Smoke

This story is part of the Butch Lab Symposium.

I didn't notice her at first when I walked in. It was dark and crowded, and I was already tipsy. I walked straight past the bar lined with queers ordering drinks, past the pool tables where frat boys threw back beers and grabbed their blonde girlfriends, past the dancefloor which was currently taken over by a crowd of onlookers watching someone I couldn't see sing karaoke. I threw my coat on a pile behind the cigarette machine and went to find a drink and my roommate.

She was leaning against the bar with her eye on me, but I didn't yet know it.

Roommate found, drink in hand, the karaoke finally gave way to the dj and we snaked into the middle of the dancefloor. I sweated out the heat of the day to the beat of Taio Cruz, eyes closed, arms in the air. After a couple of songs, my roommate nudged me and pointed to a couple of hot butches nearby. I grinned and raised an eyebrow, watching them now but trying not to be obvious about it. A few songs later, though, they'd made their way closer to us, although none of us acknowledged that we were all checking each other out. One of them was fucking gorgeous, and right next to me....I kept brushing up against her casually, the way you have to when the dancefloor's so crowded, and every time my arm touched hers I got more turned on. She was a few inches shorter than me, especially in my heels, with spiky hair, solidly strong arms and bound flat chest. She was looking at me boldly now through glasses just hip enough (but not too much), and when the music paused to go back to karaoke she leaned in close and said, "Smoke." Then she disappeared through the crowd.

I am not a smoker, and I will admit that it took me a split second to realize that she was asking me to step outside with her, instead of telling me...something? Her cheesily mysterious butch nickname? When I figured it out, I laughed at myself and moved to follow her. Outside it was dark and humid but slightly chilly, the mark of late summer, and I leaned into her and flirted. She touched my waist, I put my palm just below her collarbone, we talked of nothing important with our voices but everything with our eyes and breath. She finished her cigarette. We went back inside with our fingertips touching and danced together until last call. The crowd pushed us outside together, and we stood there looking at each other in the parking lot. I'd biked into town, and she offered to give me a ride home. "Thanks," I said. She opened the door for me, something nobody had ever done for me before. It tickled my newly-discovered femme identity, and I swooned a little on the inside. She fastened her own seatbelt and turned to me: "Your place or mine?" How bold! How gallant!

"Yours, I think," I managed. I kept my fingertips lightly on her thigh as she drove, and by the time we got there I was kissing her neck gently, urgently. I hardly knew this butch, but I was smitten and very, very turned on. When we got to her apartment, we were cool as anything until the door closed -- then we fell on each other, mouths open and hungry, hands moving over each other, exploring, discovering. She undressed me tenderly but quickly and I stood before her in my skin, dress pooled around my feet, watching her eyes wander over me. I knelt in front of her, undid her belt buckle, and unzipped her pants before she pushed me to the bed and finished undressing herself. She came to me with gentle power in her broad hands. She worked me over and filled me up and I sighed and screamed in her ear, and her breath was hot on my skin as she came with me all the way and back again.

In the morning she bought me coffee on the way back to my bike, still locked to the railing outside the bar. I kissed her in the car and told her to text me. And she did....oh, she did. She sent me gloriously explicit texts all that day about how much she enjoyed me, how she'd like to again, and I reciprocated. So I showed up that night, back at her apartment, wondering about my own judgment but knowing that she wasn't an asshole, and that I'd just had the best sex of my life. This time she got me a beer from the fridge and put on a record, and we sat close on the couch listening to Elvis and getting to know one another a little. We were both, I think, timid about the fact that this bar hookup wasn't just a one night stand, and she asked how it was that I felt confident enough to go home with her, essentially a stranger. "Well," I replied, "I have a pretty good sense of people. But mostly, you were by far the hottest butch in that bar, and I wanted you."

"Oh," she said, smiling, "I'm not butch."

"Yes, you are," I said, eyebrows raised. Is it possible that she doesn't know? It's not like she's some college kid, she's old enough to have figured out at least some of this identity stuff.

"No, I'm not," she said again. "I used to think I was butch. I lived in the city after college and I played pool with all the butches at the lesbian bars, and they thought I was one of them. I thought I was one of them. And then I realized, spending all that time with those butches -- that wasn't me. I'm not that kind of tough. I'm a faggy genderqueer."

I stepped all over myself apologizing, much to his amusement, appalled at myself that I would have misinterpreted so badly (liberal queer femme trans-loving-ally-self that I am). And then I had all kinds of questions, about how genderqueer was different for him from butch, and different from trans -- and I am lucky enough to still be getting answers to those questions. He answers me with his voice, with his eyes, with his body, with his whole self -- and sometimes we both help each other see a little bit more of who we are.


I didn't see you at first when I walked in, or even after. I had no idea that you would come into my life like a flame, like a fireplace to sit beside, like a warm hand on the small of my back, like a sweet morning kiss in the early grey light and a sexy strong presence to put me just where I want to be in my body. You are my sweet boy, my strict old man, my beau.