Ties that Bind
by Ronna Magy
1971. Dee and I pull up long answering service cords.
Plug them into the board.
Circle Answering Service. May I help you? we say.
A buck seventy-five an hour.
For this we don blue aprons.
Work through the night.
Answer plumbers’, electricians’, and doctors’ phones.
Take messages.
Connect emergency calls.
In the bowels of the Hotel San Diego
where we work downtown,
uniformed sailors slouch in outer doorways.
Hey baby they taunt.
Look us over
up and down.
As we open glass doors.
Walk inside.
Go to work.
Telephone cords stretch ‘round our lives.
Dee and I are friends.
Go to movies together.
Eat popcorn.
Giggle about dresses and nails.
Things girls gossip about.
Ways to style our hair.
We plan to room together.
Discuss the apartment where we’ll live, and
moving in.
Her old couch, my kitchen table and wooden chairs.
The objects of life.
Colors of the bedroom.
Where we’ll each have a bed.
Stretch the connection from her place downtown
to mine in Golden Hill.
A few more miles of telephone wire.
That moment over dinner when I tell her
I’m lesbian.
Cords in her throat tighten.
She stammers.
Can’t allow a friend of hers
would be anything other than straight.
Her blue eyes, sprayed hair, polished nails
still in place.
Stripes down her blue dress twisting
just a bit more
to the right.
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