Butch Talk
By Lee Lynch
One day, the Femme In Charge (FIC) was at a professional gathering when I happened to visit the Handy Dyke. Coincidentally, the Librarian stopped by. That left us three soft butches alone together in the living room with the FIC’s colorful chair conspicuously empty. We may all have experienced a flash of panic: what could three lone butches say to one another?
Butches are all about deferring to femmes. That makes femmes infinitely curious: what do butches talk about when alone together? It makes me feel like a member of an exclusive club when the FIC says she’s going to get the Handy Dyke to tell her everything we discussed.
What do we talk about? No, we don’t make plans to open lesbian strip joints or discuss horsepower or football. That afternoon we got going on our dogs: how smart, or dumb, how funny or infirm they were, and recipes for dog treats. Then it was the dog stories, boasting how this one did an incredibly cute thing and that one topped it by misbehaving in an even worse way.
But we couldn’t keep it up forever. Without a femme to entertain us and lead the conversation, we were, briefly, at sea. What fun is it to talk about butch toys like computers without someone to exaggerate her boredom with pained looks? We soldiered on, the Librarian and the Handy Dyke deciding which equipment to use to cut open a rock with agate inside. For a while we dwelled on what was flowering in the Handy Dyke’s gardens and which birds were visiting our neighborhoods, especially the eagles. We tackled the problem of how to get a rust-proof marine lock open after it rusted and the Handy Dyke threatened a scary-sounding saw if the penetrating oil from NAPA didn’t work (it did and was a great excuse to visit an auto parts store).
Somehow we veered to the topic of a part of town where a brook runs under the buildings and the Handy Dyke told us how you could walk into the cave/tunnel/hidden walkway from the beach. The Librarian decided there was a novel in that. Rainbow Run, we would call it, and it would be the story of a lesbian rum runner, Lucky the Dyke, during prohibition. Before we knew it, we had sketched out a series of three mysteries. We parted with grand butch adventures in our heads.
My next escapade was hardly the stuff of a butch tale. I found myself tagging along for a femme’s morning out. The other butches stayed home to erect a fountain in the yard. The FIC assured me that, after garage sales, she would take me home if the new fabric store in town proved interesting enough to need lengthy perusing, and I surprised her by admitting to enjoying fabric stores -- must be the clothes horse in me. The FIC and the Shopper loved the place, which was chock full of eclectic fabrics, patterns, gifts, jewelry and just about everything else in which a femme could delight. I, of course, darted from display to display, pointing out treasures and egging on the FIC and the Shopper to buy, buy, buy! My job was to transport the planned purchases to the counter while they tried on bits of frillery and made up reasons why they needed new stuff.
After a few minutes I was done. I left to walk the dogs while they did their best to both find all the goodies and not buy out the store. A lengthy walk later, I worked for a while in the car, feeling like the patient husband in a department store. A bigamist husband. At last the femmes burst out of the shop, hugging pink bags.
I know the ropes. When femmes are excited after shopping, you’re going to get a blow by blow anyway, so you might as well earn points by asking for an inventory of the bags. While it was the FIC who bought a pocketbook, it was the Shopper who gave me the back-story.
“That’s what you call a schlep bag,” she explained. “You’re always on the search for the perfect schlep bag, one with perfect balance and a strap that doesn’t dig into you no matter how much is in the bag. I’ve had bags so big I could hide my mother inside.” Three books, lunch and all the essentials for a day on an airplane seemed to be the criteria for a schlep bag’s size. This, apparently, is a femme canon.
Oh, I love femmes. They are so adorable with their shopping genes and rules. Fortunately, they think butches, with our dog stories and butch toys, are adorable too.
One day, the Femme In Charge (FIC) was at a professional gathering when I happened to visit the Handy Dyke. Coincidentally, the Librarian stopped by. That left us three soft butches alone together in the living room with the FIC’s colorful chair conspicuously empty. We may all have experienced a flash of panic: what could three lone butches say to one another?
Butches are all about deferring to femmes. That makes femmes infinitely curious: what do butches talk about when alone together? It makes me feel like a member of an exclusive club when the FIC says she’s going to get the Handy Dyke to tell her everything we discussed.
What do we talk about? No, we don’t make plans to open lesbian strip joints or discuss horsepower or football. That afternoon we got going on our dogs: how smart, or dumb, how funny or infirm they were, and recipes for dog treats. Then it was the dog stories, boasting how this one did an incredibly cute thing and that one topped it by misbehaving in an even worse way.
But we couldn’t keep it up forever. Without a femme to entertain us and lead the conversation, we were, briefly, at sea. What fun is it to talk about butch toys like computers without someone to exaggerate her boredom with pained looks? We soldiered on, the Librarian and the Handy Dyke deciding which equipment to use to cut open a rock with agate inside. For a while we dwelled on what was flowering in the Handy Dyke’s gardens and which birds were visiting our neighborhoods, especially the eagles. We tackled the problem of how to get a rust-proof marine lock open after it rusted and the Handy Dyke threatened a scary-sounding saw if the penetrating oil from NAPA didn’t work (it did and was a great excuse to visit an auto parts store).
Somehow we veered to the topic of a part of town where a brook runs under the buildings and the Handy Dyke told us how you could walk into the cave/tunnel/hidden walkway from the beach. The Librarian decided there was a novel in that. Rainbow Run, we would call it, and it would be the story of a lesbian rum runner, Lucky the Dyke, during prohibition. Before we knew it, we had sketched out a series of three mysteries. We parted with grand butch adventures in our heads.
My next escapade was hardly the stuff of a butch tale. I found myself tagging along for a femme’s morning out. The other butches stayed home to erect a fountain in the yard. The FIC assured me that, after garage sales, she would take me home if the new fabric store in town proved interesting enough to need lengthy perusing, and I surprised her by admitting to enjoying fabric stores -- must be the clothes horse in me. The FIC and the Shopper loved the place, which was chock full of eclectic fabrics, patterns, gifts, jewelry and just about everything else in which a femme could delight. I, of course, darted from display to display, pointing out treasures and egging on the FIC and the Shopper to buy, buy, buy! My job was to transport the planned purchases to the counter while they tried on bits of frillery and made up reasons why they needed new stuff.
After a few minutes I was done. I left to walk the dogs while they did their best to both find all the goodies and not buy out the store. A lengthy walk later, I worked for a while in the car, feeling like the patient husband in a department store. A bigamist husband. At last the femmes burst out of the shop, hugging pink bags.
I know the ropes. When femmes are excited after shopping, you’re going to get a blow by blow anyway, so you might as well earn points by asking for an inventory of the bags. While it was the FIC who bought a pocketbook, it was the Shopper who gave me the back-story.
“That’s what you call a schlep bag,” she explained. “You’re always on the search for the perfect schlep bag, one with perfect balance and a strap that doesn’t dig into you no matter how much is in the bag. I’ve had bags so big I could hide my mother inside.” Three books, lunch and all the essentials for a day on an airplane seemed to be the criteria for a schlep bag’s size. This, apparently, is a femme canon.
Oh, I love femmes. They are so adorable with their shopping genes and rules. Fortunately, they think butches, with our dog stories and butch toys, are adorable too.
posted by LNewsEditor at 12:36 AM
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