Just Friends

Chapter 1-2

As I said, as I cruised the porn sites, and I did a lot of it that week, Annabelle floated through my thoughts, but an Annabelle I had never know before — pretty soon this one was lying on a bed in front of me, I don’t know why but I just started to imagine that; I started to replace the women on the screen with her. In the one that stayed with me the most, she was lying on a bed with a woman’s fingers on her white nylon panties and the woman was sucking Annabelle’s breast — Annabelle sort of became the picture on the screen and it just seemed to make so much f*****g sense, and it stunned me for a moment — because it seemed to fit: I could see this happening and then I don’t know how but I sort of placed myself in the picture, too — it was my hand on Annabelle’s panties and my mouth at her breast and when I imagined that, fear stabbed at me and I stabbed at the power switch.

That shut the computer off but not me. I’ve never imagined myself in a lesbian picture before; I just liked lesbian pictures because the women seemed so accepting of each other, so real and maybe a little powerful, too, that they had the power to express themselves, they weren’t just sitting back waiting to get rammed by some lust-driven power-monger. Well, sure, I liked to look at the bodies, too, they were so varied, so interesting and some were even worse than mine. But now, about mid-week, I wasn’t just dealing with a bunch of anonymous cyber-images, I was dealing with something a whole lot more real and physical than that: I was deal with the image of me and my best friend naked on a bed — and I was liking it. Not at first, at first it just scared me and I fought it off. But, later, when I fired up the machine again, I fired up myself.

I touched her all night and I was touching her when I phoned her in the morning to confirm dinner at her place that night.

You can talk yourself into almost anything. When I knocked on her door, I had talked myself into wanting to experiment with my best friend, I wanted to have s*x with her, I wanted to know what the whole lesbian thing was about — that’s all that I had been thinking about for the past 24 hours; I had worked myself into my first s****l lather and it didn’t seem to matter to me that all my excitement was over ... a girl.

And that girl was opening the door and looking at me and when she did I came crashing back to reality. I had seen her face a million times before: homely, serious, familiar — it wasn’t the face of my fantasy, it was the face of my best friend.

She was more nervous than usual, I knew it was because of the pictures but I didn’t say anything, I just opened one of the two bottles of wine I’d brought, poured us each a glass and settled into a chair and watched her cook. And that’s all it took: just seeing her move about was enough to morph her reality back into my s****l fantasy. I knew her look well: she is short, a little over-weight, really big breasted and a little bit pretty in a very self-conscious, very shy kind of way but as I watched her move about the kitchen I realized that never mind the face, this was the body of my fantasies and the words just came out of me, “Annabelle, are you a lesbian?”

I was watching her closely, she was stirring something on the stove and with my words she tightened for a moment as if startled, then her shoulders slowly sagged as if she was feeling utter defeat. “Yes,” she whispered.

The admission was oddly shocking to me, even though I was prepared for it — I mean, it meant that I didn’t actually know my best friend, someone I had known most of my life. How can you not know your best friend is a lesbian? “Do you want to talk about it?”

She didn’t say anything, she just slouched over the stove, pushing at some food in a pan.

“Do you?”

“What’s there to talk about?” Her voice was still almost a whisper.

“I want to talk about it, OK?” She didn’t move, didn’t say anything so I got up and went over to her, “Are you hungry?”

“No.”

“Neither am I.” I turned off the dials, pulled the pan and pot off the burners and took her by the arm, “Come on, let’s talk.” She went with me to the couch and sat down while I returned to the kitchen for the wine bottle and her glass which I filled and handed to her, “Let’s celebrate.”

“Celebrate?” She straightened from her slouch and stared at me.

“You’ve come out for God sake, that’s a reason to celebrate if there ever was one.”

She laughed, sort of, and drank, then said, “I haven’t come out.”

“You’re gay, you just admitted it, that’s coming out.”

“I’ve admitted it to you but you aren’t going to say anything ... are you.”

“No, of course not.” I took another drink while looking at her — I was finding this really exciting ... and a bit titillating — I’ve never talked about lesbianism with anyone before, “So what’s it like to be gay, I mean, do you get turned on a lot?”

“Come on, Bets.” She put her glass on the table and slouched back into the corner of the couch.

“No, I mean it, ... I mean when you pass a chick do you, like ... get the hots, is that the way it works?” I honestly didn’t know.

“Ya, all the time.”

“No, seriously.”

“Seriously?” she looked up, “To me it means that I’m more or less miserable all the time.”

“Miserable? Why?” This really surprised me.

“I have no identity, Bets, not even to myself ... unless you call being really f****d-up an identity.”

I laughed, “It’s an identity, Annabelle, it’s mine,” I laughed again, “but we’re all f****d-up, aren’t we, everyone of us, in one way or another?” I hadn’t planned to bring it up, but with all the talk of being f****d-up I did, “So what about those pictures? Why did you flag them?”

“Come on, Bets, jeez.”

“No, seriously, why?”

“I don’t know,” she got up, walked over to her desk and came back with a CD, “There all here.”

“All of them?”

“Yes!” She said, emphatically, as she slouched back into the corner of the couch.

“Didn’t keep any copies?” I was smiling coyly.

But she wasn’t looking at me, “No, of course not.”

“s**t,” I said, “I can’t even excite a lesbian.” I laughed, I though it was funny.

But she didn’t, she quickly looked up at me, “Is that why you asked me to take those pictures?”

“No, of course not, I had no idea you were gay then, but now that I know you are, it’s a bit of a downer that you haven’t said they’re pretty.

“They are pretty, Bets.”

“And sexy?”

She laughed, “Sure.”

“No, seriously, did you think they were sexy?” I hesitated for a moment, “I mean, that was the point.”

She shrugged and didn’t look up, “Yes.”

“Do you ever go online to check out ... other lesbians?” I have often wondered if other women, even non-lesbians, liked to look at other women, I mean, I did.

“No.”

For some reason it didn’t surprise me. “Never?”

“No.”

“Why not?” I mean, why wouldn’t she? I did, regularly.

“I just don’t.”

“So the only pictures of a naked women you’ve ever seen have been of me?” I could tell she was uncomfortable with this but I just waited her out.

“Yes,” she finally admitted.

“And you didn’t find them sexy?”

She looked up at me now, a little defensively I thought, “I said they were sexy.”

“Did they turn you on?” Her eyes were on mine and I had the feeling that for the first time in our life we were finally having a real conversation.

“Come on, Bets.”

“Did they?” I demanded.

I think she was looking for a way out but she couldn’t find one, “Yes,” the admission was almost inaudible.

“A lot?” I could see she was going to give me another ‘come on, Bets,’ so I repeated more forcefully, “A lot?”

“Yes.”

“Did you masturbate?” When she slumped back into the corner of the couch, totally defeated I added, “I want you to say ‘yes,’ Annabelle, I would really like it if you said ‘yes.’“

“Yes.”

That kind of stunned me a little, I was really surprised she’d admit it — it must have taken a lot of guts. “A lot?”

She seemed absolutely defeated now; she looked like she had been caught with her hand in the proverbial cookie jar; she looked like she was about to cry. “Yes.”

“Do you still have copies of my pictures on your machine?” I would have been very disappointed if she didn’t.

“Yes,” she whispered.

“Is number 139 still flagged?” That was the most graphic of them all — all me without a face.

She didn’t answer right away, she just slumped further into the corner of the couch, she had been found out — she couldn’t have been more miserable, more defeated. Finally she said, “I’m sorry, Bets, I just couldn’t help it.”

“Great.” She looked up at this, “It really excites me that I turned you on, Annabelle, like, that’s really neat.”

She couldn’t conceal her surprise, “It does? Why?”

“I don’t know, it just does,” I sat back, put my arm around her and pulled her into me, consolingly, like a friend would do. It felt strange, really strange, neither of us has ever been the touchie-feelie type.

She hesitated for a moment but when she tried to pull away I held on tight. “Why are you doing this to me?” she said.

“Do you really want to know?”

“Yes, of course I want to know.”

“Then if you’ll relax, I’ll tell you, OK? Will you just relax?”

She did, I could feel her against me, she was much softer now — I liked it. But she stiffened when I said, “It started because of those pictures you flagged.’ I squeezed her, “Jeez, just let me get this out and then you can run, OK?” She relaxed a little but not much so rather than the long story I planned to give her I gave her a really shortened version. “I thought you must have liked those pictures, I thought all week about it, at first I thought it was really strange but the more I thought about it the more I liked it, then I started thinking, you know, how you’d look in those kind of pictures and when I started thinking that way, I started m**********g and when I did that, and I did a lot of it, I knew I wanted to be here on the couch with you and I wanted us to start ... sort of ... exploring our feelings ... like, together.”

Annabelle peeked up at me, “You’re not a lesbian.”

“How do you know?”

“Are you?” Her eyes changed but you really couldn’t call it hope.

“I don’t know what I am, Annabelle, honestly, I really haven’t a clue, but I do know that I want to be here on this couch with you, and I know I want to explore my feelings with you, OK? So we’re both kind of coming out, right?” I gave her a quick kiss on the forehead then leaned back to look at her, “So Annabelle, I’ve thought a lot about this and this is the way I want to do it ... I’m going to put my lips on yours, I’m not going to kiss you, I’m just going to put my lips on yours, OK? We’ll just see what it feels like.” I could see she was going to object and it pissed me off, “Look, this isn’t easy for me, either but we’re going to do it, we’re going to explore ... so get used to it.” I had been bossing Annabelle around for as long as I had known her so we both knew I was going to get what I wanted. But, even so, when I turned and slowly leaned towards her I was kind of surprised when she didn’t try to run, she just sat there, impassively and waited for my lips to close in on hers — she could have been a mannequin. And it didn’t get any better on contact, because that’s what I felt like I had contacted, the lips of a mannequin, only these ones were warm and slightly scaling.

I had thought a lot about this first kiss, of course, I had thought about it at home, at work, on the subway, while cooking, in bed, when I first awoke in the morning. What would it be like? What would it do to me? What message would I get? Well, it was ... nice, an awful word, I know, but that’s what it felt like, nice: soft, warm, safe, feminine, intimate — I liked it and I knew I didn’t want to break it off so I eased my head sideways to rest on the back of the couch and when I did her lips followed mine.