Mouthing the Words by Camilla Gibb

enough psychiatrists by this time to know that Charles-the-creep would fit right in. Vellaine and Charles did eventually move to Moose Jaw to work with the native community as prescribed in Plan A. She and I were never really able to regain any connection to our earlier friendship until well after she had caught Charles “bonking” (being a doctor you think she could have come up with a more appropriate term) a native midwife, who, of course, he managed to get pregnant (um, excuse me, but how many safe sex educators does it take to get pregnant?) which led to his “relocation” and the subsequent disintegration of their marriage.
    I would have been tempted to say “I could have told you so,” but by the time Vellaine and I were reunited I had gotten over being so cheeky and defensive. In fact, she was busy asking me at the time whether I’d ever had sex with a man. I wasn’t really sure why she was asking.
    “Remember when we used to joke about being lesbians when we grew up?” she asked me.
    “Yeah,” I nodded shyly.
    “Well, I think I’m grown up now,” she said somewhat timidly.
    So that was it. Vellaine was coming out as a lesbian. Thirty-three years old and a psychiatrist now with her own practice in Toronto and she was coming out as a lesbian.
    “Why so timid?” I asked her. “You had free licence in your house to be whatever you wanted to be. I remember Anika even explicitly giving you permission to be a lesbian if you wanted.”
    “Well, my house was not the world,” she said mournfully.
    “That’s funny, I thought
my
house was the world,” I said.
    “I was ashamed of my parents. They were hippies. They were, you know, crunchy granola types. It was totally embarrassing.”
    “My God, I thought they were amazing. I mean in retrospect I have so idealized them—the openness, the affection,” I said, amazed to hear Vellaine speak like this.
    “Well, you know, too open, too unstructured sometimes,” she said.
    “Meaning?” I asked.
    “Like they had an open marriage.”
    “Like sleeping with other people?”
    “In theory. Although in practice only my mother did. My father remained absolutely devoted and monogamous until the day he died.”
    “Wow,” was all I could say, leaving us both a little room to digest.
    “But what about you?” she asked.
    “What about me?”
    “Are you?”
    “A lesbian?”
    “Yeah.”
    “No,” I said hesitantly, although I felt like apologizing.
    “I thought you were,” she said, a little surprised.
    “No,” I said, shaking my head.
    “But have you ever slept with a man?”
    “Only my father,” I said, shrugging.
    “Oh God, Thelma.” She put her arm around my neck and drew me to her until our foreheads rested together. Rested there together for a time in order to let the healing begin.
    But that comes later. About twelve years and a whole lot of therapy later, in fact. For now, Vellaine and Charles are in the first blissful throes of their material union and I am feeling sick to my stomach.
    Even Binbi seems to have defected. Although she was never the intellectual giant, I am really questioning her decision to be an exotic dancer. Well, not decision exactly, sort of default occupation while she auditions for positions as a proper dancer. Just as “no one’s really a waiter,” no one at the Zanzibar is “really” an exotic dancer. “No, really,” insists Binbi, “the girls are all great. So-and-so is really a model, and so-and-so is really an actress, and so-and-so is saving money so she can go to veterinary school, and so-and-so has kids to support, and so-and-so is at university during the days studying to be a rectal optometrist.” A rectal optometrist? One of them’s got the wrong end of the stick anyway.
    And what’s so exotic about having all your clothes off anyway , I want to know. People do it all the time—although normally in the privacy of their own homes. Quite frankly, I find it disgusting—morally reprehensible, but I