Mary and Daphne #110

“Can I tell you a secret,” my Mary asked me. We’d made it out to the island, which we had all to ourselves courtesy of it being an ungodly hour just before dawn. You gotta watch the sunrise sometimes; you’ll regret it if you don’t.

“You can tell me anything,” I said from my customary position bare bottom across Mary’s lap.

“I don’t wanna go home today,” Mary said.

“Me neither.”

“But we have to.”

“I know.”

“Back to normal life.”

“No more pretending stuff isn’t perfect because of quarantine,” I said.

“What do you mean?”

“During the quarantine, if something wasn’t great, we could blame the quarantine. But our quarantine is pretty much over, and there’s still stuff that’s not great. It’s just life.”

“Life is pretty good,” Mary said while petting my back. I may – may, mind you – have been naked. Also, Mary may also have been naked. We may – may, mind you – have been taking a calculated risk that we’d be concealed by the darkness, the haze coming off the lake as the sun rose, and the foliage. It was very quiet out there; if a canoe approached, we’d be able to hear it way before it got to us … probably. Anyhoo…

“Life is pretty good, but it’s not perfect. If it were, we wouldn’t mind going home. Or we wouldn’t even have to go home. We could go anywhere and do anything.”

“We’d be ladies of luxury.”

“Maybe that’s what we were in another life. We were Lady Mary and Lady Daphne, two wealthy old hens who never took husbands. People thought it was strange that we lived together; rumors were whispered, but Victorian society was too polite to just come out and say it.”

“Heehee. You should write a book.”

“Lesbian erotic romance? There can’t ever be enough of those.”

“But,” Mary said as she started rubbing my ear between her forefinger and thumb, “I still think you were a kitten in a past life.”

“That tickles.”

“That’s why I’m doing it. And yes, I know I’m mean, before you say it.”

“I like it when you’re mean, most of the time.”

“I’m so scandalized by the revelation of that well-kept secret,” she chuckled. “But it certainly does explain some things.”

“Meanie.”

“Maybe we can live here,” she said.

“I’ve always wanted to be one of those rich people who just live in a hotel.” Like some famous studio system starlet who lived in the Marmont or Waldorf or Beverly Hills Hotel and kept up an open-secret relationship with a Lilian Gish or Audrey Hepburn. Of course, if it were me and back then, I’d have Fred Astaire or Cary Grant (the two best dressed men ever) on my arm at my premiers to keep up appearances in front of the press, and they’d know they were just my beards and be pleased as punch to go along with it cuz being seen with me would be good for their careers. Yep, I was that big a star in my imaginary hypothetical universe from the past. Speaking of writing lesbian erotic romances in my head …

“Or we could just pitch a tent on this island and call it ours. We could put up a little flag,” Mary suggested.

“What would we put on our flag?”

“It would be a rainbow background.”

“Of course.”

“And spanking implements.”

“We could make it like our own little banana republic and put up a giant poster of you in a military uniform looking all determined and stuff. There could be one on every street corner. Our benevolent dictatress guiding her people with a firm hand.”

“That’s just crazy talk,” Mary said while running a fingertip from the small of my back across my butt and down the back of my thigh. I didn’t even bother trying to hide my sigh as I felt my whole body relax even more.

“Have you ever had an all-over tan,” my wife who sometimes forgets I was born a ginger asked. I evolved into a day walker, but she’s had ample opportunity to see some of the freckles I still have in places.

“I think you’re forgetting I was born a ginger. I’ve only had the option of getting a tan anywhere for, like, twelve years.” Before that, I just turned pink. In the years before I evolved into That Girl at the lake, I was That Other Girl at the lake whose mom coated her in zinc oxide and made her wear the floppiest hat. How I hated that hat. I did my very utmost to accidentally lose it, but no matter how many times it somehow was set adrift, one of my siblings or friends or sibling’s friends were pretend-nice enough to bring it back.

“You still think of yourself like the ugly duckling sometimes, don’t you?”

“How so?”

“Like you still haven’t figured out that all the ways you were different as a kid are all the ways you’re awesome as an adult. Not to mention,” she said as she squeezed my thigh, “you’re a hot little thing.”

“I’m your type.”

“You’re lots of people’s type, or have you forgotten all that unwanted attention you used to get before I came along to claim you?”

“Sometimes… And I grew out of being so awkward by high school. Not like I was an outcast or something.”

“Of course not. You were just the excitable spunky girl, isn’t that what you always told me?”

“Mhmm.” The one sometimes accused of being immature because I never had that infuriating teenage phase where I thought everything sucked, and also because not so much with the dating cuz I didn’t know for sure I was gay until I was sixteen and didn’t know what to do about it until I was seventeen and didn’t actually do anything about it until I was eighteen, and then I realized I wasn’t into vanilla, which became its own saga. Baggage more than trauma.

“But some things never go away,” Mary said.

“No, they don’t.” Like our sense of self that we develop as young kids. You can change so much, but when you look in the mirror, you’ll always see some of that person. It’s not always a bad thing, but it can be hard to shake the bad things. Maybe, like me, you have to consciously tell yourself that’s not you anymore, and do so often.

“Thanks for claiming me,” I told my Mary. She didn’t transform me into someone new or help me be who I really was or any of those clichés, but she did make it fun to be me for the first time in a long time.

“Thanks for letting me claim you.”

“Let’s switch.”

That made Mary laugh. “Do what now?”

“I wanna give you a back rub.” I got up, and Mary laid down, and I got on top of her and kneaded her shoulders and back. Gotta keep those rotator cuffs supple for when she swings stuff at my butt. “Have you ever had an all-over tan,” I asked her for my friend.

“Heehee. Yes, in college.”

“I wish I had known college you.” That’s my big regret in life, that it took so long for us to find each other. I’d give anything for a few more years with my Mary.

“Speaking of, you still haven’t made up your mind about school.”

“I know.”

“You were adamant you wanted a job not very long ago. You give up on the idea of being a teacher? Not for you after all?”

“I don’t know. I think maybe I’m starting to get good at being retired.” I decided in that moment that’s what I was. I was no longer unemployed. I was retired at the ripe age of 32, like one of those people in a ‘how this person retired at 32 with a million dollars’ clickbait articles except without the million dollars.

“Weren’t you and Mae talking about jobs the other day? … Ooo!”

“Sorry. You had a knot back here. Yeah, we were. She thought I should find a part-time job I like and just do it for play money. Ya know, to spend on vacations and little extras.”

“You could do that. I keep telling you we’re fine on my salary. If you wanna go back to work, you can, but I think it should be something you really wanna do.”

“Can I be one of those people who opens a clothing boutique that’s only open three hours a day, two days a week and complains that no one shops local?”

“We’re not that fine on my salary,” she quipped. “But you could open an Etsy store or just volunteer or do nothing. Start a garden club. Make some stay-at-home mom friends. Get involved in something. That’s what you really want, isn’t it? Just something to keep your brain from turning to mush and some things to do with other people.”

“Yeah … It’s not easy having choices. I don’t like having to pick. I’m not very good at it.”

“That’s the old you talking. Look at all the good things you picked: where to live, what to do, and me.”

“Two good decisions.”

“Three. A career not working out in the long run doesn’t mean it wasn’t a good choice at the time. You just have to pick what you’ll do next, and you don’t have to rush it. … And you don’t have to get it perfect the first time. Lots of people change course more than a few times in their lives. Who wants to be the same person and do the same thing forever?”

“True. Does that feel good?” Because she certainly felt good in my hands (and elbows; I know how to give a darn good massage).

“Very.”

“I think maybe I just wanna spend the summer focusing on getting an all-over tan, and I think I’d like it if you got one too,” I told her.

“Deal. We’ll be backyard nudists.”

“And I’ll put a bell on the fence or something so we can hear Nana coming.”

“I think you should spend more time with her now that we can. You had a lot of fun with her before the pandemic. She’s a very good influence. She can probably even give you lessons on being retired.”

“She’s sweet. I … Hear that?” The unmistakable sound of a paddle, the canoeing kind, which was not nearly as fun but can also be used as the more fun kind. Um, so I’ve heard. Really.

“Yep. That’s okay though.”

We got dressed and sat on our blanket like there had been zero naked back rub conversations at all. Not like public nudity is one of our things or exhibitionism. More just that we like each other’s bodies and the air felt really good. If you haven’t had a gentle breeze in the cool morning of a warm day caress your body in a while, I recommend it.

“Should we go back,” I asked Mary.

“We can get breakfast or we can go back to bed,” she said.

“You paid for late checkout?”

“Mhmm.”

“Let’s get breakfast and then go back to bed for a while.”

“Deal.”

Putting on clothes is such a chore, but one thing clothes do have working for them is they make convenient things to grab onto, like when Mary took a handful of my shirt and tugged me close for a kiss right on the lips.

“You’re blushing,” she said to me cuz I was blushing.

“Of course I am. You love me and stuff.”

“I do love you.”

“And thanks for loving me.”

“Thanks for letting me love you.”

“And I love you back.”

I was right. It was a second honeymoon.