Sapphic Embrace: The Half-Japanese Girl

Sapphic
Embrace: A Half-Japanese Girl

by Kathleen S. Molligger

Copyright Kathleen Molligger

Smashwords Edition

CHAPTER ONE

Marijuana

It’s amazing how difficult it is to make friends outside of
school or work. Approaching people you don’t know, striking up a
conversation, making friends with someone new — maybe we’ve all
seen too many movies in which that kind of thing is a prelude to
something terrible. It comes across as a pretext to enact a
nefarious scheme. But that was how I met Meredith Angelopolous. I
saw her on the street, pretending to look at hemp necklaces on a
street-table counter near the college. The semi-homeless black man
who worked the table had disappeared, presumably off acquiring a
bag of weed to sell her.

Meredith had very short
hair, spiky and platinum-silver — not a dyejob though, or so it
seemed, it was her natural color — overtop a kind, round and strong
face. She carefully scrutinized a bracelet adorned with red, black
and green beads. I approached her casually, not sure what I
intended to do. I didn’t make friends with strangers off the
streets anymore than anyone else did.

I picked up a street map of
the DC area, saw that it was three years out-of-date and pointed it
out to the weed-buying blonde, who grinned. “It should be labelled
‘not for actual use’. Jinn-Deep just had to go get… something.
He’ll be back in a minute,” she said, her soft, lilting voice
ringing out even in the crowded street.

I smiled back at her and
said okay, pretending that I was there to buy weed like she was. I
wasn’t really a pot-smoker, though I didn’t usually turn it down if
someone passed me a joint. “I’m Amy,” I said.

“Meredith,” she said. “Nice
to meet you. Are you a student?”

“I graduated last year. I’m
working for the Josephine Foundation now,” I said. It was clear
from her blank expression she didn’t know what that meant, so I
explained, “It’s a mental health non-profit agency.
It’s-“

The scruffy black man in an
overly thick coat reappeared, drumming his hands on the table to an
unheard beat. He slipped a bag of weed into a little beaded pouch,
which Meredith picked up. “Move along, ladies,” he muttered, “About
to get busted.”

Meredith looked at me in a
panic and we darted down the sidewalk, turning just in time to see
uniformed officers converge on Jinn-Deep, who put his hands in the
air. None of the cops seemed to have noticed that we were just with
him, and we scurried through the crowd, trying to stay together as
quickly and unobtrusively as possible.

I kept thinking cops were
going to swarm us any second, but eventually we found ourselves on
a leafy-treed lane, small squat tenements on either side. We
stopped running and awkwardly fell silent, not sure where or how to
take our relationship.

“Do you wanna come back to
my place and smoke some of this?” she asked.

I shrugged and said
“Okay.”

She lived in a squalid,
rundown building, which made me uneasy, for the first time
wondering if I had made a mistake in coming with her. She was a
stranger, after all. She must have recognized my discomfort,
because she smiled and said, “I know, it’s a shitty area. My place
is fine though, and it’s safe. Almost all of my neighbors are
really old.”

I followed her into her
apartment, which was cluttered but not dirty, and it made me feel
at home instantly. Pillows and blankets were strewn about, like a
modern-day opium den, every spot an inviting place to lounge and
relax. We sat in the center of her living room, and she put some
psychedelic music on.

“What do you do, Meredith?”
I asked.

She sat down and began
breaking up the weed she had just bought. “I go to school, at
Georgetown,” she said. “I’m an information systems
major.”

“Information
systems?”

“It’s part of a library
science program,” she said, wincing a little. “I’m sorry, I’m such
a nerd. I want to be a librarian.”

“No, that’s so cool,” I
said. “I love libraries.”

We continued chatting, me
about my work at the Josephine Foundation, her about her plan to
work for the Library of Congress. By the time she finished
deseeding and destemming the weed, I felt like I had known her for
years. She packed up a bong and passed it to me.

“But my real passion is
food,” she said, patting her gut, which was tiny, her stomach
almost totally flat. I felt a little jealous — I had always had a
waistline I wasn’t proud of, and rounder hips than any woman of
Japanese descent should have. “I love to cook. Do you
cook?”

I laughed, taking the bong
and the lighter from her. “I love to cook too, but I’m so bad at
it. Sometimes
I
like the things I cook, but no one else ever does.” I hoped I
didn’t mess up taking a bong hit — bongs were complicated, came in
numerous varieties and I usually ended up making a fool of myself
trying to use them. Meredith’s bong was no exception, the shotgun
being hidden in the orange plastic tube, and I awkwardly fumbled
through it, Meredith smiling patronizingly. “I don’t smoke a lot of
bongs,” I said, feeling my cheeks blush.

As the first hit filled my
lungs with a familiar acrid-lemon flavor and a weedy fog began to
fill my mind, I asked Meredith if she had a boyfriend. She smiled
and said, “You should get your gaydar fixed, sweetie. I was moments
away from hitting on you.”

It took me a moment to
realize what she was saying, and then it dawned on me. “Oh my god,
you’re a lesbian!” I blushed, having embarrassed myself again in
front of her.

She nodded. “Is that
okay?”

“Yeah, of course, sure, I
was just surprised,” I said. “Do you have a girlfriend?”

“No,” she said, “Girls are a
bunch of betraying, backstabbing whores. I am the worst
lesbian.”

“Men are no better,” I
said.

“Do you have one?” she
asked.

“Not right now.”

“Any men on tap?”

“Not really. I’ve got this
neighbor, a guy who lives below me. His name is Calvert, and he is
ungodly hot,” I said, “And he’s so sweet and charming. He’s clean,
he’s not poor, I think, and he’s black so he should age
well.”

“Shit, he sounds like a
no-brainer.”

“Well… he’s a stripper and
an escort,” I said. “I’m liberal, but I could not handle my man
sleeping around, showing his junk off to complete
strangers.”

“Yeah, that’s not the career
path of a man who’s ready for a serious relationship,” she
said.

“And
that
is the problem with men,” I said,
leaning back against the wall, settling into the pillowy living
room. I giggled. “Lesbians have got it all figured out.”

“Oh, sweetie,” she said, “I
don’t want to break your heart, but women are worse. They will
demand everything from you, they’ll get under your skin and then,
once they’re lodged inside you and intertwined with you, they won’t
let you go. They’ll break your heart a thousand times.”

“I take it you’ve had some
poor relationships,” I said.

“Is there any other
kind?”

CHAPTER TWO

Broth

Meredith spent all day cooking dinner for her and I. She
wasn’t slaving over the stove, but the stove was on, the broth
merrily bubbling and developing flavor, or so she said. She showed
me every step in the brothmaking process, which she claimed was the
most delicate art in the world. “It’s a craft,” she said, “And it’s
great, because it’s a craft you make out of what’s around you. You
don’t have to find exotic ingredients, or even any specific
ingredients. You just cook what you have.”

She froze bones when she
cooked, so she could use them for broth, along with gizzards and
bits of unusable meat. When she spread them out on the counter in
front of me, it had almost a haunted look, frozen bones and scraps
of sinew, ice crystals dotting every surface, mysterious blobs of
meat scattered across the counter. All went in the pot, along with
frozen scraps of vegetables, pieces of onions, peppers, leeks,
mushrooms and more, vegetables I couldn’t even identify and hadn’t
heard of when she listed them off to me.

“Thank you so much for
coming over today,” Meredith said. “It’s been a couple weeks since
I had anything to look forward to on a Saturday night.”

“Oh, Meredith! You can
always call me,” I said.

“I don’t want a pity-friend.
I want a woman, a romantic, sexual relationship. Something
permanent. Something that doesn’t get ruined,” she said. I could
tell she was thinking of her ex, Elaine, who had become a
controlling, domineering, almost abusive part of Meredith’s
life.

“That’s… not totally
impossible,” I said.

“What?”

“I’m bisexual,” I said. “And
I’ve been thinking about giving up on men for a little
while.”

“Wait,” Meredith said, “Are
you really bisexual? A lot of women just say that. If you just want
to… you know, experiment, tell me. That’s fine. I can show you the
ropes. But don’t pretend you want a real relationship if you
don’t.”

“Is it okay if I don’t
know?” I said.

“That’s an experiment then.
You are old enough to know, Amy. If you aren’t seriously, really
attracted to women, you’re not bisexual. I know, I know, sexuality
is a spectrum, but I’m not going to get in a relationship with a
woman who’s ninety-five percent hetero,” she said.

“Meredith… I don’t want to
lie to you. I hate lying,” I said. “But I really am bisexual. I’ve
just never done anything like this, not really.”

She smiled, her soft
feminine face beaming brilliantly. She placed one hand on my arm
and said, “Then let’s take it slow.” She leaned forward and
delicately planted her lips on mine.

It both was and was not the
same as kissing a boy. She was lighter, more airy, and she tasted
less of salt and musk. But just the same as any man I had kissed,
her lips’ touch sent shockwaves of anticipated pleasure coursing
through my nerves. I kissed her too, opening my mouth so our
tongues could mingle.

I wrapped my arms around her
back, feeling her lithe feminine frame arch beneath my grasp. Our
bodies interlocked as we sank down into the couch cushions. Her
hands stayed around my face and neck, but electric tingling made my
entire body feel alive. We matched up perfectly, her breasts
pressing against mine, her legs ensconced with mine, our bare toes
curling up against each other.

One of her hands danced from
my neck to my chest, caressing the spot between my breasts as she
slowly descended. Her lips stayed firmly planted on my mouth, her
hard nipples still poking mine from beneath her blouse and bra. I
lowered my own hands from her shoulders to her lower back, a part
of me wanting to clutch her firm asscheeks, fitting snugly in her
tight jeans, but I hesitated, not sure if that would be too
forward, or if it was the kind of thing done during heterosexual
encounters that would seem weird in a lesbian one.

She quickly undid the
buttons of my shirt and her blouse, stripping them off to reveal my
comically dingy old-lady bra and her beautiful blue number, out of
which her ample bosoms spilled forth like fleshy cornucopias. I was
a bigger woman so my bosoms were larger overall, but she had a
neater frame, with perfectly shaped breasts that, for a moment,
made me feel like a sitcom frat boy whose eyes would pop out of his
skull at their sight..

She sat up, sitting on and
between my thighs, undoing her own bra to let her breasts hang out,
gleaming with a few beads of sweat in her well-lit apartment. “I
knew as soon as I saw you waiting in line to buy weed that we were
going to fuck,” she said. “But then you said you weren’t the
lesbian type.”

I giggled. “I wasn’t really
going to buy weed. I was just watching you because you were cute
and you caught my attention. But you’re right, I wasn’t the lesbian
type. Until now.” I slid out of my own bra, hoping my flesh didn’t
look too fat and saggy in comparison with hers. But she didn’t seem
to notice, kneeling down and taking one of my nipples in her mouth,
her tongue outlining it and sending shivers of pleasure up my
spine.