Free Unlike Others by Valerie Taylor Page B

eventually be fired because she knew too much about the boss's private affairs, she wouldn't be fired because he knew too much about hers. That was some help.
    He avoided her all the rest of the week.
    By Saturday her body's hunger was more than she could endure. She thought about Linda, her silent understanding and her excellence in love. She thought about Karen, cold and grudging, whom she had still loved with all the need that was in her. She thought about Betsy, who was going to Cal City with Stan this very evening and who might very well be eager and willing to give him what he was looking for. Three girls in her life, more less, and nothing but trouble and frustration from all them.
    Betsy and Stan would have dinner and go somewhere for a show, and park for a while, and then he would take her to a hotel. Or more likely a motel, lots of transient trade in for quickies and no questions asked. Jo didn't think he would make love to her in the car, like a pair of teen-agers, all cramped and squashed and half-dressed. She hoped not. If Betsy were really going to do this idiotic thing, she hoped it would be better than that. It hurt to think about Betsy in a man's arms, but she couldn't help it. She knew how Betsy would look with her clothes off, the tender slim perfection of her young body, the soft curve of her breasts with the twin pink rosebuds, the almost adolescent lines of her and the whiteness of her skin. Relentlessly, her mind followed the two of them, man and woman, through every stage of their lovemaking. When she came to the final consummation she put her hands over her face, as though to hold off a blow.
    She had never felt any jealousy of Betsy's young husband, only a motherly pity and a sense of kinship. He was one of her own people, caught in a situation she knew only too well. But the idea of Betsy in bed with Stan was too much. She felt as though she would choke.
    In this frame of mind she changed her shirt and went to The Spot, stopping on the way to have a steadying drink because she was afraid of what she might find when she walked in. She wanted to see Linda, but there was a chance of finding Linda with someone else—or of being rebuffed even if Linda were unattached.
    Besides, she felt confused. She wanted Linda, who could satisfy her needs so expertly. At the same time she loved Betsy, who didn't even know she was gay, who very well might not be gay, although Jo had never felt this way about a straight girl.
    It was a mess.
    Linda wasn't at The Spot. Jo stayed for almost four hours, drinking slowly but steadily and beginning to feel tearful as she always did when she was loaded. Linda didn't show up. In the end Jo went home with a chubby-faced blonde butch in jeans who pulled no punches asking her, and wasted no time getting her into bed once the door was locked behind them.
    Even with all that bourbon under her belt, she found a fierce pleasure in the girl's lovemaking. She was aggressive, violent at times, but good. But Jo's head ached and at the craziest moments the picture of Betsy in Stan Haxton's arms kept coming back to her.
    She didn't want to be here in this room with this stranger.
    It was almost daylight when she went home. Her head ached and she had heartburn. She didn't know why people never included heartburn when they talked and wrote about the evil effects of drinking, it was painful enough. She couldn't turn her head without losing her balance. Her face felt gritty. A lot of nothing, and for what? A cheap, dirty satisfaction.
    She took a taxi to the station and caught the first southbound train of the morning. The passengers looked tired and dejected. Bums and drunks, she criticized them. That's what I am, a bum. And a Lesbian too. Puts me right down at the bottom of the social scale.
    She let herself into the building, got up the stairs to her own room—thank God, she wasn't rich enough to live in a place with doormen and elevator operators—and finally got her apartment door