A Gal Don't Tolerate by M. K. Dreysen

Did you ever want to put something behind you? I mean... really want to put something behind you. Forget it ever happened.

Have everyone forget it ever happened...

Have you? Belly up to the bar, then, reader. And let's pass a cup.

For your reading pleasured this week, I offer the following free story:

A Gal Don't Tolerate by M. K. Dreysen

"Must have been a good night," Jason said.

I grunted in reply. Eight feet in the air, and I needed my concentration for other things. The six-inch stiletto buried in the ceiling tile, for one thing. Which came loose without too much trouble.

Except for me reaching up to the tile, like it or the aluminum track it sat in was going to keep me and the ladder from going over sideways. I took a deep breath, took my faith and the pressure off of my hand and the tile, and waited until the ladder quit swaying.

"Bel, shouldn't you have asked someone, well, a little taller to help you with that?" my audience of one asked.

I shrugged. Carefully, just in case the ladder wasn't finished with its boundary testing. When it didn't show any signs of dumping us to the floor, I answered Jason's question. The second one. "If I waited for you or any of the guys to help, that shoe would still be there for the Christmas ball." And here it was just getting to the Fourth of July.

And yeah, Lady's Night had been, as it often was, a pretty good night. Ward, excuse me, Wynona's shoe getting stuck in the ceiling tile was just the icing on the cake.

I'm just happy when neither she nor the rest of the queens get in a fight. Wy had just about come unglued, when Margeretta and her little pack of cronies had started in on their critiques.

Mind you, the guys and gals all have their favorites, but they run their contest for real. Best Dressed, Best Singer, they do it right and they have their fun. It's when the jealousy flows and the social daggers come out that it gets interesting. I'd ducked under the bar at that point, waiting for the inevitable.

Jason had intervened when Wy yanked her wig and kicked her shoes off. Before she could really get down to business. I'd have loved to have seen that, other than on the bar video feed, I mean. How the hell Wy had managed to kick her shoe hard enough to stick the heel into the ceiling...

While I climbed down the ladder, Jason started in on his apologies. "Ward didn't mean it, Belinda."

Only lesbian in a room full of guys, well and gals on Lady's Night. I tend the bar because it's good money; I get up in my own drag, I wear a tux on Lady's Night. Which does occasionally cause an issue, most of the guys know me by now, but strangers hitting on the bartender who looks like a teenaged boy...

Ward's called me a lot worse things than a dyke. I love him, her, but there are times I'd sell her for a nickle and considerations. "He's always sorry, Jason." The next day, when he sobers up. At least he doesn't pretend he doesn't remember.

"He asked me about the bottle again," Jason continued.

"Of course he did."

Grandma told me it had to skip a generation. The lesson, the secret. She showed me three times. The first time, she taught me the recipe at the same time she told me how to make her barbecue sauce. "Use the good stuff, if you can get it."

She liked bourbon; I try and use a good brandy, when I can afford to. Scotch I reserve for my own use. Vodka, gin, I've used them in a pinch, but they don't have the same depth.

"Why do you make it, Grannie?" I'd asked. "Why'd anyone want to, well..."

"Forget? Oh, child, pray you never know why. Maybe you'll get lucky. But just in case, you need to know how. If nothing else, so you can teach your eldest grandchild, someday, and keep it from being lost."

I wonder sometimes if, even then, Grandma had had a look, down the line, and seen how unlikely it was that I'd have grandchildren to teach anything to.

I'd eaten from Grannie's garden my entire life. Dead of winter in south Texas, we had lettuce and broccoli. Spring, early summer, the tomatoes, beans. The summer hit her garden hard, but even then we had the cantaloupes and watermelons. She spent nine months out of the year protecting the herbs against that heat. "I plant the lemons and the oranges for one reason," she told me.

"Lemonade?" I'd asked. Because that's what lemons were for, as far as I was concerned, then.

"Shade, child. And," she smiled, "And for lemonade, I admit." Shade to protect the delicate ones. Rosemary grew like barnacles, basil and oregano as well. Thyme, parsley, cilantro came and went, all the delicate ones did at some point. I carried water to all of them, sink to earth, every drop a blessing in the worst of it.

I've lost my garden three times, over the years. Even when I've been in a one-bedroom apartment, I planted at least a couple of windowsill pots, rotated them as the seasons turn to get their sun. I fight my cats and dogs when they go after them, I lay in catnip and the other mints against the little monsters.

It's my exes who've done the most damage. Every damned time. When Tela left, I'd been called up for reserve duty, six months at sea and I get back to nothing but dead dirt and twigs. At least she'd taken Roadie and Lefty with her. That much I knew because the twit sent me pictures of them in her new place, sitting on her new girlfriend's lap. For Christ's sake.

Something similar happened when Deliah left. Except I'd only been gone a couple weeks this time, so I thought maybe I had a chance at recovering the rosemary at least. Deliah and I had set up in a little two-bedroom house, one of the old ones on piers, from when the only defense against hurricanes was prayer and wishful thinking. The yard wasn't any bigger than a minute, but it let Deliah's little Scottie, Angus of course, piss on grass instead of concrete. And it gave me a little three by five plot of ground to put my garden into.

Two weeks in Corpus in August, no water and no shade, and my little plot couldn't handle it. And yes, I got pictures of Angus, as well. The little bastard looks as smug as a lord, cuddling up to whoever she is.

Rose is never going to be as delicate as her name suggests. I admit that's what drew me to her. And the others, as well. Fire, my dad calls it, that little bit of excitement, never quite knowing, really, where the storm's coming from. He watches me, listens to my troubles, and doesn't say a thing. He's there when I need help moving, or time on the water not thinking about anything except snapper or trout or redfish.

He was there the third time my grandmother showed me the recipe. I'd flown in from Philly for Mom's funeral. Dad came in, after the rest of the family had gone their way, and we sat at Grannie's table, looking at the bottle.

"Do you remember?" she asked me. And I did.

She poured out just the barest taste, into three of her coffee cups, the little tiny china cups that were her pride and joy. I still laugh at those. On ship I took coffee in the biggest mug I could find, and here I was, six weeks from losing Tina, my first girlfriend, to an arrestor cable, feeling like I was playing at tea time with my father and grandmother.

Dad didn't want to forget Mom. He just didn't want to remember, didn't want any of the other kids to remember those last few weeks. And so Grannie poured the barest measure of forgetfulness from the fresh-made bottle. I watched the memories leave his eyes, somewhere between the liquor hitting his tongue and the bitter aftertaste coming on.

Grannie and I shared that taste with him. And we kept the memories, the secrets he and my brother and sisters couldn't quite hold.

"Do you remember?" she asked me, when her turn came. Dad moved her into his house, into the room I'd shared with my brother when we were young. For the first time in decades, she'd left her garden. "It's ok, child," she told me. "That time is past."

Except I'd taken cuttings, and seeds, from that garden, and sewn them in my own little patch. The same one I have now, that I've kept these past few years. Since Z and I moved in together.

I waited until the last night. Grannie rallied, just a little, enough for me to go to my car and get the bottle I'd brought along, forgetfulness of my own making. "It's not fresh," I told her, as I poured more than a hint into a pair of her china cups.

She raised her cup to her nose, shaking but doing it herself. I matched her, letting the secrets wind their way into my mind. "Good," she said. "I'm old, and so is this." She drained the cup, and I copied her.

Grandma didn't want her secrets going to the grave untold. Most of them she'd shared with me already. There, at the last, she gave me the full dose of them, before she left. The family, friends, a lover or two, every sip she'd poured out along the way had added to the catalog. They are mine now, these secrets. I guess.

I don't know how on earth people find out about it, but they do. Ward and I have known each other since school. I went off to the Navy, and he went off to Austin to become an accountant. The only surprise to me, when I moved back home, about him coming out, was that he waited until I was back to do it.

We sat there in my little apartment, on milk crates because I was stocking shelves at night and the grocery store had more than they could handle. "I need some help, Bel," he said. "I'm telling my family, tomorrow."

"On church Sunday?" I asked. "Wouldn't it be a little quieter..."

"It's the only time all of them get together," he pointed out. "Lunch, after the service."

I remembered. I'd been Ward's beard, or maybe he'd been mine, throughout high school. I'd eaten at his mother's table more often than I could count. "I'm not sure I'm going to be much help for this, Ward. I'm not the marrying type..."

Even if that would work these days. I'd already been through the coming-out baptism by fire with my own family.

"You can make them forget, just a little," Ward said. "Can't you? Like your Grannie used to?"

He'd been to my family's table just as often as I'd been to his. Maybe Ward had heard the stories from them. Hell, maybe I'd got shitfaced and told him myself. However it happened, the secret had come to him. And here we were, sober for once because Ward had asked for that. That and this one little thing.

The hard part was judging how much forgetting to pour. That's what I learned the second time my grandmother showed me her recipe. "You'll have to learn judgment, 'linda. How to take care."

"How much is too much?" I'd asked.

"There's no way of knowing that," she'd told me. "Sometimes, you'll need more than one cup, and that's just for one memory. Sometimes it won't take but a taste and you'll wipe out a lifetime."

Ward, that night, wanted just one thing. "That they remember me, us," by which he meant Jason, "As we are, and not as they wanted us to be." Wants, dreams, you'd think these were ephemera, washed away with the morning winds. It took more than a little to erase Ward's mother's hopes for her son. That woman held onto her dreams like a raft against the floods.

We drank the bottle down that night, and I worried to the last sip that it wouldn't be enough. But somewhere between the last full cup and the drops I shook over it, she let those dreams go. And they passed to me. Ward passed out on my bed, and I sat up 'til dawn, wondering if Jason would eventually convince Ward to adopt.

There were others over the years, of course. Ward can't keep his mouth shut. But he isn't the only one. Seems like half the Valley had heard of my grandmother, at one time or another. Oh, it's not like there's a line out the door.

I just keep a bottle behind the bar. A mixer, so to speak, for the occasional wandering soul. You'd be surprised how many people will brave a gay bar, if they've need enough. That type show up when we open the doors, take their drink and leave before the evening traffic picks up. Even them, unless it's Lady's Night we're just a bar, really. Women and men, and you only notice the pairings if you're paying attention.

I noticed trouble brewing a few weeks ago. Jason's been working out of town more often, there's an oil boom up toward New Mexico and his company's had him on the road. I figured Ward's been wound up like an eight day clock because of it.

But then Jason was the first to ask for the bottle.

He didn't realize, when I shared out just the barest whisper of a dram between our two glasses, just what he was sharing. I have to admit, the young man Jason had taken to sharing time with was, is, very pretty. I guess I should be glad that Jason forgot him almost before the shot glass touched his lips. Even Ward let it go so very easily.

Except... Except that Ward might have forgotten the reason. But Wynona enjoys her anger. Her fire, I guess, the one that lights her up and sends her strutting down the runway.

Margeretta shows up to Lady's Night, on occasion. Most of the time, she's there just to give the ladies a few catcalls; she enjoys teasing the other queens. She's also made her passes at me, but Z would have her guts for garters so Margie hasn't been pushy about it. Except when she's had more than her share, like she did that night.

And with Wy looking for a fight... Yeah, I ducked down to let the two of them go at it. I'm the bartender, not a bouncer. Bernie and Cali would take care of it. Except Jason managed to get them separated before the blood flowed.

"I'm worried that she still remembers," Jason said, that morning after. "Down inside, where Wynona lives."

I didn't. Ward doesn't change to become Wynona. She just becomes more herself. Maybe that's just my opinion, but I'd had to do little more than wave the bottle at them, and Jason's boy toy had vanished into the ether.

What I worried about was the part of Jason's secret he didn't want to admit to himself. Twenty years, and he'd started seeing Ward's gray hair, and the way Wynona had to grunt when she zipped up a dress. He'd sent a little of that to me, when we'd shared a sip of secrets, but how long would that get him, I wondered? The feeling wasn't gone. Would he come back for forgetting, in five years?

Next year? With another affair? I figured he would. "When did Ward ask about the bottle, Jason?"

"Last night, before the show started. In the dressing room, actually."

Looking at Jason can be like looking at a bulldog puppy. You have to know him for a while to tell when he's excited. Or sad, or just plain Jason being Jason. It takes a lot to get his face moving, is what I'm saying, enough to let you know that he's really worried about something, instead of it just being an Eeyore kind of day. He said he was worried about Ward. Twenty plus years now, I've known Jason. Watched him across this bar, across my dining table, when he lost his mother, his nephew. I've seen him when was sick. Terrified.

Worried.

I didn't get out my bottle. I don't play with secrets when the person sharing a cup with me isn't ready to let go of theirs. "It's only been a couple of weeks," I told him. "Tell you what, when's your next trip?"

The first one since he'd let go of the memory of his affair. "Next week, why?"

"Tell Ward to call me, Z and I will make sure he doesn't have too much time on his hands. With a little vacation, I think you'll be surprised how well things go when you get back."

It had become something of a ritual. Lady's Night, when Jason was out of town for work, Z cooked dinner for us, then Ward and I headed to the bar. Wynona worked on her transformation while I got everything set up for the night's work.

And after closing time, after I'd done the worst of the cleanup and Ward had put Wynona away, we shared a drink at the bar. Dirty martini for him, a Rusty Nail for me. Ward looked at the drinks, then pushed his glass away. Then he reached over to do the same to mine.

I'd wondered if this was coming, over the past few months. When Jason told me it had been Ward asking after the bottle...

What I wonder now is whether Jason knew.

"Are you certain?" I asked Ward. I didn't pull the bottle out yet. But I did set a couple of coffee cups in front of us.

He sighed, and did what I think every sad sack has done since someone put silver to glass. He gave a good hard look into the mirror behind me. And then he nodded. "He's gone already. He just doesn't want to admit it yet."

I might agree, I might not. But sometimes, I'm not his best friend.

I'm just the lady on the other side of the bar.

What surprised me then, and now, is how little it took to erase twenty years. Oh, I filled those cups and I drank mine to the dregs.

But all it took, in the end, was just that single cup.