So I went over to my friend Joana’s house the other day, one of the rare occurrences of the mythical Mary emerging from her lair to stalk about the countryside. Yes, I realize this has never been documented, never been caught on film but you can trust me, it does happen on occasion. Sometimes even twice in one week.

And what do I find when I arrive? She had company. Some straight girl and her lesbo friend I know from town. [As a side note, it's a funny thing how city folk in otherwise rural areas still say "in town" or "from town". Growing up in the country really does stick with you. Even when you're referring to an area within the same city, just a few blocks away, that's "in town". Go figure.] They’re in the living room chatting it up so I nodded through the introductions, made a couple of polite remarks and headed for the kitchen to grab a beer.

From over the bar I gave Joana my smirking “What up wit dat?” eyebrow and she tossed back her “Shaddap” nose twitch. Non-verbal communication is dah bomb.

So I settle into the conversation, more really assuming they’d been at it a while and would get bored and leave soon so I could tell Joana the super awesome story I had to share with her. In about two seconds the topic of conversation became obvious and I found myself witnessing these two using feigned curiousity to express disdain for Joana’s celibacy. [Those of you unfamiliar with Joana: she's a lesbian and a Christian, having chosen to remain celibate rather than bother with her dealing with her sexuality. I can totally dig it and it's the same route I chose initially.]

I actually got a little mad at that and even more so when I realized that Joana had chosen to suffer through it for the sake of company. I had to stifle my impulse to come to her defense and make a scene, though. If it had been me, it would have been “go time”. But Joana’s nice. She doesn’t mind suffering a bit and shrugging off insult.

Me? I prefer smacking people. Not the healthiest or wisest choice perhaps. Which is why I didn’t really mind stifling the impulse and letting her handle things as she would.

All of which occupied me long enough to fail to realize I’d more or less just offered up myself as a target once I sat down and entered the conversation. And sure enough, I ended up fielding questions in less than a minute. And of course, because we were dealing with a lesbo and a lesbo sympathizer, the questions didn’t seem to have an boundaries and little familiarity with the concept of “appropriate”.

I was grumpy pretty quick. But I like Joana, she’s a very good friend. So I tamped down the grumpy and answered honestly. I did manage to put the turnabout on ‘em and force them to suffer a bit for the sake of company. Justice for what they were doing to Joana when I arrived, I figured.

I did find it not at all odd that the straight girl was the one asking all the questions and being snarky. The lesbo largely just shut up and sipped her beer.

HETERO GIRL: “So you don’t ever miss it? You know, everything you gave up to marry this guy?”
MARY: “About as much as any other married woman misses dating.”

LESBO: “So you’re bi-, right?”
MARY: “No. I’m not attracted to men at all.”

HETERO GIRL: “But don’t you guys…”do it”? I mean, right?”
MARY: “Oh, hell yeah. We’ve been married nine months. We “do it” all the time.”

HETERO GIRL: “But you’re not attracted to him?”
MARY: “I’m attracted to him. Of course. We probably don’t have the passion any other couple has at nine months…probably more like a couple that’s been married for, like, five years. But then our situation is kinda flip-flopped because we didn’t marry for passion, so we didn’t really start with that. We get to see our passion grow rather than recede.”

HETERO GIRL: “So do you…what…fantasize about other people or something?”
MARY: “Well, I could say “no” but that wouldn’t really be honest, would it? I can say that I don’t fantasize about other people when I’m with him any more than any other woman who’s been married for nine months to someone they’re madly in love with. Probably a lot less so because it would be even more of an insult to him. In fact, only one such incident springs to mind and remember it so clearly precisely because I felt so guilty about the insult. And that doesn’t even address that it’s a perversion to me now, so it rather fumbles as a turn on these days anyway. It didn’t even work.”

LESBO: “Okay, so you really see loving another woman as a perversion?”
MARY: “I love Joana. I have friends who are women that I love very much. That’s not at all perverted. Having sex with them would be. Even the desire to would be perverse. I don’t claim not to have that desire, just that it’s perverse and so I reject it.”

HETERO GIRL: “So that’s the point, right? How are you going to go through life suppressing the natural desire for intimacy with another woman and it never cause you any frustration? Aren’t you afraid that one day it’s going to be too much and you’ll fall for the first woman that shows an interest, destroy your marriage? That happens all the time.”
MARY: “And it doesn’t bother you that you sound like a child molester? Look, no offense but that is what you sound like when you say that. You talk about homosexual desire like it’s some beast that will turn on you and consume you if you don’t feed it regularly. Heterosexuals don’t talk about their desire that way, unless they’re sex addicts. So is that what homosexuality is? A dysfunction? So treat it like you do any other dysfunction. That’s what I do. And I’m very satisfied with the results.”

LESBO: “Yeah but you’re sex life isn’t nearly as satisfying with this guy as it was before. And say what you want but people divorce over that all the time.”
MARY: “Okay, look. Let me make two points here before this goes any further, so there’s no confusion. First, my sex life has never been better. Granted, I’ve had lovers in the past that were amazing. But even with them I never had this kind of relationship. It just doesn’t get any better than this. This is what sex was designed for, so despite all the strikes against us, because we recognize the nature of the thing, our sex life kicks ass. Just doesn’t get any better. Second, even if we both knew from the start that sex was not going to be an option for us, even if this were some kind of celibate marriage or something, we would have married anyway. Actually, come to think of it, maybe not. But we could have. It wouldn’t have been a crazy decision for us. And I’d still be happy with it if that was the case. So sex, while important, isn’t the focal point of our marriage. It isn’t the goal here, it’s just one of the tools we use to reach that goal. So, while I consider myself very lucky to have a great sex life with this guy, it’s not a critical point.”

LESBO: “How can you say it’s not crucial to your marriage? That doesn’t make any sense to me.”
MARY: “How often do you and [her girlfriend] have sex? Don’t even answer because it doesn’t matter. The fact is that the answer is going to be something less than constantly. Which by itself shows there’s more to your relationship than that. All that stuff in between the scattered moments you two actually have sex, that’s the relationship, right? So what’s sex got to do with it? For you, sex is what you build your relationship around. Everything you do in your relationship is there to support the sex. For me it’s the other way around. Sex is something that supports and strengthens the relationship. It’s not even the only thing, any more than any single thing in your relationship that you use to enhance the sex.”

LESBO: “Well, I think you don’t know anything about my relationship.”
MARY: “I think I know what every homosexual relationship I’ve ever been in was like. And I see you sitting here having trouble understanding the role sex plays in my marriage, which you wouldn’t be having trouble with if I’m wrong.”

LESBO: “Well, I can’t imagine sleeping with a guy. I couldn’t ever do that.”
MARY: “You’ve never been with man?”
LESBO: “No, never. No way.”
MARY: “Not ever, never? Not even once?”
LESBO: “Well…once. A long time ago. I hated it.”
MARY: “Really.”
LESBO: “Yes.”
MARY: “So tell me about it. What happened?”
LESBO: “He was just a friend. We got drunk and one thing just led to another. You know. I regretted it ever since.”
MARY: “So you regretted it. I can get that. But you didn’t like it at all? Nothing enjoyable about it at the moment?”
LESBO: “Well, yeah. He was good friend and we really did care about each other. But it was just horrible afterward.”
MARY: “So there you go. The only difference is that it isn’t horrible for me afterward. We’re good friends, we love each other very much and we’re married. There’s no horrible afterward.”

HETERO GIRL: “You’ve got a weird way of looking at things.”
MARY: “I’ve got a Christian way of looking at things. Comes with being a Christian.”

HETERO GIRL: “Hold on. You said you aren’t attracted to men. But you’re attracted to the man you’re married to?”
MARY: “Right.”
HETERO GIRL: “But how? Why is this the only guy in the world you’re attracted to?”
MARY: “I’m not attracted to him as a man. If I met him for the first time ever in a bar somewhere, I wouldn’t immediately be attracted to him. If we struck up a conversation, I’d find him interesting but I wouldn’t immediately be attracted to him. If we became friends, I wouldn’t be attracted to him. If we became lifelong friends who understood each other intimately and love one another very deeply, then I’d be attracted to him. And only in the sense that sex would be an option. Even then I’d prefer the woman I met in the bar five minutes ago.”

HETERO GIRL: “You’re not attracted to him, then. You don’t see him as a man but as the person that he is. He’s not some sexy guy to you. So that’s not even a heterosexual attraction.”
MARY: “Just like a woman who’s been married for twenty years. How often does she see her husband as the hunk in the bar? He’s the guy she’s married to. Same thing. And he is pretty damned sexy to me sometimes. Probably not as often as someone who married a guy she had passion for but those marriages tend to burn out quickly, don’t they? I don’t often just walk into a room, see him and think, “Damn, he’s hot.” But he turns me on all the time.”
HETERO GIRL: “And that doesn’t make any sense to me. You’re attracted to him, you’re not attracted to him. He’s sexy, he’s not sexy. He turns you on, he doesn’t turn you on. None of that makes any sense.”
MARY: Okay, I think I see what you’re having trouble with here. And the funny thing to me is that your friend here probably already gets it. But give me a minute to think how I’m going to explain this to you.”

So I went to the kitchen with Joana to make coffee. Where we snickered a bit, I admit. Even Joana understood the difference between love and sex and how the two interacted. And she’s a celibate lesbian. Yet the college educated blond was mystified.

Nutty.

Then I came back, we served coffee and I told the two girls a story…

I had a project I was working on a while back. I built a gazebo in the back yard. Not a huge project and one I really sorta dabbled in now and again. Which was just terrible really because it meant I had this big pile of unidentifiable carpentry with a fluttering plastic tarp tossed over it for like two months. But it gave me something to do when I was in the mood to twist and mangle something.

And besides, I really wanted a gazebo in my back yard.

So when I decided it was time to wrap up the project and get it done so it would stop uglifying my back yard I grabbed the guy and we went out there to finish it once and for all. Now during the process of doing this in the middle of a hot Louisiana summer day, he shucked his shirt pretty quick and I stripped down to a sport top. It was hot. We were sweaty. Muscles bulged all around.
There was some grunting here and there.

All of which soon attracted the attention of our neighbor, who found herself distracted at the sight of my guy working on the gazebo; shirtless and glistening in the summer sun. At which I tossed a good-natured eyebrow when I realized she’d got lost in the spectacle. She was embarrassed but she grinned an apology and disappeared. Honestly, I can’t really blame her and I kinda felt a little proud. I’d convinced him to start working out with me way back and it had paid off. He’s in good shape.

He never noticed, of course. Too busy cursing the gazebo for challenging his woodworking skills. Guys get weirdly aggressive with they work on something. It’s bizarre and a little frightening, I think. But this did draw my attention to the fact that he was indeed working hard in the summer sun, glistening and shirtless. And while I could admire the beauty of it…it really didn’t do anything for me. In point of fact, he smelled a bit.

Which honestly was more attractive than the sight. I actually love his smell up until the point where it officially becomes a stink. Then not so much. It hadn’t quite reached that point yet, though.

Now, of course, he didn’t notice the neighbor gawking but he spotted me checking him out. And utilizing his awesome psychic powers he knew exactly what I was thinking. So he stopped and gave me a parody of a pose and waggled an eyebrows at me, knowing full well it wasn’t doing much for me but willing to laugh with me about that. And we did laugh for a second, then went back to work grinning.

Eventually the gazebo was finished. We still had to sand and water seal and all that stuff. But the actual construction was done. So we sat on the porch, drank some cold Cokes and chatted while we sweat it off. He made me promise to slow dance with him inside the thing once it was officially open for business, no music, just us. I made him promise he’d keep his stampeding herd of beer buddies away from it.

We reminisced about this and that, spending maybe five full minutes just sipping Coke and chatting. In the process we ended up talking about things we don’t talk about with anyone else. And he told me a story about his brother. How once upon a time they were playing a cigarette lighter in the living room, trying to find something to distract themselves with while their father and mother fought in the bedroom. He may even have been abusing her in there, he said, but he couldn’t recall. Just that they were desperate for a distraction.
So his brother grabbed a cigarette lighter and started burning the fringes hanging off some kind of some kind of decorative cloth on the wall. Some kind of embroidered blanket or something, he couldn’t remember. It was red, he remembered that. And his brother would set fire to one of the fringes and let it burn up away, then put it out quickly before the whole thing caught fire. Which Matthew found completely fascinating.
So he either convinced his brother to let him try it or grabbed the lighter once his brother put it down. Somehow or other he ended up giving it a shot.

And so set fire to the whole thing. Causing his father to come out and investigate all the noise of the two boys trying to put it out.

His father grabbed the thing off the wall and simple tossed it outside, thankfully preventing the whole trailer from going up. Then beat Matthew for a few minutes. Because his brother claimed he didn’t even know what was going on and Matthew had set fire to it while he wasn’t looking.
So once his father had beat him to his satisfaction he yelled at him for a while then tossed him out of the trailer, telling him he wasn’t allowed to sleep inside tonight. He’d almost burned down the whole house, so that was his punishment (never mind the beating, I suppose). Apparently he needed to develop some appreciation for having a roof over his head.

Matthew remembers that he was bleeding from somewhere on his head, probably his nose or ear but he couldn’t say for sure. One of his hands was burned as well from trying to put out the fire. So he sat in the dirt at the trailer hitch, not wanting to be near the front door, and cried a little while trying to figure out where he would sleep that night.
He eventually decided on the car, figuring that was the best choice. He also figured he’d go on ahead and go to sleep, hoping that he’d wake up before his father got ready for work in the morning and could hide until he was gone, then go back inside.
His brother came outside a little later before he could hop in the car and go to sleep. Apparently feeling guilty for everything, the brother sat with him for a while and consoled him. And he took a stick off the ground and showed him how to draw a five-pointed star in the dirt. Which Matthew thought was completely amazing.
Which is how Matthew figures he must have been five or six at the time, that drawing a star in the dirt with a stick, all in one continually unbroken line, was amazing. His brother let him do it and walked him through the process until he perfected it, then praised him for being so clever.
And Matthew said he had never since loved anyone the way he loved his brother at that moment. Never mind that he’d played a large part in his getting beaten and tossed outside for the night. He’d taken the time to show him something amazing and teach him how to do it. He could draw a five-pointed star, all in one unbroken line, to this day because his brother had risked leaving the house and showing him how.
Then his brother made sure he was okay, went inside to shove a pillow and blanket out the window for him and Matthew made a bed in the back seat of the car for the night.

During the process of telling me this story, we ended up holding hands and leaning closer. Despite being sweaty, hot and a little tired we were very close at that moment.

Then I kissed him, intending simply to convey, “I love you.”

But the kiss got hot real quick and I ended up dragging him to bed right from the back porch.

Because, you see, I had built a gazebo with this guy. I’d run off a neighbor who was gawking at his shirtless torso. We shared a Coke and sat really close while he opened up his heart and told me a story he’d probably never told anyone else.
That was pretty friggin’ sexy.

The college-educated blond didn’t get the point, though. Instead, she insisted this was proof I was bi-sexual. I advised her never to marry.

The lesbo didn’t say anything. She already got it. I gave her a good look in the eye before I left, which she shied away from.

One can only hope.