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Three Dykes and a Butch
Three Dykes and a Butch
by Sally Sheklow
Eleven
states may have voted to ban our right to marry, but America is still
the land of the free and the home of the betrothed. I'll be damned if
sucky elections will stop me from going to same-sex weddings.
The last lesbian nuptials I attended were
conducted on the family ranch of one of the spouses-to-be, about a hundred
miles south of town. Four of us friends rode down together in Debby's
Honda CRV, of which she is the proud new owner. Our pal Debby claims to
be butch. Her car is butch, her haircut is butch (short-short, no product),
and her clothes are waaay butch. Debby wouldn't be caught dead in anything
but T-shirts and jeans, or for extreme fancy occasions, like a wedding,
a plaid button-down and Dockers.
Wifey and I are big old dykes ourselves,
with nothing in our dress-up wardrobes swankier than elastic waistband
pants and color-coordinated shirts. We are clearly outclassed by Clare,
the one straight woman in our entourage. She shows up for the trip wearing
a stunning blue linen dress suit, matching eye shadow and high-gloss lipstick.
Next to her we look like the Clampetts, but hey, we're down with diversity.
So there we are tootling along the interstate,
chatting up whatever it is homos and straight people find in common, such
as the benefits of supplemental calcium and our contempt for the Patriot
Act. We’re making good time and may actually arrive before the ceremony
if we don’t stop to eat. That's okay with us because one of the
brides is a gourmet chef and the wedding feast will be sumptuous. We're
getting into a good discussion about Kellee's baba ganouj when blammo!
The car bucks like a wild woman on a thigh ride. What the hell? Did we
hit something?
Debby white-knuckles the steering wheel
and fights the pull like she's reeling in a marlin. Wifey and I squeeze
bruise-marks into each other's thighs. Debby's freckly complexion flushes
scarlet, clear around to the back of her neck, upon which my gaze is rigidly
fixed. The car hobbles to a stop alongside the guardrail. Clare matter-of-factly
points out we've blown a tire. We could have been killed.
Life and limb no longer in danger, I check
my watch. No time to change a tire. I'm a triple-A member but none of
us brought a cell phone. I jump out and try to flag down a do-gooder,
hopefully one with a phone. I feel like an idiot. All those years of martial
arts, assertiveness training, and lesbian empowerment have come down to
this one bizarre moment – me flailing my arms in the wind like some
berserk Olive Oyl calling Help! Popeye! Traffic zooms past.
My traveling companions stand at the open
tailgate. Popeye not forthcoming, I give up on waving at speeders and
join my gang behind the car. Turns out that while Debby has owned this
vehicle two whole months, she has never looked at – nor for that
matter even located – the spare. You'd think a real butch would
have been on top of that.
Here we are, three lesbos in sensible
shoes, and a straight woman in heels, all dressed up in our Sunday-go-to-wedding
clothes. Nobody wants to get dirty. It's like we're in shock – our
bodies are here but our wits apparently kept barreling down the freeway
without us. Clare, not waiting for us to snap out of it, kicks into action.
She lifts the floor panel. We three big
tough lesbians just stand there, staring at a rubber ring the size of
a hemorrhoid cushion. Clare hefts out the tire, biceps bulging under the
still-pristine blue linen, and rolls it around to the front passenger
side where the flat tire is.
The jack handle lies in tinker-toy segments,
assembly required. Following poorly translated small-print instructions,
we three Neanderthals fumble to piece together the industrial-yellow metal
tubing. Clare uses the handle's prying tip to remove the hubcap, but she
can't get enough torque with the dinky tire iron to loosen the lug nuts.
Here's where we come in, our Amazonian power
awakened at last. Clare holds the lug wrench in place while I step onto
the bar, balanced by Wifey and Debby-the-Supposed-Butch. Gentle bouncing
loosens each nut. Clare rolls the jack into place, jacks up the car, removes
the lugs and sets them into the upturned hubcap – all without getting
so much as a dust mote on her nicely manicured hands.
By the time the blown-out flat is removed
and stowed and the spare is mounted and secured, we three lezzies are
filthy with road dirt. Clare remains unsullied. There's no time to stop
to wash up or we'll miss the wedding. Luckily, Clare has moist towelettes
in her purse. Note to self: never go to a lesbian wedding without a real
butch along.
Writer Sally Sheklow pays her AAA dues in Eugene, Oregon.