Free The Brutal Language of Love by Alicia Erian Page A

Brigitte wanted to ask, but instead she said, “Are you going to get fired?”
    â€œGod no!” Shirley Mayer said. “I have proof. A falsified ‘Mayer Memorandum’ that begins with ‘No men and women together.’ No, being persecuted at a state institution is probably the best thing that could have happened to me. You can’t do much better than that.”
    Brigitte cleared her throat. “Would you like to have dinner with me sometime?”
    Shirley Mayer didn’t respond immediately. She repositioned her desk blotter first, then sharpened a brand-new pencil. At last she did something Brigitte had never seen her do, which was to unbutton her suit coat. It fell open to reveal that she wore no bra beneath her off-white silky blouse, and that her breasts were small and round, with pale nipples. “Your movie fascinated me, Brigitte,” she said. “I burned my bras in 1972 and never bought new ones. Now I just wear these stupid coats. It’s all the same, though, isn’t it?”
    Brigitte didn’t know what to say.
    â€œMaking ourselves presentable,” Shirley Mayer added.
    Brigitte nodded then. “Yes. I see.”
    â€œBut now women like wearing bras, right?”
    â€œI guess if you have a large chest it might be more comfortable,” Brigitte said, trying not to be obvious about appreciating Shirley Mayer’s breasts.
    â€œOh really?” Shirley Mayer asked. “Is that how you find it?”
    Brigitte resituated herself in her chair. “Well, yes.”
    Shirley Mayer nodded. “My point,” she said finally, “is that it’s a fashion.”
    â€œOh,” Brigitte said.
    â€œA passing fancy.”
    â€œI see.”
    â€œWhich brings me back to your movie.”
    â€œIt does?”
    Shirley Mayer began buttoning her coat back up. “Your movie deals with something I like to call the temporary lesbian.”
    Brigitte watched as the last of Shirley Mayer’s breasts disappeared.
    She continued: “The temporary—or environmental—lesbian feels attracted to other women only in specialized, often isolated situations, where she doesn’t run the risk of condemnation from the general public. I mean, she’s not the sort of person who finds herself getting into trouble over her sexuality. She simply isn’t that committed.”
    â€œOh,” Brigitte said. “I guess that wasn’t really what I had in mind.”
    â€œNevertheless,” said Shirley Mayer, “the film succeeds brilliantly at that level. In fact, I know several people who I’m sure would be very interested in seeing it.”
    Brigitte nodded weakly. “I’ll make you a copy.”
    Shirley Mayer smiled. “Thank you,” she said. “And thank you for the dinner invitation. Really. I accept. Just give me a rain check until the end of the semester, after I turn my grades in. Then you, the French guy, and I will all go out and have dinner.”

    â€œShirley mayer thinks I’m a fake,” Brigitte told Raoul that night. She had gone to see him at work, a sunken bar in an old bowling alley behind a shopping center.
    â€œHow so?” Raoul asked, handing her a glass of beer. He had showered and was sharply dressed in a mod-looking black T-shirt, which usually meant he hoped to go home with one of his patrons after work. Brigitte could tell she was cramping his style from the way he kept glancing down the bar at two giggling brunettes, but she didn’t care. She had no one else to talk to.
    â€œShe thinks I’m in a phase.”
    â€œA gay phase?” Raoul asked.
    â€œI think so.”
    He shrugged. “Maybe you should listen to her.”
    â€œWhy?” Brigitte asked, indignant.
    â€œBecause man, she’s probably right.”
    Brigitte sighed. “But I’m proposing that my heterosexuality is the phase.”
    â€œThis is too long to be a phase! The