Locks, Guns and Rings
by Kuya Minogue

1969 Locks

Seconds after Janice jumped off the bus into the rainy Vancouver night, she disappeared into the shadow that followed the line of the buildings down Davie Street. Always best to stay out of sight. When she reached the intersection at Howe Street she pulled the black sweatshirt hood over her head and close to her face. Was it anxiety about getting caught or excitement about seeing Dorothy that propelled her civil war boots into a brief shuffle? Janice didn't know, and she didn't care. She just wanted to get inside before the vice squad spotted her.

When the light changed and the Howe Street traffic stopped, Janice leapt off the curb, made one last check for the cops, crossed the intersection, turned right and hopped down some stairs to knock on a pink door. A small peek-hole opened. An eyeball appeared.

"Janice," a voice sang out. "Come in."

Janice waited until three locks clicked open and the door latch snapped. She slipped in, quickly shutting the door behind her.

Pamela refastened all the locks.

"Is Dorothy here, yet?" asked Janice.

Pamela nodded. "She's in the back booth." She closed the last bolt and stood up. Pam was a truck driver dyke. She stood solid, dressed in baggy jeans and a plaid work shirt. It was a mystery to Janice why some women modelled themselves after the roughest of men. Or was it toughest?

Pam said, "But I don't know why you bother with her when you could have me."

"You're too butch for me, Pam. I'm not into roles. Besides, I like her laugh better."

The acrid smell of beer and cigarette jolted Janice as she entered the dimly lit bar. She felt her body tune into the rhythm of Aretha Franklin's Chain of Fools. The music put a beat into her hop and she danced across the dance floor towards the laughter that rang out over Aretha's voice. She would recognize that deep guttural laughter anywhere.

A warm glow spread through her. It was the same warmth she had felt the first time she heard Dorothy's laugh over the din of students in the UBC cafeteria on the first day of classes. Even then, the woman's low growl had tweaked her desire.

She had waited, lunch in hand, in the centre of the cafeteria for a second burst of laughter so she could spot the woman who was creating it. Then, in a moment that changed her life, she saw Dorothy, sitting with two women at a table by the window, face raised to the ceiling. The woman's whole body bounced as she laughed. She was wearing a white T-shirt and black jeans.

Janice approached the table, met Dorothy's eyes and held them. Jane Rule's Desert of the Heart was on top of the pile of books on the table. She was talking about how Jane was losing her UBC teaching job for publishing lesbian content.

Janice's attraction to Dorothy solidified in that conversation. Dorothy's outrage at the injustice to Jane fired the warm glow of Janice's desire. Dorothy must have felt the same way, because within a week, they were sleeping together, and the warm glow had erupted into a smoking volcano.

As Aretha headed into the chorus, Janice spotted Dorothy's face flickering in the strobe lights. She was dancing across the floor to meet Dorothy. They moved together long before their bodies merged. They danced close, as if bonded by the chains that Aretha was singing about.

"I missed you," Dorothy whispered into Janice's neck.

"Me, too. Missed you." She pressed tightly into Dorothy's abdomen.

The song came to an end. Dorothy pointed at the table.

"I have a cold beer waiting for you."

Pat and Leslie slid across the booth to make room. When they had settled in, thighs pressing together, Dorothy took two cigarettes out of her pack of Export "A" and lit them both.

Pat leaned over to speak above Diana Ross and the Supremes who were now belting out I'm Gonna Make You Love Me.

"Did you hear the news?" Pat was a political science major, just like Janice.

"What news?"

"Trudeau's Omnibus Bill passed. We're legal!"

Pat was yelling. She laughed.

"I told Pamela to take the fucking locks off the door, but she hadn't read the newspaper and didn't believe me."

She shook her head in disgust and dropped her voice.

"That woman lives in gay bar land. Knows nothing about gay rights. She didn't even know about Trudeau saying," she paused, "Get this."

She brushed her short hair so it lay loosely on her forehead and spoke in a voice that impersonated Trudeau.

"The state has no business in the bedrooms of the nation."

Pat raised her beer, "To Trudeau and the Omnibus Bill."

Dorothy's cheer raised the temperature in Janice's belly. She leaned over and whispered in Dorothy's ear.

"Let's go to your place and act out our new freedom."

By the time Dorothy's car pulled up to the curb in front of her house on Dunbar Street, Janice was soaked with desire. She double-stepped the concrete porch stairs and couldn't wait while Dorothy fumbled for her keys. Janice pressed Dorothy backwards into the wall.

Dorothy whispered. "Don't, Janice. Someone will see us."

"Who cares? We're legal now."

"I care, Janice. I have to live in this neighbourhood."

She pushed hard on Janice's chest and turned to unlock the door. Janice felt her stubborn streak arise. She rebelled.

"Let's not do all the locks, tonight, Dorothy. Let's celebrate our new freedom."

She held up a bottle of massage oil.

"It's your favourite, Sensuality."

Dorothy smiled.

"Okay -- just the dead bolt on the front door."

She turned the handle of the lock until the bolt snapped into place. The chain clasp lay undone.

Dorothy was nervous, "Maybe we should do the locks on the bedroom door, just in case." Her eyes were slightly dilated with tension.

"Let's not." Janice scowled. "I hate that so much."

She pulled Dorothy into bed before the locks were bolted. She could feel Dorothy melt into their kiss. Desire expanded. Breathing heaved. Their minds and bodies dissolved. A small clicking noise started up in the next room. Janice didn't hear it; but Dorothy did.

"Shhhh." She pushed Janice off her. "What was that?"

"What?" Janice was confused. She dampened down her desire.

"What happened, Dorothy? What was what?"

"That noise?"

"What noise?" Janice listened.

A cat meowed at the window outside the living room.

"Dorothy, it was just a cat."

"Well, I'm going to lock up. I can't stand this."

Dorothy got out of bed. Janice could hear the latches clicking. Inside the bedroom, Dorothy turned the key in the door, closed the dead bolt and snapped the padlock shut.

"There," she said quietly. "That's better."

When she turned to get back into bed, Janice was lying curled up and cooled off.

1992 Guns

"I don't want you to do it. It's too dangerous"

Dorothy's reading glasses were down on her nose. She was looking at Janice over the top of them. Her copy of Cixous's Le Rire de la MÈduse lay in her lap. Janice ignored her plea. They'd been through this so many times.

"How's your book."

"Oh this." She held the book up. "I've read it so often, I'm having trouble bringing a fresh view to it." She put the book down. "It was far more exciting when I was studying with Cixous ten years ago in Paris. Then it was new. Now it's history. But still, it's new to the students, so I need an approach that excites them."

Janice was putting the finishing touches on the banner that she had spread out across the dining room table. She held it up for Dorothy to see.

"What do you think?"

She had made the banner with fabric paint on a 3 X 6 white bed sheet tacked to two lengths of doweling. She had painted a huge black and red swastika in the middle and the words "Never Again" across top of the swastika. On the bottom she had painted "Say NO to Ballot Measure 9."

Janice waved the banner back and forth to dry the paint.

"I know you don't want me to go." She paused. "And you know that I have to. I can't just let those Christian right goons take our rights away like that. Imagine. Legalizing discrimination." Janice could feel her volume increase with her rage.

Dorothy stood up.

"Then I'm coming with you."

"Thought you weren't into political protest."

"I'm not, but I am into you."

"Good. You can hold one end of the banner."

"Where are we taking it?"

"We're going to hold it up outside Jim's house. It's a good backdrop. The hole in his house from the bomb is still open." Dorothy shook her head. " I admire that guy. He's still standing as head of the No-On-9 group - even after the goons threw that bomb."

Dorothy trembled and then scowled.

"When is the Christian right going to get Christian?" She made one last appeal to Janice.

"Please, Janice. Don't go. And if you do go, wear the bullet proof vest that the police gave you."

Janice put her arms around Dorothy.

"I'll be okay, Do. The whole network will be there and the police are covering the event.

"I still don't like it."

"I know. But the referendum vote is in two days and we gotta win this."

Janice hadn't been at the No-On-9 meeting when they threw the bomb at Jim's house, but she could have been there, and she knew it. She also knew that Dorothy knew it. Dorothy was still frowning.

"Dorothy," Janice's voice was earnest. "If we don't defeat this measure, the state constitution will declare homosexuality abnormal, wrong, unnatural and perverse and that will make all kinds of discrimination legal. I can't stand by and do nothing."

"I know. I know, Janice. I don't need to hear your elevator speech." She turned away. "Let's not talk about it. Let's just get ready." Dorothy reached into the closet and got out her suede jacket.

"If we have to go," she said, "let's go."

Janice pulled a small pink triangle out of her pocket.

"Here. Wear this. We just got them today."

"What is it?"

Janice unclasped the pin on the back of the broach and pinned it on Dorothy's lapel.

"The Religious Response Network dreamed it up. We're calling it the King Christian response. It's like when the Nazi's tried to force Jews to wear a yellow triangle in Denmark and King Christian ordered all the Danes to wear one. We've made about 3000 of these. We're doing a press conference about it tomorrow."

When she finished pinning the broach on Dorothy's sweater, Janice pulled the tall blond woman into her body.

A warm wave of tenderness flowed through her. She could feel Dorothy responding. She tightened her embrace.

"Later." Dorothy gasped, and ducked under Janice's arms. 'Right now we are too busy saving the world from the crusading Christians."

They parked their blue Mazda pickup in the Fred Meyer Parking lot across from Jim's house.

"Oh my god." Dorothy gasped. "I didn't imagine the hole to be so big."

She was staring at the plywood that was covering the front of Jim's house. The words "Bombed by the Christian Right" were painted in red across the plywood.

Dorothy took Janice's hand.

"Janice. Is that the room where the meeting was?"

"It's usually in there. The night of the attack the committee was in the kitchen because they needed the table to work on the placards."

Dorothy stopped and pulled her hand out of Janice's. "C'mon sweetie. We'll be okay. Let's go."

As they walked across the parking lot Janice spotted a red truck with a sign that said, "No special rights!" in the window, and a larger one that said "Adam and Eve NOT Adam and Steve" in the pickup box. Three men and two women were standing by the truck.

They yelled across the parking lot.

"Fuckin' dykes! Go home, ya fuckin' dykes. Leave our children alone."

"Just ignore them." Janice took Dorothy's arm.

"But they make me so mad. They are so disgusting and stupid!"

Janice spotted Jim among a crowd of supporters across the street and waved.

She handed one of the pieces of dowling to Dorothy.

"Here. Let's spread this out."

The opened the banner for Jim to see.

Jim yelled. "That's great! Stay on that side of the street. We'll cover this side."

He held up his sign. "Say NO to Hate. Say NO to Ballot Measure 9."

The protest group stayed on the corner until sundown and then gathered in Jim's kitchen for refreshments and a debriefing.

"Nice to see you out, Dorothy."

There was a titter of laughter. Dorothy just nodded.

Their talk about the evening's demonstration was interrupted by a phone call.

Jim answered it. Within seconds, his face clouded over with pain.

"Oh my god!"

As he listened his shoulders dropped, he took a deep breath, and tears began to roll down his face. When he hung up the phone, he broke into sobbing.

"They killed Hattie May and Brian. They firebombed their apartment and killed them." He reached for his jacket.

"I've gotta go to the hospital. Hattie's parents are there."

Donald, Jim's lover, stood up too.

"I'm going with you."

As they were going out the door, Jim warned the others.

"Be careful on your way home. Things are getting really nuts."

Janice and Dorothy didn't speak to each other until they were getting into bed.

"I saw Hattie May just yesterday." Janice said.

"Did you know her?"

"Not really. She was pretty active in No on 9, though."

Dorothy whispered. "Like you are, you mean."

Janice held out her arms to Dorothy.

"Come here, sweetie. C'mon in here."

Dorothy snuggled into Janice's arms and put her head face down in the hollow of her shoulder. She began to cry.

"I'm so scared, Janice. I'm so scared that something horrible will happen to you."

"Shhh. Sweetie. We have to let life flow through us, not fear."

Dorothy softened and opened. The two women moved closer and let the heat flow. Just as they were about to disappear into each other's desire there was an explosion outside the window. Janice threw herself across Dorothy's body and lay there. They listened. The upscale neighbourhood was quiet until another bang resounded from further down the street.

Janice got up to look out the window.

"It was a car backfiring, Do. It was nothing."

When she looked around, Dorothy was curled up and trembling.

2003 -- Rings

Janice and Dorothy did not agree on the details of their first meeting. They joked about it in the hotel room. Dorothy was sitting by the window that looked out on the harbour in St. Johns, Newfoundland. She was watching for an iceberg. Janice was on the bed.

"You were sitting at a table close to the cafeteria window. I can see you laughing at a joke I'd made," Janice insisted.

"No I wasn't. I was at a table in the middle of the room and you sat at the end." Janice loved telling the story over and over again, and she loved their disagreement.

The TV was on in the background. They were so involved in retelling their story that they almost missed the announcer's words.

He spoke with a quiver in his voice.

"Ottawa will introduce legislation to make same-sex marriages legal, while at the same time permitting churches and other religious groups to sanctify marriage as they see it,' Prime Minister Chretien said Tuesday."

"Oh my Goddess." Janice stood up to turn the TV volume louder.

There was a video clip of two men kissing outside a government building.

The announcer continued in a voice over.

"A licence was issued to Michael Leshner and Michael Stark only hours after the ruling. The two men were married in a Toronto ceremony attended by about 50 people."

Janice was so excited that her voice squeaked.

"Dorothy. Look at that. This is incredible. I never thought it would happen in my lifetime."

She couldn't stop babbling.

"Do you know how long I've worked for this?" She jumped off the bed. "I'm so glad we moved back to Canada. Oh Canada!"

Dorothy was quiet.

"Doesn't this excite you, Dorothy?"

There was caution in Dorothy's voice.

"It makes me proud to be a Canadian, but I don't believe in marriage as an institution. It's a male thing. I'm just afraid that you'll want to get married."

"Dorothy. This isn't about us. It's about every gay and lesbian person in the world. It's about recognition and respect."

"It's a male institution and it's about ownership of women."

Janice sat down and glared out the window.

"Look," she said as a way of changing the subject. "There's that iceberg you wanted to see."

Dorothy stood up and glanced out the window. An iceberg floated past the harbour entrance.

Dorothy studied the iceberg for a moment and then said in a clipped voice, "Right. Well, you have to make your presentation in half an hour." She turned from the window and walked towards the door. "We'd better get down to the conference."

They didn't talk about marriage again until they arrived home. Janice was lying across the bed reading The Globe and Mail as Dorothy unpacked.

"Looks like the backlash is starting already."

Janice read aloud from the front page.

"The Vatican launched a global campaign against same sex marriage Thursday with the release of a statement urging Roman Catholic politicians and others to oppose all legal efforts to sanctify homosexual unions."

She looked up at Dorothy. There was worry in her voice.

"Do you think the Christian right could turn this around?"

"I don't think so. But every time a couple gets married, the conservatives lose ground."

Dorothy disappeared into the walk-in closet. Janice got off the bed and followed her.

"Then I think we should get married."

Dorothy held her ground.

"I don't believe in marriage."

"Dorothy. We already are married. We've exchanged rings. We're a financial unit. When I was doing that contract on Baffin Island and the planes were stopped after 9/11, we agreed that we would never live apart again. What is the problem here? Let's get married, just because we can."

"What we've already done is enough for me. Why isn't it enough for you?"

"There's more at stake here than you and I." Janice paused. She felt a rare flare of anger at Dorothy. "Besides, when we're old and crotchety, we may need a piece of paper to rattle at Nurse Ratshit when she tries to force us into separate beds."

Dorothy laughed.

"You do have a point there. I need more time to think about it. Marriage scares me."

"Well, fear is no reason to avoid anything."

Dorothy grimaced.

"I'll think about it."

Three weeks later, it was Dorothy who started the conversation again. She was standing at the door to Janice's den.

"Okay. I'll do it."

Janice looked up from her computer screen.

"Do what, honey?"

"I'll marry you."

Janice leapt up from her chair knocking her knees on the keyboard platform.

"You'll do what?"

Dorothy backed up.

"You'll marry me?"

"Yes. But I just want the Justice of the Peace and two witnesses there. I don't want to make a big deal of it."

"But surely you'll want your daughters there and some of our friends."

"No. I want it to be quiet and small. The minimum."

Three months later, 30 guests crowded into their living room. They had a Buddhist ceremony followed by what Dorothy called "the paperwork". When no one answered the question, "Does anyone know of any legal impediment to this marriage"' there wasn't a dry eye in the room.

When they kissed, the guests broke out in cheers.

Later, after the gifts were opened, the quiche and cake consumed, and the guests gone, Janice took Dorothy by the hand and led her up to the bedroom.

"Shall I carry you across the threshold?"

"Don't be ridiculous."

"Well then, let's just hold hands."

She pulled her into the bed and slowly removed her clothing. For three days, they didn't get out of bed for anything but bubble baths, Venusian Springwater, and deliveries from the Lazy Gourmet.

Kuya Minogue is resident teacher at ZenWords Zen Centre in Golden, BC. She was given disciple ordination in Soto Zen Buddhism by Kyogen Carlson in 1986. She married Rita Scott in 2003. They live with cats and music.

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