The Amazon Trail
|
The Amazon Trail When a Butch Goes Bad |
 |
by
Lee Lynch
My friends and I kid
around a lot about butch and femme. To us, it's not about role-playing,
it's who we are. None of us wears motorcycle boots or lipstick, but we
know where we fit with one another. There are unspoken customs and unwritten
behaviors that
are not even second nature — they're built-in. Most of all, acknowledging
our butch and femme sides is a lot of fun.
A few weeks ago a femme friend and her partner
were telling a story about a couple that had disappeared from their lives.
This was near the holidays and our hosts had decorated their new home
with lights inside and out. The house felt warm and snug despite the gale
force winds buffeting their windows.
The femme of the house said, "Bertha
thought she was losing control over Smithy because Smithy was getting
tight with us." Her partner nodded. The rest of us had watched this
happen and agreed. "The last straw came when Smithy started going
grocery
shopping with me — grocery shopping!" We all laughed at the
absurdity of getting jealous over grocery shopping.
"When butches go bad — they go
grocery shopping with another femme!" cried someone, cracking us
up again. Immediately came a string of comic examples of butches going
bad.
"When you turn them loose in a hardware
store!" struck us as particularly funny, though my partner salivates
even more than I do in the hardware aisles.
"When you turn them loose anywhere
with another butch!" I was reminded of the time our butch host and
I had gone shopping for their anniversary. She found an irresistible anniversary
gift in every store we entered and I egged her on to keep splurging.
It's what happens on these butch adventures, as the femmes obviously knew.
Through laughter, a femme offered, "Don't
forget the B&D butches!"
That stopped me short until someone else
reminded me, "Black and Decker butches."
"Of course," I said and
immediately pictured a slew of us marching in formation, power drills
held high, at a gay pride march.
I reminded them of what had transpired just
a few moments before — I'd gotten up to retrieve another slice of
pizza and was back at the table and well into my first bite when, to my
horror, I realized that I'd forgotten to bring my femme host a slice.
She got it herself with an affronted dignity, but I will never live down
the teasing, which was more about my remorse at failing my self-imposed
butchly duty than about her expectations.
When I referred to her out loud as a host,
she teased back that she was a hostess. Did that make two hostesses, or
is the butch a host? There was no preponderance of opinion, only preferences.
It seems that modern usage would make everyone a host, but some femmes
reclaim the feminine forms of words — perhaps to assert their feminine
identities in a world that would lump them all into the diesel dyke category.
Or perhaps because they really enjoy their womanliness. I sure do.
Someone got up to clear the table and said,
"A butch goes bad when she brings home the 10th cat." Hilarity
shook everyone. It was all too true.
The next example, "Or when she puts
the house up for sale without telling the femme," brought on a quick
awkward silence.
"Did you really do that?" one
butch asked the accused. She's currently adding a room to her partner's
home so they can live together and was obviously incredulous. Butches
don't do these things.
"But femmes do," someone said.
That brought up the question, "Why do butches let femmes get away
with so much?"
"'Cause we're easy!" All the butches agreed with that, smiling
and not meeting anyone's eyes.
"A butch goes bad when she gets too
close to her cat!" someone volunteered, cradling one of the house
cats in her arms. A groan went up, like everyone was familiar withthat
one. "Or dog," someone else offered.
It's evenings like this that remind me how
very much I love us, the inhabitants of lesbian nation. I think we're
the wittiest, warmest, most loveable creatures on earth. Except when we're
not.
"Hey!" someone said, "When
does a femme go bad?" The group didn't want to go there
at all.
I thought of my partner, who was in a distant
city that night, and how in our early days together, we got so shy about
who would push the grocery cart. Was that a butch thing or a femme's job?
Now we sometimes push it together, and laugh at our funny selves. I guess
grocery shopping can be romantic after all.
"A butch goes bad when she votes wrong,"
said the femme hostess.
It turned out that all the butches relied
on this politically savvy femme for voting information. She delivers a
not insignificant block of votes to our common causes.
" What would we do without you?"
we all wailed. She allowed herself a satisfied look. After all, she knew
she'd never have to get up for that next slice of pizza again. These butches
weren't about to go bad.
Lee Lynch is the author of eleven books including The Swashbuckler and the Morton River Valley Trilogy. She lives on the Oregon Coast, and comes from a New England family.
© Lee Lynch 2003