Words
By Dreamspinner



I heard a polite clearing of the throat and looked up from the progress note I
had been writing. I had been so intent I hadn't seen Sister Mary Katherine, or
Sister Kate ... as she insisted she be called ... until she spoke. She was the
Director of Nursing at St. Boniface Home for the Aged, and she was standing at
the nurses' station, her arms lying folded on the counter, her fingers
interlaced ... as they always were when she was waiting.

"Would you step into my office, doctor?" In another setting, she would defer
to me, but this was her Home and she was mistress of it.

I leaned back and bent my elbows, stretching hard, feeling my biceps expand,
stretching my shirtsleeves. I picked up my pen and put it in my pocket. I
stood up. "Ready," I said. Sister led the way to her office. I trudged along
three steps behind her. I was tired, but not too tired to appreciate her fine
backside. Nuns like her might have had some guilt about their private
thoughts ... only their confessors knew for sure ... but I had taken no vow and
indulged myself every time I was with Sister Kate. Her easy loping gait, her
small well-shaped head held high ... she was the stuff good fantasies were made
from.

I liked to wonder what secrets might lie beneath her starched habit ... was she
lean and hard or soft and poorly-formed? What color was her pubic hair? What
was her ass like? I had seen a wisp of red touched with gray trailing from her
wimple one day tried to imagine what she would look like without her head
wrapped in that damned thing. The skin of Sister's face was almost translucent
and seemed to be lit from within. I was wondering if she glowed in the dark
when we arrived at her office.

"After you, doctor," she said.

"No, Sister, after you." She flushed.

Sister Kate and I respected each other and I liked her. She was icily formal
when we were on the floor, but playful and childlike when it was just we two.
I believed she liked me as much as I liked her, and often had the sense that
very un-nunlike thoughts came into her mind when we talked. There was
something about the way her pale blue eyes played games with mine; a
hesitation before breaking eye contact that betrayed her...at least that was
what I liked to think. I enjoyed it very much when that happened and had every
expectation it would happen again ... soon.

"Please sit down," she said, closing the door. "There's a matter I would like
to discuss with you." My anticipation of eye contact games vanished.

I sat in the straight-backed chair in front of her desk. I had been witness to
many of Sister's Kate's ass-chewings of her nurses and even a medical student
or two of mine; squirming in the selfsame chair while Sister sat behind her
desk, arms on the blotter, fingers interlaced, waiting for her target to
respond. For a moment I wondered if that's what Sister had in mind for me, but
when she removed her wimple I knew for certain that was not what she intended.
The moment her hair was set free, it hair fell to her shoulders. It was a
shame to keep it covered, I thought. Hair like her should have been shown
off ... not constrained by that mediaeval relic. It was auburn, streaked with
gray. Its accommodation to the contour of Sister's shoulders reminded me of
the wavy grain in my grandmother's antique walnut dresser.

"I know this is quite unusual," she said. "I'm sorry to let you see me like
this. As you are well aware, no one outside the order is to see us uncovered."

Keeping my mouth shut when my patients said or did anything unusual always
paid off. I figured it would work with Sister, too, so I sat tight and waited.

She came around to the front of her desk and leaned against it. She ran her
hands through her tresses. "God, it feels good to get that damn thing off!"

I laughed at her indiscretion. "You wanted to show me you knew how to swear?"

"You think we're all pure as the driven snow?"

I laughed again. "You must trust me not to run to Monsignor and tell him," I
said.

"I do," she said. "And with more than that." She pushed herself up and sat on
her desk and kicked off her shoes. She let her legs swing.

I took every bit of restraint I could muster, but again I kept still and
waited.

"'All things come to he who waits,' eh, doctor?" she asked. "All right," she
said. "Your wait is nearly over." She hopped off her desk and padded to the
window and looked out, her nose almost touching the pane. Her breath made two
ovals on the glass each time she exhaled. Her hair, now free, was
spectacularly beautiful.

The playfulness she had shown just moments before was gone. She spoke to my
reflection in measured tones. "Doctor, three weeks ago, I saw one of my nurses
reading something, and this thing ... which I took and part of which I
have ... troubles me still." Sister Kate turned to face me.

"What is it?" I asked.

"A magazine...or a page I tore out of it, I should say."

My eyebrows shot up. "A magazine? What kind of magazine?" I asked.
Pornography, I thought. It had to be. What else, I wondered, could trouble
this unflappable woman for three weeks?

She crossed her arms and stared at me. In a moment, her eyes filled with
tears. Sister took in a long, shuddering breath and blew it out. "When I saw
what my nurse was reading it was like my past came rushing up before my eyes,"
she said. "At once, all I had forsaken to become a nun came crashing in on
me." She stepped to her desk and took a Kleenex from the dispenser. She dabbed
at her eyes. I said nothing.

"I saw someone in that magazine I knew once," she said. "Someone who changed
the course of my life." She went behind her desk and sat down heavily. She
laid her arms on the blotter and carefully interlaced her slender fingers.
Color came to her cheeks.

"When I was a girl, we lived in Fort Myers," Sister said. "Our backyard was
adjacent to that of a woman named Margaret Canton...did you ever hear of her?"

"If it's the Margaret Canon I'm thinking of, then, 'yes,' I have," I said.

"Good," Sister Kate said. "That will make this easier." She leaned back in her
chair and opened the top drawer, reached in a pulled out a page clearly ripped
from a magazine. She handed it to me. "Is this the Margaret Canton you're
thinking of?" she asked.

There on the page was Margaret Canton I remembered seeing as I stood in
Walgreen's Drugstore, trying to avoid being seen looking at the magazine
called Women's Arm Development, my dick hard as a rod, my young mind full of
amazement at the sight of a woman with biceps as big as a longshoreman's. That
had been a long time ago, but the memory was as fresh as if it had all
happened yesterday, and I hardened as I had then, so many years ago. I
squirmed.

"I used to watch her from my bedroom window," Sister said. "Doing just what
she's doing in that picture ... watching her muscles swell as she pulls her
weights up again and again. I was fascinated...no, that's not the word.
'Excited' is more to the point. Yes, that's it." The words were tumbling out
now.

Sister Kate took in another breath and blew it out. She went on. "I wanted
her, or rather, wanted to 'look' like her, to be precise. After watching
Margaret exercise, I'd stand in front of my mirror and make muscles ... or try
to, I should say." She laughed ironically. "I remember flexing my arm as hard
as I could, trying to get a little bump to rise up." Sister shook her head. "I
wanted muscles, doctor. I wanted my muscles to look like hers in the worst
way." Her eyes filled with tears again. I said nothing, but my imagination was
in overdrive.

"There's more," she said. "Sometimes other women just as muscled as Margaret
Canton would come over to her house, and they'd all be in her backyard,
lifting weights and comparing muscles ... seeing whose was the biggest. It seemed
so joyous. They'd be laughing and flexing their arms and legs and puffing up
their chests. I wanted so much to run out and join in the fun. I wanted to be
one of them. I wanted to be part of it." Sister was crying now.

"What happened?" I asked.

Sister Kate shook her head slowly. Her faded walnut hair tumbled from one side
of her oval face to another. I thought she was very beautiful and wondered
what she might have been had she not taken her vows. She looked me in the eye.
"One Saturday, when my parents were out, Margaret and her girlfriends were in
her backyard, lifting weights. I was watching them from my bedroom window as
always, when the urge to be with them came upon me. It was irresistible.
Before I could stop myself I was out the back door. I raced into Margaret's
backyard and came to a stop in the midst of them, staring at one and then the
other. I was covered with goose bumps."

"Then what?"

"Then I told them what I just told you ... I told them I wanted to be like them;
that I wanted muscles, and I asked them to help me make mine as big as
theirs." Sister flushed. "The moment the words were out, I was so embarrassed
I wanted to run back home, but Margaret came over and put her arm around my
shoulders. She must have sensed how difficult that moment was for me." Sister
Kate dabbed at her eyes. "Can you guess what she said?"

"No."

"She said she understood." Sister Kate covered her face with her hands and
wept. I said nothing. "Sorry," she said, minutes later.

"Don't apologize," I said. "She understood you in your moment of conflict,
Sister. An expression of that order is one of the most meaningful things one
human being can do for another ... it's no wonder you wept then, and it's no
wonder you weep now in the remembering of it."

"Damn you're good, doctor," she said.

I smiled. "Tell me what happened that wrecked it, Sister Kate."

How did you know something wrecked it?"

I didn't say a thing. Sister's eyes welled up. "OK, it's obvious, isn't it?"

"Yes."

"After I got settled down, Margaret looked me in the eye and told me how
flattered she was that I would want muscles like hers. I don't need to tell
you how out-of-the-ordinary a muscled woman was back then, do I?"

I remembered that day when I stood in Walgreen's. "It certainly was unusual,"
I said. "I have the feeling that you're about to tell me something that feels
awful to you."

"Yes, I am," Sister said. "Margaret offered her help with muscle- building.
She said she would be glad to teach me different exercises and the proper
techniques. I was nearly crazy with excitement. I was hopping up and down, I
think." She paused, too long, I thought.

"What happened that wrecked it?"

"I heard my mother yelling from our back door. My parents had come home early,
I guess. Margaret still had her arm around my shoulders and she was bending
down. It was quite innocent, really, but my mother...well, she evidently
didn't see it that way."

"You said she was yelling."

"Screaming is more like it. I could see the veins in her neck sticking out. It
was awful." Sister Kate suddenly looked very far away.

"Go on," I said finally.

Sister Kate turned on her desk lamp. She brought her hands up and cradled her
face, her elbows on the blotter. "That night over supper, my mother and father
declared that I would be sent away to Catholic school, and from there, I would
enter a convent. I was to be a nun, my mother said. That was the only way I
would be able to remain pure." Sister put her hands together on the blotter in
front of her again, fingers laced carefully.

Sister Kate looked me in the eye. "My mother said she would not have a
daughter of hers consorting with muscle-bound women. She knew they were
lesbians, she said, and to be a lesbian, according to my mother, was worse
than being dead."

"So she wanted you in a convent?" I asked.

"Yes," she said. "Ironic, isn't it?"

I nodded. "And the picture of Margaret...that brought all this back?"

"Well, yes. But the real point of all this is that..." Sister's voice trailed
off.

"Go on."

Sister Kate got up and stepped to the window again. Her hands were on the
sill. "I did my best to stop wanting muscles. Out of a sense of obligation to
my mother, I suppose."

"I take it you weren't able to stop."

"No, but I did my best. If I saw a magazine in a store with a picture of a
muscled woman on the cover, I'd avert my eyes. When I saw a woman with
muscular legs, I'd turn away. But I couldn't quell my desire." She turned to
face me. She was flushed.

"Tell me about it, if you like."

"In a weak moment, I'd look at my muscles in the mirror ... just like I did when
I was a girl in Fort Myers. I'd flex as hard as I could."

"And?"

"As the years went by, my muscled got bigger and bigger," she said. "All on
their own, it seems. God knows I didn't lift weights." Her eyes seemed to bore
holes in the floor.

"You're guilty, Sister," I said. "Aren't you."

"Yes," she said. "I've got so much guilt about my muscles I had the
maintenance man take the mirror out of my bathroom."

"Good God!"

Sister Kate picked up the page from the old magazine. "Look at her arms," she
said. "Look at those blood vessels. When I first saw her muscles rippling it
felt like electricity was passing through my body! God, how I wanted to look
like that. I could have, I think."

"You do?"

"Yes. Look at this, doctor." Sister Kate shoved up the sleeve of her habit and
flexed her biceps. The muscle looked as if it had been weight trained for
years. I was stunned...and immediately hard as a pole.

As quickly as she had shown her arm, Sister pulled down her sleeve. Her face
was red as a beet. "You see?" she asked.

I nodded. "If it weren't for your mother," I said.

"Yes," she said. "If it weren't for her, I could have had what I wanted. Why,
I might have married; had children, even. Fancy that ... me with children." She
looked horribly sad again.

"How old are you?" I asked.

"How old are you?" She countered.

"Fifty-something," I said.

"So am I," she said. "Why?"

"Well, I've come to believe that the fifth decade of a person's life can be a
window of great opportunity."

I sat up and put my elbows on her desk. "For me," I said, "the fears of my
earlier years have receded. I find myself taking risks ... in my practice, in my
conversations ... even the way I think about things I'd been too frightened to
even consider when I was younger. Don't you find yourself aware of the same
kind of perspective, Sister?"

She was very still. A minute passed, then two. Finally she said, "I wasn't
aware of it until you said so, but yes, I do have that sense."

I waited.

"Funny," she said. "It seems like I'm escaping from that prison my mother put
me in, even as I sit here." The nun shifted her weight. She looked at the
picture of Margaret Canton. "It's so odd ... I can look at this woman and not
expect my mother to break through the door and scream at me." Sister looked me
in the eye. "This is the first time since I was a girl I haven't expected that
to happen when I looked at ... or thought about muscles...Margaret Canton's or
mine."

I leaned back in my chair and waited. The Director of Nursing at St. Boniface
Home for the Aged now looked as if she was forty-something. Her features
seemed to have become better-shaped in the last few minutes ... her lips were
fuller, her nose seemed more aquiline, and her pale blue eyes ... always
striking ... seemed to radiate a light of their own. And her fingers weren't
entwined ... they were tracing the contours of Margaret Canton's arms; running
from her wrists across the bulge of the old musclewoman's biceps to her
shoulders and back again. Sister Kate took in a long breath and let it slowly
out. "I used to fantasy what these muscles might feel like," she said. "I
would often feel my own meager arms as I lay in bed at night, pretending I was
feeling hers and wishing I were she ... all at once. It was wonderful!"

"I'll bet."

Sister Kate looked at me suddenly. "Does that make me a lesbian?" she asked.

"Probably not, but who gives a shit?" I said.

Sister raised an eyebrow. "My mother," she said.

"'Gave,'" I said.

Sister Kate nodded. "Yes, she's dead. 'Gave' is the word. Past tense."

Our conversation had made my head swim. Sister's description of her conflict
had struck a sympathetic chord. She must have sensed it. She tapped her nail
on the base of her desktop lamp. "Doctor," she said. "Are you all right?"

I shook my head. "You and I have more in common than you might think," I said.
Sister waited, silent. "My mother was like yours in many important ways," I
said.

"Tell me," she said. Clearly, she was the psychiatrist now; listening,
watching me, and waiting.

"My mother hated muscles," I said. "It didn't matter if they were a man's or a
woman's, although now that I think of it, a muscular woman was worse than a
muscular man ... to her, at least."

"Go on," Sister said.

"My father was an athlete...he pitched and played third base and played
football in college. Fact is, he was such a good baseball player the Detroit
Tigers invited him to spring training...that was in 1938."

"Did he go?" she asked.

"No, his father said he was needed on the farm...spring planting."

"Oh. That's too bad."

"Yes. I think he regretted it all his life." I shook my head. The memories
were painful still, ten years after my father's death.

"The point is," I continued, "he was proud of his athleticism, his strength,
and his muscles. He used to push up his sleeve and flex his biceps ... just as
you did a moment ago ... even when we were out with company. My mother was
scandalized."

"How do you know?"

"She didn't make a big show of her displeasure. She was subtle ... she'd just
look at her plate with this look of horror on her face. But I got the
message."

"What was the message?" Sister asked.

"Not to be like him...in that way...in that muscular way."

"But you have muscles, doctor. I saw them bunch up under your shirtsleeves
when you stretched at the nurses' station."

"Yes," I said. "I do. I've been slaving over barbells for thirty- five years,
but it's just been in the last two years or so that I've felt comfortable
having muscles."

"Really?" Sister said. She sat up straight and leaned her elbows on her
blotter. Her fingers were not entwined. She had her palms flat on Margaret
Canton's picture.

"Yes, really," I said.

Sister's jaw dropped. "You weren't ever before?" she asked.

"No. When I was in high school, I hated short-sleeved shirts. I was afraid
someone would see my muscle...worse yet, that they'd ask me to flex it and
then want to feel it. It's ironic, looking back on it, that I'd let myself get
put in such a box."

"I know the feeling," Sister said.

"There's more," I said.

Sister Kate was silent.

I squirmed in my seat. Finally, I said, "Here's what else we have in common,
Sister Kate ... I love muscular women. Always have ... as far back as I can
remember."

"So you're a lesbian too," Sister said.

We burst out laughing. I slapped my thigh. Sister Kate clapped her hands.

"God, what a gift you have, Sister," I said. "You should have been a
counselor!"

When we settled, Sister Kate began to play her eye contact game; holding my
gaze overlong, turning her head slightly, letting one corner of her mouth turn
up slightly. "You're flirting with me, Sister Kate," I said.

"Goddamned right I am!" she declared.

"What's gotten in to you, Sister?"

"Like you said earlier, doctor. The fifth decade is a 'window of opportunity.'
Those were you words, weren't they?" she asked.

I nodded.

Sister got up and came around to where I was sitting. "Can I feel your
muscle?" she asked.

I nodded.

"Make it hard," she said. This was her Home and she was mistress of it ... I did
as I was told. She put one hand on my muscle, then the other. She took in a
short, sharp breath. The fingers of both hands began to explore my biceps;
squeezing it, cupping over the curve of it, feeling where it originated and
where its tendon disappeared. "It has two heads," she whispered. She was
trembling.

I stood up. My dick stuck out like a broomstick. "Let me feel yours," I said.

Sister Kate shoved up the sleeve of her habit and bent her arm. Her muscle
slid up the humerus and became a hard lump under her translucent skin. I put
my palm over it. "Gosh," I said. "It feels like you've been lifting for
years."

"No," she said. "It grew on its own, remember?"

"My mother would be horrified," she said. Her muscle quivered.

"And mine would be scandalized."

Sister Kate wrapped her arms around my waist and pulled me into her. She
ground her hips against my hardon. I could feel the strength in her arms.
"Kiss me!" she commanded.

"But your vows," I protested. "What about your vows?"

She made a little snort. "Fuck my vows."

I drew back. "Fuck your vows?"

"Yes," she said, drawing me tight. "Those foolish words have kept me from what
I've wanted all along, and I'm tired of doing without." Her lips were nearly
touching mine. Her eyes were ablaze. "God just opened a window," she said.
"Let's go through it now."