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“Look,” Paris says. “I wrote this. I made this happen.”
“It’s a press release.” Rory raises her eyebrows and settles down on her twin bed. They’ve only got a week left in their not-quite-Dupont-Circle sub-sub-sublet and Rory can’t figure out whether she’s crushed or delighted that she’ll be home in a week. On the one hand, Dean. And Lorelai, obviously. She’s never gone this long without her other half, and by “she” Rory means her mom. One of them knows how to take care of herself, pretty much, and it’s not the one old enough to vote.
“Of course it’s a press release,” Paris says. “It’s my press release.” She’s waving around three watermarked pages with Jim Maloney’s seal. That’s her Member. Her Congressmember (don’t be rude). She works in his office. Constituent relations, which means she answers a lot of phones.
Rory thinks there’s no job in the entire Longworth Building for which Paris seems worse suited. She has to be nice to dumb people all day, as she’s put it herself. Writing a press release feels like a big deal, a crowning glory to this slightly disappointing internship, even if it was Paris’s long-coveted first job on the Hill.
Rory sits up and leans over to Paris’s bed and almost falls on the floor. She’s that tired. it’s probably 1am and her fingers hurt from taking handwritten notes and typing. House Foreign Relations, minority side, Democrats trying to pump brakes they can’t reach, or throw sand in gears strong enough to crush it to powder. It’s a good thing Rory takes the long view.
Now Rory takes the pages and starts to read them. “This is good,” she says. “Waterbury aqueduct renewal… You’re really taking an interest. All politics is local, right?”
Paris scowls. “And all local politics is a way to get up the ladder to where things are really important.”
Rory throws a folded pillowcase and a hand towel at her roommate. Of course Rory folds all their laundry. And does their laundry, and their dishes. And Paris lets her. “You don’t really believe that,” Rory says, shaking her adorable straight hair.
“I have my doubts,” Paris says. “But really… how much can, like, one aqueduct do? Or one bridge?”
“How much can one load of laundry do?” Rory counters. “Try going without clean clothes for a week and see how the brilliant, beautiful Paris Geller feels after that.”
“Nobody thinks I’m beautiful,” Paris says.
“I do.”
“You just say that so I’ll let you do my laundry,” Paris glances—or glares, or maybe opens her eyes wider than usual?—at Rory. “You want an excuse to take care of people, don’t you? That’s how you are with your mom, too.”
“What?”
“It’s called parentification. I read about it for AP Psychology.”
“And again, I say, what?”
“Parentification. It’s when the kid acts like the parent and takes care of the parent and has to be responsible, because the parent makes the messes and the kid has to clean up and the kid is the responsible one. And Rory Gilmore, that is your life.”
“Is not.”
“Is too.”
“As if you, Paris, don’t take care of people too. As if your mom could really take care of herself.”
“I don’t take care of my mom,” Paris responds, suddenly serious. “I barely see my dad or my mom. I don’t even know what canton she’s in right now.”
“Canton, Ohio?” Rory leans forward—adorably, Paris thinks—her palms on her knees (her knees in her soft striped PJs). As if Paris’s mom would be caught dead anywhere in the great state of Ohio.
“Canton of Switzerland. There are 26, in case you were wondering. She could be anywhere. I don’t really care.”
Rory’s not done proving Paris is more like Rory than Paris thinks. “OK, Louise and Madeline then. You’re like their mom. You take care of them.”
Paris snorts. “Louise and Madeline take care of each other. I’m not even practically friends with them any more now that they’re lovers.”
Rory’s eyes bug out. “They. Are. What.”
Paris did not know that Rory did not know. Rory places the press release, gently, on Paris’s nightstand, and Paris gets up and shifts her whole body over to sit on Rory’s bed, as if more physical proximity were required for passing on such a juicy non-secret. Then Paris takes Rory’s hand and squeezes it hard, while Rory has questions. “They are what. They are lovers? For each other? With all that mooning over every boy?”
“That’s kind of their brand, yes.” Paris notices Rory’s thin T-shirt, the one she usually wears to bed. It’s a literary map of Paris. The city. Arondissements, authors’ residences, the Île de la Cité in the center with Notre Dame.
Paris has never made the connection to her own name before. She’s never held Rory’s hand, either. “Rory, you’re shaking,” she adds.
“Just a little?”
“You’re that shocked to know about Maddy and Louise? I thought it was obvious. Actually I thought it was obvious before it even happened, because they’re so clearly connected to each other and they do everything together and when we were in, like, eighth and ninth grade, before you ever darkened our doorways at Chilton, they very clearly wanted me around not just so they could play up their talents with boys compared to me, since boys basically do not care for me and never have, but so that they wouldn’t have to face the very high likelihood that if they spent much more time around each other without me they would fall into bed together with their panties off. Rory Lorelai Gilmore, you do not know how much self-control I had to exercise in order not to tell them they were in love, like smoochy feel each other up get under the covers get a room and get going please get a room love, before they knew it themselves. It’s a good thing I had a lot of self control. Have a lot of self control.”
Rory snorts. “A lot of self-knowledge, too, clearly.” She raises her eyebrows, too. She’s doing that ultra-cute thing that Paris adores where she shows that she’s simultaneously the most innocent one in the room—she even looks good in a T-shirt and sweats, Paris thinks—and, also, the most together, the most reliable, the most mature.
Paris has probably outgrown her usual nightgown. The one she’s wearing right now, with the knit X’s across the shoulders. The one Mom brought back for her from Berne two years ago, for what Mom wrongly thought was her birthday.
“You and your… speeches. I do hear you practicing,” Rory continues.
Then Paris looks Rory right in her big, impossibly big, blue eyes. There’s a nearly full moon in their third story window, and the reflected light from Feminist Perspectives on Political Geography by Nocenti and Simonson (New York: Oxford UP, 1999) is making Rory look even more like an old-timey Hollywood photoplay movie shoot than ever. That’s what Paris thinks. She’s seen a surprising number of old-timey movies. Often she falls asleep watching them. Especially Katharine Hepburn.
What would Katharine Hepburn do in this situation? Riposte, of course. “I know a lot about myself, Loralei ‘Rory’ Gilmore. For example, I know that I’m better at physics than I am at chemistry, and I know that my interest in behavioral economics dates back at least to age twelve, when I could not figure out for the life of me why my father preferred to fly out of Newark rather than Hartford-Bradley and I decided that it must just be easier for him—now I know he was seeing that real estate broker in Montclair but that’s neither here nor there-- and I know that you set me up on my first date with a guy because you wanted to deflect that guy from you. Also what were either of us thinking, that guy sucked, both of us spent half of tenth grade thinking about Tristan when really I wanted to kiss you.”
Rory’s eyes could not get any wider, and yet they do.
And then Paris just leans over and Rory almost falls over and their lips meet and time just…. stops. The whole universe stops,
Rory tastes like sweet ginger and marzipan, then like vanilla, then like everything wholesome and good, every fleck and shred of generosity and patience and givingness that Paris had never seen anywhere in her life, certainly not at home and not in anyone’s love life, before she encountered this naïve girl from the not-even-suburbs, who breezed in from quaint north-of-Waterbury inn-land on the strength of her grandma’s name and her total recall of Jane Austen and George Eliot and just—
Paris thought she would never admit it, not even to her own very private diary (admittedly much of that diary comprises notes on European history), but she’s wanted to kiss Rory almost since they met. More than kiss: wanted to know what it’s like to wake up in the same bed as Rory, to share a whole day (not a school day) outdoors with Rory, to share what she’s never shared with anyone, to feel Rory’s fingertips on her own still-secret places.
And now there’s been a first kiss. Paris’s first real kiss. Something’s happening in Paris’s body that has never happened before: soft inside and slick outside and changing fast. She wants Rory to touch where only she herself has touched so far, and it feels like an energy burst, like warmth and tires and shooting stars, in her hips. Not that virginity means anything—it’s a patriarchal construct, obviously—but still: what if Rory Gilmore were Paris’s first?
They’re side by side lengthwise on Rory’s bed now and Rory’s got Paris’s straight blond hair between her fingers, stroking it smooth. “I knew it.” Rory smiles.
“What did you know and when did you know it?” Old habits die hard, if at all: when Paris says “what” it’s almost sarcastic. Also she thinks that Rory, alone among all her same-age acquaintances, will recognize a reference to Watergate.
“I knew you were into me after you flipped from pretending to hate me to taking any excuse to come to my house. I swear, Paris, it was like gravity pulling you. Lor—Mom said you wanted to come over because yours felt so cold and lonely and you didn’t have parents who acted like parents but I knew there was something more going on.”
“You call her Lorelai when she’s not around? See, that’s parentification.” Paris pauses, like an beginning actor learning about stage beats. “She wasn’t wrong. About me, I mean. But you were right.”
Paris boops Rory on the nose as a prelude to kissing her on that same little round nose a second time. Paris moues so Rory can kiss back, but Rory doesn’t understand the gesture (which Paris read about in, was it Colette?), so Paris goes to the plan she worked out for what if she tells Rory how she feels and Rory’s accepting but hesistant and requires literary assistance?
It’s not a plan Paris expected to use if she and Rory were already in the same bed. But it is a plan.
She pauses and pitches her head back for the kind of oratorical effect she practices in private, when she delivers rhetorical moves to her mirror. Since she’s in bed with the girl she’s wanted for a year and a half, under a few thin blankets, with her hand on Rory’s hip over her sweat pants, and she can feel Rory’s breath on her clavicle, the effect of oratory might well be, let’s say, blunted. But Paris can’t stop being herself. And Paris likes plans.
So she starts to recite. “Sweet mother, I cannot weave. Slender Aphrodite has bowled me over—no, overcome me—with longing after a girl.”
Rory smiles and kisses her friend again, lightly, a third time. “You took Greek 1.”
“You’re familiar with the very basics, like the 101, of lesbian literature touchstones.”
“That’s bisexual erasure,” Rory responds.
“It is not.” A third kiss. This time their lips stay together and Paris can feel Rory’s heartbeat inside her rib cage. Her breasts are pressed up against Rory’s and she can feel their size difference, Paris’s awkward soft roundness against Rory’s gentle halfsies, and all the tingling in Paris’s own rib cage… “Rory Gilmore, do you consider yourself bisexual?”
And Rory sits up in the bed they, at this moment, share. God, that long light brown hair. Those sloopy shoulders under the oversize cotton. How did Paris delude herself for so long? How could she stay away? (It’s up to Rory, Paris reminds herself. It doesn’t matter how much Paris feels if Rory won’t feel that way too. Consent consent. Aphrodite has overcome…)
“Paris Geller, I can honestly tell you that I had not considered the prospect until ten minutes ago.”
“And?”
“There’s a good deal of evidence in its favor. I would even say conclusive evidence.” Rory looks, for once, like she’s surprised herself: she takes both of Paris’s shoulders between her arms and pushes the blond girl, gently and slowly, down, so that Rory can have the still very new experience of kissing Paris from above a fourth time. Paris wonders if Rory’s feeling the same sparks, the same warmth, the same beginning of wetness, inside herself…
She must be. There’s Rory’s tongue on Paris’s shoulder, now, and Rory’s palm down to Paris’s side, to her camisole. All Paris’s senses are heightened: everything is vanilla, and smoothness, and firmness, and body heat…
Then Rory stops. “Paris, I can’t. Not without… without asking.”
And just like that the two friends and former enemies and DC roommates are lying parallel on their backs, for all the world like a little kids’ sleepover after the adults turn out the light, and Paris is holding Rory’s hand. “Don’t tell me you have to ask your melancholy, comparatively inarticulate, not-nearly-good-enough-for-Rory-Gilmore hometown boyfriend whether you’re allowed to kiss me again.”
Paris can feel Rory’s cuticles. If Rory ever, ever, ever spends the night at Paris’s house they’ll have the manicurist over for her. But Paris would rather spend the night at Rory’s. It’s… more human. She’d rather be where Rory lives.
“I’m not going to tell my boyfriends.”
“Your boyfriends, plural?”
“Sorry. My boyfriend. Dean. Dean is my boyfriend. Dean. And I’m not going to tell him. I don’t need his permission. I’m tired of asking for his permission.”
“Who, then? Not your mom???”
“No.”
“Well that’s a relief. Wait, I know—"
And Rory confirms it. “Lane. I promised I’d tell her if anything—”
And Paris chirps like a bluebird, if bluebirds had microphones. If Rory looks after everyone in her life, who does Rory imagine looks after her? It's Lane. It's always Lane.
Rory’s head falls back on her crisp linen floral pillow. (Yes, she brought linens from home. Because that makes it feel like home. Paris bought a new set at the Mazza Gallerie her first day in DC. Rory’s smell better.) Rory closes her eyes and sits up and kisses Paris a fifth time, just a peck, as if to thank her. “I like kissing Paris Geller,” she says. “No matter who else I love.”
Paris enters a kind of fugue state: she’s never felt happy this way, not even when she got an A+ for her sight translation in the final for French 3 (it wasn’t really a sight translation, since she recognized the passages from Tocqueville’s Democracy in America). Paris feels seen. Her head’s in the clouds. Rory is the moon and Paris is a moonflower, bending towards however faint a light. Stars fall around them, softly. The stars are hollow, as in Stars Hollow, as in all roads lead Paris to Rory’s house. To Rory. Is she sleepy or just happy? Slappy. Heapy. She’s breathing slower now. Her eyes close and then open. She thinks about whether she’s wearing the right mascara as per Louise’s instructions and then she realizes Rory can’t see, in this light, and Rory’s eyes are closed, and Rory won’t care.
Rory has a committee meeting tomorrow where Rory will be, by far, the youngest presenter—Paris knows from watching: Rory doesn’t blow her own horn that way—and Rory needs her beauty sleep, or her Ivy League sleep, or her confidence sleep, or something. (You don’t get skin that clear from staying up late.) Paris’s heart is still beating faster than it has done all year but she’ll give her roommate—best friend? future girlfriend? ex-rival? all three at once—what she needs. Which is sleep.
She didn’t reckon with Rory’s need to make things right, to avoid misunderstanding, to stay, always, kind.
Paris Geller is almost all the way into noiseless slumber when she hears her roommate talking, and she wakes herself up enough to listen to what Rory says. When she comes back to full awareness, Paris likes what she hears. “I’m not saying we can never cuddle,” Rory says softly. “I’m not saying we can’t cuddle, honestly, tomorrow. I’m just saying that I think Lane should know.”
“Because you’re in love with Lane.” Aphrodite has struck her, Paris thinks, with longing for a girl. Or maybe two girls?
Rory grasps Paris’s hand even tighter: tonight they’ll at least sleep happily in the same twin bed. “You’re right.”
Paris smiles back at the girl from Stars Hollow, then pulls down the shade so it’s truly dark, and thinks about Rory Gilmore’s sweet, enticing, bisexual, potentially consensually polyamorous lips one more time. And about the future. “I’m always right.”