“WHAT IS FUCKING?”
“Whaddo you mean, what is fucking?”
They were sitting around the kitchen table at Fenn’s house; him, Todd, Tara and Diego.
“I mean, if you’re straight, you know what fucking is,” Fenn told Tara Veems. “But then you’ve got folks who say lesbians don’t fuck.”
“But they don’t fuck,” Diego said. “Not really.”
“What the fuck do you mean lesbians don’t fuck?” Tara looked at him. “We fuck all the time.”
“How? With a strap on? Or like… fingering each other.” Diego said. “Or like in that movie… with Ellen and what’s her name…?”
“If These Walls Could Talk you mean,” Todd said. He was very tall, so tall that to Fenn, when he sat with his hands pressed together, his elbows on the table, he looked vaguely like a preying mantis.
“Yeah,” Diego said.
“Okay,” said Tara. “So what’s a fuck to you?”
“A fuck is when a dick goes into a vagina or an asshole.”
“There has to be a dick for a fuck?” Tara said.
“Yeah.”
She laughed and took a drink of her beer.
“That’s bullshit. I fuck my girlfriend all the time.”
Todd smiled at her shyly and said, “You fuck everyone’s girlfriend all the time.”
“Shut the fuck up. I’m a reformed dyke now.”
But Fenn asked: “Why does there have to be an asshole? That’s bullshit too, Diego. That’s that crap that says an asshole is the same as a pussy. But an asshole is an asshole. It’s nothing like a pussy.”
“So you’re saying that you can fuck someone’s mouth?”
“Of course you can. Or someone’s ear if you want to. It’s not like Queer as Folk where everyone’s always getting the condom lecture because everyone’s always fucking in the ass. Think about how many men can never even get it in your ass in the first place.”
“I know that’s right,” Diego said. “The other night, this one poor fuck, I just kept trying to bring it in, and he couldn’t—”
“Diego,” Tara put a hand to her face and shook her head. “This dyke does not need to hear all that.”
“Excuse me, Snagglepuss—”
“Well,” Fenn intercepted, “half the time you, you would never need anything but lube cause you would never be going there anyway.”
“Do you guys fuck in the ass?” Diego asked Fenn and Todd.
Todd, his black hair sticking up, eyes wide, looked awkward.
“That’s not even your business,” Fenn said before Tara said it. “But what I’m saying is, can I fuck a pillow? I mean, if someone says I fucked my pillow, or I fucked a blow up doll or something… you know what it means.”
“Right.” Then Diego said, “But it’s not the same as real fucking.”
“It is real fucking you idiot,” Tara said. “You’re saying the only kind of fucking that’s real is the kind that A. straight people do or B. gets you AIDS.”
“I don’t really need to get fucked in the ass,” Todd said quietly.
“But you all…” Diego said.
“We do it all the time,” Fenn said. “If you have to know. We have a great sex life. But what you said is not the only kind of sex. You’re subscribing to some bullshit that says the more we act like straight people the more it’s real and asses are like vaginas. That’s like that Catholic school shit where a girl blows everyone and says she’s a virgin because she hasn’t taken it in her—”
“Snatch,” Tara snatched it away.
“And then she might take it up the ass and still say she’s a virgin,” Fenn went on. “Only with gay men—they’re always acting like Victorian women—the ass is the ultimate thing.”
“And that’s how you end up with AIDS,” Todd said. “You could fuck like a jackrabbit forever and never even worry about AIDS if you weren’t gung ho on having someone stick his dick in your ass. Though I will admit,” he smiled, shy. “I am occasionally gung ho about having a dick in my ass.”
Fenn said looked at him.
“Just yours,” Todd clarified. “And I don’t think before I got with Fenn I was ever into that whole cum in the ass thing.”
Tara said, “That was too much.”
Diego looked at them in mute disbelief.
“You’ve never done that?” Diego said to him.
“What?”
“Come in a guy’s ass.”
“This,” Tara declared, “is foreign territory to me.”
“Not intentionally,” Todd said. “Not the whole where some tweaked out freak is like, ‘I need you to come in my ass.’ That weirds me out. I’ve certainly never had anyone do it to me. That would freak me out too much.”
“You’ve never….” Diego sat back. “Okay,” he said, “so you’re saying that anytime a dick is… fucking anything, it’s fucking?”
“But you just said that yourself,” Fenn said.
“So like if two guys are just naked and rubbing up against each other and they come…”
“Or if they don’t come even,” Fenn said.
“Then there’s fucking?”
“Of course there’s fucking,” Todd said.
“And what Tara’s saying is fucking is even more than that,” Fenn said. “Like, do you have to be in a girl to be fucking her?”
“Whaddo you mean?”
“He means,” Diego said, “Can the two of you just be rubbing clits?”
“Well,” Fenn said, eyeing Diego, “that is one way to put it.”
“You and Todd said if it’s a dick pushing up against something it’s fucking, right?” Tara said.
Fenn looked at Todd and they both nodded.
“Okay,” she said. “So I’m going to say if a clit’s being pushed, or if pussy is being pushed, or entered, then it’s fucking.”
“So if your finger’s in a girl?” said Diego.
“Then we’re fucking.”
“And if you’re wearing a strap on?”
“I wouldn’t be. It’s not my thing. But if I did then we’d be fucking too.”
“And if you’re rubbing clits?”
“Fucking.”
“Well,” said Diego.
Tara said, “Well.”
“WELL, I’VE CHECKED,” Fenn said, putting the bills on the night stand, “and we have enough to live until… I’d say next April, if some good shit doesn’t happen to us.”
“I hate our professions,” Todd groaned, stretching out in the bed beside him.
“You do?”
“Well, no. I hate the pay though.”
“I think it’s like the old triangle,” Fenn pulled his knees to his chest.
“Hum.”
“You know. You use it in productions when people are building sets or paying for something or…whatever. You want it cheap, and fast and good. But you can only have two out of the three. If you want it cheap, it might be fast, but not good. If good it might be cheap, but not fast… and so on.”
“Okay,” said Todd, waiting for the connection.
“So you can have steady money, have it easy and do what you want. But you can’t do all three. Right now, what we don’t have… and it’s very important we realize that we won’t have it for almost another year, Todd, so we don’t get nervous… is steady income. I really wanted to pay the mortgage off next year. I don’t know we’ll even be able to make mortgage payments if something besides the play I’m in doesn’t happen.”
Fenn stopped talking while Todd began smiling.
“What, baby?”
“There is something else,” Todd said.
“Hum?”
“I think it shows promise.”
“Well, spill, already.”
“There’s a film maker or something,” Todd said. “Up in Port Ridge.”
“Yes.”
“I’m supposed to meet with him tomorrow. Drive up there. He saw something I did. He wants meet to shoot a film for him. About his life I think. He wasn’t very specific.”
Fenn regarded him with a happy, steady gaze. In the last few years Fenn Houghton had come to realize that really, he always saw the dark side of everything until it turned out well.
“That is good news.”
Todd, lying beside him smiled brightly.
“Yes,” he said. “Yes it is.”
Todd reached up and with his very long arm, dusted in black hairs, he caught Fenn’s hand.
“All the talking… about fucking we did tonight.”
Fenn put down the envelope with the bill and said, “You want less talking?”
“I want no talking,” Todd sat up, reached across him and turned out the light.
“And all doing.”
“It’s for you,” Dena whispered behind her hand, passing the note.
Layla pretended not to hear. She kept her head turned in the other direction, observing the map of World War II Europe as if it were the most interesting thing in the world.
“It’s for—”
Layla turned and hissed, “I know it’s for me. Keep it.”
“Will will never be happy until you—”
“Miss Reardon,” their teacher stopped lecturing.
Dena cleared her throat. “Yes, sir?”
“If you would like, we can all stop the class so you can better get Miss Taylor’s attention.”
The class sniggered as Layla frowned, and her friend sat up straighter saying, “No, that’s all right.”
“You’re ready to pay attention, then?”
“Yes, sir.”
“All right?” My Shori turned around. “This is AP European history, folks. At one of the best schools in town. Half of the city would give their teeth to be where you are.”
But Layla looked down, and her eyes widened when she saw that Dena had managed to slip her the note from Will Klasko.
She blew out her breath and shot Dena a cruel look while her friend turned away.
“So some people like to say that Martin Luther caused the Reformation and that this was how the nation state was born. Does anyone have a problem with that?”
By the way Mr. Shori said it, Layla could tell that she was supposed to have a problem with it. In fact, having done the reading she did have a problem with it. But it was Will who put up his hand and said:
“One of the problems is that this theory ignores the birth of the printing press, the schisms with the Church that had been happening in Germany for years and things like… say, how far Germany was from Rome anyway. For a long time the Germans had been forging an identity and trying to separate from Rome. Luther came along when enough time had gone by, and when printing was en vogue and there was high literacy. If he hadn’t been the poster boy for reform and German nationhood, then it would have been someone else.” The dark haired, dark eyed boy nodded curtly in the vague direction of the girls.
“He’s a show off,” Layla muttered.
“Yeah,” Dena whispered. “But he’s showing off for you.”
Layla opened the note.
Dear Layla,
Three years now we’ve been at school together, but never really known each other. I would like it if you went out with me on Friday night. The new French movie is showing at the art theatre and I heard you say you wanted to see it. My treat. Unless you think that’s too forward. Please get back to me,
Sincerely yours,
William J. Klasko
While Layla sat there with the note, Dena leaned over and whispered to her:
“I think you should say yes.”
Will was on the other side of the class room door when Layla and Dena came out, and he sprang on them, not even noticing Brendan, who was across from him, also waiting.
“Are you two trying to scare the hell out of us?” Layla looked at them.
“Actually, I don’t think he even noticed me,” Brendan said, humbly. “I thought we could all go to lunch together. Will too, actually. Unless you were eating with someone else.”
“No,” Will said. “No, I’d love to sit with you guys. That all right with you, Layla?”
Layla plastered a smile on her face.
“Of course it is.”
“Well, then let’s go,” Brendan said.
He pulled Dena a little ahead of them, and he had whispered something that Layla suspected might have been about the porn. Will was saying:
“So did you get my message?”
“Yes,” Layla said. “And yes.”
“Huh?”
“I mean, yes,” Layla told him. “I’ll go with you.”
“Did you know that Layla was the name of an Arabian princess?”
“Who was placed in a loveless marriage instead of being able to marry the man who pined for her. Yeah.”
Will looked at her.
“Did you know?” she said to him. “That you’re actually kind of cute when you shut up and you’re not working to impress someone.”
“I…”
She looked at him.
“I don’t know what to say.”
Layla caught his hand and dragged him down the hall, behind Brendan and Dena.
“That’s how I like you,” she told him.
