Read Online Stripped Down by Tristan Taormino - Free Book Online

and his scissors snipped at a few rogue strands. I looked at my hair lying in clumps on the tiled floor. Then I looked in the mirror and sucked my teeth. Fuck, I wanted to blow a kiss to that sexy butch looking back at me. This was going to work. All I had to do was get the job and buy the cologne Jacqueline loved—the one Katie couldn’t stand and had always refused to wear.
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    Two weeks later it was my first day at Between the Lines and the manager was showing me the ropes—giving me the grand tour, introducing me to the staff. Everything was going well, but I was nervous knowing Jacqueline could be anywhere and that at any moment she could spring out like a pop-up monster in a children’s book. As chance would have it, however, I had nothing to worry about—I was the one who popped out at her. The manager and I rounded the magazine rack and there she was, kneeling in front of the philosophy section with her back to us. “Jacqueline,” the manager said, clearing his throat. “I’d like to introduce you to Kelly.”
    From her place on the floor, Jacqueline slowly looked up at
me—her easy smile first playing over my boots and then up and up until she met my eyes and the happy curve of her lips was lopped off, sliced up by three huge shocks. One, we were face to face for the first time since she’d stolen my girlfriend. Two, henceforth she’d have to deal with me daily. And three, I didn’t look the way she remembered.
    Fortunately, by this point so many people had expressed shock over my new look that I’d learned to shrug that off. Tracy, for instance, had told me such quick comfort in a 180-degree turn meant I didn’t know my own true identity—a bullshit line, I concluded, meant to conceal her own fear. The very human fear of gray. Of worlds colliding. Of categories blurring. Yes, people want tidy distinctions. Butch or femme. Hot or cold. Love or hate. Villain or victim. And so it was making people very nervous to see me with short hair. To hear me say I’d always had butch and femme sides and that the butch had just been waiting to learn how to swagger.
    But Jacqueline’s look of bewilderment had various sources, not just the butch thing—and so it was a zillion times harder for her than for others. That’s what I was thinking, anyway, when the book she’d been trying to shelve slipped from her fingers and fell to the floor with a thud.
    The manager’s gaze flicked in a triangle from me to Jacqueline to the book, which lay pages spread. Spine arched. “Have you two met before?” he asked.
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    Jacqueline avoided me for weeks, but it wasn’t wasted time. I was studying her and our game by spending a few minutes of every shift in the hunting and fishing section. I’d open a random book to a random page and I’d read until I found some nugget of advice I needed, and in that way I learned how to
circle in slowly, how to interpret every gesture—the tilt of her head, the flick of her hair. And I learned when to start reeling in.
    â€œJacqueline,” I said one afternoon when all the signs were right and we were alone in the staff room. “We should talk.” She had a peach in one hand and a book in the other and instead of putting them down she gripped them tighter, apparently not noticing the trail of peach juice that dripped down her fingers and all the way to her wrist. I licked my lips and sat down across from her.
    â€œYou obviously aren’t comfortable around me,” I began. “But I’m not at all mad at you.”
    â€œNo?” she said, her voice lifted in hope.
    â€œNo—you did me a favor. Things weren’t working between Tori and me. I couldn’t be myself with her…. The two of you, on the other hand—you make sense together.”
    Afraid of sounding smarmy, I paused then and looked at Jacqueline, trying to read her. The corners of her lips were