Johanna and Maxine Pt. 02

"Linda Lovelace," she grinned and then chuckled, "sorry, bad joke, Linda Barnes."

"Not related to Louise Barnes are you?"

"Nope, never heard of her."

Maxine didn't reply to that as she stepped away from the table. Shawna rose and grabbed two cues from the rack. They introduced themselves a moment later. Shawna was about her age with thick red hair that fell past her shoulderblades and a heart-shaped face.

"Where do you know Johanna from?" Shawna asked as she fed a dollar coin into the slot.

"I was here the other week with my boyfriend, I met Macca, Brenda Jodie, Sue and Johanna," she replied as Shawna pulled the release lever.

"Cool," she replied as the balls fell.

Maxine glanced over at Johanna's table just in time to see Linda look up at the same time, a smile nudged her lips as she moved around to make room for Johanna. Linda was wearing a pair of jeans, boots and a cream-coloured jumper that clung to her like a second skin accentuating large breasts. She looked away a moment later as Shawna started putting the balls on the table and grabbed one of the triangles.

The game began shortly afterwards but it was hard to concentrate when Johanna burst out laughing at one of Linda's jokes. She kept glancing across at their table as she tried to work out if Linda was flirting with Johanna or vice versa.

Nevertheless she did manage to win the game but that was because Shawna potted the eight ball by mistake and they moved on to play Linda and Sue. Johanna and Macca waited their turn to play at another table as soon as a winning pair was declared.

"So," Linda eyed her, "who's Louise Barnes when she's at home?"

"She's a financial counsellor with Gardner, Fønsmark and Barnes," she replied.

"Who are they?"

"Counsellors, they handle bankruptcies and the like, the Citizens Advice Bureau use them, they're handling my auntie's bankruptcy apparently."

"Oh," Linda digested this news as Maxine pulled the lever to release the balls.

"Louise Barnes is married to Sigrid Fønsmark," she went on.

"Really?" Linda's eyes widened, "even cooler, although I can't say I'd work with my partner, if I had one that is, been there done that, got the tee shirt to prove it."

"So, where do you work?" Shawna asked as she picked up the triangle.

"Cadbury Chocolate in Ringwood, health and safety consultant and trainer," she replied.

"Sweet," Shawna grinned, "any samples?"

"I am sweet but if you want samples I require cash up front. We can only buy from the shop at the gatehouse, thirty dollars will get you a few kilos of chocolate."

"Wow," Maxine's eyes widened, "that's cheap, what's the catch?"

"Most of them are rejects, broken bars for example but there's no limits to what you can buy, they can't get rid of it fast enough."

"Hmm, mm," Shawna licked her lips, "I might be up for that."

"Knock yourself out, I'm up for anything," Linda smiled crookedly at Maxine.

Maxine laughed at that and was rewarded with a wink from Linda.

She soon learned that Linda had a sister and brother, both older than her. She liked to go hiking or horse riding. She didn't own a horse, she hired one from a farm outside Buxton. She'd been invited by Miranda, who worked on the line at Cadbury.

Maxine volunteered some information about herself but when it came to talking about the church she played it down as much as possible. To her surprise, Linda didn't seem fazed by the admission and mentioned that she'd been raised a Catholic girl.

"But I went bad," she chuckled, "I can never go back."

"Why not? I thought Catholics had confession?"

"Not for gays they don't, they'd take me back but I'll be in purgatory. My mother says a prayer for me every Sunday and now and then I leave a sacrifice at Thor's altar," their eyes met.

"I'm joking," she chuckled, although I reckon Thor is way cooler than the Christian god but maybe I've just had a thing for hammers."

"I've got a boyfriend," she potted a ball, "when I told him I was going to this women's meeting he took it personally because he knows Johanna is gay."

"So he's homophobic?"

"He's a dick at the moment," she straightened up, "sometimes I wonder why I'm still with him."

"There's usually a reason if you dig deep enough," she replied, "I used to date guys years ago but I guess I decided that women were less dangerous although we can be more dramatic."

That led to a brief conversation about Women Who Talk, Linda was interested in the group but she was more interested when Maxine mentioned the clothes she and Rowena had bought.

"How much?"

"Three hundred for six blouses in total. Handmade and guaranteed, bloody cheap considering the price of a single blouse from Myers."

"Interesting, I might check this joint out. Where is it?"

Maxine gave her the address and she put it into her phone and squinted at the map on the screen and when she looked up Shawna had just potted the eight ball.

"Fuck," Sue swore, "I thought you were going to fuck it up."

"It must be my lucky night," she grinned.

Shawna and Maxine played Johanna and Macca after that followed by Miranda and Phil's girlfriend, Nolene but they lost against Phil and Trevor. Their final game was the first knockout game against Sue and Linda and they lost and emigrated to a spare table to play a couple of friendly games. The ultimate winner was Johanna and Macca, and Linda and Sue happily paid for a round of drinks and once again Maxine elected for Coke, Linda decided to have another lemon squash and when someone asked if she drank she merely shrugged.

"I just don't drink," she replied, "it doesn't agree with me."

"I don't like feeling out of control," Maxine remarked.

"What're you doing afterwards?" Johanna asked her a few minutes later, "I'm going back to Sue and Jodie's place and you're welcome to tag along."

"Sure," she glanced over at Linda who was talking to Trevor and Shawna, "where do they live?"

They left some fifteen minutes later but during that time Maxine was aware that Linda was looking at her every now and then.

***

Maxine glanced over as Jodie rolled onto her side, her head was resting in Sue's lap. They were all watching the fallout from the Brexit referendum playing out live on tv. The vote had taken place on Thursday but now that the result was conclusive there had been a kind of mass confusion as the remainers and leavers tried to put their points of view across. The British Prime Minster had just resigned. Johanna was dismissive of Cameron, calling him a mere photo bomber, unable to manage a pig farm without embarrassing himself. The conversation moved from the toxic discussion about Brexit to coming out and in particular how they all came out.

"If you'd rather not say then that's fine, I'm just curious," Maxine ran a hand through her hair, "is it something you're born with or do you like, grow into it?"

For a few seconds no one said anything and then Sue spoke up.

"I was probably born this way but it wasn't until my marriage was on the rocks that I finally started to question why I was with him and that led to why I was with a man at all."

"Sounds... complicated," Maxine ventured.

"It certainly was at the time. I was in a bad marriage. He was cheating on me and I knew it but I didn't really care because while he was in someone else's bed getting satisfaction he wasn't in our bed trying to touch me, he was discreet enough although the last few months I knew it was building up to something."

"So, you didn't want him?" Maxine asked her.

"Not towards the end, and it's not like it started that way. At first we did love each other, just not enough to get married I guess, it was peer group pressure. Everyone said we were the perfect pair and when you're young enough that means something. We were good friends and in the aftermath we both admitted that we should've stayed friends but what I didn't admit to him was that before he and I got together I'd been going out with a lesbian."

"Okay," Maxine raised an eyebrow, "and?"

"And nothing," she smiled crookedly, "Jacinda and I were just mates, we used to go to clubs in the same car and watch each other's drinks, we'd take turns staying sober in case one of us had to drive the other one home. It was a partnership but we used to joke around that we were girlfriends to guys and also women who she didn't like," she stared at the television.

"One night though we slipped up and started kissing at her place. Oddly enough, it was Jacinda who backed out saying we should think about this first before we took it further. Over the next week or so I did think about it now and then but then Brian asked me out. He was supposed to be a one night stand but he stayed longer than one night and we started going out to clubs together. Jacinda got a girlfriend at the same time and that should have been the end of it," she paused.

"But I could never forget that night at her place because we could've done it, and at first it was just a pleasant memory and then an embarrassing memory but as the marriage began to fall apart I'd find myself revisiting that night and imagining what it would've been like."

"Did you ever try to contact Jacinda again?" Johanna asked.

"I did invite her to the wedding, she came for the reception but she was wrapped up in Ashley and I didn't feel I had the right to intrude, I wasn't about to break up a perfectly good relationship just to satisfy my idle curiosity. After it ended though I did go and see her and Ashley and confessed that I was curious. They took me out to a gay party and I went home with a gay woman, she didn't last more than one night but I knew then that I was gay and probably had been skirting around the edges for years without realising it."

"Oh," Maxine said.

"To put it simply, I used guys for sex because I knew that's what they wanted, I could control a man through sex but I never gave anything away to a man. I was never intimate with a man, I'd tell him what he wanted to know but I kept my past secret. My mum had been a prostitute in her youth and then became a social worker when she got out of the game. I kept secrets like that, along with my dad's infidelities. It was different with girls, I told them everything, even when there was no need to tell them. I wanted and needed approval from girls more than boys. If a guy got upset with me I could shrug it off but if a girlfriend was upset then I'd move heaven and Earth to make it right."

Maxine felt the colour in her cheeks as Sue patted Jodie's belly.

"Jodie on the other hand is different, she was born this way."

"Too right," she grinned, "I was out when I was in high school, I knew what I was and wasn't shy about telling people. I liked guys, don't get me wrong, but I liked doing things with guys like sport or helping to fix their cars. I was a tomboy and mum knew it too, it was never a struggle for me, I had a school counsellor who challenged me to explore my feelings for guys and I just laughed out loud. It was just ridiculous to think I could kiss a guy, I felt no desire towards guys."

Johanna then came out with her story about finding out when she was still in high school that she liked girls more than boys. When she'd finished speaking there was another silence and finally Sue spoke up.

"So, tell me. Why did you ask that question?"

"Probably because I'm questioning things myself."

"Such as?"

"Well it's a lot of things, not just sexual orientation. I'm questioning God, my faith, the reason I do the things I do. I've had two guys propose to me in the last couple of years and I said no to both of them but at the time I thought it had something to do with ongoing trauma from my dad and mum breaking up," she paused.

"Now I'm thinking there's more to it because I get with guys I have no intention of marrying, the guy I was going out with before Mark wasn't a Christian. In my world they frown at marrying a non Christian and so it was okay to date him because I couldn't marry him but I ended it with him."

"Why?" Jodie asked.

"Um, he wanted to have sex, we'd pashed on a few times and we got quite hot and heavy but when he tried to take it further I refused because I wanted a condom. When he finally decided to buy a pack of condoms I found a reason to not go through with it, she frowned, "I went out with Mark and he became the excuse although I did wind up on the pill after that anyway."

"It just seemed safer," she continued, "considering the situations we'd wind up in, I didn't want to find myself pregnant and faced with a choice of marrying the father of my unborn child."

"It doesn't make you gay," Sue mused, "but you're right to question things, it's not as cut and dried as it seems. I don't like labels to be honest, sexuality is a fluid thing, we have sexual desire and it can be satisfied in straight or gay encounters. I still don't call myself gay, I just admit that I love Jodie more than I love others, whether male or female."

The conversation continued with all three women coming up with stories about how other women had discovered sex with their own kind. Some were just experimenting and went back to guys after a night or a brief fling, others however went between the two but the greater proportion seemed to stick with women and that had a lot to do with changing societal norms. It was more acceptable to be openly gay or bisexual without the negative connotations but it was important to find your own preference and that was only found through experimenting.

"That was one of the best nights I've had in a long time," Maxine confessed to Johanna as they walked to their cars, "I said things tonight that I haven't told anyone."

"They can be trusted," she replied, "don't worry."

"Good," she nodded, "I'm glad it's stopped raining finally."

"For now," she looked up, "but I reckon we'll see more tomorrow morning."

"I know," she unlocked her car, "well, I guess I'll see you," she stared past her, "Sunday night for our Swedish lesson?"

"Ja visst," she touched her elbow.

"Of course," she translated.

"Vi ses," Johanna used the more informal form of goodbye.

Even so, she was still tempted to follow closely behind Johanna as they drove down Alto Avenue to Wicklow Avenue but at the last minute she turned left at the bottom of the hill when she suddenly remembered she had to get some things from Coles. By the time she got home though she felt as if she'd crossed an obstacle that had seemed insurmountable.

So what happens next?

To be continued...