Authors note: Hello, please give this story a chance. I have indulged in quite a bit of character development and some of my obsessions (like 70s movies) but trust me, if you stay with it, it does get really sexy.
Florence: There are just three things in life – sex, loneliness, and death! Ever since I was a teenager, I wanted to be alone. The unassailable winters of Bismarck, North Dakota, where I grew up must have thrown a blanket of frosty aloofness over the natural American tendency of gregariousness. As a grown up, I liked my cubicle and my privacy at The Bismarck Dispatch. My movie columns were popular. So, when Davey, our editor told me that I would be co-writing a column with Dorothy Rosenrot, who was moving here from The Fargo Journal, I was annoyed to say the least. I felt like I was being sabotaged.
Dorothy: I got no joy at the thought of co-writing a movie column with a stranger. Fargo, where I grew up, has harsher winters than Bismarck. I am as much of an asshole as any other writer, but my movie columns were fucking popular. Just ask the postman about the fan mail that I used to bring in. The Credence Group, the parent company that owned both Bismarck Dispatch and The Fargo Journal decided to merge the two newspapers to cut costs. The folks at The Fargo Journal were told to move to The Bismarck Dispatch. Most of my colleagues moved elsewhere. I was the only one from my office who made the move to The Bismarck Dispatch. Davey Maggiano, the editor at The Bismarck Dispatch
Davey: Florence Mailer is one of our most esteemed film columnists. So is Dorothy Rosenrot. But these are tough times for the North Dakota newspaper industry. Circulation has plateaued since the late sixties. We simply could not afford two offices. Head office decided that the two newspapers would have to merge under the name of The Bismarck Dispatch. It was my idea to unite the two stalwart movie columnists for a single column. I knew a few sparks would fly. But I thought it would be all right if they could create something beautiful together.
Florence: There is a point in a person’s life when you simply cannot make friends with anyone anymore. How many of you have made friends in your thirties or forties? Once the working life begins, all you have are acquaintances. You immerse yourself in movies or books to fill the lack of human contact. Movies have become my best friends. I am forty-five. What was me and Dorothy Rosenrot supposed to do together? Go on movie dates? Are you kidding me?
Dorothy: Two unmarried forty-five-year-old women in a single cubicle. I wasn’t looking forward to it. But what is one to do? One had to make a living. Frankly, I felt bad for me and Florence after Davey Maggiano, our editor called me and informed me about how we would be co-writing a column. It was like we were two middle aged women who were forced to marry the same guy or something and live together in the same house.
Florence: We would have to make it work. But it wasn’t like I was going to go out of the way to be nice to her. I dreaded going to work as the day neared. She was to join on a Monday. That weekend, I played some Bruce Springsteen and got really drunk on both Saturday and Sunday, feeling bad about the state of my life. The winter was upon us and one glance out of the window at the cold freezing landscape was enough to drive anyone to madness. I had wanted to make movies. But instead, I became someone who wrote about the movies. It was too late to start over at forty-five. If there are any young people reading this, you might think you have your whole life ahead of you when you’re in your twenties. But it goes really fast. Trust me, it does. I know.
Dorothy: I skipped The Fargo Journal farewell party. What was I supposed to say to my co-workers? I would never see any of them ever again. Sure, phone numbers and addresses would be exchanged. But would we ever keep in touch? I didn’t think anyone of them was going to ever invite me over for dinner. I walked to the bar. The cold breeze felt like it was coming straight from hell and beat against my face. I talked to the bartender, Jeffrey, while downing a few whiskeys. I must have known him for twenty years now. I did not tell him that I was leaving town or anything.
Early the next morning (I remember the day as Saturday, December 15th), I dragged the two suitcases and put them in the Cadillac. Then I locked the house and placed the key under the front door carpet. I had lived on rent for much of my life. I had told my landlord that I was leaving and where to find the key. Nobody came to say goodbye. I took one last look at the house that I had lived in for more than twenty years and got into the car.
When I reached the ice cream store at the corner, I choked up a little. I stopped the car there and went inside. The young man at the store did not recognize me. I asked him what his name was, and he said Colin. He seemed to be busy and paid me little attention. Old Harold Sparrow owned the store when I was a kid. I would walk down to the store with my father for homemade orange rind ice cream that Harold made himself. He would always give me an extra scoop even though my father only paid for one. I said goodbye. The boy called Colin did not respond. I felt better when I reached the highway.
Florence: That Monday, when we were supposed to begin work together, I was hungover from all the drinking I had done the previous night. I reached work early and had a few coffees from the coffee machine. Dorothy had not come in. My head felt like it was being badgered with a hammer.
Dorothy: I walked into the office in the afternoon, after dropping my luggage off at the new house that I had taken on rent. Davey took me around, introducing me to the staff. I must have met around twenty employees before he took me to the cubicle where Florence sat. I took one look at her face and knew she was hungover. But boy, she was a foxy lady with her hair cut short. There were wrinkles on her forehead and dark circles under her eyes, but she carried them well, with a certain grace and strength as if she didn’t give a shit. She wore a round neck t-shirt tucked into denim shorts, that showed off chiseled legs. I couldn’t take my eyes off her legs and had to tell myself not to stare.
Florence: I was struck by Dorothy’s large barely lined face, a face like that at forty-five suggested she came from good genes. She had sharp intense questioning eyes and a prominent nose. Her large lips were painted red. She wore a tight shirt and a long skirt. I smiled at the skirt. Maybe Fargo was a little more conservative than Bismarck. We shook hands. She had a firm grip.
Dorothy: Our first column was due in three days. Davey kept us both on our toes that first week. He watched over us like a hawk, maybe to check if we were fighting. We agreed on an easy subject for our first column – “The Twenty-Five Greatest Films of the 1960s”.
Florence: We had an argument over “In Cold Blood” and “Le Trou”. Both crime films. I wanted “In Cold Blood” at number one. She wanted “Le Trou”. She railed on about the effortless brilliance of “Le Trou” and how Becker managed to make a realistic film with rookie actors. I managed to convince her about “In Cold Blood” in the end by talking about the clever editing, the score by Quincy Jones and the intense performance by Robert Blake. I mean, the film was a perfect adaptation of Capote’s novel.
Dorothy: I was impressed by her knowledge of contemporary French cinema. I was a big fan of French crime films and not just the arty Goddard and Truffaut films. We agreed to add Le Samourai to the list. We fought over The Sicilian Clan. She thought Verneuil was a useless hack, a mediocre commercial version of the great Melville. I took offense to this. I spoke about the procedural aspects of the film which were more imaginative than Melville’s and there was Morricone’s gorgeous score. But she wouldn’t budge.
Florence: I didn’t get my way always. Dorothy wanted De Palma’s Greetings on the list. While I had enjoyed the film, I did not think it deserved to be in the top twenty-five of the decade. We really fought over that one. She took off about how innovative and clever it was and how it had a young De Niro. I was taken in by her passion and finally relented.
Dorothy: It wasn’t all daggers between us. We agreed on a couple of Polanski films – Cul-De-Sac and Knife in the Water. I could tell Florence really liked Cul-De-Sac and its helpless no hope protagonist played by Pleasance. It was a personal favorite of mine too.
Florence: We also agreed on Whatever Happened to Baby Jane. I was glad we agreed that there would be just one Sergio Leone film on the list. But we fought like a couple of cats over Paint Your Wagon. I loved that one with Marvin and Clint sharing Jean Seberg. I thought it was damn sexy. We had to call Davey in on that one. He agreed with me and it made it into the list.
Dorothy: We impressed each other. There was a lot of name dropping and dueling over cinema. Both of us were passionate and we argued intensely. We fought over who would write summaries for which films. We criticized each other’s summaries and sometimes the arguments were quite heated. All this in the first week.
Florence: That first week with Dorothy was vigorous and I needed all my energy to keep her in check. It was clear that she wanted to dominate me, and I decided that I would not give an inch. Sparks would fly. There was no question about it. But I must say I was quite impressed by this woman from Fargo, and I think she was quite impressed by me too. It’s a good thing our cubicle was far away from the rest of the office. We could fight our heads out and the rest of the floor wouldn’t know anything about it.
Dorothy: Our joint column was a big success. We received more than a hundred letters within a week from many enthusiastic movie fans across North Dakota. Davey was pleased with the two of us.
Florence: But we didn’t just fight over the movies. After a few days, Dorothy began to turn up at work in tight denim shorts and t-shirt tucked in, just like me. I found it quite amusing and flattering that she wanted to imitate my sartorial indiscretions. Then she cut her hair short and wore it like I did. I wasn’t too impressed by that.
Dorothy: I wanted to impress Florence. I got rid of my long skirt and shirt. I wanted to be as cool as her. I wanted her to admire my legs which were as chiseled and shapely as hers. Just like I admired her legs. I wanted to be like her, so I got my hair cut just like hers. I thought the two of us looked cute together.
Florence: We were both about the same height, I guess. Maybe 5’5. We had a lot in common physically. I had managed not to put on weight, despite my drinking. I was lean and thin for a forty-five-year-old woman. Dorothy was the same. There was a wiriness and toughness about her that I admired.
Dorothy: Our work together was so intense that I quickly got over my sadness of leaving Fargo. Florence kept me on my toes. There was never a dull moment. We would talk cinema all day. After a few days, I wanted to know more about her. I kept prodding her about her personal life, but she kept dodging them, cleverly turning the discussions back to films.
Florence: The second column we wrote together was to be titled “Brando’s Lost Decade”. It was about how Brando had made some terrible movie choices in the sixties. It was published a couple of days before Christmas. We really tore into each other while writing this one. Dorothy felt that the sixties weren’t really a lost decade for Brando. Afterall, he had acted in Mutiny on the Bounty, worked with Huston in Reflections in a Golden Eye and finally with Portencovo in Burn!. It’s not a lost decade if he acted in a classic film and with two all-time great directors. That’s what she said.
Dorothy: Florence kept harking about how he had missed out on Benhur and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Boy, we fought like a couple of cats over this one. I didn’t give an inch and neither did she. But I finally managed to add a question mark to the column title – “The Sixties – Brando’s Lost Decade?”. I think she was pretty done with me after this one. I wished she would invite me for drinks over the Christmas holidays or ask me out on a date. But she did not. I was too proud to ask her out.
Florence: I did finally ask her out to the movies. The first film we ever watched together was The Exorcist. It came out a day after Christmas in 1973. I had spent the previous night drinking and had a terrible hangover the next morning.
Dorothy: I spent Christmas night getting drunk on whiskey. It was cold and the whole of Bismarck felt like it was a freezer, and I was like a headless turkey inside it. It was the kind of climate that would make the most ardent teetotaler carry out a raid on the liquor store. In the morning, we were quite nasty towards each other, not talking, just beaming out bitter alcoholic faces at each other. Two grumpy hungover forty-five-year-old women. That’s what we were. I didn’t have any friends. I don’t think Florence did either. By the time we entered the movie hall, I felt a little tender towards Florence.
Florence: The Exorcist was one hell of a scary film. Damn unsettling, and I don’t know whether by accident or design (it was later revealed that the Demon Pasusu or some unknown entity wreaked havoc on the sets of the movie), I grabbed Dorothy’s hand in mine, and we clasped our hands together tightly.
Dorothy: I was quite flattered when Florence held my hand. I held on to her hand tightly, enjoying the human touch. A few minutes later I took a risk and entwined my fingers in hers. Entwining your fingers with a person is more intimate than clasping hands together. Florence acquiesced reluctantly. We sat together like that for the rest of the movie, occasionally she would glance at me and me at her. When the movie got over and the lights came on, we hastily disentangled our hands from each other.
Florence: I could not pay attention to one of the greatest horror movies of all time. Though I enjoyed the intimacy between us, I was a bit annoyed when the movie got over and we came out of the hall. I could tell that Dorothy longed for me to invite her out on a date. Maybe it was all the alcohol the previous evening and the harshness of this winter, there was a streak of cruelty in me that day and I whispered a terse goodbye and drove away. I saw her in my rearview mirror, a sad and lonely figure. I felt bad about the way I left her there, so I went home and got drunk again.
Dorothy: I hit the bottle hard that evening, angry at Florence’s heartless spurn. I blacked out and the next day I could hardly stand up on my feet. I felt like my hands and legs would fall off. When I arrived at the cubicle, I did not even acknowledge Florence.
Florence: We were like two boxers fighting an endless bout. I wanted to be intimate with Dorothy but all the shit that had happened in my life – all the booze, the bitterness the unfulfilled promise, they wouldn’t let me embrace her.
Dorothy: When I saw her that morning, all beaten and hungover, I once again felt a tenderness towards her. I could see right through her. Understand what she was going through. I felt like she was my doppelganger both in heart and soul. I reminded her of herself. That is why she didn’t want to be intimate with me. A little later, she brought me a coffee and we got talking again. She told me that I could decide what the next column would be about. Despite my hangover, I told her that I had this idea about writing a column about great films that never got made.
Florence: I wanted to make it up to her. I could see that she was as hungover as I was, her eyes all pinched and narrow, speech slurred and an oily sheen across her usually clear face. If the alcoholics aren’t nice to each other, the world had no chance.
Dorothy: Despite the truce, I kept a distance from her in the days leading up to the New year holiday. I did not want a repeat of my Christmas spurn at Florence’s hands. A day before the holiday, I left work without saying goodbye to her. I went home, stayed in bed throughout the New Year holiday and got drunk. She had spurned me once. I had my revenge.
Florence: I was secretly hoping that she would invite me out on a date for the New Year. But nothing happened. Like her, I hardly got out of bed and just played Springsteen tapes and hit the bottle. I thought about looking her up in the telephone directory and then realized she wouldn’t be listed because she was new in town. I wished she would turn up at my doorstep, but she did not. I did not even turn on the lights, I entered the new year with frost all over my heart. The frost was thicker than the frost over Missouri.
Dorothy: In the new year of 1974, we settled down to work again, putting the alcohol-induced maneuverings and mutual spurning behind us. We had the column titled “The Best Films That Never Got Made” finished a couple of days into the new year. It had gone relatively smoothly. There were minor disagreements. We commenced work on our next article – “The Best Young Filmmakers of America”. We were both excited to be working on it. It was an interesting time with guys like Scorsese, Coppola and De Palma taking American cinema by storm. We also began to take interest in each other physically.
Florence: Dorothy had a distinct odor. I could tell that she never wore perfume. As the days went by, I appreciated her odor more and more. I liked the smell that her body emanated. When we would sit side by side discussing a movie, I would often catch myself eagerly inhaling her glorious body odor. I found myself wanting to be near her just to smell her. I would lean close to her, my face next to her armpits, just to savor her smell.
Dorothy: It is true that I never wore perfume. I caught on to the fact that Florence liked my body odor. It was just the way she came sniffing around, asking innocuous questions. The way she looked at me while we talked. I know people at my earlier workplace had often complained about my body odor. But not Florence. She liked it. But Florence wore a pretty strong perfume which I could not appreciate. I did something naughty, that in hindsight might have brought us closer. I told her to not wear perfume anymore. I confronted her about how she had no qualms in enjoying my natural body odor. So, it was only fair that I be allowed to smell her natural body odor.
Florence: It was a strange request. I was a bit surprised and annoyed by Dorothy’s boldness. But nonetheless I complied. I stopped wearing perfume to work. Dorothy told me that she liked my body odor and I also admitted that I liked her body odor. The cubicle was filled with our intermingling body odors.
Dorothy: Florence smelled heavenly. Her perfume had been a turn off for me. But her natural body odor was another attraction that once again made me long for her. I wanted her to be my friend. I wanted us to be closer.
Florence: I agree that it drew us closer together. There was an undercurrent of sex in our enjoyment of each other’s body odors. Intimacy was a wonderful thing to discover at forty-five.
Dorothy: But I couldn’t help but feel that Florence still held a grudge towards me. I often found her to be cold and distant. On some days, I smelled vodka on her. She was really hitting the bottle even in the new year. No new year resolutions there. As a heavy drinker myself, this made me long for her company and acknowledgement even more. I wished she would invite me out on a date. But nothing like that happened.
Florence: I was getting hammered every evening. I had a room full of empty bottles that would raise eyebrows about my sanity if somebody found them. I could sense that Dorothy really had the hots for me. There we were, two forty-five-year-old women, circling each other in that tiny cubicle, smelling each other’s sweat.
Dorothy: I finally had an idea to break the stalemate between us. A few years ago, I stumbled upon a strange book about employee conflict resolution by this maverick author called Dr. Christine Burr. Burr had recommended that female employees who were in conflict should be forced to lock their feet together and play footsie. I thought it was an exciting idea.
Florence: The idea was absurd. At least that’s what I thought when Dorothy suggested it. I said no. I wanted to say yes. But I was enjoying all the attention Dorothy was giving me. Then she blackmailed me saying that if we did not play this conflict resolution footsie exercise, she would complain to Davey that I was being difficult. I was left with no choice. Our column was doing well. The letters were pouring in. I did not want to upset the applecart. So, I said yes.
Dorothy: Florence and I sat on opposite sides of a desk, facing each other. There was enough space to flex our legs under the table. That day after lunch, when the office wasn’t that busy, I took my shoes off under the table and me and Florence touched feet. A bolt of electricity shot through me at the touching of our naked flesh. I placed a foot above hers and she placed a foot above mine. We let them rest like that for a few moments. Her feet were very smooth for a forty-five-year-old woman. I ran my leg palm up and down her foot while she firmly pressed her foot onto mine. I then slid my foot over the arch that led to her lower limbs, slowly pleasuring her leg up to her knees. Florence kept her foot pressed over mine, not venturing to other parts of my leg.
Florence: I breathed unsteadily as Dorothy ran her toes under my thighs and towards my inner thighs. I let out a helpless laugh as her toes caressed the soft flesh of my thighs. I looked through the cubicle glass into the office. Nobody was paying any notice to us. I looked over at Dorothy and the expression on her face was urging me to be bolder. I slowly moved my toes over Dorothy’s feet, enjoying the feel of her smooth skin and climbed up her lower limb and rested my foot on her knee. She massaged my foot with her hands. We laughed across the table at each other.
Dorothy: I couldn’t control myself any longer. I took my chair, placed it next to Florence and sat down beside her. I asked her a random stupid question about the next article we were working on and while doing so, snaked my leg in between hers. Florence responded by opening her legs and we tightly entwined our thighs and limbs. The soft flesh of our thighs and the taut muscles of our lower limbs were tightly locked together. Our feet were placed one on top of the other so that we couldn’t tell our feet apart.
Florence: Our bare legs were tied together like creepers. My head spun. My heart beat fast. Then Dorothy kissed me on my lips. We exchanged kisses on our lips and then we opened our mouths to each other. Our mouths enclosed one another, forming a hollow for our tongues to meet and lick.
Dorothy: I kissed her passionately and Florence responded with equal vigor. It was an intense competitive kiss. My tongue would dominate hers for a few seconds and then her tongue would fight back. Our mouths were glued to each other as our tongues fought fervently.
Florence: I was feverish with sexual arousal. I buried my fingers in Dorothy’s hair and grabbed some of it in my hands. Dorothy looked both shocked and pleased at my aggression and then she grabbed some of my hair and we kissed even more passionately.
Dorothy: My body was aflame with a violent sexual frenzy. Our kissing had taken a violent turn. I didn’t know if we were kissing or fighting. I was enjoying the hell out of it. We exchanged spittle and our faces were covered with the fluid from each other’s mouths. We kept spraying spittle at each other to make it a really wet kiss. That is how crazy we were about each other.
Florence: A month of circling around each other like two wounded tigers had given way to a desperate longing. I kissed Dorothy’s neck and then buried my face in the sweatiness of her t-shirt near the armpit. I breathed in her body odor.
Dorothy: We could smell each other’s sweat. That is how closely locked together we were. It was primitive the way we enjoyed each other’s body odor.
Davey: After lunch that day, I had decided to drop in on Florence and Dorothy to see how the new column was going. When I reached their cubicle, I saw the two of them snogging like a couple of teenagers. Now I am as broadminded as anyone and I had no problems with two women being sexually attracted to each other. But I could not permit sex in my office. You would have understood if you had seen the way they were going at it like two horny teenagers. I put a stop to it immediately.
Florence: Davey walked in unannounced, and we were locked in a torrid kiss, on the verge of falling to the floor, locked in each other’s hands. That’s how aroused we both were. We disentangled quickly and Davey gave us a bit of talking to. It was humiliating to be censured like that. I felt terribly ashamed.
Dorothy: After Davey caught us having sex, Florence once again kept a distance from me. Maybe it was because she felt Davey perceived our sexual liaison as the last resort of two middle aged women whom nobody else wanted. There was that aspect to our relationship. I don’t deny it. Would we have been into each other if we were both in our twenties and had better sexual prospects? I think I would have been interested in her. But I don’t think Florence thought so. We were back to square one.
Florence: Then everything went south. Oh boy did it go south. Davey received a letter from some religious fanatic group saying that the newspaper would be attacked if they did not fire me and Dorothy immediately. Somebody had seen us making out in the cubicle and it had leaked that there were two lesbians working at the newspaper. Maybe Davey had told someone, or people had been privy to the chemistry between Dorothy and me, the similar dressing, and the hairstyles and all that stuff that was going on between us. Now everyone at the newspaper knew about Dorothy and me.
Dorothy: Davey called the Sheriff, and he told us that a fundamentalist group called “Touch of Christ” was active in Bismarck, threatening gays and lesbians. We were advised to take a break from work and post our typed article every week to the newspaper from an anonymous post box. The North Dakota police needed time to arrest the members of the group. The Sheriff said it was a serious threat and he did believe they would murder us. It was best we left town for a while. That wasn’t too comforting.
Florence: I had this large cottage out in a small town called Shark Tooth. It was something my mother left me. I invited Dorothy to shack up over there with me. We fled in Dorothy’s big Cadillac (not the car you want to go on the run in if you wanted to keep a low profile like us) with my typewriter in the back. Beside it was a bag containing twelve Jim Beam’s. I wrapped them in towels in case we had a rough drive to Shark Tooth. There was a sack full of canned food. I wasn’t anxious about the death threat. I was more concerned about what people thought about my relationship with Dorothy.
Dorothy: We weren’t talking much in the car. Florence kept a distance from me. I could play that game too. I didn’t talk much either. I would look in the rearview mirror occasionally. I still couldn’t believe the threat was real. It hadn’t sunk in. The very idea that someone would want to kill me seemed absurd. It was snowing like a maniac, and I had to drive slowly. It was irritating with Florence acting so stuck up and me having to drive through the snow. I kept glancing at the foxy bitch. But she just looked straight ahead.
Florence: We took turns driving. The scenery outside was as depressing as it was inside the car. The cold winds had forced the trees to shed their leaves, their branches were twisted up bestowing them with a grotesque visage. The roads were deserted. On the way, there was a procession of monstrous oil tankers. We couldn’t see the drivers inside them. Everything and everywhere was frozen and deserted as if all humanity were squeezed out of them.
Dorothy: We got there after a long eight-hour drive. We didn’t see much of Shark Tooth itself because it was snowing. I saw a cemetery, the lights from what could be a bar and the steeple of a church. I had kept checking the rearview mirror to see if anyone was following us. Even if there was, I couldn’t see anything. On the side of a winding road was a little open pathway. Florence drove up the pathway and I could barely see anything. I did not know where she was taking me. We parked outside what looked like a rather large house that Florence called a cottage. It was surrounded by thick ponderosa pines. It was a stucco house and behind it, the dark cloudy sky loomed ominously. It was cold and I was eager to get into the house.
Florence: I hadn’t been here in at least a year. It’s where my mother retreated to when she still had dreams of becoming a writer. I would drive here every once in a while, to go on drinking binges while watching the lake. It was pitch dark when we got out. Dorothy looked a bit unnerved.
Dorothy: We got the luggage out. Nothing much except the precious Jim Beams, the cans of food and two bags filled with our clothes. Florence opened the cottage. Nothing fancy, but walls were of oak panels, and they gave out a cozy smell despite being locked for so long. The bathroom had a large tub. There was a stairway. I walked around a little. Florence wasn’t much into taking the friend from work around the cottage. It was night and the wooden balcony looked onto the lake. It was dark but I could see the still black lake and there was a cool breeze blowing. Florence called out my name. When I went inside, she was pouring the Jim Beam into two glasses.
Florence: I poured a couple of drinks, handing one glass to Dorothy. She took it gladly and we sat on two chairs facing each other, a bit awkward at first. The first drink went down fast, and I felt nice and easy, and Dorothy’s face told me that the whiskey was working on her too. I poured more whiskey into our glasses, and we took off our shoes, our bare feet side by side, not touching.
Dorothy: Perhaps it was the pleasant room and the whiskey, Florence opened up about her life. She had been single for the last fifteen years. I wasn’t surprised. The guy she had dated in her early thirties had married someone else and Florence often saw him around town. At one point, Florence got so lonely that she began to stalk him and his wife. She would follow them around town in her car. Then she got bored of it and buried her head in movies. I could relate to her and understood why she tried to keep her distance from me. She did not want to get burned again. North Dakota was a harsh place for single women. There simply weren’t enough men out here. Once you dated a man, there was nothing much to do except cling onto him, hoping that he would marry you. And if that did not happen, you were destined to a life of loneliness and misery.
Florence: Dorothy told me about how she was dating a security guard out at the Nekoma Anti-Missile Safeguard Complex. They had a bit of a row once and he never came back. She went searching for him and his friends said he had disappeared. She thought his disappearance was very strange and dug deeper. Then she received an anonymous phone call telling her to discontinue investigations. She believed he was murdered because he was privy to classified information about the anti-missile complex which was shut down a couple of years ago. She hit a dead end in her search for her boyfriend and then she really hit the bottle.
Dorothy: Our mutual confessions melted the freeze around my heart, and I felt a tenderness towards Florence. We had a third and a fourth drink, the alcohol acting like fuel on the low fire of tenderness to a feeling of mutual competitiveness. Then Florence brought up Alfred Hitchcock.
Florence: I told her to name her top ten Hitchcock movies. I don’t know how we went from relationships to Hitchcock. I am sure it was the alcohol. I don’t know, I was quite tipsy by then.
Dorothy: We were a bit gone, if you know what I mean, after we downed our fifth whiskey. When Florence told me to name my top ten Hitchcock movies, I was game. Who doesn’t like pervy Hitch? I told Marnie was my favorite Hitch film and Florence countered me with Psycho. How could I leave out Psycho? Well, I said Janet Leigh’s cake face ruined that movie for me. She said what about Tippi Herden’s cake face in Marnie? I told her Tippi was the most beautiful piece of ass ever cast in a Hitch film.
Florence: Tippy Herden the most beautiful piece of ass in a Hitch film ever? What about Ingrid? Shirley MacLaine? And Kim Novack? What about fucking Kim Novack? Good old Kim Novack who could turn any cocksucker into a pussy muncher. I told her that. I was raging now.
Dorothy: It was the first time that I ever got drunk with Florence. I don’t think it’s right for middle aged spinsters to drink together. Alcohol flushes out all the anger and bitterness that we keep buried inside us. It was quite funny the way she took off about Kim Novack. I pressed my feet against hers and our foot palms lined up together. The touch of our bare feet seemed to calm her down a little.
Florence: It felt good with our feet palms against each other. It was nice and tender. I pushed hard with my feet, and she pushed back with hers. It was tender, competitive, and erotic. Then Dorothy said we should have a titfight. I asked her what the hell was a titfight.
Dorothy: I had first seen a titfight in an old Mexican movie at a b-movie film festival. I cannot recall its name. It involved two women pitting their breasts against each other after a fight over a man. I thought it was erotic as hell. I told Florence to take off her coat and t-shirt. I took off mine and we faced each other bare chested, the two of us leering at each other’s naked breasts.
Florence: Neither of us had particularly large breasts. Dorothy’s breasts looked taut and firm to me. There wasn’t much fat on them. They suited her wiry and thin body frame. I turned off the lights in the room, we were left with the light from the table lamp. She took a step towards me and I noticed that her nipples were rock hard. My hard beat wildly as I took a step toward her and our nipples slowly crashed into each other. My head was swimming from all the alcohol and now this impending erotic encounter with Dorothy.
Dorothy: Our breasts looked alike. Florence’s breasts did not sag one bit. It almost hurt when we began to push at each other’s breasts. The light from the table lamp cast a warm and gloomy pallor over our faces. I pushed Florence back with my breasts until she was leaning against the oak paneled wall. I snaked an arm behind her back, pulling her closer to me. We embraced, our thin bodies crashing together and firm breasts fighting.
Florence: I crashed my mouth onto Dorothy’s, and we blew sweet whiskey breaths into each other’s faces before our tongues locked together in a torrid kiss. Years of pent-up sexual frustration had been uncorked by the whiskey and now it threatened to erupt in a volcanic sexual frenzy.
Dorothy: We both sort of lost control of ourselves. I remember us disentangling briefly to take swigs from the whiskey bottle, snarling at each other to decide who would take the final swig. It was all in flashes now, the whiskey had taken over my sensory experience completely. I remember Florence wrestling me to the floor, the whiskey bottle crashing down and shards of glass hitting my cheek. I remember us rolling around on the floor without a care in the world, our fingers in each other’s hair, kissing wildly with our tongues lashing at each other like serpents.
