[Close Calls cover]

"Close Calls," Part One

By Wickie Stamps

A Story from Close Calls: New Lesbian Fiction

"I didn't mean to kill her. After all she was my lover. Sometimes I just get mad is all," Christy said as she lit her cigarette and took a deep drag. It was my second trip up to MCI Framingham. And my second meeting with Christy. All my other clients were women who killed their abusers. Except for Christy. She was the abuser who had killed her female lover. Because Christy was a woman and a lesbian I'd made an exception and had decided to work with an abuser. I hadn't mentioned my decision to anyone in my life. Personally, I was sick of talking to people about my choices.

"It was drugs," Christy added as she swept her dirty blond hair back off her shoulder. She was wearing the type of strappy tee shirt my father and uncles used to wear. She readjusted herself in the chair and tapped her cigarette on the edge of the ashtray. Just this slight wrist movement accentuated the definition in her forearms. It was obvious that Christy spent a great deal of time in the prison's weight room. She took a second drag, heaved herself up out of her chair and strode over to the window. I was a bit startled by how quickly she'd stood up. But Christy never did anything slowly. She stood with her back to me and stared out the window. Then she shoved her cigarette in her mouth, locked her fingers together behind her back, flexed her shoulders and stretched. I studied her powerful back muscles and the tattoos that wrapped around her arms. Hugh lizards coiled upward from her forearms, their heads disappearing into the back of her tee shirt. About a half dozen lines of four inch scars, obviously carefully placed, were slashed across each shoulder. As I examined her scars and tattoos I wondered if her posing before me wasn't premeditated to arouse me. After all she was an abuser which, in my eyes, meant she'd cross any boundary she could find.

"Killing her just came with the territory," she said casually as she stared out the window. "Anyway she had AIDS and wouldn't have lasted long. Gave it to herself." The last statement seem to be added as an afterthought. Christy did not seem to interested in our conversation. Like most inmates, Christy could get "good time" credits for attending therapy and showing a willingness to reform. The credits could then be applied to either days off a sentence or privileges within the prison. This often left my client's motivation open for question.

"Excuse me?" I said, not sure I understood what she had just said. I had been too caught up in studying her looks. I, who was what women often referred to as a Birkenstock lesbian -- pale, slightly out of shape and neither butch nor femme -- was fascinated by the visual impact of such a masculine-looking woman. In the world of Cambridge dykes, lesbians who looked like Christy were a rarity.

She turned and blankly stared at me. "I said she gave herself AIDS." Christy's tone struck me as nasty and impatient.

"Oh," I said, uncomfortable with her attitude.

"No, not 'oh.' You don't understand. I'm not talking about how everyone gives themselves AIDS or some shit. I mean she was getting high with someone who had AIDS and she intentionally injected herself with his blood." Christy's voice was angry. She seemed annoyed at my confusion.

"Really?" I said trying not to sound too fascinated, but I was.

"Yeah, really," Christy added sarcastically. She turned back toward the window and looked out again. Like all the windows at Framingham it looked out onto asphalt and barbed wire. "Jesus I wish they'd turn the fucking heat off," she added and gingerly touched the ancient radiator that was in front of the window. My eyes wandered down to Christy's buttocks. Like the rest of her body they were tight and highly developed. Her jeans clung to her in the same manner as the young, Irish Catholic punks who dominated the street corners in Dorchester, my neighborhood. I knew I could run into trouble feeling so attracted to an inmate. Again, I decided that because Christy was a lesbian, perhaps I could help her.

"Aren't you going to say something?" she said with her back still to me. She glanced over her shoulder. While Christy was busy staring out the window I was wondering if I wasn't overreacting to what seemed like her hostility towards me. Perhaps Christy's butchness intimidated me.

"What do you want me to say?" I asked, trying to regain my composure. I liked her looks, but she made me feel grossly out of shape and emotionally diminished by her intensity.

"Just fucking anything," she said harshly and strode over to the table where we were sitting and impatiently stubbed out her cigarette. "Just fucking anything." I looked down at her work boots and found myself instinctively curling my toes up into my Reeboks. This woman made me very nervous. I was aware that I was feeling confused about why. "What's the matter with you, are you afraid of me or something?" Christy added as she looked at me with great annoyance. I felt put on the spot. And guilty that I was so aroused. I swallowed my fear and tried to focus on our exchange. I could not figure out if I was afraid of her because she was an abuser or if her aggressiveness was frightening me.

"How do you feel about killing your lover?" I asked, trying to get our exchange back onto more therapeutic ground. Christy sat down across from me and crossed her arms over her chest. Her biceps were as powerful as any man's.

"Like killing myself," she said.

Her response surprised me. Christy did not strike me as someone who was long on remorse. From her records I knew that, after beating her lover to death, Christy completely destroyed her lover's most valued personal possessions.

"Are you telling me you are suicidal?" Christy did not strike me as a woman prone to suicidal tendencies. Murderous, yes. But suicidal? I doubted it.

"No, I just think I ought to be punished. How the fuck would you feel if you'd killed your lover?" she asked and glared at me. I wondered if she had a general dislike of women, a fact that, given she was a lesbian, confused me.

"I did." I couldn't believe my own ears. It had been a long time since I'd lied to a client.

"What?"

"I said 'I did.'" I sat completely still. I was as clueless as Christy as to what I was going to say next.

The silence lay heavily in the space between us. The exchange had given me a breather from my own confusion. And it was obvious it had taken Christy by surprise.

"You're fucking lying," Christy said.

I could see the confusion and suspicion in her eyes. I could also tell she was trying to figure out my angle. I felt like I had knocked her off guard. I suppressed a smile. I felt like I had one up on this very powerful woman. I took a deep breath and momentarily relaxed. I considered terminating the session. Too many things seemed to be happening. But I didn't. I hated the fact that she intimidated me so much.

"You wouldn't be a god damned counselor, sitting across from me on an act of feminist mercy if you'd killed you lover. You'd be my cell mate." She looked at me with disgust.

"Not necessarily," I said, momentarily regaining my composure and returning to the conversation. "Maybe I just didn't get caught." I surprised myself with my flip tone. It verged on being sassy.

Christy studied me. I could feel her trying to size me up. "You're lying," she said quietly but seemed fascinated by the exchange. Her eyes roved over my entire body. I felt like every nook and cranny of my out-of-shape body was completely exposed. I had never been so blatantly checked out by another woman. I wanted to tell her to knock off the cruising, but I actually enjoyed the attention. My lover Carla wasn't big on giving me sexual attention. Rather than tell Christy to cut it out, I sucked in my stomach, straightened up in my chair and, as best I could, tried to remain calm. I controlled my impulse to tuck my hair behind my ear, a habit that persisted despite the fact I had cut off most of my hair ten years ago.

"Maybe I'm lying, maybe not," I said and met and matched her gaze. A barely perceptible smile crept across my lips, a fact that did not go undetected by Christy who seemed to be enjoying our exchange. I was aware that my behavior was edging on being flirtatious. "So, like I said, what was it like?"

Christy sized me up for a few seconds. "All in a days work," she said flippantly. She shoved back her chair and spread her legs wide. Her blue jeans pulled tightly across her muscular thighs. I knew from her records that she had worked for several years on a construction crew. She crossed her arms over her chest and gave me an incredulous look. "Did you really kill your lover?" she asked again. She looked at me suspiciously with a slight twinkle in her eye. I couldn't help but smile. I liked her. She could be incredibly charming when she wanted to.

"No, but I know that you did and I want to know about your reasons so." She didn't let me finished.

"Have you ever wanted to?" she asked. It was a question that Christy seemed to have wanted to ask someone for a long time. There was a childlike eagerness in her voice.

"Well?" she asked and stared at me hard. I sat in my chair and considered this woman who would probably be in prison for the rest of her life. She was not the first women I'd met with who had killed another human being. But she was the first lesbian. I hesitated in my response.

"Who the fuck am I going to tell?" she asked and tipped back her chair. Her question caught me off guard. As did the sudden increase in her anger. "And who would listen to me anyway," she added, suddenly looking extremely young and grumpy. Without warning she let her chair tip forward and banged it's front legs onto the linoleum floor. It seemed like an intentional move to scare me. She seemed annoyed at the entire conversation. She reached for her Marlboro's that lay on the table between us, pulled one out, tapped the end hard on the back of her hand and jammed it into her mouth. I leaned forward, picked up her lighter, clicked it open and held the flame towards her. She wrapped her hand around my wrist and pulled it towards her. Her hands were strong, her palms callused. As she took a drag on her cigarette she looked over at me, held my wrist for a second longer than was necessary to light the cigarette and then released it. I was totally turned on by this strong, butch woman. By the way Christy looked at me, I was pretty sure she knew that I was. And that she was also interested in me. I was aware that, just like most abusers, Christy would use anything, including her good looks, to get her way. She took another deep drag on the cigarette then rested her arm back down on the table and distractedly rolled the tip of the cigarette on the edge of the ashtray. She looked over at me, waiting for an answer.

She never got one. I merely smiled nervously at this woman whose every move either aroused or scared me.

I left Framingham and went directly to see Marta, my therapist and a candidate at Cambridge's Jungian Institute. It had been a hard decision for me to reenter therapy. But for the past few months my fear level was hovering around 9.5 on a scale of 10. And I was having a hard time setting limits with people and standing up for myself. I had told the intake analyst that I would stay open to whoever they felt would be best for me. They didn't have to be queer or female, two things I'd usually required in the past. Marta Schmidt, a young, straight Jewish woman originally from New York, was who I was assigned to. Immediately we hit it off. She also had a great sense of humor.

It was Marta's idea that I meet with her after my visits to Framingham. Quite honestly I didn't know why. On the intake I'd told the analyst that my mother had been incarcerated so I assumed that Marta had based her suggestions on this fact. Also I was starting to have panic attacks after each visit.

As always the session began with a long silence. I sat in the chair directly across from Marta with my arms crossed over my chest, still angry that after so many years of therapy with droves of different therapists, I had to return. I mentioned my anger to Marta.

"Say more about that," she said.

"What's to say?" I shrugged, annoyed at her classic therapeutic response. "I'm thirty five, I've been in therapy off and on for over ten years, I'm in recovery, I've been in treatment facilities and even battered women's shelters and for what? To come back to therapy?" I sighed and felt rather childish. "I'm also really sick of paying so much money to get over a horrible childhood." I sat in my chair and pouted. "I'm sorry, I just thought I'd have my act more together than I do."

"What does it mean to have your act more together?"

I paused. I knew I should talk about Christy but I really didn't want to. I had conveniently neglected to mention to either my lover or Marta that I'd decided to see her. And, quite honestly, I already knew I'd made a mistake. I ignored Marta's question and sat thinking.

"I'm counseling a batterer," I blurted out. "She's a woman. And a lesbian. It's already a mess. I'm attracted to her but I'm afraid of her. I think I'm afraid of her because she's butch. I think I'm attracted to her because she's abusive." I took a deep breath and closed my eyes. I felt completely incapable of explaining to this straight woman what the hell was going on in my mind. I didn't even know if she knew what "butch" meant.

"Maybe you are attracted to her because she's attractive." I looked up at Marta and laughed.

"That's too simple," I said and yet was relieved that maybe it was as simple as that and not some deep-seated neurosis about being sexually attracted to abusive people. "But I'm scared of her," I said.

"Usually, if we are feeling afraid something is going on in the situation that is frightening," Marta said.

I thought about how angry Christy seemed. "Christy killed her lover. Murdered her." I waited for Marta's response.

"I'd be scared meeting with a murderer," Marta said.

"Really?" I was surprised at Marta's response. I thought I was somehow morally weak. But I plunged forward determined to convince her that I was not only a coward but confused. "Maybe I'm just afraid of my own lesbianism. Maybe I am judging her because she is so butch. So masculine," I added, just in case Marta didn't know what butch meant.

"What does your identity have to do with being afraid of a batterer?"

"My father was very violent," I said to Marta. I knew I was jumping around "And my brother. Maybe I am projecting this onto Christy."

"Maybe you should stop reading psychology books," Marta said and smiled. I laughed. I liked her. I also liked the red lipstick she always wore. And the dark-colored dresses.

"Maybe, because I am uncomfortable with my own lesbianism, that that's why I am so afraid of Christy." My argument now sounded pretty silly.

"I doubt it," Marta said without the least bit of hesitation. "More likely, she's scary. You've had a lot of experience being around people who are abusive, so you're probably right on target. Is she acting aggressive or appear extremely angry?"

"Well, I'm not too sure. But maybe I'm just judging her or something. Maybe I'm just afraid of how butch she is," I said again. "Don't you think it's possible?"

"Do you think it is different when women are abusers?"

The question threw me off. I paused and thought about it. "Well to tell you the truth if you had asked me that question before my last session I would have said 'yes' but now I'm confused." I said. I felt muddleheaded. And extremely tired. "I know I am very attracted to her. I know that I am having sexual problems in my relationship. And I think I thought that it would somehow be different working with a lesbian abuser rather that a man."

"Is it different?"

"Yes, it's more confusing." I chuckled. So did Marta. I rubbed my face with my hands. I felt totally wiped out.

"Perhaps it is too difficult to work with another lesbian right now. Especially one you are attracted to. How are your sessions going with her?"

"Not well," I confessed. "They feel out of control, moving too fast. I am filled with self doubt. I lied to her and told her I'd killed someone."

"Why did you do that?"

"I thought it might lighten the conversation or give me a chance to breathe," I said. I laughed. "I don't know my ass from my elbow right now. I don't know if I am afraid of her or if I am afraid of how I feel about her." I went back to my litany: "Maybe I'm afraid of women, maybe I'm just judgmental because she has tattoos and looks really tough. Maybe this is a triggering situation." I paused and slumped in the chair. I looked up at Marta. "She's actually really nice," I added lamely. "And very hot looking!" I giggled. So did Marta. We were nearing the end of our time. "So, you don't think that I'm afraid of her because of some sort of unresolved identity problem I'm having or that I don't like butch women?"

"I think working with someone who killed another human being can be frightening. Also, if you are attracted to her, it may be too difficult for you to work with her. Because you are both lesbians it may be too hard for you to get clear in your relationship with her. Especially since you are having sexual problems in your relationship with Carla. You might consider terminating working with this client."

I sat still for a few moments considering what Marta just said. Then I rocked back in my chair and looked out the window. Two crows were sitting on the telephone wire. I watched them picking and pecking at each other. I reached over, grabbed a tissue from the table and, while watching the two birds, blew my nose.

"Crows are the juvenile delinquents of the bird world," I said to Marta. She laughed. So did I. "I'm really overwhelmed. In case you hadn't noticed." She looked at me. And just smiled.

Go on to part two of "Close Calls"

Back to Close Calls: New Lesbian Fiction

Back to the Stonewall Inn