People in Trouble by Sarah Schulman

avoid walking alone too often.   What people see when they're alone can drive them mad.   The first time Kate and Molly had made love was easy because Kate had decided not to decide anything.   She did not consider even one consequence.
     
    "I love your breasts," she had said, lifting them in her hands, letting them fall over her face and squeezing them together so she could suck both nipples at once.   "I love your caramel eyes and your mustache and your breasts and your buttocks and your clit."
     
    She was lying back in Molly's arms feeling nervous and open and silly, being held by a woman that way.   Even though Kate was long, she was also very light and could be carried through the making of love.
     
    "What animal are you?"   asked Molly.   "You're sleek like a mink but the size of a panther.   Only it is the color that dominates everything.   To give you a coat of black fur would be a lie.   Is there a red fox who is like a swan but warm, that growls, who can turn into a tree to be watched and only then decide to bend?   What do I have in my arms tonight?"
     
    "Let me smell your breath," Kate said.   "Mmmm, so sweet."
     
    "That's because I've been eating you for the last half hour.
     
    Do you know why I like eating you?   Because I like your come all over my face."
     
    "No wonder men like big breasts," she said.   "Who wouldn't?
     
    This is my favorite part."
     
    She slid her hand back and forth over the slope in Molly's waist.
     
    "This shape, what is it?   How can you say what this is, this hidden incline?"
     
    "It's just because I'm female."
     
    "Men are getting more female," Kate said then, becoming chatty and thoughtful, like she had just put on her eyeglasses.
     
    "At least in New York City."
     
    That was over a year ago, Kate thought now, pushing her hands into her pockets and pulling the shawl more tightly around her shoulders.   I would never say that now, knowing the way she hates men.   Imagine me having brought up men at a time like that.   Shows how deeply I care for Pete, I guess, he's always on my mind.
     
    Only certain kinds of people are out alone with regularity late at night.   Some are going somewhere and the rest are already there.   That particular night four people stopped and asked Kate for money.   And because she needed something to identify with this transitional state between Molly and Peter, she took a moment, on each occasion, to pull out her wallet and offer them something.   The exception was a white wino sitting on a stoop who was too fucked up to stand and receive it.
     
    He expected her to come over and deliver, which was something she was not -prepared to do.   Especially since it would go directly to alcohol and not a more acceptable vice like food.   But she did give to a disoriented black man wearing too many coats.   He held out a paper cup and mumbled without acknowledging her gift.   In fact, he didn't see her at all.
     
    There were so many people living on the street it was unbelievable.
     
    Surely there were more now than there had ever been.
     
    Kate was warm and wet between her legs.   She brought her hands to her face for Molly's smell, which was still on her fingers.
     
    "Do you have any extra change?"   a tired woman in gray clothing asked.
     
    Actually, it was her skin that was gray, her clothes were nondescript.
     
    "Thank you for stopping," she said slowly, -articulating.   "And God bless you.   It is people like you who keep me employed.   This is the one job I will never be fired from."
     
    Do they say the same thing to each person, thirty times an hour, twelve times a day?   Why aren't they rioting?   Why are they -standing so politely on street corners?
     
    Kate passed graffiti on a wall that said Arm the Homeless.
     
    She shook.   If the homeless were armed, people like her and -Peter would be killed immediately.   They would slash the throats of everyone who had a nice place to live and gave only fifty