshold of a gay bar or a party. Maybe there'll be something here for me. Maybe this time I’ll meet somebody or learn something, and it will make all the difference.

Rich paid the driver and joined her. We make a nice-looking couple, she thought, seeing their reflection in a store window. I bet everyone thinks we're married. Rich looks exactly like the kind of husband who spends Saturday putting up storm windows.

"Sometimes I understand why foreigners gang together so," he said. "This is like finding somebody who speaks my own language."

"That's what I was thinking."

The opened door released a hum of voices and a whirl of jukebox music. They looked intently through the semi-darkness, partly to find seats, partly to see if they knew anyone. Richard said, "All the booths seem to be taken. You mind sitting at the bar?"

"Not at all, it's closer to supplies."

A youngster came to take their order. Girl or boy, it was hard to tell which in this light. Girl being boy, Jo decided. "Gin and tonic, please."

"Two gin and tonic."

This was the office crowd, stopping on its way home. Most of the girls were in skirts and blouses or between seasons cottons, their faces neatly made up, their young legs in nylon. Later in the evening the car-coat crowd would take over. The boys were mostly young. On a long bench along the wall, close to the jukebox, three young men who might have worked on a newspaper or in an ad agency sat talking in low voices. At the other end of the bar a woman in a flowered hat—the only hat in the room—sat next to a short man in glasses. "Tourists," Richard said scornfully.

"Or a protectorate."

"Not with that hat, I don't think so."

"I don't either," Jo admitted. "I'm not sure about him, but she's straight."

"How can you tell?"

1 don't know. Sometimes I make mistakes, but not very often."

They smiled at each other. Richard paid for the drinks. Jo said, "Thanks. I'll see you payday."

"No you won't. It's my pleasure."

"You have Michael, you don't need any more pleasure.

It took him a minute or so to frame the question that had been in his mind all day. He was concerned. At the same time, he didn't want to hurt her. She waited, knowing this. He said, looking not at her but at the boy on the other side of her, "Have you heard from Karen?"

"Not since I saw you. I told you she called me up, didn't I? They're back from the honeymoon and she's gone into analysis. Her analyst thinks she's making headway. Maybe shell be normal eventually." Jo's smile was a grimace. "We're all cases of retarded development."

"Sure, we're neurotic. Who in hell isn't?" Richard wanted to know. "Society breeds neurosis. I suppose the heteros who run around laying every female they can get their hands on are normal. I suppose the morons who rape and dismember little girls are mature mentally. Also the frigid housewives who are always so tired when their husbands come to bed."

"Well, anyhow you're the nicest neurotic I know.”

"Thanks, darling. I love you too."

The beautiful thing was, he really did. Looking at his profile as he scanned the men around the long oval bar, Jo felt the familiar warm affection. There was no one in the world she trusted more than Rich, or liked better, or relied on more often for understanding. Not that she often asked for advice, or took it when it was offered, but it was a comfort to know he was there to be counted.

She said absently, "It's too bad I hate men.”

He laughed. "All Lesbians hate men. If they didn't they'd get married."

"Good old stereotypes. The boys are all artistic and the girls are all athletic."

"Some are." With the smallest possible gesture he indicated a girl of twenty or so sitting next to the three young advertising men on the bench. Hair cut like a boy's and slicked back, knees brawny under olive drab bermudas, moccasins planted flat, she wore the challenging expression of a tough little boy looking for trouble. Jo said, "It's too bad I don't go for butches, they're so easy to identify."

Rich finished his drink. The barboy picked up the glass. "You ready for another?" he asked Jo directly.

"Not for me. Go ahead, Rich, unless you'd like to leave."

Now that the first drink was down, he went back to the subject at hand. He said, "I thought maybe you saw her, or something."

Jo said, "I've been thinking about her all day, off and on." She put her elbows on the bar and hunched forward, as though she could collect her thoughts by pulling her body together. "We hired a girl for Nancy's job this morning. She looks a little bit like Karen."

"Is she gay?"

"I don't think so. She's divorced."

"Don't mean a thing. I've been married and divorced myself."

"I know. The thing is," Jo said anxiously, "I don't want to start thinking she might be gay because she looks like Karen. She's quite a common type."

"Karen wasn't a member of the club anyway, she was just experimenting. A lot of girls do that. They hear about it and they're curious. All you can do is let them go when the novelty wears off."

"I know."

"Sweetheart, the trouble with you is you're too monogamous. Why can't you pick somebody up and have a good time? It would do you good."

"I was ready to last night." She looked into her empty glass, decided to have another gin after all, and beckoned the barboy. Her smile was answered by a hopeful look. Girls, she decided. "I was absolutely crazy last night," she said in a small abashed voice. "Not just in my body, the way you get when you haven't loved anybody for a long time, but my mind too. I was so lonesome I thought I'd die. You know?"

"Baby, I do know."

"I couldn't see anything ahead for me."

"There's this new girl."

"I'm trying not to think about her. I'd rather not be disappointed."

"You've been thinking about her all day."

"Have I? I don't think so. Anyway, I guess Stan's looking her over. Every time I went past her office today he was in there, explaining the job to her and looking down her cleavage."

"Let him find his own girls. What's the matter with him anyhow?"

"He has to be home by five-thirty," Jo said, "or his mother sends the sheriff out with a posse. He does a lot of talking, but I bet he hasn't laid a girl in the last five years." She sipped delicately at her new drink. "If this keeps up, I’ll be able to say the same for myself."

"You know what I'd do in your place?"

"Oh sure. You'd look around till you found something you liked, and move in on it. It's not that I have anything against the system," Jo explained, "I wash I could do it, but I can't."

"You want a whole-personality relationship."

She smiled. The drink was beginning to make her feel a little more cheerful, but sleepy too. "Thank you, Dr. Freud. I'm a bitch to keep you here when you could be with Michael."

"It's only six-thirty." He checked his watch against the wall clock. "Let's have a sandwich or something, there's plenty of time. Excuse me just a minute."

What a great guy, Jo thought, watching him walk in the direction of the telephone booths. If I were straight, that's the kind of man I'd go for. He deserves something better than those selfish young bastards he's always getting hung up on.

The girl in the tan bermudas stood beside her. "You mind if I sit here?"

"My friend's coming back."

"That's all right," she grinned. Jo said, "Maybe another time."

Because she herself looked so ambiguous, in spite of her short haircut and tailored clothes which were the style now, anyway, she was careful not to behave like a tourist in places like this. Just as careful as she was to hide her real nature from her fellow-workers. One was a necessary self-protective measure; the other, a way of identifying with her own kind.

For these were her people. Not only the two career girls in the corner booth, touching each other with their looks even as their hands lay on the bare tabletop, but the others. The shabby little girls holding hands, the butches in jeans and heavy oxfords, the nervous-looking woman in high heels who was visibly and unsuccessfully cruising. They were hers. Just the middle-class, solvent and well-washed poet has to acknowledge his obscure colleague, reading for drinks in a cellar pad, so she had come to admit her relationship to the entire homosexual world—that society within a society whose existence most people never even suspect. It was easy. Too easy, she thought, following her idea carefully because the gin was clouding her mind a little. Once you learn to accept yourself, it's easy to accept other people.

That was where she'd made her mistake with Karen. She had supposed that Karen was simply reluctant to admit her own deviant nature. It's not easy to make a commitment to an idea that's going to take you out of the main stream of society. She hadn't realized, until the day of their separation, that their relationship was based on a false premise. For Karen seemed to feel, with her analyst, that the only possible commitment was to the normal. Anything else was a falling short, a detour rather than a destination. Jo's kind of love was not an alternative but only a phase she might go through.

That takes care of that, Jo thought. If Karen had been attracted to another woman she might eventually have come back. Or if she had fallen irresistibly in love with a man. But no, she snatched at David Breen as a drowning person snatches at a life preserver, not caring who tosses it.

Karen couldn't realize that it was normal for some people to be gay, just as it was normal for others to be attracted to the opposite sex. And failing to learn that, she would be miserable until she learned to live with a man—or with her own ambivalent feelings, a cold and cheerless outlook. I guess it had to be, Jo thought, taking a good long drink to drown her thoughts.

"I feel happier," she told Rich when he came back from the telephone, looking flushed and a little smug.

"Sure, it's the gin."

"No, it's from talking to you. You always make me feel better."

"You never take my advice. Maybe it's a good thing."

"You always listen while I gripe."

"No, but I've decided I have to forget about Karen. I decided that two or three times before," Jo admitted, “but I think I can make it stick this time. Then I'm ready for whatever happens next."