Does She Like You?

I had been decorating her clotheslines with my briefs and Good Morning towels and she always took them off for folding and ironing, but you can’t just assume that one aunt understood that as a sex change.

My Aunt Lydia suddenly got into dolling me up. I don’t know why. Maybe she just wanted to clear her lockers of unworn clothes hanging like unsold brides or she just found me a little too poorly dressed that she kept on handing me things to fit into. Yesterday morning she took a red sequined blouse shining like a street car which I promptly waved away saying, “Not that, that’s for a girl,” and she yelped and stared down at me her eyes big as her gaped mouth, “And why, what are you a boy?!?” I scratched my head and went back to my book mumbling something about crossing universes a long time ago and where are you which I hoped she didn’t hear and she didn’t and she turned her head around to whoever was there and broke into a loud laugh that called everyone within earshot to her side. “Listen! Listen to this fool! She thinks herself a boy!!!” She kept on repeating the tale to every neighbor and member of the family that came to the house later that day that My Goddess, at 45 I felt like a tyke running fussed over by adoring adults.

My Aunt Lydia is sixty-seven and very provincial. In another time you would not find her making a big laugh about a thing like who you like to sleep with, which is, as I explained to her long ago, what being a lesbian is all about. But we aren’t that theoretical, Aunt Lydia and I. You can’t get around long with old folks explaining your sexual preferences elaborately. You just tell them Oh I don’t like the smell of them sticking in my bed sheets, the smell of their urine in my latrine, like it’s all about hygiene and you have them agreeing and imagining that lesbian sex is indeed far cleaner than heterosexual sex. From there, if you like, you may proceed to talking about limp dicks and big egos beside the many ways that two women can understand the world they both live in on top of sexually pleasing each other, and I promise you, the worst you could get is some cussing and swearing, the best hugs and wild sniggers.

It’s not that my cross-dressing never registered. But if you are the family’s most trusted laundry machine, after some time nothing surprises you anymore, be it a nose ring, a dollar bill, a packet of female condoms in one of the pockets turned inside out, or strings and funny strings with tiny flaps of wings. Reality often doesn’t flop down your lap that way, no. Like I had been decorating her clotheslines with my briefs and Good Morning towels and she always took them off for folding and ironing, but you can’t just assume that one aunt understood that as a sex change.

But really, I have had no trouble with telling as far as my old provincials are concerned. And sometimes I get carried away with the telling that I make up more than what is actually there to tell. Like today my Aunt Lydia had me telling her about girlfriends that I skidded away improvising along the way about why two women who perfectly understand each other often do break up.

“Oh Auntie, I don’t really like girls, they’re all traitors, double-crossers.”

“What?!?”

“You should see them. How they think of themselves priceless gifts to lesbians.”

“What you talking about you nut?”

“It’s true! They’re rotten at the core! They’d trade you for some idiot of a guy with a car and come back crying like you’re some ortho clinic for the convalescent. Oh Auntie, most days I just want to break their teeth and knee their pits. A thankless sorry world if you get so unlucky as to get stuck with one…”

                                  

I was growing uncomfortable, also sad, because it looked like I disappointed her about a truth neither of us could help. One arm akimbo, she put her weight on one side and looked me in the eye.

“Now what are you talking about, you, rascal!?!” her voice was so low, so soft, it broke my heart.

I turned away, lifted a comb from on top of the refrigerator and pretended to be brushing my hair.

“I don’t really take to girls, Auntie.” I put it back and turned around to face her. She really looked so distressed that I could not stop myself from smiling.

“I swear! They’re a lot of baggage!”

“So you take to boys???” She was picking up and was beginning to smile herself.

“Why, sure, Auntie. I’m a homo, didn’t I tell you? So I take to boys. And I go boy-to-boy only. And you know, Auntie, this girlfriend I have? Geeh! She’s the real one! You could spot her without your glasses on. She looks a mighty testicle crusher from five miles up.”

Guffaws. “You crazy fool!”

“Yes, Auntie. And she’s a bit like you, too. A little jagged and a little aged.”

Silence. Long silence.

And then, “That’s nice, dear.  And does she like you?”