On The Phone:
Bette: (sounding upset) Ok…. Ok…. I promse I’ll show up. Stop calling me everywhere I go. You’ve already called me to Philadelphia, Boston and even there in Los Angeles and you know I’m not there… stop it Al…. it’s annoying…. I promise I’ll go.
Alice: Ok! Now that you are clearly mad at me I’ll stop hunting you down… is that ok?
Bette: (in a sarcastic tone) Thank you!! It was about damn time…. Hey is Shane going too?
Alice: (ignoring Bette’s tone of voice) Yes of course she’s coming… How in the world would she miss the lesbian version of The Love Boat?
Both laughed….
Bette: I guess you are right about that…
Alice: As I’m always right about my friends…. Honey I know you’ve been working very hard and non-stop for the last two years and that you won’t admit it… but you need to return to the world of the living some time in this life… even for a week or two…
Bette: (returning to the angry tone) Alice… don’t start again….
Alice: But Bette you already know you are Bette "the most successful woman in the art world" Porter, now you need to cool down a little… enjoy what you’ve accomplished… I mean you are almost in every art magazine… and the article on The New York Times last month… hell… I’m a journalist myself and couldn’t believe I was reading an article about you…. on line… and those were very good photographs also…. I bet every hot chick in town is throwing at your feet right now…. you insatiable, legendary lesb…..
Bette: (almos shouting) ALICE!! Please stop it!
Alice: (sarcastic) Ok mom!!…. but you’ll give me all the details from last month…. eventually…
Bette: Bye Al! See you next week!!
Alice: Ok, bye!

 

Although I didn’t say so I’ve always found Alice’s questions amusing, It’s always been like our little game… for me is to see for how long Alice can take my elusive answering and for Alice, how much I can take of her incisive questioning before I break down and start talking…. I’ve always thought of her as my own annoying FBI agent….
Anyway I was forced to go to a cruise over the Pacific ocean next week. I wasn’t very excited about it but Alice from the west coast was hunting me down and Dana from the east cost was doing exactly the same so… I basically had no choice….
To tell you the truth Alice was right…. I was at the top of my career. I owned four art galleries across the country (Los Angeles, New York, Boston and Philadelphia) so I was traveling all the time. I rented small apartments in each city and had two or three friends in each city as well so every time I got to those places I wouldn’t be alone…. and yet I’ve been alone long time before any of this.
As to my love life… of course I got laid at least once a week, I mean I’m human after all… and it’s like a habit I can’t break. Although many of those one night stands were willing to continue with a relationship I…. I couldn’t commit to anything even… less another human being…. the only living things I owned were plants at those apartments but I didn’t even take care of them, my friends did. Besides how could I be with someone if I never stayed around in a city longer than a week? And to be honest there were other reasons for that behavior but I don’t want to go there…
I wasn’t like all my friends, except for Shane of course… I wasn’t longing for my soulmate, I didn’t even think about it either…. we were all successful, young and independent woman…. Alice was a well known journalist in L.A., Dana was a now top ten tennis player traveling all around the world, Karen was a doctor in a very important hospital en New York, Julia was a well positioned lawyer working in one of my dad’s companies in Boston and Grace and Ann were both architects and they owned a studio in Philadelphia.
All of them no matter how busy they were they always found the time to date and search for their soulmates…. only Shane who, by the way was a well known hairdresser in Hollywood and me were the rebel ones…. always getting lectures from everybody…. fuck, even my father gave up and told me…. and I quote "I don’t care the gender of who you go out with… please just settle down, start a family…… UHHHH!!! I couldn’t take it anymore….
Now that’s why when I graduated from Yale the first thing I did was to take a sabbatical year and travell all over the world… just to collect experiences and memories from different  countries and cultures before I decided what to do next with my life…..
YES! I run away….. I couldn’t stand the pressure of so many different people telling me the same "get a decent job and a decent girlfriend and start your family"….
So I travelled all over South America. Always returning to the US, Los Angeles in particular…. I mean don’t get me wrong I’m a New Yorker…. I love New York I can’t stand being away for long but LA always had something special… I never knew what it was but I kept coming back there…. besides Alice and Shane were there. I met most of my actual friends that year…. that was a happy time for me…. wait… what is wrong with me? I never look back
Perhaps Alice is right for once…. either I’m just very tired or getting very old and very fast.
Since my mother died I’ve always lived by one rule: live your life day by day, enjoy everything that life offers you and most important don’t look back… don’t regret anything…. what’s done is done…. I know that sounds selfish but it got me trough my mother’s grief, the acceptance of my sexuality, my sister Kit disappearing on me for so long. So now it’s how I live… I couldn’t imagine myself any other way…. and all the traveling kept me away enough time from everybody… so here I am going to a cruise with Dana, Alice and Shane… oh fuck!! I can’t believe I’m going to stay more than a week in one place…. and with the same people. Why did I ever agree? It’s too late anyway, Alice promised to hunt me down and drag my ass to that boat if I didn’t show up and…. I know she is perfectly capable of doing so….
Fuck! I’m getting panicky…. I’d better go back to the gallery…. what’s wrong with me? Did I miss doing something today and this is my subconscious telling me "you forgot to"….? Ok, all I have to do is breath and get over myself…. I was telling me all this as I realized I haven’t felt like this in a long time.
I was restless like an animal before a huge storm and I couldn’t tell why… I felt as if my entire body was shaking… but in anticipation of what?
Suddenly my cell phone rang…. thank God it was James from the office telling me to return because that gave me the strengh to stand up and head towars the door and into my car….