A road trip with an old friend
POINT OF Q

Suki Lee and I have crossed paths frequently for quite a while now. We first met in high school; both of us were artists-in-training and unable to admit or act on our burgeoning queer desires. Well, at least I wasn’t anyway. Back then, I knew her by the name of Susan, and she can remember several bad 80’s hairstyles on my end. We met up again when I was working at some other gay and lesbian Ottawa paper, which shall remain nameless, and she started to write as a freelance writer. It was one of those moments when you go – “Is that you? Are you… no, really? Cool!”

Suki quickly became a columnist there, and, as I recall, she came into my office one day and we hashed around a few ideas about what her new column should be named. It seems to me that I said the word Sappho, or Sapphic, and she came up with the traffic part, but then again, I could be wrong. Anyway, she loved it and “Sapphic Traffic” was born.

After the paper and I parted ways, I started working at the Making Scenes Film Festival, the office of which is located in the same building as the Ottawa Art Gallery, where Suki works in communications. Once again, we kept bumping into each other and kept in touch about our thrilling and exciting lives as artists, writers and lovers to fortunate young women and men respectively. Well, at least her life was thrilling and exciting.

In addition, Suki has been an absolute fountain of queer knowledge about everyone who attended our high school and is now out and proud. In our email correspondence, I keep learning about Rob so-and-so and twins Niklas and Sascha… I had no idea there were so many fags and dykes in Kanata… we are truly everywhere.

Now, our paths are crossing again as I read her astonishing new book of short fiction, called… what else… Sapphic Traffic. It’s a small little book with big, wonderful words and big, wonderful ideas and I admit I was a bit taken aback by it. Not that I had any doubt that Suki would be a talented writer; it was more at the depth of the dark, obsessive and cosmopolitan flair that clearly is lurking behind such a seemingly innocent façade.

The first two stories cleverly illustrate the title of the collection. In “Diva Antoinette Concherez”, the narrator speaks of her fanatical passion for a beautiful opera singer. With skillful, almost ruthless cunning, she pursues, beds and transforms herself into a mirror image of her beloved. These Sapphic urges are complicated – love is part of it, but so are ambition, lust and deceitfulness.

“3”, the traffic part in “Sapphic Traffic”, is less about cars and more about drug trafficking. Ruth and Tracy are lovers and small-time drug dealers until Ruth is persuaded against her better judgment to smuggle hash oil from Jamaica by the reckless Tracy. The tale is short, but harrowing, gripping and real as the stakes mount higher and higher for two women so clearly out of their league.

The following gems are diverse and multifaceted, covering issues of euthanasia, breakups, vanity, chaos, despair, betrayal and just plain lust. There’s a wealth of surprises when straight women become dykes, lesbians get knocked up after sleeping with men – clearly the sexualities are as fluid as the author’s writing style.

“Absinthe” is a clever little yarn about the infamous hallucinogenic beverage that has the narrator literally becoming green with envy while her feckless Parisian girlfriend continues to string her along. “Night Walk” is an interesting parable on strength and weakness when a woman who has just been dumped by a cheating girlfriend gets senselessly and savagely attacked, and ultimately finds the courage to accept the cards she’s been dealt with dignity and strength. The final few words are moving and triumphant; it’s very powerful prose.

Two of my other favourites are the strikingly simple “In a Perfect World” and the romantically hopeful “First Water, Then Light”. “World” is one long sentence of sex as culturally diverse and oppressed women choose love over war. It’s hot, poignant and pointed... even a little bemusing. “Water” is gratifying in that the lovelorn, at least in fiction, can sometimes have a happy ending.

The only other thing to add is the format and design of the book is fresh and new. Like the fiction, it is hip, modern and even a little edgy. It’s a perfect compliment to the text. From one designer to another, well done.

I was glad for this little detour of a book to take a trip into an old acquaintance’s mind. The traffic wasn’t always light, but it certainly was Sapphic.

- printed in ToBe, Volume 2, #12, December, 2003. Book cover by Conundrum Press.