I was caught for a moment, looking into her eyes, then I had to glance away. My stomach had just done a very complicated somersault and I didn’t want her noticing.

“Hang around, y’all,” Alex said as she breezed by. “All the obligatory people are leaving.” Then she headed off to say good-bye to some of the exiting guests.

“Alex does win the best family award,” I said as I watched Mrs. Sayers hugging Joanne good-bye.

“Why are families so depressing?” Danny asked rhetorically.

“What’s going on here?” Joanne asked as she joined us.

“We’re discussing families,” Elly explained.

“Whew, all gone,” Alex said, having seen the last guest, save us, to the door.

“We all want to be in your family,” Elly told Alex.

“Sure, no problem. Yo, Ma, five more kids,” Alex called after her safely out-of-earshot mother.

“Micky, go open those champagne bottles,” Danny commanded.

I saluted and headed for the kitchen. Alex joined me, finding the champagne where Joanne had put it in the refrigerator. I opened the bottle, quickly popping the cork while Alex found glasses, then followed her out to the living room.

Danny poured the champagne, handing us each a glass. I started to decline, then decided it would be easier to just park a glass in front of me than make a fuss.

“To Joanne and Alex,” Cordelia said, raising her glass. They kissed as we toasted them.

“To us all,” Alex said, lifting her glass. “Joanne, because I love you. C.J., you’re my best friend. Danny, for your legal advice and being a devil’s advocate when I need one. Elly, stitches and compassion after that oyster shell last summer. You probably saved my life. And Micky, in ways I couldn’t possibly recount.” She took a sip, then added, “But it might be real interesting for me to try.”

After the laughter, I asked, “Joanne, how do you get her to shut up?”

“Sex,” Joanne laconically replied.

“Which is why I talk so much,” Alex added.

“Okay, is it late enough and are we drunk enough?” Danny asked.

“For?” Alex inquired.

“To talk about sex.”

“We can’t talk about families, work, politics, and religion. What else is there?” Alex said. “How did you two meet?”

“Us?” Danny asked.

“Well, I know how Joanne and I met,” Alex replied.

“At a party Cordelia gave,” Elly answered.

“You think Elly’s shy? You should have seen her. She walked up to me, asked me if I had a lover, then got my phone number and told me she’d like to see me. I was impressed,” Danny elaborated.

“I think I introduced myself first and we had talked a few times in passing. It took every ounce of courage I had to do that. But I figured you were going to be leaving any minute and if I didn’t, then that was that.”

“I’m very glad you did,” Danny said, taking her hand.

“How’d you two meet?” I asked Alex and Joanne.

“C.J., the matchmaker,” Alex answered. “I had just moved in here, having finally broken up with Louise. How did I ever get involved with a woman whose passion was watching interest accrue? Anyway, Cordelia brought some friends of hers over to help paint. I was having a painting party.”

“Twenty-five words or less,” I cut in.

“Actually, Danny brought me,” Joanne supplied.

“I was trying to fix you up with Cordelia,” Danny said, “but my matchmaking went astray.”

“Doesn’t it always?” I commented. “I remember some of the matches you tried to make for me.”

“You have no match,” Danny retorted. “Fortunately.”

“Now, girls,” Alex refereed.

“So how’d you get her quiet long enough to get her into bed?” I asked Joanne, not taking Danny’s bait.

“What a presumptuous question,” Alex interjected.

“Alex told me if I wanted to shut her up, I’d have to kiss her. So I did.”

“Then she picked me up, picked me up, mind you, and carried me into the bedroom. I think hunger, food, that is, finally got us out about a day later. We spent half an hour in the kitchen and went back into the bedroom. Or did we even make it back to the bedroom? Didn’t we—”

“Alex,” Joanne interrupted her.

“Yes, dear?”

Joanne kissed her. A long kiss. Danny started whistling, deliberately out of tune. Cordelia winked at Danny and started drumming her fingers on the table.

“I do declare,” Alex said, after they finally broke off, “I totally forgot what I was talking about.”

“Sex,” Danny reminded her. “Tell us about your first time.”

“If you insist,” she agreed and looked at me. “You don’t remember, do you?”

“How could I forget, Alex, dear?” I played along. “Was it Paris? Rome? Biloxi?”

“New York,” Alex laughed, shaking her head. “My senior year in college. I had been curious for a while and I was in the painful position of fence-sitting. I kept getting these weird physical sensations around women and it happened often enough that I couldn’t write it off to the flu.

“One evening we were making our way to ACDC—the All Campus Dining Center, not what you were thinking—and we heard rumors of tuna tetrazzini. One brilliant woman said, fuck this, let’s go to New York City. So, with the naïveté of youth, we galloped off to the train station and the temptations of the Big Apple.

“Once at Grand Central, division struck the troops. Three went to the Upper West Side and three to the Village (my group). Rhonda immediately headed for her NYU boyfriend, leaving Sylvia and me to our own devices. We had an Italian dinner, a tremendous improvement over re-formed tuna, then we started bar hopping. Straight bars, of course. Syl was relentlessly hetero.

“An unwound watch changed my life. Had it not been for that fickle watch, I would have left Syl to her wenching and caught the last train back to Poughkeepsie. Syl wasn’t worried, she had no plans to return to her dorm room that night.

“She found a suitable male and left me defenseless with his friend. And then I did something which years of Southern female tradition should have beaten out of me: I spilled my drink on him, forcing him to the men’s room while I made my escape. Out to the less-than-gentle streets of New York.

“I roamed, I wandered, I wondered what would become of me. Then I saw this very interesting group of women go into a bar. I must have walked around that block at least ten times before I summoned the courage to go in.

“It was filled with women. Only women.

“And what had seemed impossible in that het bar, to pick up some strange man and go home with him, seemed possible here. Except in straight bars, men made the advances. I stood around for about an hour, hoping someone would at least come and talk to me, but it didn’t happen. And I kept giving myself all these little pep talks. Just go up and say hi. Ask for the time, my watch had stopped. I’d take a step or two, then falter. No, she’s with someone. No, she’s going to the bathroom. Any port in my storm. And I kept hoping some woman would come up and talk to me.

“I finally got what I wanted. A—I’m sorry, I know this is politically incorrect—bull dyke was suddenly standing less than six inches in front of me. Cigarette hanging out of her mouth, beer on her breath. My dream date. She took a step in and I took a step back until I was backed against the wall. ‘Hi,’ she said—I was relived to know she could talk—‘wanna dance?’

“I couldn’t dance with her. I’d asphyxiate on the alcohol and smoke on her breath. I do remember vaguely saying some sort of no, but she wasn’t in the mood for negatives. She flung a paw around my shoulder and pulled me to the dance floor. I bumped into this tall, dark woman that I had noticed earlier, causing her to glance in my direction.

“And, being desperate, not to mention light-headed from the beer breath, I said, ‘It’s about time you got here.’

“She burst out laughing, then winked at me and said, ‘Get your hands off my girlfriend. She dances with me or nobody.’”

Alex looked at me again. She had obviously gotten the pertinent details from Danny, who, I had to admit, was doing a very good job of keeping a poker face.

“Tall, dark, and handsome led me across the dance floor. From a nightmare to a fantasy. We danced a few times, including a slow one for appearance’s sake, she told me. Slow enough to get my pants wet. Then she said, ‘Let’s go,’ and she led me out of the bar. We were walking down the streets in the Village and I had no idea where I was. And I suddenly had these images of headlines blaring, ‘Vassar Senior Strangled by Lesbian Maniac.’ This woman was tall, a good eight inches over me. I didn’t have much of a chance.

“Then she asked me where I lived and said she’d escort me home, making me feel a bit foolish. I explained my missed train predicament. And she very politely offered to let me crash at her place. I agreed because I’d detected a hint of a Southern accent. I knew Southern girls wouldn’t be lesbian sex maniacs.”

“So it was you, huh, Mick?” Danny asked as if she wasn’t in on the whole thing.

“Of course,” I replied. “Who else could possibly have the stamina to sleep with both you and Alex?”

“To continue,” Alex continued, “we walked a bit more. She was chatting, in that Southern fashion, about this and that, pointing out where Stonewall had been. And this lightbulb went on in my head. I was being taken to this gorgeous woman’s apartment.

“Then she led me into the subway and I began to wonder if I’d met the first Southern lesbian maniac. At some point she noticed how nervous I was. Maybe it was my saying Hail Marys and not being Catholic that tipped her off. She said she never worried about being in the subway alone. Only if there were other people did she worry. It was only me, her, and some wino asleep on the bench in the station.

“So we were standing there waiting for the train and I found myself looking up at this woman, thinking, God, she has beautiful eyes. Then she bent down, moving slowly, and I knew she was going to kiss me. And I didn’t even know her name. Just as she started to kiss me, an express train roared by. I jumped back, startled by the noise and the idea of all those people on that train watching me kiss another woman in a subway station.”

I sat up. A scrap of memory intruded. I had kissed a woman in the Christopher Street station and she had jumped away. I looked at Alex. Different haircut, different glasses…but she could have been Alex. I surreptitiously glanced around the table, but people were watching Alex as she told her story. Could I have mentioned enough of the details for Danny to have passed them on to Alex? This being true wasn’t possible.

“…and we were passing Eighty-sixth street and I’m thinking, I’m going to the Bronx. After Ninety-sixth, I had to ask, because I was beyond Hail Marys. She replied, ‘Relax, we’re going to my dorm at Barnard.’ Relief. We finally left the subway.”

And I remembered the woman, saying, “Hi, I’m Alex. I just thought it might be a good idea to introduce myself.” Embarrassment descended with a vengeance. I had slept with Alex.

I glanced around the table again. Joanne was looking at me. Then Danny caught Joanne looking and she stared at me, too, followed by Elly. I could imagine the look on my face. Alex paused, noticing that her listeners’ attention had been diverted.

“Is it that dress, Mick, or are you blushing?” Danny gleefully asked. “Naw, that’s not possible.”

“Alex, I’m so embarrassed,” I said.

“Why?” she replied. “I had a good time.”

“Did you? I hope so,” I answered, trying desperately to dig up a few more details from my faulty memory.

“Yeah,” Alex answered again. “Didn’t you?”

I couldn’t remember. I tried to picture us having sex, but the images blurred.

“I’m sorry, Alex,” I said very softly. “I don’t…remember.” I suddenly felt sad and empty. Why hadn’t I been present then? How many other women had I taken in a drunken or drugged fog? “I’m sorry, Alex,” I repeated quietly. “I should have remembered.”

“What was that, Mick?” Danny inquired. “Couldn’t hear you at this end of the table.”

“I said, Elly, did you throw out those dental dams I left in the back seat of your car?”

“Very funny,” Danny replied.

“Gosh, I hope so.” Elly winked at me.

“Could we hear the end of your story, Alex?” Cordelia asked.

“Being a proper Southern girl,” Alex continued, “Micky offered to let me have the bed and she would sleep on the floor. Of course, being a proper Southern lady myself, I couldn’t allow it. Being a typical college cot, the sleeping space was immediately intimate. Then she…you started kissing me. And like a fool, I decided to be honest, so I said I’d never done anything like this before. And you rolled over and said, ‘Okay, we don’t have to do anything.’”

“And?” Danny asked.

“Having a big mouth helps out in situations like this, because I immediately blurted out, but I want to do something. Then we did a lot of things. And I learned the virtues of keeping my mouth open and not saying anything.”

“Congratulations, Alex, on a memorable first time,” I said, sardonically raising my glass. I was upset.

“For at least one of you,” Danny couldn’t resist adding.

Damn, Danny and her needling. It suddenly occurred to me that I might find it amusing, too, if I were drunk.

“Okay, Micky, now I want to hear about your first time,” Alex said.

“If she can remember,” Danny interjected.

“How about a break for the bathroom?” Cordelia suggested.

“Come on, Elly,” I said, standing up. “Let’s get it over with. We can do it while they pee.” I was trying to annoy Danny.

“No way,” Danny answered for her. “Take Cordelia.”

“I’m going to the bathroom,” Cordelia replied.

“Hey, golden showers, Mick’ll go for that,” Danny said.

“Yeah, you taught me,” I retorted.

“Bullshit! We never did that,” Danny responded.

“Have you forgotten?” I said.

“I don’t forget the things I do in bed,” Danny chided.