Page 51 of Obedience

‘Yeah, I guess,’ Dylan said with a wince, as if she were worried she’d accidentally stepped on a generational landmine. ‘I’m the archetypal lesbian, really. A bit like you and your U-Haul parked outside.’ Dylan flicked her head toward the window with a cheeky grin, as Greta let out a sharp, amused huff of air through her nose. ‘I’ll watch anything with a lesbian plot line, even if I spend the entire time bitching and whinging about it afterward. I still have to see it.’ She shrugged.

Greta chuckled as she tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear. ‘When I was younger,’ she began, the words irked her the second they left her mouth, a reminder of the lifetime between them that felt louder than it sounded. ‘We were just grateful. Seeing women together on TV and in films just didn’t happen. The first proper films I saw were Go Fish and Bound.’

Dylan nodded appreciatively. ‘Fuck, I love those films. Absolute classics. Guinevere Turner is brilliant.’

‘I remember thinking, ohh, okay, so women can be together, but I was also horrified that I’d have to learn about sex for myself. There wasn’t the plethora of information afforded to lesbians as there was to heteronormative people. If you were heterosexual, you knew your path. It’s everywhere, isn’t it? Books, films, TV, music. They teach straight people how to do relationships, how to be intimate, how to break up even.’ Greta rolled her eyes. ‘There used to be a magazine called More…the girls at my school used to read it and it had this awful section called Position of the Fortnight. An actual manual, available at your local newsagents, on how to have sex with boys. Whereas little old lesbian me didn’t know where to start.’

Dylan billowed her cheeks. ‘Bloody hell.’

‘Yeah,’ Greta breathed.

‘I kinda know what you mean. Back then, you had to get by on Beth and Margaret on Brookside, or Zoe Tate in Emmerdale. Slim pickings, really.’

Greta paused a mound of noodles halfway to her mouth, both shocked and genuinely impressed by the depth of Dylan’s references.

‘That was before you were even born, Dylan. Jesus Christ.’ Dylan just shrugged, leaning back against the headboard and giving her a wink. Greta hurriedly chewed. ‘The gutter press ran headlines after the kisses on Brookside and Emmerdale with utter rubbish like Pre-watershed lezzie romp! Complaints made by thousands!’ They both laughed with their chests at Greta’s ridiculous newspaper seller voice. ‘I remember seeing those newspapers and thinking that I enjoyed watching those kisses! I couldn’t understand why people were complaining.’ She shook her head and sighed. ‘Anyway,’ Greta rested her bowl on her thighs and wiped her mouth with the soft paper napkin, ‘how do you know so much about what happened in the nineties?’

‘I did a short course in Queer literature, film and TV studies, yes, that’s a thing,’ Dylan chuckled, ‘before I started my nursing degree. It was brilliant. I needed something other than…’ She sucked in a quick breath, her expression dropping for a fraction of a second. ‘Well, I just needed a bit of a distraction, and the nineties was where it all really started to properly happen for lesbian representation. Ellen coming out, the first pre-watershed snogs and all that. There were finally gay people on telly who weren’t just feather-boa-clad, limp-wristed comedy gay men there to make people laugh. The boundaries started to be pushed. We were allowed to start having nuanced relationships and actual stories with happy endings. Although the happy endings have taken a while. It fascinates me that it wasn’t that long ago.’

Greta smiled at the not-so-long-ago part of Dylan’s sentence. ‘You have an impressive library, too,’ she said, nodding in the direction of Dylan’s shelves.

‘I do. Take something if you like.’ Dylan jumped off the bed, holding out her hand for Greta’s empty bowl before disappearing with them. When Dylan reappeared, she bypassed the bed and moved straight to the shelves.

‘Do you read much?’ Dylan asked, her eyes already scanning her collection.

‘Sapphic literature wasn’t exactly brimming with exciting, uncomplicated love stories and happy endings in the nineties, and then medicine and academia took over. I don’t have much time to read for pleasure these days. There aren’t enough hours in the day sometimes.’

‘Hmm,’ Dylan hummed, giving Greta a sideways glance. ‘We should change that.’

‘Do let me know when there are extra hours in the day, won’t you? They’ll come in handy,’ Greta said wryly.

‘Will do.' Dylan laughed, turning back to her books. ‘I go to Queer Lit in town. What they don’t have isn’t worth knowing about.’ Dylan’s fingers danced over the spines. ‘You tell them what you like, and they fire books at you like you’re in an ALDI and some checkout lass in a tabard is lobbing the tinned pineapple she just scanned at you.’ Greta let out a sharp laugh at the image. Dylan tilted her head and narrowed her eyes. ‘You’ve probably never even set foot in an ALDI, have you?’ Greta sighed, as she slowly shook her head. ‘Thought not,’ Dylan chuckled. ‘More of a Waitrose girl?’

‘Booths,’ Greta replied nonchalantly, her lips pursed around a smile.

‘Knew it.’ Dylan smiled softly, turning her attention back to the shelves. ‘Lesbian literature today is just...it’s insane, Greta. There’s so much of it now. Forget Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit or The Well of Loneliness… Well, no, don’t forget them. I mean, they're absolutely brilliant, don’t get me wrong.’

For a moment Dylan looked genuinely worried. A wry smile tugged at Greta’s lips. ‘It’s okay Dylan, I don’t think Radclyffe themselves will be beating your door down to demand a posthumous apology.’

‘Just as well, I’m terrible with confrontation, I go all blotchy,’ Dylan said with a grin, turning her attention back to her books. ‘But yeah, we need mooore…’ She stretched the word while her eyes darted across the rows of paperbacks, until they landed on a specific spine. ‘Like this one.’ Greta watched, transfixed, as Dylan ran her tattooed hand along the shelf, hooked her index finger over the top of a book, and slowly slid it out. Dylan turned, moving toward the bed. ‘Have you read it?’

Accepting the book, Greta shook her head. She inspected the bright blue cover, her eyes lingering on the two red chilies positioned in a way that was undeniably labia-esque.

‘In at the Deep End,’ Greta read aloud.

‘It’s brilliant. Kate Davies won the Polari for it. The way she writes is just fantastic. Hilarious and so real, although the fisting…’ Dylan trailed off, her face twisting into a grimace. ‘I’m not averse to sex with a potential safe word, as well you know, but that is not…and never will be…my bag. I hope that’s cool with you?’ She shot Greta a playful smirk.

‘Ohh I don’t know. If the technique is good, I find it quite…’ Greta paused, finishing her sentence with a slowly raised eyebrow instead of the much-anticipated adjective. Horror slowly travelled over Dylan’s face. ‘I’m kidding, Dylan. No fisting is very cool with me.’

Dylan huffed out a breathy ‘Phew!’, comedically wiping a line of imaginary sweat from her brow and flicking it to the floor. Greta just shook her head, her laughter warm and genuine.

‘Oh, you have to take these two, too,’ Dylan said, a fresh spark of excitement lighting up her eyes. She slid two more books from the shelf and climbed back onto the bed toward Greta, who was propped up against the headboard on a mountain of green pillows.

‘Bloom Town?’ Greta murmured, turning one of the books over to skim read the blurb.

‘These books are absolutely incredible,’ Dylan enthused, her knees sinking into the mattress as she hovered close. ‘When I saw they were set in 1852, I was like, “for fuck’s sake, can we not!” But then... Well, you’ll see. Ally North’s writing is triumphant. She’s a brilliant storyteller.’ Dylan took a breath, her eyes wide with the need to convey just how much this mattered. ‘After you’ve read them, you have to listen to the audiobook. The narrator, Quinn Riley—fuck, she brings them to life in a way your imagination never could. Trust me.’ She blew a stray curl away from her eyes with a sharp puff of air as if it had burned her forehead. ‘I dropped a pan on my foot listening to her reading a fight scene.’ Greta laughed hard. ‘It’s not funny,’ Dylan chuckled. ‘I broke my big toe!’

‘So you do both? Read them and then listen?’ Greta asked, fascinated by her relentlessly passionate consumption of art.