"It's – the way I feel about it. Now, I mean, after I've had two days to think about it."
"It would be better if you would try to forget about it completely," June said gently. "Put it out of your mind and don't think about it at all."
"I've tried to, but I can't. I keep thinking about it all the time."
"Well, that's only natural, I guess," June tried to explain. "You had a terrible shock and it must have been an awful experience for you, but in time…"
"Oh, no!" Mimsy quickly interrupted, squeezing more tightly to June's hand. "That's not what I mean at all. I don't think about the bad part of it; I've gotten over that."
"Then – what?"
"Well," Mimsy lowered her eyes slightly, "I told you that I'm more grown up than I might look. I know what a lesbian is."
"You do?" June tried once again to pull her hand free and this time the girl's fingers slowly relaxed their pressure and let her. She puffed nervously on her cigarette, her eyes darting anxiously away from direct contact with Mimsy, as she asked, "Just what do you know?"
"I know that a lesbian is a woman who makes love to another woman. Like Roxanne did to me, I mean. With her mouth."
A sharp tingle of excitement shot through June's body as the words registered their image in her mind. She'd suspected what had happened between the two girls, but this was her first confirmation that forcible cunnilingus had been performed on Mimsy by Roxanne. Although she was horrified by the images running through her mind, June could not dispel them. She saw Mimsy spread naked on the ground at night, her legs torn apart, her feminine softness open and vulnerable to Roxanne's ruthless lust. What must she have tasted like, June wondered? Was there much hair around her cunt, to tickle her nose the way Pat's pubic bush always did? Had Roxanne stayed down on the girl and tongued her until she came on her mouth? Was her sexual juice as bitter-tasting as Pat's…?
"What's wrong with me?" her mind suddenly shrieked. "Why am I thinking these things? You'd almost think that – I wanted her for myself!" A cold shudder ran down her spine as she realized there was more truth in the remark than she cared to admit. She was finding herself sexually drawn to the younger girl, in spite of everything that had happened between Pat and herself in the past two days and all her vows that this part of her life was finished for good. She did want Mimsy. She had wanted her and known it in the darkest part of her mind from the moment their hands had touched together in that tight locking of fingers.
"There's a lot more to being a lesbian than just making love to another woman, Mimsy," she explained softly, still not daring to make direct eye-contact with the girl. "It's a whole way of life. It's as much of a commitment to a life style as it is to get married. To a man, I mean."
"Do you mean that lesbians actually marry each other?" the girl asked in awe.
"Well," June smiled nervously, "I've never heard of it being done legally, but I guess a lot of lesbian women fall in love with each other and want to share their lives together, yes."
"Then there's nothing really wrong with it? I mean, with being a lesbian."
June couldn't help swallowing hard before she answered. She knew the girl had seen her gulp and probably was wondering why her questions were causing such a reaction, but June couldn't control herself. How to answer her, she wondered, without sounding like the biggest hypocrite of all time? How to steer this trusting young girl in the right direction at a crucial turning point in her life, where the wrong decision might ruin every chance of future happiness for her, when all of her own instincts were urging her further and further toward a physical seduction?
June knew very well that a few moments of reckless foolishness on her part might not be interpreted in the same way by the girl. What for her would be nothing more than an experiment to appease a momentary hunger might be for Mimsy the most crucial few minutes of her life. Any latent tendencies toward lesbianism as a sexual way of life might be wakened and roused to full life in an irreversible course. And yet to not respond if Mimsy made an advance might result in drawing the girl deeper into her shell and possibly forcing her into a heterosexual life that she was neither sexually nor emotionally able to deal with. It would be as much a tragedy to insist upon a lesbian way of life for a girl who was basically heterosexual in needs as it would be in the reverse. June had read many case histories in her psychology courses at college of married women with children who couldn't stand the touch of a man, but had submerged their true lesbian emotions and needs in a heterosexual disguise because it was what society demanded of them. She also knew that with the advent of women's liberation and the public confessions by many notable females of a bi-sexual, if not outright lesbian nature, it was becoming less of a public stigma to lead a deviant sex life. In the next ten years or so, many attitudes were going to change and, possibly, one day it might make no difference what a person did in bed. If Mimsy chose a lesbian life style, she might find the world more accepting of her than that world would be for June, today. She knew well enough what damage her letters to Pat would cause in her personal life if they were ever to be revealed. Where she came from and among the people she knew and loved most, sexual liberation still had a long way to go.
"I-I don't know what to say, Mimsy," she admitted at last. "Why do you ask if there's anything wrong with being a lesbian?"
Without blinking an eye, without hesitation for even an instant, the girl answered, "Because I think I'm one."
"What?" She couldn't help her mouth from dropping slightly open. The admission had come as such a shock to her that for a few moments she didn't know how to deal with it and stammered helplessly for words. Then, as though to make the whole idea seem preposterous, she laughed nervously and exclaimed, "Why, I've never heard anything so ridiculous! Just because of one experience…"
"Oh, no!" Mimsy swore, interrupting her. "It's not just that one experience. I've felt this way for a long, long time, but I never did anything about it."
June stubbed out her smoked-down cigarette in the ashtray and reached immediately for another. Her hands were trembling slightly as she held a lit match to the end of her smoke, billowing a thick cloud out from her nostrils the instant the cigarette was lit.
"Do you want to tell me about it?" she asked softly. "What do you mean, you've felt this way for a long time?"
"I have," the girl insisted. "But there was never anyone I could talk to about it. Like I told you before, my mother would faint if I even mentioned the subject to her. I wouldn't be surprised if she didn't even know what a lesbian is!"
"Why do you feel you can talk to me, then?" June asked with hesitation.
"Well – because you know about what happened to me," she explained. "I don't think I'd ever have dared bring the subject up, even with you, if you didn't already know what Roxanne did to me."
"I see," June murmured with relief. Apparently she was still playing the role of Big Sister in the girl's mind and Mimsy had no real suspicions about June's own sex life, as she'd feared at first. "I'm sorry for interrupting; please go on – if you want to."
"I do, June," the girl said earnestly. "I really want to talk to you about how I feel, because I think you'll understand."
"All right," she answered with a little gulp. "I'll try to, anyway."
"Well, these feelings, I'm talking about – I've had them for a long time. I mean, I'd look at some of the girls in school when we got undressed for gym class and I'd feel this funny kind of tingle running all through me. Like I wanted to reach out and – touch them, I guess."
"Do you mean touch in a sexual way?"