Look to His Like

Chapter One

Author's Note: the spelling, slang and setting are Australian. It is intended that this book push the envelope a bit as far as characterisation and plot are concerned - hopefully a reader will find it spicy and fun!

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Let's get this straight from the outset: I like being single. I like living the high-life of the free-wheeling, unattached, successful, professional woman.

My name is Jo Butler. I am a lawyer here in Sydney, Australia. I am clever, attractive - and ambitious. For a long time, I've wanted my name engraved on the large glass doors of the reception of Gilden Hawke, the firm for which I have worked for five years. The six-figure salary, power and prestige that come with it would be a nice bonus.

Problem is, recently I had it made glaringly obvious to me that a woman in my position needs to be married, living in some plush North Shore suburb, preferably with a couple of kids in daycare. That revelation was followed by the most crazy week of my life, which I want to tell you about.


It all started last Monday when David Sleezak, a partner of Gilden Hawke, cornered me in the firm's kitchen where I was painstakingly preparing my mid-morning skim latte. After the usual opening banalities, the subsequent conversation went like this:


"What did you get up to on the weekend, Jo?"


Trying not to reveal my boredom at the typical line of questioning, I said: "Oh, nothing much. Hung out at the gym for a while, went to a movie and dinner with a friend on Saturday."


"Is that so?" I sensed David's keen gaze on me and looked at him curiously. "Boyfriend?" he probed.


Now, look. I value my private life. When I spend most of my waking hours at work, under high pressure, with people I don't like much, I want to have a separate life outside of it where never the twain shall meet, if you know what I mean. Davey-boy was threatening to be an unwelcome encroachment on my carefully guarded retreat. I glared at him.


"No, as a matter of fact. Excuse me, must get to court ..."


David - a tall, skinny, bald man, somewhere in his forties - had gone a bit waxy under my impaling glare, but he stood his ground, barring my escape.


"Girlfriend, then." His eyes - an indeterminate colour, somewhere between grey and blue - began to glitter salaciously as he inspected me. "I must say, Jo, I wouldn't have picked it with you, although I've had a few suspicions. You're - what? - over thirty, unmarried, you never mention any guy in your life. Not to mention everything else. Shame though. From career point of view, I mean, although no doubt there are also a few guys gnashing their teeth across Sydney over you being a lesbian." He gave a braying laugh, winked and turned away to the percolator.


I could have made my escape then, but didn't. His words had rendered me immobile. Frank sexual talk is pretty common amongst lawyers, from my experience, so I wasn't frozen with shock. The probable excuse for the ribald, often crude banter amongst lawyers is that it's an outlet for stress. I think that's B.S. It's more likely because lawyers aren't getting any, and talking about it is the only way for some to get their jolly rogers. Personally, I prefer my battery-operated friend in my side-table drawer.


Frozen with fear, more like it. My ambitions were being thwarted by appearances of the way I lived my life?


I swallowed a sick feeling in my throat.


"I'm not a lesbian," I said coolly to David. "Not that there's anything wrong with that."


David shot me a look over his shoulder, eyebrows arched. "Really?" He sighed. "Unfortunately though, that's what people naturally assume about women like you, after a while. And there is something wrong with it, as far as you're concerned. "


"Why, in this day and age?"


David picked up his full coffee mug - a moulded caricature of the face of our Prime Minister - and cupped it in his pale, skinny hands. He also leaned back against the kitchen bench and crossed one ankle over the other, which bunched his grey, designer suit trousers around the front of his loins. I quite like it when men stand like that. Very sexy; and being a thigh-and-package kind of girl, it's usually hard for me to not take a quick look, even at someone as insubstantial and unalluring as David Sleezak. It was a measure of my disturbance that the notion didn't even occur to me that morning.


"Gilden Hawke likes to maintain an appearance of conservatism and respectability," explained David primly. "It's important for our clientele. And the fact is - an unpalatable fact, I know - " he added, although his small smirk belied his qualification, "that our clientele will never accept a lesbian as a partner. Nor can we have our clients suspicious that we support that lifestyle. Like I said - shame. Your name would have looked good on the door, underneath me, of course."


His smirk grew as he straightened and sauntered from the kitchen with a murmured "Ciao, bella," probably quite aware of the horror he had inflicted on me.


I emptied my mug into the sink, and on weak legs reeled from the kitchen, down the corridor and into my office, where I shut the door and leaned against it. My head banged back against the small mirror I had hung there.


David's words echoed in my mind: You're - what? - over thirty, unmarried, you never mention any guy in your life. Not to mention everything else. Not to mention everything else? I pushed myself up straight and turned to look at my reflection, my thoughts racing.


He had been right, I realised, appalled. If one gave any credence to stereotypes, I did fit the one of the professional lesbian woman!


Leon - my hairdresser - says I have a nice face and beautiful green eyes, and I need to show these features off with the appropriate hairstyle. So, although my blonde hair is stylishly cut and thick, I wear it very short. Check off one stereotypical lesbian trait. I wear no jewellery to work, and no make up. Check, check. I also always have on a black or navy pant suits with a plain cotton shirt, because I long since decided I can't stand the male ogling at my legs or bosom if I wear skirts and tight-fitting or clinging tops. Check. About my one feminine fashion trait is my fetish for nice shoes, sometimes the more strappy and high-heeled the better; however, I daresay an observer wouldn't get past staring at my soberly coloured and designed tie, and speculating on its significance, to ever arrive at regarding my footwear. CHECK!


My phone buzzed and I stumbled to my desk to pick it up.

"Jo, it's Danielle," said a fellow associate of the firm. "You're heading to Registrar Canon's court in a minute, aren't you?"


I shook away my sombre preoccupation and answered in the affirmative, reaching for the file I would have to take with me.


"Great," said Danielle. "Could you mention a matter for me, please?"


As she gave me the details of her case, I pictured her sitting at her desk, and felt sicker by the second. Danielle Shaw was my main rival for the partner's position. As she talked to me, I imagined her tossing a silky tendril of long black hair back over her shoulder, and with a carefully manicured hand, checking that the clasp of her strand of pearls was hidden beneath the collar of her clinging silk blouse. Matching pearl studs glowed in her ear lobes, and her red lipstick was glossy and expertly applied. Beneath the desk, her silk clad legs revealed by her short tailored skirt were probably elegantly crossed. I knew she had the perfect accountant husband, two perfect children in some exclusive daycare establishment, and a perfect mansion on the North Shore. There could be no doubt about her acceptability, or her sexuality, I thought bitterly. She didn't have half my brains or ability, of course, but her bio would look damn good on the firm's web site. Whereas a listing of my professional qualifications would finish with: Thirty-one year old Jo is single and lives in Darlinghurst with her cat, Wolfgang. The meagre description signified the worst.


Therein lay another of my problems of course, I realised, while traipsing to the Supreme Court. Not only did my appearance count against me. In addition to being unmarried, I lived alone and had a cat! Furthermore, those familiar with Sydney will know Darlinghurst is not one of its most salubrious suburbs, and it tends to attract the fringe dwellers - that unconventional element of society that shuns staid respectability in favour of a more shocking lifestyle. When I was at university, I rented a room in a terrace house there, owned by an old lady - Agatha Frogmorton - who used to be a brothel owner, until she Found God. After that epiphany, the old dear devoted herself to caring for the Underprivileged and Needy around Kings Cross. As a landlady, Auntie Ag was superlative - never interfering, never cross if I was late with my rent, she didn't mind if I kept a cat, and she made a mean roast chicken dinner that she invited me to share once a week. I stayed there happily for eight years, enjoying my freedom, and the convenience to university and then to my first city job. When Auntie Ag died five years ago, I decided to buy the place and renovate- those old Federation inner-city terraces are a great investment and very trendy. However, the neighbours to my left - Damien and Eric - are a gay couple, while the bunch of professional students who live in the terrace on my right are active Greenies, who paint anti-nuclear slogans on ships in Sydney Harbour and hang banners on the Opera House. Hardly conformist or tolerable conduct, according to the edicts of Gilden Hawke! Without doubt my surrounds would be tarnishing my own reputation.


"But I love my house," I said miserably to Wolf that evening as we sat on my leather couch and watched the fish in my aquarium. "And I like my life. I don't want to change anything. So what's a girl to do, hmm?"


Wolfgang is a black cat that I rescued from a shelter when his predecessor, Ludwig, got run over three years ago. He's a great cat, very sympathetic and devoted, with a great feline-ality, although a few weird fetishes have infected him of late; I guess all this craziness that has been going on has affected him as well, to be fair. He purred louder now beneath my stroking hand, and opened his golden eyes to a slit to peer at me. I swear he was contemplating my dilemma, and I sighed as his steady purrs temporarily banished my tension and alarm.


"It's a question of how much I want this partnership," I mused after a while, and Wolf drew a deep breath and let out a loud rumble in response. "If I want it bad enough, then I will do anything to get it, right?"


I thought of the partnership - the appropriate culmination of years of blood, sweat and tears at university, and drudgery at work while I climbed the ladder to that glass ceiling. I thought of my dad in his butcher's shop in Wagga Wagga , and my mum in her quilter's group, bursting with pride as they regaled all with a listing of my professional achievements. How thrilled they would be if I got this promotion!


My stroking hand clenched on Wolf's fur in desperation. He opened his eyes and looked snootily at me.


"Looks like I have a task ahead of me, Wolf," I said to him, "if I'm to smash through that glass ceiling, I have to make some changes to make myself look respectable. First of all, I'm going to have to find a husband."


Wolf bounded off my lap and slunk over to sit in front of the aquarium, his back to me, tail swishing on the polished floor boards. I was too distracted to let his ill humour bother me. I retrieved a pad and pen from the kitchen cupboard and sat down at the kitchen table.


Unable to restrain his natural curiosity, Wolf joined me some minutes later, leaping onto the table and lounging in front of me, indolently watching my scribbling. The stereo was playing Chopin, reminding me of a recital I wanted to attend at the local hall that night. First though, I would make The List.


"These are the qualities I want in a husband," I explained to Wolf later, who blinked and mewed lazily in response. I pointed at the top word with my pen. "He has to be a professional. White collar, you know. It wouldn't look good if I was married to a plumber or a labourer. Maybe an accountant, or a doctor ...I guess even a bank manager would be okay. But not a lawyer!" Wolf seemed to shudder in agreement. My pen moved to the next words. "He has to be a non-smoker," I continued, "I can't stand the smell of nicotine! He has to like cats, and drive a decent car - a Volvo, or Landcruiser, or Mercedes, and have a house on the North Shore where we'll live. And he has to like classical music - I really couldn't tolerate having to listen to anything else. He has to not interfere with my life, and not require my input into his own. And last but not least - ," I sighed regretfully, "under no circumstances can he be sexy!"


Wolf leaned over and rubbed his face on my hand in sympathy. I patted him, stood up to place The List under a magnetic pineapple ornament on my fridge, and stepped back to study it.


"Anyone who fulfills those requirements is the perfect husband," I declared. "And as of tomorrow, I am on the hunt for him!"