“The candle routine,” Bobby explained. “God above, first time I came to one of these parties and saw her fussing with those things I thought we were going to have an orgy. Candles! She lights them and recites poems. I’ve never seen anyone make quite so monumental a production out of homosexuality. She gets almost religious about it.”
“Does it last long?”
“Homosexuality?” Bobby grinned. “It lasts forever, my sweet.”
“I mean-”
“I know what you mean, goofy. Here’s Meg. Meg, you didn’t bring me a drink.”
Megan sat next to Rhoda, “You don’t need one,” she said. “Jan’s playing with her phallic symbols again. Did you notice?”
“We were talking about them. And about Jan. Homosexuality As A Religious Phenomenon. I might write a paper on that sweet theme.”
“For The Ladder?”
“For the john. Poems to be read in the can. I think there was a book like that, come to think. Some phony nonsense. Dykery As The Highest Expression Of The Inner Self. Sound good?”
“It might to Jan.” Megan sipped her drink. “Jan’s right,” she said. “There are worse poses.”
“Name one.”
“I Am A Lost Lesbian And A Thing To Be Pitied. How’s that?”
“It’ll do,” Bobby said. “Except that we all use it now and then. Even you and I, sweet.”
“That’s what’s so tragic about it.”
Jan Pomeroy was walking around the room turning off lamps. Her eyes, Rhoda noticed, were slightly glazed. And she almost fell over at one point. “I think she’s drunk,” she said.
“Brilliantly put, Rho. Jan’s always stoned at her own sets. Drinking develops her appearance of intense sincerity. The funny thing is that she used to be ordinary enough. She never got over that thing she had with the actress.”
“Actress?”
“Moira Maine. Whose name, before Hollywood played with it, was something far less euphonious. I think was-”
“Moira Maine?”
“Uh-huh, I think it was-”
“But she isn’t gay!”
Megan and Bobby both laughed. “Oh, Rho honey, the hell she isn’t. You didn’t know?”
“But she’s married-”
“To one of the screamingest queens in Hollywood, sweets. Too many people were whispering about both of them, so they’re married. I’ve a hunch they never consummated that marriage, and that it wasn’t exactly made in heaven. Meg, you should have brought me another drink.”
“Get it yourself.”
I don’t really need it. Miss Maine was in hot water for awhile. You must have heard something, Rho.”
She shook her head.
“A big blackmail thing, the way I heard it. Some West Coast call girl slept with La Maine and let a friend of hers take pictures, and first they held her up and then they sold the pictures to one of the scandal mags. It got hushed up, I guess, but that’s the way it was.”
Bobby stood up. “I see an old friend,” she explained. “Catch you people after the Sapphic odes are over and done with.”
Rhoda sipped her drink. Megan was beside her, telling her a story that she couldn’t quite keep up with. Across the room, a blonde with dark roots had her arm around a much younger girl. The younger girl giggled and the blonde leaned over and kissed her. The younger girl put her arms around the blonde and the two got lost in the embrace.
Rhoda looked away from them. “I don’t like that,” she said.
“Bleached hair?”
“That either.”
Megan gave her hand a squeeze. “I don’t like it myself,” she said. “They might as well make love in Macy’s window. Some girls are funny that way. Exhibitionistic. Just because they’re among other gay girls they think they can do anything without offending good taste. I don’t mind dancing at a gay party. There will be dancing later, you know. Will you dance with me, kitten?”
“And with no one else.”
“Oh, don’t be silly. You’ll dance with whoever asks you, pet. It’s just part of the ritual, and quite sexless. But petting in public that way, that I don’t go for.” Megan shrugged. “The really militant homosexuals are all excited about campaigning for equal rights. I think some of them would like to picket lunch counters in Atlanta that don’t employ gays. But you’d think they’d realize that the same obligations as far as taste is concerned as straight people have. Sex is such a preoccupation with all of us. It’s silly, I suppose.”
The room was dark now. On the mahogany pedestal, the two candles burned. Jan Pomeroy stood behind the pedestal, her face framed by the yellow glow of the candles. There was a slender volume open on the pedestal in front of her.
The room quieted down. The dark-roots blonde and the younger girl were still kissing on the divan across way. Someone said something short to them. They separated.
“I’d like to read some poetry,” Jan Pomeroy said. “ I hope you all enjoy this.”
“Little chance of that,” Megan whispered. Rhoda felt a laugh forming and smothered it. She squeezed Megan’s hand in the darkness.
“The first poem was written by Sappho on the Isle of Lesbos,” Jan announced. Her voice had taken on a theatrical tone. “Lesbos had been renamed since then. Mytilene is its present name. And Sappho’s little colony has long since been dispersed. There are some of us who dream of returning to that little island in the Aegean, of forming a society where we can be alone with people like ourselves. Some day, perhaps that dream can be realized completely and perfectly.”
“Picture it,” Megan whispered. “All of us frolicking nude in the sun, with nary a man around. I wonder if she really believes all this.”
“It sounds that way.”
Jan stared their way and they stopped whispering. She took a deep breath, leaned over so that the two candles stood on either side of her face. Her eyes, circled with heavy make-up, looked hollower and deeper than ever in the candle light.”
She read;
Oh Chryseis
The budding beauty of your Cretan soul
Echoes from hill to hill.
Come to me.
Night is a barren notion
Fitting the heart
For love in shaded places.
Teach me of torment
In Sweet hysteria,
O Chryseis!
There was a scattering of embarrassed applause. A candle flickered briefly but did not go out. Jan Pomeroy closed her hollow eyes momentarily, lowered her head reverently. The applause died out. Jan straightened up, opened her eyes, turned a page of the book. “Thank you,” she said. “This next work is also Sappho’s. It is a somewhat longer poem, an ode to one of the young girls Sappho loved so deeply. It-”
Megan groaned.
CHAPTER SEVEN
After the little performance with Sapphic odes and candlelight, Jan Pomeroy did what she always did at her parties. She got thoroughly drunk, cried without interruption for ten full minutes, and then abruptly passed out. Two girls carried her into her bedroom and wedged her fully clothed between the bedsheets, stopping only to remove her shoes. She slept soundly. Her eye make-up looked wildly unreal on her sleeping face.
With the hostess out of the way, the party moved into gear. The mahogany pedestal was wrestled out of the way, the candles blown out and put aside, some lights left off, others switched on again. An angular girl stacked records on the hi-fi-dance music, some vocal sides, Billie Holliday, Sarah Vaughan, Anita O’Day. One or two couples drifted off homeward. Others talked intensely in little groups. A girl cried in a corner, another locked herself in the bathroom and refused to open the door. Others danced.
The dancing seemed odd at first to Rhoda. They had danced before, once or twice at the apartment, moving together slowly with the dancing serving as a prelude to the act of love. But dancing had never before been a social phenomenon. There was something disarming about it, as though the roomful of dancing girls burlesqued heterosexual dancing, as though all the dancing couples were less intent upon enjoying themselves than in proving something to the world.
The feeling died as she caught the mood of the evening. Megan held her lightly in her arms, taking the man’s part and leading her slowly and smoothly around the floor. She closed eyes, relaxing in Megan’s embrace. She had never danced much as a girl, had hardly ever gone dancing with Tom Haskell. Once, maybe twice before they were married. Afterward, never.