Dancing With Daisy
tatiana de la tierra
I ruined a potential lesbian. I didn’t mean to, but I was horny. Her name was Daisy, or so she said. Could have been Concepción, Amy, Elodia, or one of many Marias. I’ll never know. She’d been calling me for months. Said she got my number from the bulletin board at the gay bookstore down the street, from a note I’d posted way back: “Lesbian in search of a man or butch to dance salsa with so that I can impress my macha Cuban lover.” My girlfriend had already dumped me by the time Daisy called, and Daisy wanted to do more than dance.
She wanted to get down, though she never put it quite that way. She’d call me up, speaking in Spanish, sounding timid. She’d say, “I’ve never known a lesbian. I was wondering, maybe you can tell me what it’s like to be with a woman?” At first I tried to brush her off. It’s not like I’m a lesbian hotline or anything. But curiosity got me. And she didn’t speak any English and no way was she gonna get the dish on the joys of lesbianism at the local tiendita. So I felt a twinge of social responsibility. And hey, why not say it, it was a potentially pleasurable situation. Why say no until at least you’ve checked it out?
So to begin with I told her generic stuff like, “Desire is desire. It doesn’t matter who you’re with, or what’s driving the pleasure. It’s about giving yourself over.” That’s not what she wanted to hear. Daisy was forty-two years old, divorced, with three children, touched by men only. She remembered being enamored of a classmate in the all-girl Catholic boarding school she attended in Managua. How she would volunteer to brush and braid the girl’s hair, just so she could touch her. How the girl gave her candies and pretty stones every Friday. Then, how the girl had been smitten with a boy during the summer, and how her relationship with Daisy was never the same again. Daisy remembered being obsessed with the nuns, wondering what could be going on between their legs. Surely they menstruated. Did they also tingle like she did? She imagined the stiff frocks brushing their bare thighs, their soft breasts. The sisters belted out orders with stern faces, and she found this exciting. She liked being told what to do.
Which turned me on. I never had a nun up-close myself, but my lover–I mean, my ex-lover–that fucking bitch, she was beyond stern. She was the Mother Superior Dominatrix, and I was her sexual slave. Fucker dumped me for a woman ten years younger. Left me, still in love and all hot and wanting more. She had a way of becoming the proprietor of my pussy and every part of me. She’d say “I’m gonna rip you up tonight,” and I’d about faint from the pleasure of terror. Pinch my ass, suck my nipples raw, slap my face. Whisper, “Puta… cabrona… maricona.” Eat my lipstick, sniff my cunt. Oh my god, she teased me to the edge of insanity before she’d fuck me. “I’m going to rip you up…” She could kill me for all I cared, as long as she was fucking me like that. That’s when I would lose my will, become clothes in the final spin cycle, a screaming maniac on a roller coaster, the most urgent pussy in the world. But the motherfucker had to get herself another fucking whore.
I wondered if I could get a whore, too. Aren’t whores equal-opportunity? Could I be a femme with a woman as a sex object? That’s where Daisy came in. I could tell she wasn’t my type. Her voice was soft and flat. I envisioned her wearing a gold cross around the neck, cooking white rice, yelling at the kids, watching telenovelas at night, going to church on Sunday, going to bed without any revelations. She had only been in the U.S. for five years and me, I was born elsewhere but I grew up here. I’m a modern Latina and Daisy was—well, let’s just say she was a tacky one. I knew she wasn’t meant for me, but I wasn’t getting any action, and I had a hot hot cunt, the kind that contributed to global warming.
True, I could have tried to get fucked some other way. But lesbians, most of them, they are just not man enough when it comes to cunts. They have to be in love, they have to know your sign, your whole goddamn therapeutic history, they have to be an ex-lover of one of your ex-lovers, they have to agree with your politics, see themselves reflected in you, they gotta know if your god is male or female, how you light your candles, your medical history, your dietary habits since age seven, the relationship with your mother, how you deal with men, if at all, your first sexual encounter and every one thereafter, your butch/femme/or anything-goes identity, and most importantly, details about your past lives, all of them. Give me a mother-fucking break! All that, just to get your cunt stroked?
But Daisy wasn’t a dyke, so she didn’t know any of this. She called every week, asking questions. Why are you a lesbian? Cuz women turn me on physically and because, emotionally, being with women is the only place I feel at home. Is it true that some are like men and some are like women? Well, for some of us that’s true, but others are androgynous; they look the same and do the same things to each other. Me, I’m a femme, and I have been one ever since I found out I could be a girl and a lesbian at the same time. How do I know what I am? Hmm. You’re probably a femme, though if you’ve never been with a woman, how can you be sure? But it’s an evolving identity, you don’t have to know instantly. How can you have sex without a penis? That’s easy! With a woman you can fuck non-stop, as hard or as gentle as you want. You can fuck with hands, fingers, rocks, vegetables, Barbies, tongues. And dildos, of course, strapped-on or hand-held. Dildos could be made of curved purple silicone, stiff clear acrylic, chunky black leather, translucent pink gel. You can get them in any size you want, and any shape you can imagine, from cosmic swirls to dolphins to penises with simulated bulging veins.
When she ran out of questions, she wanted to meet me. To touch, to have sex, to know a woman in the flesh. “No,” I said. I mean, what could I possibly do with another femme?
But like a good femme, she persisted. Daisy was sounding better every day. She was available, she wanted to experiment, and she didn’t know any better. And then I started getting ideas. Why did I think that I always had to be on the bottom? Couldn’t I expand my sexual horizons? Didn’t I have enough experience being in her position to play the opposing role? What would it be like to have a woman under me, to be a bird’s beak on her skin, to turn her with the palm of my hand, to whisper crude things in her ear, to inhale her perfume, to tongue the nubs on her nipples, to coax her cunt, to make her please me on command? All right Daisy, finally, you got me. Let’s meet.
We drank strawberry daiquiris at an outside café at Bayside while we checked each other out. There she was, as expected: Ms. Middle-Aged Tacky Latina, circa 1975, in the flesh, heavily made up and meticulously dressed. With shoulder-length platinum blonde hair and dark roots, fluffed out and kept in place with lots of hairspray. She had just gotten off work in the downtown business sector, where she was a receptionist at a South American firm. Daisy looked at me timidly with cork brown eyes. Tapped her long acrylic nails nervously on the tabletop. Displayed her cleavage with a partially unbuttoned white blouse that she wore under a navy blue blazer. Showed her wide hips under a matching knee-length skirt, corpulent thighs beneath the flesh-toned panty hose.
Daisy was someone I’d probably seen at the grocery store earlier that day and then forgotten. I had nothing to say to her. And she, she didn’t even have any questions for me. We just sat there, watching couples stroll by, avoiding each other’s eyes. This woman I’d been talking to, this voice at the other end of the phone, this lesbian novice that I knew as Daisy—well, there was not much to her. It was like she’d hung up the phone on me. Hello? Hello? Is anybody there? She would have been perfect for my Mother Superior Dominatrix ex-lover, who preferred me passive and stiff as a corpse when she was about to come.
“I don’t think this is going to work,” I told her. Then I paid the bill and took her home with me.
Poured Blue Nun into lead-crystal goblets. She stood at the window, looking out at the water from my ninth-floor apartment. Said something, I don’t know what, as I had other things on my mind, like, Now what? I mean, there I had some potential pussy in my apartment, and I didn’t know what to do! Think, think, think. I put on a CD, Luis Miguel, “Somos novios.” Oh no, too romantic. But it’s too late. As the syrupy ballad begins, I walk over to Daisy. “Would you like to dance?” She rises shyly, looks me in the eye for the first time.
And then I remember that I can’t fucking dance. Okay, I had some private lessons, learned to salsa and merengue up a storm, learned to close my eyes during the baladas and boleros and flow with my lover’s rhythm. But lead? Never! So I pretend. Extend my hand, palm up. She takes it. Quickly recall the arm positions of being led, and do the opposite, I hope. Right hand cupped just below her waist, left forearm up, as if waving to floats on a parade. She’s trained in this, gets right into place.
And then, I don’t move, and neither does she. Of course, we both know, I’m the one who’s supposed to make the first move. But there she is, right in my face, and I don’t even know her, or for that matter, care to, and I know that this is one big mistake, but it’s happening and I have to go for it. So I close my eyes—it’s the only way—and start swaying side to side. She’s not thrilled, I can tell; she’s totally rigid. Then I pull her close until our torsos are touching and we move more naturally together. Our bodies relax, finally, and we are tit to tit. I run my hand up and down her back, press my pelvis into her and think, Yes, I can do this! I am about to get some pussy.
The song ends. She sits down and I go into the kitchen to pour more wine. Okay, now what? I splash liquor on the floor, don’t even bother to clean it. Instead, I take a swig of aguardiente from the bottle that I stash under the sink. I place my palms on the counter and let my head hang. I don’t know how to make a move on a woman. Fling her down or just make conversation until she begs to be flung to the floor? I take another swig, inhale deeply, do a few arm flexing and releasing exercises. I have to do this. There’s no going back. I return to the living room, wine glasses in my hands. We toast this time. “To discoveries,” I say. We take dainty sips.
“Would you like to go into the bedroom?” She rises, like my question was a command. It seems like she’ll do anything I say, and I like this.
“Sit,” I tell her, and she does, at the edge of my king size bed and, once again, she looks out an open window. Luis Miguel is still playing in the other room, the wine glasses are still full, and I still don’t know what to do. I fling my glass out the window, straddle her full body between my legs. She gasps, eyes open wide. Maybe thinks I’m a psycho, that in no time at all I’ll be howling at the moon. Regrets ever having called me. “You want to know what it’s like to be with a woman? Feel this.” Pull up my blouse, let my favorite breast out, tease her L’Oreal lips with my nipple. “Lick it,” I order. She hesitates and then, ever so slowly, begins to use her tongue. I feel her breath on my breast, start to feel that cunt fire within.
She’s propped herself up with both hands on the bed. I nudge them out from under her, till she’s lying on her back. So here we are, me with my tit hanging out and she with her legs spread. And I’m on top? I’ve never been on top! I flash back to my exploits with butches who know how to handle a woman. They say things like, “Mami, did you get those tits made especially for me?” And I don’t know, but I just can’t say such smarmy things. Okay, so forget words, just do touch.
My cuticles snag on her pantyhose. How in the world I’m actually going to get into her underwear, I have no idea. And no way will I get on top and hump and grind on her. But I gotta do something. The sooner I begin, the sooner it will end. So I begin touching, smelling, exploring. Polyester, talcum, deodorant, cheap perfume, hair spray, smudged eyeliner, blotchy face powder, shiny lips. It’s all so damn gross. You think I’m gonna taste those waxy chemicals on her mouth? I don’t think so. How do butches eat lipstick? Her body is soft and curvaceous, her nipples are hardening, her pussy’s warming up. Her body is foreign to me and I’m disgusted. Yet at the same time, I’m getting wet.
Her breath quickens and I visit the thighs again, snake my hand up her skirt, follow the pantyhose to the waist, dig and pull at the elastic, where I encounter a girdle. The type that I thought didn’t even exist any more. By now, my right forearm is twisted and suctioned over her womb. Not a romantic moment. It’s excruciating, but somehow, I manage to get my fingers on her mound, where it’s wet and hairy. It’s time to fuck her, I guess. I’m pulling my shoulder out of its socket, chafing my arm on that Playtex rubber, trying to get the right angle. Put my thumb on her clit while keeping my fingers inside, read her body for signs. She moves with me at first and then, who the hell knows why, she stops moving, so I stop fucking, untwist my arm from those layers of synthetics, stick my tit back in place.
That’s when I see what’s become of Daisy. The puffy hairdo is flat, the watery breasts are spilled out, the mauve lipstick is smeared, the forehead glistens with tiny beads of sweat, the flesh-toned mask is beginning to crack. She pats her skirt down, draws her legs together, sits up, squishes all of the breast matter back in, buttons her blouse, puts on the one pump that fell off. Luis Miguel has stopped singing. There are no more words, no more pussy, no more femmes to be had, nothing to do. I drop her off downtown, on the same corner where I had picked her up. We don’t even say good-bye. I can’t drive away fast enough.
When I got home I fucked my own damn self. Which is what I wish I’d done in the first place.
28 de marzo de 1998, el paso, tejas
revised 28 de julio de 1998, lutsen, Minnesota
Originally published:
de la tierra, tatiana. “Dancing with Daisy.” Gynomite: Fearless Feminist Porn. Ed Liz Belile. New Orleans: New Mouth from the Dirty South. 2000: 29-42.