Unholy Birth

1. The first question someone like me obviously has to ask herself is how are you going to do it? Making love with a man, even if it were done as impersonally as a medical exam, was abhorrent to me. I could count on the fingers of one hand how many men I had kissed on the lips, much less permittedto touch me anywhere intimate. It was always difficult for me even to imagine a relationship with a man. It never took me long to discover who I was. I never had to go in and out of any closet. It was my parents who kept themselves shut up, and still did.I hated to think of the excuses, the rationale they used to explain my lifestyle. They chose to live in some illusion. I supposed I should be grateful. They could have considered me dead and gone the way some of the parents of gay people I knew considered them. Of course I realized that there were women who got married just to have children. The years were nicking away at them and they panicked to the point where they considered themselves sufficiently in love with a man to marry him. Afterward, after the children were born, these women lived what were practically separate lives. Their husbands were just a different sort of deliveryman.But even that was clearly not for me. What's more, there was the matter of inherited genes, resemblances. Whenever I looked at our child, would I always see the man I had employed, reminding me of what I had done? I could end up resenting my own child. Employed was the kindest word I could use to explain it. It would make me feel like a john, not a prostitute. I'd be paying a man to have intercourse with me. If I didn't spend actual money, I would spend my self-respect. Nevertheless, I realized it might be interesting to consider whom of the men we knew we would choose. He certainly wouldn't be anyone we had worked with or who worked for us. Would we choose on the basis of his personality or his looks? Money wasn't a concern. Willy and I ran a successful catering business in Palm Springs, California. We had both begun our lives here as waitresses. Her first restaurant went out of business just before the end of the tourist season, and my first restaurant was set on fire either by the owner or by someone who hated him. It was definitely an unsolved arson. Nevertheless, both Willy and I wanted to remain in the desert. It had become a comfortable place for the gay community. There were gay people involved in the local government and more and more gay entrepreneurs were opening their own restaurants, clothing stores, bars. There was even a small supermarket owned by two gay men right in the downtown area. I didn't meet Willy in any gay watering hole. We both were hired by the manager of a new restaurant chain that was already known nationally to be a restaurant catering to gay people. The manager himself was not gay, but he did make an effort to staff it with as many gay people as he could find qualified. It was ironic because any restaurant not hiring someone because he or she was gay would be subject to a lawsuit. Willy was not quite sure about me when we first met. There was never anything butch about me or anything else that would immediately give away my sexual identity. I wasn't particularly good at any sport. I had enjoyed acting in high school and during my first two years of college, but I dropped out after that, mainly because I had a disastrous love affair with another girl in my dorm. I liked gourmet cooking, and I was admittedly obsessed about my appearance, chasing a variety of skin products that claimed Fountain of Youth capabilities. I paid a lot of attention to my hair and wore it long, or at least what was considered long, which by now was merely down to the nape of my neck. I was also a clothes junkie, reading fashion magazines as obsessively as some members of the religious right read the Bible. In short, I was what is called a femme, a feminine woman who is attNeiderman, Andrew is the author of 'Unholy Birth ', published 2007 under ISBN 9781416516842 and ISBN 1416516840.