Clark pulled the sheet aside. Jody darted in under his arm. Then Clark passed through. Lights and shadows fluttered up into his face. Just as quickly, they retreated to their fixed niches. His eyes adjusted to the room's dim brilliance.

A few feet in front of Clark, an avocado green recliner held Ahenobarbie in its rigid embrace while a shimmering patchwork of gray duct tape held it together. Not all the chair's wounds, however, had healed, and, in a few spots, its foam innards had poured out and hardened. Once again, he stopped, stood, and stared at Aheno. She'd begun to busy her hands in her crotch by gathering up the folds of her robe into her lap. The longer he looked at the green chair and its many-shades-of-pink occupant, the more he thought that this couple reminded him of a monstrous watermelon wedge. Aheno stretched back. The foot rest popped out and pointed Clark's eyes toward the rest of the room. Two battered coffee tables, pushed end to end, ran across it. On either side, Clark made out the shape of a futon couch turned sideways and opened its whole length. On top of each, an odd assortment of women was sprawled with even less care than the half-full and half-empty plates and cups that littered the tables and floor.

There in the center of the futon opposite him sat a Buddha with the largest breasts he'd ever seen. On a Buddha at least. And usually a Buddha this big had a smile as wide as Santa Claus'. This one only scowled. He tried not to stare at The Buddha's breasts. But, in her silver lamé wife-beater T-shirt, they really did look like honeydew melons or canteloupes bulging from the bottom of a plastic grocery bag. Then an even brighter shimmering caught his eyes. He stood transfixed by the near-miracle of her bald head. Somehow, with a serendipitous tilt, she'd angled it to reflect the glint of every candle that watched from the ledges of molding along all the room's walls and the twinkling of every little white bulb in the strands of fairy lights that hung above all the room's windows and doors. The scowling Buddha had been transfigured into Our Lady of the Beatific Disco Ball Head and Silver Lamé Breasts.

He blinked. His vision had disappeared. An unexpected movement had made The Buddha shift her head out of the light. The mop of black hair piled up next to the Buddha's knee twitched again. Clark followed the hair as it trailed out through more shadowy piles into a pair of pale legs. Once he understood that this would be the extent of its stirring, he looked to the right of the Buddha. There, stretched out as far as she could, was a very short dyke--a dykette, actually, for she was as young as she was small. With a flick, just one, of his eyes, he'd surveyed her from head to toe and back. Over her toes, she wore the daintiest, yet still somehow butch, combat boots. Over her head, she wore the requisite baseball cap with its bill turned backwards. And across the small gap between each extreme, she'd covered herself in an enormous pair of vintage coveralls with some man's name sewn into a patch. He tried to read it sideways without turning his head. It looked like "Joe."

Joe had propped her chin up with her left arm and hand. And this allowed her sleeve, which she must have had to roll up six or seven times just see the tips of her fingers, little choice but to collapse under its own weight in a heap around her elbow. The dykette spoke in rapid monosyllables to Jody, who'd wasted no time getting comfortable on the futon across from her.

Looking over Jody's broad back, Clark also noticed that both Joe and Jody were talking to another lesbian. She looked--he couldn't quite tell with all the shadows--like she'd dressed only in black and leather. A black leather shirt, black leather pants, black leather motorcycle boots, even a black leather vest. She was all black except for her pale skin and her platinum blond hair. Why had she done that, he wondered. Draw everyone's focus to her hair. For her hair had been cut short on top and billowed from the back in none other than honest-to-god tresses. She must be the last lesbian in San Francisco with a mud-flap hairdo. Maybe she's making the transition from the East Bay to the City. Or maybe--he cautioned himself before the cosmos once again demanded a payment for unearned attitude--maybe she's the first to ride another retro wave. Look at her ear. It hung with silver hoops from tip to lobe. And her nose. Pierced twice on the one side he could see. And her lip. Pierced again. Yes, it must be an intentionally reclaimed hairdo. He smiled. That must be it. For he had never yet met someone from the stylish tats and piercings scene who wasn't the late twentieth century's equivalent of the fop.

Of course, he didn't really know why it was so important for him to run a fashion check on this particular woman, but, somehow, it made him feel like he'd lived longer in the City than he had. Like he belonged in this room as much as anyone else tonight.

"Okay, boys and dykes, here go the introductions," said Aheno, now comfortable enough in her chair to play hostess. "Get ready to make your mental name tags because I'm only doing this once.

"To my left, our designated drinker for the evening is Alice. To her left, Clyde. To her left, Billy Joe. And in this corner is our designated delusional, Mal. She thinks she's Pat Califia circa Macho Sluts. But, Mal, I've seen you cane, and, honey, you sure as shit ain't no Pat Califia. That woman knows how to draw blood." Towards some invisible image, Clark watched the Buddha--Clyde--smile.

"You freakin' cunt," Mal laughed. She turned to her sisters for help with a collective retort. But all her sisters offered were smirks. "Fine, I was going to take this off anyway." Her sisters laughed. Clark was stunned when the "this" that came off was her hair. Between all those years spent back home in church and then in several gay bars, he'd become convinced he could spot a bad rug at a hundred paces. He was even more surprised, however, to notice what had been under the hair. Her head was shaved as smooth as Clyde's. But, following the hairline as a pattern, it had been tattooed a solid blue. He'd never seen anything like this, and, after being Jody's pal all these months, he was sure he must have seen everything--once.

Aheno, unfazed, moved right along the futon. "And I think you all know Jody." Her call was met with a response of "Hey, Jody"s.

Another glint tugged at Clark's eyes. A pair of earrings, eyes, breasts and one plate rose up beside the left arm of the recliner. The naugahyde smacked as Aheno pulled herself up and turned toward them. Then the entire chair sighed as she lifted herself onto her hip and let her hand hover over the plate. "Hold on. Hold on," Aheno said, as dolma after dolma slipped through her fingers. Everyone did until she held one firmly around its dark green middle. "Jody," the chair coughed while Aheno rolled back, "you haven't met my slave pussies for this evening." Jody smiled. A few others chuckled knowingly.

Aheno made the recliner creak all over again as she reached back out with her left hand and held, with surprising tenderness, the chin of the naked woman. Actually, Clark wasn't too sure she was completely naked. Yet he could clearly see, as he traced the pattern of freckles across her small, upturned breasts, that she was topless. But the rest of her body hid behind the chair's bulky arm or receded into the shadows.

Without letting go, Ahenobarbie managed to turn just her own head back toward the boys. "Jody, Clark, this is the plate that tonight only I may eat from. Call her Beth."

"Yes, O mighty Isis," said Jody. Fuck you, Aheno mouthed back to him. He laughed and the three butches felt free to join in. Even Beth couldn't help a very little, very coy smile. Clark stared at her and her eyes; the odd alien glow of her colored contacts had hypnotized him.

Jody, seeing only her smile, winked at her. Where does that dog find them, he thought.

A squawk from the chair and Aheno had propped herself on its other arm. She extended her hand into even deeper shadows. Clark followed it until he realized there'd been another woman--definitely a naked one--kneeling there on a large pillow the whole time. Aheno's wide hand encouraged the slave to look toward them.

Her face sparkled. Braced across her nose were silver glasses and hung up and down her ears were silver hoops and studs. Her deep-set eyes were almost a dark as her mane of long black hairs--this was the best description Clark could think of since the sides had been buzzed to the scalp and the remaining strands pulled back tightly into the darkness behind her head. She too smiled. Her already broad nose widened and her cheeks pushed up the rims of her glasses and lifted up her thin upper lip like the hem of a skirt.

She bowed her head in further greeting and the boys followed the downward tilt past a silver pendant to the blue glass chalice nested in the crevice between her very impressive breasts. Jody told himself that before this night was over he'd have to touch those airbrushed-smooth, milk-white tits. Maybe even let a cotton-candy-pink nipple melt in his mouth.

She raised her head up and turned her attention toward her master. As she moved, her many pieces of silver again caught the candlelight. She sparkled. Except this time Clark noticed one dull glint below her stomach. There's something plastic between her legs? His eyes trailed a thin strip of material out from her crotch and around her waist and down beneath the cheeks of her equally white ass. A jockstrap? Hello, stupid. You're in the land of the lesbians. He paused. A dildo harness!

"And this, my jealous old flame," Aheno had to raise her voice now to be heard over Jody's deep belly laugh, "this is the cup that tonight only I may drink from. Call her Keri." Jody opened his mouth and the three slaveless butches did the same. "Yes, O mighty Isis," the chorus droned.

"Fuck you all, my dears. And just when I was having second thoughts about sharing."

"Yeah, right," said Clyde. "I've heard that before."

"Safeword," squeaked Joe, looking nervous.

"Joe," Aheno said, "don't wet your diaper, girl. You've been up north too long. Clyde and I settled that old score. Didn't we?"

"Yup. The she became a he. Didn't you, Jody?"

Clark snapped his head to his right in time to see Jody, just barely, stiffen.

"Clyde," barked the hostess, "this is supposed to be a fun little holiday potluck. Don't you fucking dare turn it into another process session." Clyde grumbled and picked up a cup. "Besides, I'm not done with my introductions." Aheno looked up at Clark. "Everyone, this is Jody's covered dish, Clark. Clark's a friend of Bebe's." Various heads bobbed in time with the sputtering candlelight.

Emboldened by his recent vision of Wonder Woman, Clark decided to invoke his true patron saint--the Bionic Woman, Jamie Sommers. He summoned every ounce of her wholesome California casualness and tried once again to make polite conversation with his daunting hostess. "Will Bebe be coming?"

"Most likely. But not here, and not on us."

Clark blushed. Ahenobarbie scrunched up her nose as if she were about to sneeze and snorted out a loud laugh. "Bebe Czar, superstar," she sang. "Who in the dyke SM community do you think you are?" An echo of laughter rose from both futon couches.

"No, Clark, this particular potluck is too tame for her. No needles. Little blood. But she did offer to compromise and come as a Roman augur--read my fortune in entrails. I just wasn't too sure the entrails wouldn't be my own." She picked a piece of pita bread and daubed it with hummus.

"Besides, could you imagine any Roman other than that old drag queen Nero in a pink feather boa with matching pink jelly clogs? Not that she wouldn't have made a wonderful Nero. Okay, okay," she said between chews, "I'll admit I was tempted to play Nero's mean old mama, Agrippina, if she did grace us with her presence. But then I remembered, as several others in this room might too, what happened the last time the two of us played together. And that was too much even for a perverted old classicist like me."

Aheno used the moment of silence to dab about with another slice of bread. Once she'd swallowed, she continued. "So Ms. Czar and I decided to plan a different theme party for later. Something more in line with her newfound gothic sensibilities like, um," and Aheno waved her third piece of pita before her audience, "a shooting gallery for the undead."

She looked around for encouraging smiles. When she'd tallied up enough, she continued. "Well, ladies, you and I both know this wouldn't be much of a potluck if we didn't trash our absent sisters. As hostess, I've started. So, who'll help me malign Bebe, our fair city's brattiest bottom?"

"Sssssss," the three others butches hissed, mimicking the sound of Lezzie's sharp tongue striking across Bebe's absent ass.

The sound struck Clark's mind as well and he realized he was still standing, alone, in front of the whole room. He blushed and smiled simultaneously at his hostess. She returned this with a genteel grimace. A few seconds later he had spread out beside Jody on the couch.

"Hey," Jody said in a whisper. While the women grew bolder and louder with their insults, Jody quietly reached his hands under the table. There he fumbled for a clean plastic cup and then pushed several bottles of spring water aside for a large green jug of wine. He pulled it out by its neck, braced its wide bottom with his other hand, and poured until the cup was nearly three-quarters full. He put down the jug; he picked up the cup; and he stretched to place it between Clark's arms which dangled almost as far off the couch as his legs. "Here, stud. Drink up." Jody nudged Clark affectionately with his elbow. "Don't worry. She likes you. Believe me. I guess Bebe never told you that story."

"I guess not," Clark looked down and shook his head. He took a big, stinging gulp of wine.

He coughed. His eyes watered. He looked up. A shining blur danced in the corner of his left eye. He turned and focused. The candles had found ten or more dull silver mirrors on Keri's fingers. The flickerings bounced from the dark window panes to the wall's glaze of varnish to the glassy sides of the cup in her hands. She raised herself up on her knees and leaned in toward her master.

Aheno swiped at the mug mid-sentence and punctuated the rest of her tale with gulps and burps. Clark had heard Bebe tell this one. It was the one about her infamous late-night trip to the supermarket. The one where she'd been caught in flagrante delicto with a fish in the frozen food section. Of course in Aheno's version, and she claimed it was the naked truth, he learned that Bebe had failed to tell him what she'd really been wearing beneath her red faux fur coat.

A final belch and Aheno was done with her drink. She handed it back. But before she finished Bebe's dressing down, she held up her hand. Odd but dramatic, thought Clark. Aheno turned her head and looked only at Keri's breasts. Despite their size and gravity's heavy grip here at sea level, Keri easily lifted the soft bulk of her right tit. She then dragged the nipple around the rim of the cup with such firm and deliberate slowness that Clark wondered if she honestly believed it was a sponge, able to absorb the last drops Ahenobarbie had failed to suck down. Why doesn't she just use her mouth?

Keri then set the cup on the floor, raised herself even higher on her knees and leaned in even closer to her master. The chair rocked and Aheno rolled over its arm. Her breast leapt from her hand into both of Aheno's and then again into her master's mouth. Between sucks, Ahenobarbie would tongue in wider and wider rings out from whatever skin might have touched the cup. As Clark watched, he learned just how big a mouth Aheno had. It could hold so much more of that breast than Keri's hand ever had. Clark was spellbound. He secretly wished she'd try to slurp the whole tit down. But she didn't. The breast leapt back to Keri and flopped against her chest.

Another buck of the chair and Aheno had lurched back toward her guests and launched back into her tale.

During all this, Clark had ignored the entrance of three more people. He'd heard the rise and fall of the other curtain along the far right wall. He'd felt the room cool and the candles sputter. But only when several glints jumped up and down in the corner of his right eye did he turn and see three pairs of glasses reflecting a room full of little white lights.

They must have been wearing only black in that shadowy corner for all he really made out were their three pale heads and not that well. Oh, sure, he could spot the obvious. Here a nose, there a mouth. But other than that, all he could do was guess that they were older, shorter, and fatter than he. And that they were musicians. Actually, that was an easy guess since two of the six hands held a recorder, two more a mandolin, and the last two a little drum.

Slave pussies, musicians, a recliner. Clark didn't really know if these things made this potluck Roman, other than the fact that Aheno had said they did. But he was certain that they were all weird enough to make this evening thoroughly San Franciscan.

Burop.

The thunderclap of a belch came from Clyde. That sound--Clark had heard it before. It was her. Of course he hadn't recognized her sooner. He'd never seen her before with her head bare and her breasts covered. In fact, the last sighting had been a Saturday night in October. She was the headliner at Mirken-A-Go-Go. That night, San Francisco's only sumo drag king had stood center-stage and ankle-deep in a wading pool of instant chocolate pudding. Crowned with wig-perfect topknot and girded in a white-leather recreation of the mawashi, she'd let the rest of her mighty, mighty olive breasts, belly, and butt all hang out. Her opponent, here to raise money for charity and promote her new CD, was the equally beloved drag queen Cristal Lite. And, once again, Cristal had captured the essence of Linda Evans during her Dynasty years right down to the shoe-box shoulder pads and the vacant stare. But she would be no match for Clyde Akutagawa. A few sumo body slams and victory was hers. To the cheers of the crowd, she pushed Cristal's face down in the muck and let out her trademark belch.

Burop.

Clark nudged Jody's arm. "Clyde's Clyde Akutagawa, right?"

"Uh huh. You really know your local dyke performance artists. Maybe next time you're out back at Red Dora's they'll even let you sit at their table. You know the other two are also stars in their own minds?"

Clark answered Jody with a blank look.

"Billy Joe is Billy Joe Bumbershoot of Seattle. And Mal. C'mon, you've heard of Mal Toupé?"

Clark shook his head.

"The recently published authoress of that definitive collection of her spoken-word performances entitled Pud?" Clark shook his head again. "The recently crowned drag king of all New York?"

"Nu Yourk Citee!" Clark tried to cover up his provincialism by making Jody laugh.

"Cute." Jody smiled, pleased that Mal had yet to become as infamous as she'd claimed and that Clark's face had begun to shine again. "My best guess is that they're in town for the holidays. Trawling for new material and new women."

"And who's Alice?"

"None of the above."

"Fine, but who is she?"

"I doubt you've ever seen her before. And that's because she performs everywhere except on a stage."

"Bitter?"

"Like hell. We broke up long before Lez joined the femme-of-the-month club. In fact, let's just think of Alice as Miss December."

"You are bitter."

"No, I'm disappointed. Lez could do a lot better."

Clark frowned. He felt sorry for Jody, but he also felt hurt that there was something else that Jody wasn't telling him. Didn't he trust him yet?

Clark's concentration jumped its tracks with the speed of a late night Amtrak when the mop of hair moved again. It twitched a few times, and, suddenly, it was levitating. It continued its rise until it began to tilt backwards letting the hair fall away. Clark saw that there had been a face beneath it all the time. A face that he found to be rather pretty in spite of being so heavily dyed and painted. Since her skin was a white as a bleached bone, he could now easily tell that her hair had been colored several shades beyond black and that her greenish eyes were fluttering under the weight of a few layers of black mascara and blue eye shadow. Very Elizabeth Taylor in Cleopatra, he thought. Well, except for the kelly green nightie. And the nose. It ran ahead of the rest of her face. And the lips. They fell on the spectrum somewhere between bee-stung and punch-swollen.

The face, the hair, and the rest of the body all turned over until they were stuck, mid-roll, against Clyde's log of a thigh. "I want to sing of many things, of shoes and slips and ceiling wax, of cabbage-patch kings," slurred Alice. She rolled back onto her stomach. "Who'll join me?" She picked up the plastic equivalent of a tankard, some "Super-Duper-Suck-Me-Down" cup from a convenience store. As it rose shaking, it dribbled deep purple streaks down its once-white sides. She pointed it and her arm toward Aheno. Now it was Alice herself who shook, with a tiny child's giggle, and words spilled over the rim of her mouth. "My friend, the Walrus, you'll sing along."

"Watch it, little girl," said Aheno, startled by Alice's use of a pet name in public, "or I see an oyster who'll be left uneaten if she keeps that up." Alice tittered and lowered her eyes and then her mouth into her cup. Aheno stage whispered to all, "I'm afraid she's fallen through the looking glass and can't get up." There was laughter, except from Clark. Aheno noticed this and spoke directly to him. "I know, I know. It's obvious women are my weakness--especially when her muff can warm both my hands."

Again everyone laughed--even Alice from inside her mug--while Clark sat puzzled. Two strikes, thought Aheno. Oh, well, Bebe never made any promises about his personality. Trying not to appear disappointed, she graciously observed, "I see you know little about femmes or fists."

With that said, she let her eyes peer over the top of her glasses like welcoming neighbors come to the shared black plastic fence. But Clark's eyes said nothing back, not really to be rude--they just had nothing to say. He blinked. Neighbors, fence and all disappeared as Aheno pushed her glasses back up her nose. This must have also been a secret signal for suddenly everyone was aware of the musicians and their instruments. The room filled with eager tooting and pounding.

"Like the music?" She spoke directly to Jody. "I know, I know, it's too Renfaire. Actually, that's where I met Beth and Keri and these Bremen Town Musicians." The drummer, as best he could on his tabor, tried to pat out a rim shot. Aheno accepted his gift with a grin and a queenly flourish of her wrist. "You remember that summer, Jody? The one where I did guerilla performance art at the fair. I was," and her fingers rapidly bowed, pantomiming quotes, "The Hooded Pearl, Lesbian Highwaymyn. Seducing bawds, cuckolding gentlemen." Jody grinned and nodded.

"Actually, tonight I'd hoped for music a little more ancient, a little more Greek. Something that sounds a lot like someone playing a Japanese kitaro with a little shakuhachi thrown in."

"Don't forget the wasabe," said Joe.

"Mal, honey, you look lost. Is this conversation too West Coast for you?"

"Fuck you, Lez."

"You probably were thinking habachi when I was saying shakuhachi. It's a bamboo flute. I know you've heard one. I'm sure you'll recognize it next time Gloria makes you rent Karate Kid."

"We broke up."

"Oh. Sorry."

"Anyway I even asked Clyde if she had a extra shoot of bamboo she could spare me..."

"Cunt," Clyde burped into her mug. The word hovered over the conversation. In a few long, long seconds, the room had grown still enough to hear the mandolin player's fingers sliding along the strings and the notes falling to the floor.

"Why that's just what she said the first time." Aheno was determined to take back her guests' attention.

Clyde perked up--she smelt blood. "Listen, Lezzie Badinbed, I'll be happy to discuss with you any and all possible cross-cultural similarities in the tonality of ancient Greek and Japanese religious music just as soon as you discover your own roots."

"But I have. They're mostly dark red with a few streaks of gray."

"Ironic, isn't it?" Clyde looked directly at Jody while she spoke. "Big girl. Small wit."

Joe and Mal laughed. Jody shook his head. Ah, shit. Here we go again. Alice turned her wide-eyed gaze from Aheno to Clyde and back.

"Hey! I'm a Euromutt. A little bit of everything with no idea how much of what. We deal with our lack of awareness by being insensitive to all other cultures--what remains of them." Aheno took the chalice out of Keri's hands and gulped from it.

"What a bullshit excuse." Clyde felt confident enough to shift her gaze to the guests' plate of pita bread and hummus.

"Fuck you too." Aheno paused for a belch that sounded more like a croak. "It's the best I could do. This wine's cheap, but strong." She handed the cup back to Keri. Clyde smiled when she saw that Aheno didn't even wait to watch Keri wipe the rim again with her breast.

Clyde was certain she'd won this round. She took another bite of the bread. "Yes sir, Commodore Perry, sir," she said between chews. "Whatever you say, sir. But you're going to have to strap on some big fucking guns if you ever hope to open this country to imperialist western devils like yourself." She leered at Aheno.

"Guns for big fucking." She rolled the images over in her mulled mind. "Someday, Clyde, someday." Aheno smiled. Her prodigal guest had returned. "Well, now that we've picked out Mama's new year's resolution, who's next?"

Alice began to twitter, but Clark wasn't listening. He turned to Jody. "Who's Commodore Perry?"

"I have no idea. Don't worry, it wasn't meant for us. They were just feeling each other up again. They do it all the time."

"Oh," sighed Clark. Who knew lesbians had so many secret customs.

Jody could see now that Bebe was one of those rare subjects of constant gossip who didn't gossip herself. He would have to fill in Clark's blanks.

"It's a butch thang, girl." He tried to get Clark to laugh, smile--hell, even blink. He put his mouth close to Clark's ear and whispered. "It's like arm wrestling, only these two do it with their mouths. You know. They're both perfomers working the same circuit in the same city. They're both in graduate school. They've both chased the same women." Jody marvelled at how much herstory he could condense, and, like Bebe, how many secrets he could keep.

"Anyway, it's gotten nastier lately since Clyde got into UC Santa Cruz's History of Consciousness program and Lez--Aheno--whatever--didn't."

"Oh," was all Clark knew to say.

Jody surprisingly misread it as a signal of comprehension. The cheap wine was strong. "Yeah, they felt her thesis dabbled too much in 'low theory.' None of us are sure what they meant by that--except that now the fight is really on to be the king of queercore."

Aheno had been watching Jody's head bobbing at Clark's ear. When neither had closed his eyes, she knew Jody wasn't tonguing him the way she'd hoped. Here she had just brought one guest back and two more had wandered away from the fold. What was it Phillipa Marswell had told her? Good old Phillipa, the City's one-stop-shop for all dyke gossip in those days before the internet. It was something that her most recent ex-girlfriend had been saying about her. A top is a bottom's bottom. She took in a deep breath. That was it. May that foul-smelling swamp between her legs dry up into a desert. She started sipping the air in through her nose and spitting it back out through her mouth. That bitch wouldn't know a top if she fell on her. And lord knows--hell, everyone in the building knows--we tried that too. Before she could hyperventilate, she stopped breathing altogether. And what is a hostess but a top's top--putting out so much and getting back so little. She stopped her mind mid-monologue and began to breathe. Jody was now staring at her.

"What's going on over there?" Aheno asked him as soon as she could remember why she'd first looked in their direction. She arched her right eyebrow. "Perhaps you boys would like to share with the rest of the class what is so important that it must be whispered?"

"I was just asking Clark if he was as hungry as I am?"

"Right. I'm sure you were. So you boys are hungry, eh? Well, good. Mama has something she knows you'll both enjoy eating."

Read Part 2