Dykette

by Jenny Fran Davis

A girl had to be a detective in matters of the heart.

a pretty girl whose bad attitude could be mitigated only by attention.

Maybe a better word for it was dykette, containing both the butch’s gaze and the femme’s stare—because, of course, they’re looking at each other. It’s not a stare from below, the lesbian stare, but a pure wanting, a desire whose direction is always in flux.

antics were a way to express desire that couldn’t be sated and had to be performed instead.