And though it’s a gray day in London, with clouds threatening to rain on their parade, nothing can bring Seema down, for standing next to her in the bus, her hand threaded around Seema’s waist, her chin resting on Seema’s head, is Chloe, lithe muscular Chloe, buzz-cut Chloe, Chloe whose smile can burn through Seema, whose whisper can make Seema tremble at her knees, whose touch can make the hair on Seema’s skin stand on end, whose hands and lips can reduce Seema’s body to feeble quivering flesh. Chloe, Seema’s first lover, if not her first love.

What a day it is! They hoot and toot their way around early 1990s London. They scatter leaflets over bewildered disapproving crowds. They descend on Marks & Spencer on Oxford Street and pose with mannequins clad in lacy underwear in the lingerie department. They take over squares and circle fountains chanting, “We’re here, we’re lesbians, get used to it.”

For the pièce de résistance, they head to the Tate, and in front of Rodin’s The Kiss, they stage a kiss-in.

“Babe, shall we?” Chloe murmurs, her tongue in Seema’s ear.

Seema hesitates only for a moment. She’s come a long way in the few months since she’s been recruited—We recruit! screams the Lesbian Avengers’ tagline—and taken under Chloe’s wing.

Chloe is twenty-five, a graduate student in women’s studies at Oxford, a core member of the Avengers. It’s with her that Seema attended her first Avenger meetings and her first protests: for the immigration rights of gay partners and against Clause 28, which declared illegal actions that could be considered as promoting homosexuality in schools. It’s with Chloe that she shared her first kiss, in Chloe’s darkened flat, after returning from one of those events.

And it’s with Chloe that she will now kiss for the first time in public. Look at them as they pose on a stool in front of Rodin’s sculpture of Dante’s embracing errant couple! Chloe has rolled her sleeves up to expose her sculpted arms. Seema sits in Chloe’s lap, their legs entwined. Chloe’s hand rests on Seema’s thigh, Seema’s hand is around Chloe’s neck.

They make a passable imitation of Rodin’s sculpture, but there’s one major difference: whereas the marble lovers are frozen with their lips apart, as if punished for eternity, the lips of these flesh-and-blood lovers are locked, their supple tongues free to seek each other.

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