Free Sapphic Embrace: The Half-Japanese Girl by Eroticatorium Page A

her about her plan to
work for the Library of Congress. By the time she finished
deseeding and destemming the weed, I felt like I had known her for
years. She packed up a bong and passed it to me.
    “But my real passion is
food,” she said, patting her gut, which was tiny, her stomach
almost totally flat. I felt a little jealous — I had always had a
waistline I wasn’t proud of, and rounder hips than any woman of
Japanese descent should have. “I love to cook. Do you
cook?”
    I laughed, taking the bong
and the lighter from her. “I love to cook too, but I’m so bad at
it. Sometimes I like the things I cook, but no one else ever does.” I hoped I
didn’t mess up taking a bong hit — bongs were complicated, came in
numerous varieties and I usually ended up making a fool of myself
trying to use them. Meredith’s bong was no exception, the shotgun
being hidden in the orange plastic tube, and I awkwardly fumbled
through it, Meredith smiling patronizingly. “I don’t smoke a lot of
bongs,” I said, feeling my cheeks blush.
    As the first hit filled my
lungs with a familiar acrid-lemon flavor and a weedy fog began to
fill my mind, I asked Meredith if she had a boyfriend. She smiled
and said, “You should get your gaydar fixed, sweetie. I was moments
away from hitting on you.”
    It took me a moment to
realize what she was saying, and then it dawned on me. “Oh my god,
you’re a lesbian!” I blushed, having embarrassed myself again in
front of her.
    She nodded. “Is that
okay?”
    “Yeah, of course, sure, I
was just surprised,” I said. “Do you have a girlfriend?”
    “No,” she said, “Girls are a
bunch of betraying, backstabbing whores. I am the worst
lesbian.”
    “Men are no better,” I
said.
    “Do you have one?” she
asked.
    “Not right now.”
    “Any men on tap?”
    “Not really. I’ve got this
neighbor, a guy who lives below me. His name is Calvert, and he is
ungodly hot,” I said, “And he’s so sweet and charming. He’s clean,
he’s not poor, I think, and he’s black so he should age
well.”
    “Shit, he sounds like a
no-brainer.”
    “Well… he’s a stripper and
an escort,” I said. “I’m liberal, but I could not handle my man
sleeping around, showing his junk off to complete
strangers.”
    “Yeah, that’s not the career
path of a man who’s ready for a serious relationship,” she
said.
    “And that is the problem with men,” I said,
leaning back against the wall, settling into the pillowy living
room. I giggled. “Lesbians have got it all figured out.”
    “Oh, sweetie,” she said, “I
don’t want to break your heart, but women are worse. They will
demand everything from you, they’ll get under your skin and then,
once they’re lodged inside you and intertwined with you, they won’t
let you go. They’ll break your heart a thousand times.”
    “I take it you’ve had some
poor relationships,” I said.
    “Is there any other
kind?”

CHAPTER TWO
    Broth
     
    Meredith spent all day cooking dinner for her and I. She
wasn’t slaving over the stove, but the stove was on, the broth
merrily bubbling and developing flavor, or so she said. She showed
me every step in the brothmaking process, which she claimed was the
most delicate art in the world. “It’s a craft,” she said, “And it’s
great, because it’s a craft you make out of what’s around you. You
don’t have to find exotic ingredients, or even any specific
ingredients. You just cook what you have.”
    She froze bones when she
cooked, so she could use them for broth, along with gizzards and
bits of unusable meat. When she spread them out on the counter in
front of me, it had almost a haunted look, frozen bones and scraps
of sinew, ice crystals dotting every surface, mysterious blobs of
meat scattered across the counter. All went in the pot, along with
frozen scraps of vegetables, pieces of onions, peppers, leeks,
mushrooms and more, vegetables I couldn’t even identify and hadn’t
heard of when she