"Except that being in the scene is probably a lot less painful," interjected Ruth. She gave an exaggerated shudder. "I don't know how you girls do it. I haven't even been able to watch since the last time I saw Stacy get kicked in the head."

Liz, nursing her offended knuckles, glared at Diane and said, "Fantasies don't count. Saying that you're an s/m d.y.k.e because you have fantasies you never act on is like saying that a d.y.k.e is bis.e.xual because she has fantasies about men that she never acts on."

"Hmm." Diane crossed out the offending line and wrote instead, Women who call themselves s/m d.y.k.es because of their fantasies and feelings, even though they may never act these out s.e.xually.'

"So, do you do uniform scenes?" Liz asked Alison brightly, her hands carefully out of Diane's reach.

Liz! She's just curious*. You're being a pig! That's like asking if you do courthouse scenes!"

"Well, but I do do courthouse scenes."

"And everybody knows it because you won't shut up about it. But that doesn't mean that everybody wants to talk about b.u.t.tf.u.c.king within five minutes of meeting you."

"Lo," said Stacy to Alison, "and behold. Living representatives of the leather community. Look at them carefully before deciding if you want to be categorized with them."

"Ask me some questions," said Diane, still busy with her marker. "I haven't appeared before a group in a while. I could use the practice. You're my panel," she ordered the other three women.

"Why in the world do you wear high heels if you're not forced to?" The question seemed to leap out of Alison's mouth of its own volition. Liz howled with laughter. Alison blushed beet red. Good job, Alison. Stacy was going to want to take her along all the time.

"Because," said Diane, "there are women who are driven mad with l.u.s.t by it."

"Me for one," said Ruth.

"And I like that kind of woman. And, to answer all your unanswered questions, no, it doesn't mean that I'm an idiot, no, it doesn't mean that I can't take care of myself and no, it doesn't mean that I'm afraid to get my hands dirty or that I automatically freak out when I see a mouse, although I certainly reserve the option, or that I necessarily fit any of the other stereotypes that I am sure, from having held them myself, that you have. I paid my dues as a flannel-shirt d.y.k.e and I now have gotten to the point where I feel that I have the right to create my own s.e.xual image without sticking to d.y.k.e standard rules."

"This question," said Stacy from the side of her mouth, "appears to have been asked before."

"Ask a technique question," advised Ruth.

"Ask for dessert," said Stacy, who had finally corralled the waitress.

"Cheesecake," said Alison, who had sampled the charms of this particular coffeehouse before, without looking up. To Diane she said, "Do you do s/m for money?"

"No!" trilled Diane, going suddenly into a kind of Barbie at her dumbest mode. "But I have a friend who does!"

"How does she justify prost.i.tuting herself?" Alison asked. She could feel Stacy glaring at her, but she seemed to have gotten on a roll from which she could not recover. "How is she able to distinguish work from lovers?"

"Luckily, the little lady is on our panel tonight." Diane abruptly closed down Barbie. "Take it away, Stacy."

Stacy, apparently deciding to take the situation with good grace, half stood and gave a bob. "Hi," she said, "my name is Stacy, I top for a living, I work about twenty hours a week, I charge lots of money, I have my own dungeon and equipment, most of my clients are into heavy beating scenes, privately I switch and play much lighter with lots of fantasy and f.u.c.king, I don't have genital contact with my clients, so no, it's not illegal, I only do women, privately I tend to get into serial monogamy." She ran out of breath and sat down suddenly.

"Who are you talking to this time?" Liz asked Diane. "The Kiwanis?"

"Women's group at the Gay and Lesbian Community Center."

"Oh, then how about this one? How do you justify partic.i.p.ating in violence against women?" said Liz.

"This is a hard one," said Diane, squinting at them thoughtfully. "And one of the reasons that it's hard is the huge split that we have created in the lesbian community over the s/m issue. Because we have become so polarized and so absolutely pro-con, right-wrong there is a tendency on one side to say, Well, those women are just neo-n.a.z.i sickies who shouldn't be allowed to say they're d.y.k.es and who should be stopped at all costs, and on the other to say, f.u.c.k you, you don't listen anyway. It's important to realize that, just as referring to the lesbian experience means referring to millions and millions of women, each with her own unique story, s/m d.y.k.es, just as you can see on my list here, have a huge array of feelings and experiences. I can tell you a little about my own experience and maybe get my friends to do the same."

She smiled persuasively at Liz, who slouched down in her seat mumbling, "I'm not going to do another 101 scene."

Diane threw up her hands. "My experience with the lesbian s/m community has been fairly positive. I had been out a long time before it entered my mind that this was something in which I might be interested. I had done a lot of your basic d.y.k.e stuff, but always had that feeling of not quite fitting in. I was always labeled as too s.e.xual and too femme. When I finally met some leather d.y.k.es, the first feeling that I got was that they were prepared to really honor and enjoy these two qualities. Before that, the feeling I had gotten from the community was, 'Well, we'll like you in spite of that, but it's big of us.' I really enjoy feeling appreciated rather than just tolerated. There is a lot more room for and acknowledgement of butch/femme stuff in the leather community." She stopped and looked at Liz.

After a moment of silence Liz sat up and spoke, with some bad grace. "I'm in the scene because I like pain. I hate doing this display, because I know that most of you are thinking that makes me a bad or sick person, and it personally is an uphill job to try to feel good about yourself when you're faced with that kind of feedback all the time. Which is why a lot of leather-women tend to hang out together even if they don't have a lot of other common interests. But anyway, the right kind of pain with s.e.x makes me very high. If you have trouble imagining that, think about going on a roller-coaster or running a marathon or doing a polar-bear swim. These are all things that give people the same kind of rush that I get from a beating. The thought of doing any of them fills me with horror, but I've learned to accept that people get their endorphins in different ways." She slouched down again and scowled.

"More coffee?" asked the d.y.k.e waitress in a barely civil tone. She gave them what Alison, by now, had learned to recognize as the 'G.o.dd.a.m.n leather-d.y.k.es' glare.

"I've played soccer with you, haven't I?" Liz went straight out of her sullen mood into one of a charmer. "You play with thirty-something, right? You play...." She snapped her fingers, trying to recall.

"You play right half," supplied Stacy. "You scored a goal against me in our last game. Went right off my face into the cage. You play indoor at the Sportarama, too, don't you? Coed on f.a.gs and d.y.k.es' in the Sunday over thirty league?"

The woman refused to be charmed. They were sc.u.m, and talking about soccer was as much a trick as monkeys typing Shakespeare. She slammed down the check with a jolt that sloshed everyone's coffee over and huffed off to take care of her legitimate customers. Liz and Stacy looked at each other and shrugged.

"Leather P.R." said Stacy. "A thankless job."

"f.u.c.k 'em if they can't take a joke," said Diane. She stuffed her list back in her briefcase. "I gotta go." She rose without good-byes. Alison watched her walk away from the table, wondering if she could ever be driven mad with l.u.s.t by a woman in high heels. It was a possibility.

Outside the temperature had dropped and the wind was blowing. The closest parking Alison had been able to find was several blocks away. She hunched down in her sweatshirt and put her hands in her armpits. Stacy was power walking down the street so that she had to hustle to keep up with her.

Halfway down the block was a tiny men's bar. In front of the door were four people handing out leaflets and ha.s.sling the customers. Stacy had her head down against the wind, but Alison looked at the two couples curiously. They were dressed as if for church, the women in long coats over dresses with heels. One of the men was trying to give a leaflet to two gay men on their way into the bar. He was about Alison's own age, dressed in a blue suit.

"G.o.d loves the sinner!" he called after the men when they pushed past him. He turned towards Alison, and she ducked her head too late to keep from catching his eye. He held a leaflet out to her. "G.o.d hates the sin, Sister," he sang out in a strong, pleasant voice. "Don't stand by idly while someone you love prepares to go to h.e.l.l, or your children are seduced into a path of abomination!" He held a leaflet out to her, smiling a smile that a.s.sumed they were conspirators in the fight for the righteous.

"Take that bulls.h.i.t and peddle it someplace else," Alison snapped at him, forgetting her plan to pa.s.s like strangers. "It's oppressive and it's offensive!"

"No! It's the word of G.o.d, and with our help these people can be saved!" He reached out to take her elbow, and savagely she shook it off, wondering what conceit could make one person believe he could save another's soul. "Well, I'm one of these people'! A d.y.k.e, get it?"

She turned to follow Stacy, knowing from experience that shouting matches with religious maniacs were fruitless, but the man stepped in front of her. "Get out of my way!" she snapped.

"Just let us help you into the light, Little Sister," said Blue Suit in his fine speaker's voice. She put her elbow out to push past him, but before she was even aware of the danger, the second man who wore a red tie, had grabbed her wrist from behind and was holding it tight, not quite pinning it behind her back, but close enough so the pain was the same. Her cop training kicked in and she slammed her heel backwards, hitting him in the shin. He jerked her arm up so hard that she screamed, "Jesus!" and he clapped a hand over her mouth.

"Don't take the Lord's name in vain, Little Sister," he said gently, as if he were admonishing a much loved child.

Up until this point Alison had felt only anger, but now, looking into the eyes of this man who was so certain that he was doing the will of G.o.d, she was afraid. She had never known anyone personally who had been kidnapped for 'deprogramming' but she had read about it. She knew that the packet h.o.m.ophobic parents paid for sometimes included a taste of 'normal s.e.x' in the form of rape.

She tried to jerk her head around, looking for Stacy, but she must have walked on, unaware. Or were the women distracting her? Was this a well-planned ruse? Surely not, not right in the open on the sidewalk. But, even as she thought about it, Alison realized that the street was virtually deserted except during those moments when someone was entering or leaving the bar. Did she hear a car idling by the curb? Again she tried to struggle, and again she was brought up short by a wrenching jolt of pain. Dammit, she'd taken self defense, but as long as he had her pinned this way she was helpless. She had been foolish to speak without a.s.sessing the situation better.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a group of gay men approaching the bar. Her whole body sagged with relief. But, as if he had read her mind, the man holding her turned his back on them casually. She could tell he was thinking that if he just kept his cool they would probably not even look his way. So confidant was Red Tie, in fact, that he nodded to Blue Suit who stepped around them calling, "G.o.d loves the sinner!"

That was what did them in. The men might not have heard the single, strangled noise that Alison was able to squeeze past the beefy hand which shifted only slightly when she bit it. But Blue Suit had identified them as enemies, and the gays were wary. She didn't see what happened-all she knew was that the pain in her arm was, for a moment, worse than it had been before. Then she was free. The relief was so sudden that her eyes filled with tears. One of the gay men was leaning over to pick her up off the sidewalk.

"Are you okay?"

"Yeah, I...thanks...I.." She couldn't explain to him those moments of terror when she realized that she might really be in danger.

She glanced over at the curb. There was not actually any real fighting going on, but there was plenty of shouting and shoving between the two groups. A tremendous push from the smallest of the gay men sent Blue Suit reeling off the curb and into a puddle that covered a trash-clogged grate. That ended it. The evangelist couldn't possibly get his momentum back in a suit that was stained with oily water and gum wrappers sticking to the pants. The wind had blown his fliers up against the building and out onto the pavement. Alison grabbed one as it scuttled past, at the same time craning her head to try and spot Stacy. Surely the women couldn't have overpowered her, could they?

Then she caught a flash of red in the doorway of the leather shop that was next to the bar. At first she couldn't believe that after her fearful fantasies, Stacy was just standing there in the doorway, talking to the two evangelical women as if they were all old friends. Alison's fear suddenly turned into anger so intense that it was only with difficulty that she didn't grasp Stacy by the arm and shake her.

"What the f.u.c.k are you doing? What do you mean by just leaving me alone with those crazies while you have a little chat?!" She could feel herself working up into a frenzy, but there seemed no way to stop. All she could think of was the terror she had felt when Red Tie had clapped his hand over her mouth, and the whole time Stacy hadn't been twenty feet away, exchanging recipes with the Jesus girls.

"I thought you were talking, I didn't think...." That one phrase said it all; of course she hadn't thought that there would be any problem walking through a gay neighborhood she'd walked through a dozen times before.

Alison, however, was beyond reason. "You sure f.u.c.king didn't think! I'm about to have the s.h.i.t beat out of me by the G.o.d boys, and you don't even look around to see where the h.e.l.l I've gone!"

In turn, Stacy's face grew dark with anger at her tone, and then blossomed with concern as she got past the cursing, far enough to take in what Alison was saying. The delicately made-up mouths of the two other women formed almost identical O's of concern, and they rushed past Alison towards their men. Stacy reached out to put a hand on her shoulder.

With great effort Alison composed herself. She stood still against a wall, sucking in great gasps of the night air. The adrenaline that had raced through her like lightning was gone, and its void left her weak and shaking. She watched the scene playing out before her with the same detachment that she might watch a play.

Blue Suit had finally climbed out of the gutter. He shivered as the wind plastered the wet cloth up against his legs. He and his cohort were obviously fuming, spoiling for a chance to let G.o.d work through their fists. They were not, however, confident enough of a David and Goliath scene that they were willing to rush into a situation where they were outnumbered two to one. They were making do with shouting Biblical threats. The gays, of course, were shouting back, so that when the two women rushed into the scene it was impossible for Alison to hear what they said. Blue Suit grasped one by the arm and pulled her close, as if he could not believe what she was saying.

He turned with a look that was so full of malice that everyone on the sidewalk was suddenly silent. Alison found herself, like all the rest, turning her own head to see what could possibly have caused such a look.

"Hey, Brother Malcolm," Stacy said, and Alison wondered what effort it took to appear so nonchalant while having such a beam of hate focused on her. "Long time, no see." Silently, all heads turned back towards the man, and Alison was reminded of the theater when everyone in the audience waits for the climactic line. She found herself leaning forward anxiously, wondering if it would be the well formed tones of 'G.o.d hates the sin!' again, or if there was a special line for a sinner with whom one appeared to be acquainted.

"b.i.t.c.h!" was what he finally sputtered, in a voice so small and mean that it robbed him of any shreds of dignity that had survived the dunking. His hand closed on the arm of the woman and he began to hustle her off. The grip looked harsh and painful.

Finally reaching Alison's parked car, they climbed in without a word. As Alison pulled into traffic, the silence became thick and obvious, almost as loud as the buzz of conversation at the coffeehouse.

"Well, you're sure a h.e.l.l of a fun date." Alison took it upon herself to blast through.

"Oh? And tell me yourself, do you do the berserker thing often? I mean, can I look forward to that if I forget something at the store?" Well, obviously Stacy thought she was owed an apology.

"No. Only when I've had my arm ripped out of its socket by a Jesus yuppie and then think my date's been abducted. That does tend to send me into a frenzy. But I'm sorry I screamed at you."

Stacy waved the apology aside. "You mean that f.u.c.ker put his hands on you? Oooh, I should have held a pillow over his face while I had the chance. I'll bet I'd be up for parole by now."

"Actually, it was his sidekick who tried to dislocate my shoulder."

"But he called the shot, right?"

"I take it you know this man?"

"Another skeleton in the closet. Boy, I should have just spilled it all at once, huh? Remember I said I was married? Well, that was him, the husband from the Twilight Zone. Two years of wondering, 'Am I crazy, or is he?'"

"Oh, Stacy, you've got to be kidding! How...?"

"How did I get with such a nut?" Stacy asked bitterly as they reached Alison's apartment. "Well, mainly because he wasn't such a nut then. He was a nice Christian boy, I was a nice Christian girl, we went to Sunday school and youth group together, so I figured why the h.e.l.l not? It wasn't like there was some guy who I liked better, or that I even expected to ever like some guy better. I hadn't quite gotten the whole picture yet, but I had figured out that much-it was never going to be like it was in the movies for me. And if I was a little unhappy, h.e.l.l, my mother was a little unhappy. His mother was a little unhappy. That was what life was all about. At least I'd be out of my parents' house. I suppose you're one of those d.y.k.es who never slept with men, right?"

"Well, yeah, but...."

"I knew it! I hate you, I hate you all! Oh, I always knew I was a d.y.k.e, I came out when I was fourteen, I was out at my high school, I've been going to Michigan for ten years, I never had to f.u.c.k men to find out who I was!' f.u.c.k you all."

Alison could think of no reasonable reply until they arrived at her place when she said, "I'm going to make some tea."

There was a legal sized manila envelope on her kitchen table. On it, Robert dropped this by was written in Mich.e.l.le's handwriting.

"So I suppose you've never had any f.u.c.ked-up relationships, have you?" Stacy followed her into the kitchen, still upset.

"Look, Stacy. If you want f.u.c.ked up, sit down because the whole list is going to take a while, okay? I mean, isn't it true that d.y.k.es invented co-dependent relationships? In fact, if you've got the time, I'll just call Mich.e.l.le and Janka down and get out the slide projector-I believe they have a whole show put together called, 'a.s.sholes we couldn't keep Alison from dating and how right we were every time.'" She slammed the kettle onto the stove.

Unwillingly Stacy gave a small guffaw. "I would like to see that," she said. "Am I in it?"

"Without a doubt. I'm sure you already have your own section. My parents do another version of the same show called, 'I don't know what Alison saw in that girl.'"

"So," Stacy flopped down into a kitchen chair and continued her story, "he wasn't nuts to begin with. Not any worse than any of the other Bible thumpers that I grew up with. And then we decided to...," she paused dramatically and hummed the theme from Jaws, "make Babies! Because that's what nice young Christian couples did, right? Only we couldn't. He could have dealt with it, I think, if it had been me. He could have been generous and forgiving. But he totally freaked out when we found out it was him. Total denial. It couldn't be him, G.o.d wouldn't do that to him, let's just do it two or three times a night to make sure, and for G.o.dsake, don't get up afterwards, the right one might leak out! Like increased effort is going to negate mumps at fourteen, right? And the more obsessed he's getting about having his own child, the mote he's getting attracted to religious crazies. He starts doing the Right-To-Life thing, right? Carting around bottles with fetuses and blocking clinic doors because maybe that will convince G.o.d how sincere he is, and maybe then we'll find out the whole thing was just a matter of mixed up files."

"What were you doing?" asked Alison, taking down two of the hand-thrown mugs Janka had given her for Solstice. She was dying to open the envelope, but didn't want to seem disinterested in Stacy's story.

"I was making a lot of quilts," said Stacy. "And visiting the women's bookstore in disguise without ever bringing anything home. And falling in love with my best friend. And so..." She accepted the cup of Sleepytime Tea (Alison had put in two bags), "...we finally got in bed and-bad movie, right?-he busted in on us! It couldn't have happened any other way, we were all primed for drama and craziness."

"Then what?"

"Well, you know how you cure a lesbian, don't you?"

Alison made a face. "You show her how good s.e.x with a real man is."

"Bingo. He decided that we'd do a little rape scene and I decided that I'd hit him in the head with an alarm clock instead and get the h.e.l.l out of there."

She spoke lightly, but Alison could see her throat moving in a silent retch.

"So did you move in with your girlfriend, then?"

"No, I spent the next week at a Battered Women's shelter. I was lucky- my parents pretty much ostracized me-of course he told everybody all the gory details-wanted to make sure who the villain was-but my sister had some money and she helped me get an apartment and get by till my next paycheck. I had some money in savings, but they were joint accounts...." She let the sentence trail off, and rolled her eyes back in her head to indicate that the money was good and gone.

"Wow." Alison did not quite know if comfort was in order. Perhaps Stacy was like Mich.e.l.le, who told her most awful experiences to be laughed at, and froze at a sympathetic word. Experimentally, she stroked Stacy's hair.

"Oh," said Stacy, "one more twist. Just to make us eligible for the O. Henry award. The woman I was talking to at the store while you were getting ha.s.sled-that's Nina. My old girlfriend. The one he caught me in bed with. They're married now."

Alison froze. Catching her look of horror and disbelief, Stacy threw up her hands to indicate her own incomprehension. "Hey, she was raised in the church of the nuts. She really believed she had sinned. There was nothing that I could say to make a difference. She wouldn't talk to me, anyway-I was the Great Satan at that point."

"So he transferred from Right-to-Life to Death-to-d.y.k.es?" Alison picked up the envelope and began struggling to open it. Robert had taped it as if it were going overseas.

"Like that." Stacy snapped her fingers. "Everybody does Right-to-Life- it's hard to be a big frog there anymore. But Kill-the-Queers is a wide open field! Check this out-he makes his living doing this s.h.i.t-he does counseling and 'support' groups and there's been some talk about 'reprogramming.' It's also the perfect way to carry out a personal vendetta without seeming ugly."

Alison had gone back to stroking her long curls. "You think?"

"All I know is that he shows up at a h.e.l.l of a lot of events I'm attending. Maybe I'm just being paranoid-I guess there aren't that many d.y.k.e happenings in town-we might just read the same calendars. But tonight was obviously unplanned. I don't think he brings Nina with him if he thinks he'll see me."

"What was she telling you?"

"You're never going to believe this one. She's pregnant. Guess we had a miracle after all."

Alison gave one last jerk on the envelope and the contents fell out on the floor.

"What is this?" Stacy bent to help her gather the contents.