I Am A Woman

He grinned. “I never thought of it that way,” he said. “I guess they do, all right.”

She stared at him. And then she looked around the room again, and suddenly she saw a girl with her arm around another girl at a table not far away. Her heart jumped. A pair of boys at the bar were whispering urgently to each other.

Gay, Laura thought to herself. Is that what they call it? Gay? She was acutely uncomfortable now. It was as if she were a child of civilization, reared among the savages, who suddenly found herself among the civilized. She recognized them as her own. And yet she had adopted the habits of another race and she was embarrassed and lost with her own kind.

They looked at her—her own kind—from the bar and from the tables, and didn’t recognize her. And Laura looked around at them and thought, I’m one of you. Help me. But if anyone had approached her she would have turned away.

Jack came back with the drinks and sat down, passing them around. He drank a shot of whisky and said to Laura, “Well? How do you like tonight’s collection?”

“Tonight’s collection of what?” Laura said.

“Of nuts.” He looked around The Cellar. “Doesn’t anyone tell you anything, Mother? Burr, what’s the matter with you? She’s a tourist. Make with the old travelogue, boy.”

Burr laughed. “I thought you didn’t get it, Laura.” He smiled. “They’re all queer.”

Laura’s face went scarlet, but the candlelight hid it. She felt an awful tide of anger and fear come up in her at that word. She felt trapped, almost frantic, and she vented it on Jack. “Why didn’t you tell me?” she said. Her voice trembled with indignation.

“Take it easy, Mother,” he said.

“Tonight’s collection!” she mimicked bitterly. “You talk about them as if they were a bunch of animals.”

“They are,” he said quietly. “So are we.”

“We’re human beings,” she said. “We have no right to sit here and laugh at them for something they can’t help.”

“Can’t help, hell,” Burr said, leaning over the table toward her. “All those gals need is a real man. That’d put them on the right track in a hurry.”

Laura could have belted him. She wanted to shout, “How do you know, you big ape?” But she said instead, “You’re not irresistible, Burr.”

“I don’t mean that!” he said, frowning at her. “Christ! I only mean a man who knows the first thing about women could lay any one of these dames—even a butch—and make her like it.”

“What’s the first thing about women?” Jack asked, smiling, but they ignored him.

“If men revolt her and somebody tried to—to lay her—he’d only make her sick. No matter how much he knew about women,” Laura said sharply.

“Any girl who doesn’t like men is either a virgin or else some bastard scared the hell out of her. She needs gentling.”

“You talk about us as if we were horses!” Laura flared.

“Us?” Burr stared at her.

“Us—us women.” Laura’s face was burning.

Burr watched her as he talked. “Some girls get a bastard the first time,” he said. “It’s too bad. They end up in joints like this swapping horror stories with the other ones.”

Laura hated the way he talked. She couldn’t take it. “What if the bastard is her father?” she said. “And he scares the hell out of her when she’s five years old? And twenty years later some ass who thinks he’s a great lover comes along and throws her down and humiliates and horrifies her?”

Jack remarked, with amusement, and probably more enlightenment than the others, “Jesus, we have a moralist in our midst.” He looked at her as if she were a new species of fish.

“Damn it, Laura, that’s the point,” Burr said. “He wouldn’t humiliate her. I don’t mean some God-damn truck driver with nothing but a quick lay on his mind. I mean a considerate decent sort of guy—a sort of Good Samaritan—” He grinned and Marcie said, “God!” and rolled her eyes to the ceiling.

“—who really wants to help the girl,” Burr finished.

“Why don’t you try it?” Jack said.

Marcie’s face darkened. “Yes, darling, why don’t you prove your little theory? I’m sure we’d all be fascinated.”

“Now damn it, don’t you go yammering at me. I’m talking to Laura.”

“Excuse me!” Marcie said.

Laura leaned toward her. “I didn’t mean to start anything,” she said.

“Nobody ever does,” Jack remarked to himself.

“He said he could lay any girl and make her like it,” Marcie said.

“I said,” Burr said, turning to her and intoning sarcastically, “That any guy with any—”

“We know what you said, boy,” Jack interrupted. “Let’s keep it purely theoretical. Nobody has to prove anything. Burr loves Marcie and Marcie loves Burr. Jack loves whisky and whisky hates Jack. Laura loves animals. Everybody happy?”

Thinking over what she had said while Jack talked, Laura began to feel sick. She wished she had been perceptive enough to see where she was when they first came into The Cellar. But she took things at face value. They had entered a little bar and they were going to have a nightcap. Okay. What was so sinister about that? Why did it have to turn out to be a damn gay bar? And why did she have to react like an angry virgin when she found out?

They stayed long enough to get pretty high. They were stared at by the regular customers, but Laura was afraid to stare back.

When she did, once or twice, she couldn’t catch anyone’s eye. She was ashamed of herself for trying to, but she couldn’t help it.

There was a girl at the bar, standing at one end, in black pants and a white shirt open at the collar. Her hair was short and dark, and there once again was that troubling resemblance to Beth. There were some other people with her and they were all talking, but the short-haired girl seemed somehow apart from them. Now and then she would turn and smile at one of them and say a word or two. Then she turned her gaze back to the bar or into her drink, or just stared into the mirror behind the bar without seeing anything.

Laura glanced at her now and then. She had an interesting face. It made Laura want to talk to her. It must be the drinks, she thought, and refused another.

“I see by the look in your eye,” Jack said, “that you’ve had enough of this place. It’s nearly midnight. Are you going to turn into a pumpkin?”

“God, I hope not,” said Laura.

“It’s after midnight,” said Marcie. “Let’s go. After all, poor Burr had to get up at six this morning to get to work. He’s probably exhausted. Maybe we should leave him here and let him organize a night school for the ladies.”

“Wouldn’t be any takers in here,” Jack observed, looking around. “They aren’t ladies, they’re lessies.”

“Do you have to talk about them as if they were exhibits in a zoo?” Laura exclaimed.

“God, now we’re quarreling” said Jack, laughing. But they weren’t really, for it takes two to make a quarrel and he was feeling powerfully good-natured with all that booze in him. “Leave us not forget our dignity,” he told Laura. He enunciated with meticulous care, not to let the liquor trip his tongue.

Marcie laughed at him, and pulled Laura aside as they got up. “Let’s go,” she said, and Laura walked with her to the ladies’ room. It was a glaring change from the softly lighted Cellar. They were nearly blinded with a big bare bulb which hung by a frayed wire far down into the room and watched all the proceedings with an unblinking eye.

“You go first,” Laura said to Marcie. There were few things less appealing to her than a public rest room—especially a one-horse job like this with its staring light, cracked mirror, and mounds of used paper towels on the cement floor. She wet her comb slightly in the tap and ran it through her hair. The door opened and the girl with the short dark hair and black pants came in. She lounged indolently against the wall, studying Laura. Laura recognized her from the bar, but ignored her royally. Marcie was talking to her through the john door.

“How do you like Jack?” she said.