Kate watched them for a while, the way they picked up each other's rhythm and figured out how to move together.
They figured it out rather quickly.
What do you know?
she thought.
Molly dances hot with everyone.
It's not just me.
That's the way she dances.
And for the first time ever, Kate felt jealous.
"Excuse me," she said, cutting in abruptly, "but I have to dance with my girlfriend."
And took her to the floor, noticing -immediately that Molly's arms went around her neck.
Then Molly announced one last stop.
"Where could we possibly be going now?"
"Shopping."
"At one thirty in the morning?"
"You know this city never sleeps.
Anyway, it's a vintage gay porn store.
You know that necessities stay open later than frivolous indulgences."
Kate felt one second of resistance before walking through the front door.
"It's fine in here," she said, without thinking.
"Excuse me?"
"I guess I might have been expecting sleazy old men jerking off into telephone booths."
Then she realized that she was surrounded by cocks.
Mostly big ones.
Mostly on beautiful young men.
She started flipping through some of the magazines.
"This is how I know I'm not a lesbian," Kate said.
"Because I'm turned on by cock.
I like cock."
"All right, Kate," Molly said.
"I can't believe you're not."
"You can't be alive in the modern age and not associate sex with big dicks," Molly said.
"Well, I like it."
"Good for you.
Does Peter have to hear you say, `I like pussy'?
Bet not."
"Well, I like cock."
Kate said it again.
She liked saying it.
It made her sound dirty and polymorphously perverse.
"Have you ever said to Peter, `I like pussy'?"
"No, I haven't," she said.
"It has never occurred to me to say that.
It wouldn't be appropriate."
Then she felt uncomfortable.
"Where's the women's stuff?"
she asked.
"Ask the guy behind the counter."
The first thing that she noticed about the guy behind the counter was that he had Kaposi's lesions on his face.
She knew that's what they were from pictures she had seen and some sideways glances at deteriorating men on the street, but never on the face of someone she had to interact with in an equal way.
How great, she thought.
How great of this place to let him keep working like that.
Then she remembered that this was a gay place, so that particular brand of compassion could probably be expected.
She wondered how many other people in the store had AIDS.
"Excuse me," she said, looking past the man's lesions to see his real face.
"Where is the lesbian section?"
"Well," he said, smiling as if nothing was wrong, nothing at all.
"Unfortunately most so-called lesbian porn is made by men for men but if you look over the really old material from the fifties and sixties there is some that's fun."
He came out from behind the counter and led her over to a solitary bin behind the videos.
"Here, for example, is a 1962 picture book disguised as a socially conscious expose'.
See, here is a classic black-and-white of two women eating each other."
He put it into her hand and walked away.
The caption said, "Lesbians are often better cunnilinguists than men."
- - That's true, she thought suddenly and was surprised.
When it was time to close up, Kate saw Molly making a huge -effort to be in a good mood, since they only had an hour to get home and make love before Kate had to leave.
On the way out Molly handed her a magazine she had bought and wrapped up in a paper bag, making her promise not to open it until she got home.
That had been a week ago.
She'd opened it a dozen times since then.
It was a collection of transsexuals in various poses.
-"I found this when you were looking at the muff-divers and thought of you immediately," Molly had said.
It was packed with photos of euphorically happy men in sexy, slimy, girly getups with hard pricks and big boobs.
They looked so turned on.
They turned her on with their dicks and tits, how excited they were.
Kate watched herself masturbate in front of the mirror.
Her face showed great pleasure.
She could rock down on her hips and swing into a low moan.
She could dance around her studio being led by her own hand.
When she masturbated against the white wall, her skin was so white that a voyeur would see no separation until the eyes.
When she danced along the purple wall, the wall the color of greengage plums, she was a body tumbling over an ocean like the flying musicians of Chagall paintings.
She masturbated.
She could feel her orgone rushing inside her like a waterfall, like crowds of teenage girls held back from the Beatles, who, suddenly in a tearful frenzy, break free of the police and lose control.
She was open in every way.
There were no obstacles.
She was streaming.
Love streams.
Pearl and Molly walked toward the church in Chelsea where so many men who had died of AIDS had their funerals.
It was one of the first places to open their business to people with AIDS and their lovers.
So it had become a safe environment for these most private of events.
The women were not talking about Jeffrey and they were not talking about AIDS.
They had said everything they needed to say.
All the rest would have been repetition because, after a point, there really was no way to resolve any of this.
They had made love and cried and waken up together and lain about and eaten breakfast and talked about Jeffrey and gotten dressed.
Coming out the front door, Molly saw a short, husky black man waiting for her on the sidewalk.
He was not leaning against the brick or sitting on the steps.
He was jumping up and down instead, trying to keep warm.
"Molly, hey you got any checks for me?"
"Charlie, I took your name off my mailbox.
This is my friend Pearl."
He shook Pearl's hand formally.
"Nice to know you."
Then he said, "Molly, I got to talk to you for a minute."
"Okay, but only a minute.
I have to go to a funeral."
The two of them went off together for a private conference - I by the mailbox, hands jammed in their pockets, feet stomping in various rhythms just to keep warm.
"Charlie, I gave up on you.
We kept making appointments and you never showed up."
"I had things you know.
I had to go see my mother."
"How's your mother?"
"Fine."
He kept looking around like someone who hated him could show up at any moment.
"Look, Molly, I need a certified letter for the Energy Assistance Program.
This can mean two hundred and fifty dollars for me.
I went to the shelter and it's crazy there.
They keep the lights on all night and the crazies don't stop screaming.
I need a letter that says I'm your roommate and I pay gas and electric so I can get energy assistance.
The same kind you gave me before, certified."
"Okay," Molly said, "but I can't do it now.
My friend died, I have to go to the funeral.
I'll meet you here at nine in the morning and we'll get it notarized."
"Okay."
"Charlie?"
"Yeah."
"Show up, okay?"
He was gone very quickly.
- I Molly took out a pen and wrote his name back on the mailbox.
"Is he going to show up?"
Pearl asked.
"No," Molly said.
"Did you know that you have to have an address to get welfare?
I didn't know that until this year."
Then they started out for the church.
"How's work?"
Pearl asked.
"I go there and watch the movies.
They change every day.
My only problem is how to prolong my happiness."
"Oh, come off of it."
"Sometimes I get tired of having to choose between taking a subway or going for coffee, but I like being relaxed."
"Molly, you're going to have to do something substantial eventually."
"What do you suggest?"
graduate school?"
"In what, computer science?"
"I don't know... social work?
You already do it, might as well get a paycheck."
"Pearl, if I ever become a social worker, please shoot me and put me out of my misery.
This is the Me Generation, remember?
There are no more social services to administer.
I'd have to wait until the return of the welfare state before there'd be any jobs to get rejected from."
"Can I ask you a personal question on a dangerous subject?"
"Sure."
"How could Kate have sex with her husband after having sex with you?"
"What is that, a compliment?"
Pearl took out a packet of Drum tobacco and started rolling a cigarette.
"Yes, I still smoke.
No comments please: Anyway, I just brought up this tender topic because isn't that your beloved standing across the street?"
"Where?"
"Right there.
You say she's not coming out, but take a look at that."
When Molly turned she stopped and they both stared through the traffic at Kate walking past Union Square Park.
She didn't seem to see them at all.
Her hair was orange against the green overcast cool and she was dressed as a man.
"Does she wear drag often?"
Pearl asked with some doubt.
"Never, I've never seen that before."
"Well, something's going on."
Kate was a man.
Anyone in the street would have thought so.
But she was a better man than most because she was so -strikingly handsome in her black suit.
She strode powerful and erect like a well-bred charming man.
A male model perhaps.
A movie star.
She didn't wear a white button-down.
She was much too stylish for that.
Kate, the man, wore a soft blue shirt designed for a sexy strong man's leisure.
It was cut to hang from his neck and muscles.
Kate was thrilling.
She was the most handsome man on the street.
"Molly?"
Pearl asked, not moving at all.
"What?"
"Do you fully understand what you're dealing with here?"' "No," Molly said, starting to walk again and then stopping one more time to take a hard last look.
"I have no idea."
When a friend finally dies of AIDS there usually is not much surprise and often some kind of relief for everyone involved because the man they loved was suffering too much.
Also, the people around him needed to go on.
These funerals were frequent ghastly habits that crept into the structure of everyone's personal life.
In fact, for Molly, at this point, there were a number of people that she only or mostly saw at funerals.
"Look," Pearl said.
"There's Jeff's family from Rochester."
Huddled stiffly in a quiet corner were the out-of-place contingent of relatives experiencing a variety of emotions that ranged from pure loss to sheer embarrassment.
They appeared to be as miserably uncomfortable with their surroundings as they were with one another.
Molly hadn't seen Bob Catmull since Ronnie's funeral but she had thought about him from time to time.
He was a particular kind of personality that always reminded other people of something.
He looked very healthy, she noted with relief as he smiled warmly, crossing the room.