Read Online Ain't Gonna Be the Same Fool Twice by April Sinclair - Free Book Online Page A

men.”
    â€œOh,” I said, feeling relieved that you could go to a lesbian bar and not necessarily be a lesbian.
    â€œIn fact,” the woman continued, “I’m going to a women’s dance tonight.”
    â€œOh, is it open to the public?”
    â€œSure. I didn’t mention it before because it’s in Berkeley.”
    â€œBerkeley, is that far?”
    â€œNot really, I live in Berkeley. I take BART and it’s not a bad commute. It’s only about a half-hour ride.”
    â€œThat’s nothing. It takes longer than that for me to get from my house to downtown Chicago.”
    â€œSounds like you might be game, then.”
    â€œYeah, actually a dance sounds better than a bar.”
    â€œI can give you directions. But you have to remember to get into the BART system by the stroke of midnight.”
    â€œOr I’ll turn into a pumpkin?”
    â€œOr you’ll have to take a cab back, which costs about twenty-five bucks. Unless of course you get lucky and meet someone tonight and get picked up by her.”
    â€œI’ll manage to get into the BART system on time or else spring for a cab. I don’t think I’m ready to go home with anyone just yet. It’ll be a big deal for me even to get up enough nerve to go inside the place, believe me.”
    â€œWell, good luck, here are the directions.”
    Taking BART was an experience in itself. I’d read in the newspaper last year about the Bay Area’s new transit system. Yet I was startled when the shiny silver train with blue trim sneaked up on me. Its sleek design reminded me more of something out of The Jetsons than Chicago’s creaky old el trains. BART even put the newer trains that ran along the Dan Ryan Expressway to shame. BART was computerized; machines gave you your ticket to get in and out of the system. The ride was amazingly quiet; the cars spacious and almost squeaky clean.
    I liked what I saw as I walked along the streets of Berkeley: Comfortable-looking houses, quaint shops, harmless-looking hippies. If I got lost, it wouldn’t be hard to walk up to one of the several smiling people strolling with backpacks and ask them for directions.
    Even though the night air caused me to fasten my sweater, I marveled at the number of people wearing down jackets in June. After eating dinner at Kentucky Fried Chicken, I wiped my mouth good and sucked on a peppermint Life Saver. I didn’t want to look greasy or blow chicken breath in anybody’s face.
    It still tripped me out that a lesbian dance was being held at a church. But that’s what the woman at the switchboard had said. Maybe the parishoners envisioned prim and proper ladies waltzing with one another or something.
    The closer I got to the dance, the more nervous I felt. What kind of women would be there? I wondered. The few known lesbians I remembered observing during my childhood were never anyone I’d aspired to be like. Take Lois and Gwen from my ’hood, for example. Lois walked and dressed like a man. Gwen was just as feminine as Lois was masculine. And Lois referred to Gwen as “my woman.” Melody, a girlhood friend, had lived upstairs from the couple. She told me that her mother had to call the police on Lois and Gwen more than once. Judging by Gwen’s bruises, Melody concluded that Lois also hit like a man. I never saw any advantage in Gwen’s being a lesbian. She had two children from a failed marriage. And it baffled me that she would substitute a woman for a man without gaining any ground. What was the point of kissing some woman’s behind who hit you whenever she got ready? Not to mention that you got ostracized by society on top of it. I decided that if it was my lot in life to be a lesbian, I wouldn’t be that kind of lesbian. I would be the kind who’d heard about Women’s Liberation.
    I turned up the street that the church was supposed to be on. I spied a group of women milling