“All right,” I said because I was glad she had actually attempted to say something to me that wasn’t over my head. You couldn’t say anything to her without her getting all weird. Seriously. You could be like, “So, Bette, what do you think of birds?” and she would reply, “The Franz or the Puvis de Chavannes?” and at that point, you can’t say anything except, “Never mind. I thought I was talking to a human being, not an art encyclopedia.”

But today she was being quite normal and I was feeling very happy with her, spurring me to say, “Come over tonight.”

“Oh, I can’t, honey, I have to work.”

I forgot to mention how, when I talk to Bette on the phone, I usually mouth her words along with her. She has all of these catchphrases. One of them is “Oh, I can’t, honey, I have to work.” (Another one is “I hate this conversation,” which I get a lot.)

“Oh, really?” I said. “What do you do for a living?”

“I’m a professional kidnapper.”

This was an old ongoing joke we have where I pretend I don’t know what she does for a living and she pretends to be something other than an art gallery owner; it is very not funny and I’m embarrassed that I shared it. Anyway, what I said next was, “I never get to see you anymore,” to which she said, “Okay, we’ll go to Milk tonight.”

“Oh? Are you going to dance with me or are you gonna drink club soda all night and look hot?”

“I don’t know. I’m trying to decide which will make you the most annoyed.”

I forgot to mention that Bette is also very funny in her own way. She would say that it’s too bad she can’t be funny in other people’s way, too, and even that’s sort of funny.

Another thing that’s funny about Bette is how we’ll spend a grand total of ten minutes at Milk before she becomes grumpy and wants to leave because she’s sick of getting hit on by “***** kids” and tourist dykes and “it’s not like I can even ***** smoke in here, anyway.” This was true; even though California hadn’t yet finished passing its ban of smoking in public places, a few clubs and bars had already picked it up, and Milk was one of them.