Lesbians at the kerb

A friend sits with me in the tiny courtyard. She shyly hands me a small white box. I open it as she talks about the joys of hunting for goodies on an auction website. I look inside. There’s a fine filigree brooch with grey-green diamantes and a pale amethyst, shaped as a thistle. My friend knows I am Scottish and has found me this to fix a heavy highland shawl to my blouse. I gush with gratitude.

But age has got the better of me. My eyesight is too poor to see the brooch, and I struggle to put it on. Even with glasses on, the clasp is a blur. I wrestle for a little while, then lean forward, and let her fingers expertly slip the pin within its cradle and turn the gate closed. I joke what a relief it was that nothing got pricked, because they might deflate.

I am too old to be learning the things I am learning.

She doesn’t stay long. She says goodbye to my son as we head to the front door. “Bye”, he says, smiling but not turning away from the game on his screen. I will walk with her to the car.

It is a warm evening. We stand by the kerb and embrace. A slight woman, I have to bend down to her such that, as we are about to make this farewell, I seriously think about stepping around her and arranging us so I am standing down in the gutter and she on the grass at its top. But it would be a ridiculous manoeuvre that, anyway, would then put me between her and the driver’s side door she’s trying to get to.

We kiss goodbye. Over the road at that moment is a high-vis vest man, standing beside an old Holden ute. He and his mate have just finished topping up the radiator with water. “I always like the kiss on the lips” he hollers out at us. My friend is already in her seat and closing the door when he follows up with “and go a bit of tongue”. I have turned to go back to the building and am completely nonplussed. I go with ignoring it. Don’t give them oxygen.

Let’s play ladies bingo. My first catcall. Tick.

Even in that moment, as I walk the last few steps back to my home, I am already thinking of the hundreds of times every woman has had to listen to such rubbish in her life, that I have not had to hear.

Funny thoughts occur to me. Like how he thought he was watching two lesbian women, when in fact that describes neither of us. Closely followed by the question – which has occurred to me many times since – of whether I was a lesbian now, and would people think that was okay for me to say?

Mostly, though, I thought about what it would have been like to turn around and in my deepest, most masculine, broadest Australian accent, yelled back at him and his friend, “are you sure you want some of my tongue, you prick?”