Donna and Equality ‘If,’ said Donna, ‘all men are created equal, what about women?’ She had the ability to raise such matters at moments when I was not entirely able to reply, this time being engaged upon a mission to return a favour she had bestowed upon me earlier. Her thighs were clamped fairly tightly to my ears which made me unsure I had heard her correctly. I raised my head but she tapped it. ‘You concentrate on the task in tongue, College, and let me muse a while longer.’ Her fingers ran delightfully through my hair as I bent myself once more to my duty.
‘I suspect that whoever the sage was who coined this phrase, he (or she I suppose) meant humankind rather than men, at least one would hope so.’ I nodded but I suspect she thought that was for a different reason because she did a little “mmmm” before continuing. ‘It’s just that we are not created equal. I’m taller than you and you’re cleverer than me. That’s not equality. But because we’re different doesn’t mean we should be treated differently, so perhaps that is the drift of his point?’
She broke off at this point because my ministrations seemed to have taken her to a point where philosophy could go hang itself for a while. She has a delightful motion at ‘the moment’ which lifts her pelvis and turns her body slightly – hard to explain but it does it for me. I crawled up over her and kissed her mouth then rolled to lie beside her. She turned her face towards me and wriggled to settle comfortable, legs entwined, arm across my chest and idly played with a nipple. She cupped a breast and said, ‘See what I mean, you’re definitely not
equal to Nellie in the Bristol department but equality and quality are not the same, are they?’
‘You spend far too long gazing at Nellie’s knockers.’
‘Well, they are hard to avoid, they damn near fill a room.’
I giggled and kissed her again. She rolled me onto my belly and started to do something delicious to my spine with her tongue. There is a bit of me somewhere in the lower spine which is connected directly to heaven. She discovered this particular spot fairly early on in our relationship and often returned to it when she was feeling particularly generous.
A while later she was talking to a part of me that cannot answer back. ‘Well, I think that was equally good as the first time.’
‘I’m surprised you can remember the first time – it was about 3 hours ago.’
She looked up. ‘You clock watching, College?’
Donna’s Friend We were entertaining a friend of Donna’s and her girlfriend, Delia, for dinner. Sam was what I believe our American cousins would call a ‘stone butch.’ In normal circumstances she would not have been a companion of choice for me but I had great affection for her because of the care she had shown to Donna during a particularly low period in my lover’s life.
‘My mum and Cassandra were competing it seemed to me to shag their way through the ‘phone book. Mum gave up around the Ls but Cassandra has got top the Ws and is still at it. That, College, notwithstanding her sharing her bed with Dennis. That poor boy, she makes such demands on him between her other applicants that he must have a willie like a boy scout’s firelighter. Anyhow, when this Messalinan orgy was in progress I left the bosom of my family and Sam took me in.’ Where she had learnt about the Emperor Claudius’s wife’s activities and her contest with Scylla I did not enquire; she had a surprising collection of data in her sweet, short-haired head. ‘She took care of me.’
Sam had arrived in traditional butch garb: black jeans, heavy boots and a tight black t shirt. The only incongruity in her appearance was a set of top-hamper that rivalled Nellie’s.
‘She did consider having them off but I dissuaded her. At least they mark her out from the crowd.’
You couldn’t argue with that. Delia, whose father apparently liked cookery and Norwich football club, was a different kettle of fish. She was about twenty years old with long, bleached hair, chewed gum and wore the shortest skirt I had ever seen. It was what my Dad would have called a pelmet but shorter. If she bent more than two degrees from the vertical her choice of underwear was clear to all. Her small chest was barely concealed by a halter-neck top in vivid pink.
There are few things in this life about which I am prejudiced but I have to declare a deep-rooted loathing of the Birmingham accent.
‘Don’t mind College, Sam. She thinks anyone with a Brummie accent should get elocution lessons on the National Health.’
I served a slow roasted shoulder of lamb with rosemary and white wine which met with general approval.
Delia decorously placed her gum on her side plate while she ate it. She proved to have a wicked sense of humour although she seemed constantly to want to emulate Sharon Stone for Sam’s benefit and crossed and uncrossed her legs so often and so explicitly that by the time they left I suspected that they’d be at it before they made it to the taxi outside. Sam was a delight. She had wit and a genuinely caring soul.
‘She had,’ I said as I cleared away after they had left, ‘a rather unusual bump in her jeans.’
‘To be fair, College, she has a few unusual bumps, wouldn’t you say? I think that particular one makes up for a mistake of nature, or that’s how she sees it. Personally, I have never felt the need.’ I was at that moment bending over the dishwasher when I felt her hand slide up my thigh and her finger stroked me where silk divided thigh.
‘There’s a few bits of me getting bumpy just now. Care to check them out?’ I finished clearing the dishes the following morning.
Donna’ Philosophy
Donna is a beautiful individual, physically and temperamentally. She had revealed a certain insecurity, you may remember, when I invited her to join me and my colleagues at the dinner dance. I did not in any way see myself in a Pygmalion type relationship with her, however. In fact it was rather the opposite. I found that she gave me new insight almost every time we discussed anything of importance. I loved her enquiring mind and the fact that, though almost entirely self taught, she had a highly developed sense of what was logical and what was right. I often considered how the circumstances in which she had grown up; her promiscuous mother and lack of father might have shaped her. To be honest I found the question too complex to understand, especially since I came from a safe childhood with a loving father and an efficient if uncaring mother (who later turned very uncaring when she discovered my sexuality).
‘Your trouble, College, is that you grew up expecting your mother to love you.’ Donna said this as we enjoyed our regular glass of wine at the local pub. Nellie was enjoying a regular’s conversation with her breasts which rested comfortably, like two Halloween pumpkins on the bar, encased as they were in a yellow t shirt. ‘I never had that expectation as far as I can recall.’
‘So many people are damaged by the absence of parental affection but you don’t seem to have been. You’re balanced, loving, caring and all those good things.’ She squeezed my hand affectionately. We never felt the need to hide our innocent tactile moments since we were now accepted as, ‘The two lesbians who sit at that table in the corner.’ The fact that her toe, slipped out of a shoe, was running up the inside of my long skirt and caressing my calf was unknown to everyone else but I was acutely aware of it.
‘Introspection is not something I indulge in to any great extent. We are what we are. I just knew I wasn’t like my mother or Cassandra. Being lesbian was not a revolt or anything, I just like girls.’ I indicated that at 41 I was no girl. ‘You’re a little dykey dictionary, that’s what you are.’ Her toe rose ever higher. ‘I never even knew I was androgynic, until you told me.’
‘Androgynous.’
‘Right, that too. But you’re not all bitter and twisted because your Mum was anti-sapphic. You just got on with it. You don’t wear your sexuality like a badge, you look like a normal girly, you have men friends, you have a good job and you are self confident.’ I wasn’t so sure. ‘If you weren’t, would you allow a bird like me to slip her toe there.’ I will not explain where ‘there’ was precisely but it was certainly not anywhere you’d allow a stranger to put it. I acknowledged the logic of her point.
‘We have often discussed the influence of genes and nurture, and although we have reached certain agreements I would suggest we have reached few firm conclusions.’ I nodded. ‘Shall we just leave it for now that we’re both comfortable in our own persona?’
‘Donna,’ I said rather seriously, ‘it appears to me that your toe might well be comfortable in my persona within a few moments. Could we, perhaps, continue your explorations away from licensed premises. I am finding your attentions are reducing my ability to concentrate on philosophical matters.’
‘Good point, College. Why don’t we knock of our drinks and scamper to your garret where I should like to indulge in what I believe is called unproductive sex.’ We swallowed our drinks and, as we left our table, Donna took our glasses and placed them before Nellie’s bosom. ‘Night, Nellie. I’m just going to take College home and give her a seeing to.’ The man talking to Nellie choked. So did I.
