Fic Post: 3 AM Milkshakes
Title: 3 AM Milkshakes
Author: vegawriters
Fandom: Murphy Brown
Series: Come Rain, Come Shine
Pairing: Mentions of Murphy and Peter
Rating: Teen
Timeframe: The Anchorman (season 6)
A/N: “You could have a meaningful experience with someone and walk away enriched by the experience. It was a simpler time.” - Murphy to Corky in Angst for the Memories. I’ve always wanted to explore Murphy’s potential for sexual relationships with women, but I think it’s important to note her own identity must be honored in writing her. I really don’t think Murphy would never consider herself to be anything but “straight” and while fan culture gives us that freedom to explore the queerness in our characters and ourselves through those characters, I think sometimes it’s important to honor the identity of a character as she is written. At the same time, Murphy was a flower child, coming of age during the sexual revolution, dedicated to the activist cause in the 60’s. So, I think there are also avenues to explore. But with caution. Us younger types, we tend to want to throw labels on people who would never label themselves. And while it is an aspect of privilege to not have to “choose” that label, I think we also have to consider how generations looked at themselves. To my mother’s and Candice’s generation: I hope I get this right.
Disclaimer: Even though I sometimes write at work, I don’t make any money off of these fics I write. Exploring this woman is its own reward and I love her.
Summary: Silence. Comfortable silence. They ate their fries. She could sense Jim trying to bring a conversation thread to the front of his mind, but wasn’t sure how to word it, so she waited, patient.
It wasn’t the first time she and Jim had closed down a bar, but Murphy had thought they’d seen the last of how the air touched your face at 2 AM, after the door locked behind you. She leaned against him as they walked down the street toward her car, her hand tucked in the crook of his elbow, the comfortable silence of friendship settling on them.
“Are you okay?” She finally asked, halfway down the block.
Jim paused and then nodded to a nearby all night diner, the window front full of men, many of whom had been in the bar. She smiled and led him in, surprised at how quickly the young, and clearly gay host took them to booth in the back.
“Water, please. And, do you have cheese fries?” She asked as they slid onto the cracked vinyl.
The host nodded. “Yeah. I’ll put the order in for you.”
Murphy nodded her thanks. Jim was still unfocused, and she waited until he’d shredded half of his paper napkin to cover his hand with hers. “Jim?”
“It bothers me that it bothers me,” Jim said, lifting his head. “It bothers me that …”
She quirked her lips, “That along the way, you realized you connected with this entire subculture of men with whom you have everything but nothing in common?”
“How did I not see it?” He leaned back, falling silent as the young host deposited a plastic carafe of water and two slightly foggy glasses before them. Jim poured. “And why is it that a culture where men come together, share songs and story, why is it reserved, it seems, solely for those who love other men?”
Murphy offered him a soft smile, “I wish I had an answer for you.”
“Is it wrong of me to be uncomfortable?” He looked at her, his eyes full of a fear that she wasn’t sure she knew how to address. So she listened. “Murphy, I’ve loved one woman in my life. And I love her with everything I am. It isn’t that I’m worried that I myself could be …”
“Gay?” Her lips quirked. “It’s okay, you can say it.”
His chest jumped, slightly, with a laugh. “It isn’t worried that I am gay, or even that people might perceive me as such. But, when did this … divide … begin?”
The cheese fries were dropped off. Murphy took one from the top, watching the sauce run into the center of the plate. “I don’t think it’s about when the divide began, Jim. I think …” she popped the fry into her mouth, chewed, and put her thoughts in order. “Somewhere along the line, somewhere, somewhen, we started to associate sex with interest. And it goes back, far deeper, than we want to really think about and then society just compounds it all the time.”
“I’m not gay, Murphy. And I don’t know why I feel the need to say that, except that I’m not gay. And … I feel like to not say it dishonors the men who have died over the last decade. I don’t share their struggle. I just … wish I could share their community. At least, the community that formed at The Anchorman.” He picked up his own cheese fry. Murphy looked at her hands.
“I’ve been with women,” she confessed, looking up at him again. His eyebrow raised. “I was even … well … in love might be a stretch.” She sighed. “But it was the 60’s - and before you roll your eyes, the sexual revolution was so freeing for women. And being with women meant you weren’t getting pregnant.” She shrugged. “But I’m not gay, and I have learned something crossing genders in my sexual exploration - it’s that bad sex is bad sex and being a woman doesn’t mean it’s automatically better.” A smirk crossed her face.
Jim barked out a laugh. “So the romance novels?”
“Lie,” she grinned. They both took another fry from the plate. “I think you should keep the bar, Jim,” she said. “I know, you feel like it isn’t your place, but you know what … maybe it isn’t. But that bar, it’s giving men who need a place to gather a place to do so. You know how popular it is. So what if it gets out that Jim Dial owns the Anchorman, which is the hottest gay bar in DC. Right now, more than ever, I think it’s our place to be … what’s the word? Allies?”
“How would you feel?” Jim asked, taking another fry from the plate. “If Avery is gay?”
She looked back down at her hands and then up again. “I don’t know. I know nothing he could ever do would change how much I love him. I know watching him grow up is the greatest thing in my life. He is everything to me, Jim, and I can’t understand a parent who would turn their back on their child for something as beautiful as who he could fall in love with.”
“I hear a but in there …”
“Look at what is happening with gay men right now, Jim. Even with the medications that are available …” She blinked back a sudden wash of tears. “I can handle anything, I really can. But he bumped his head on the coffee table the other day and I almost had a heart attack. He was fine! But I … and now I’m looking down the road 16 years and what if it isn’t any easier for them? What if who he grows up to be gets him beat up or worse? What if he wants to go into the military and he can’t reveal who he really is? What if he can’t get a job because of it?” She shook her head. “So, if he comes to me someday and says “mom this is my boyfriend” I’ll love him just as much as I always will. But it will scare the hell out of me and it won’t stop me from wishing his life could be easier.”
Jim nodded. “Well, maybe in sixteen years, it will be easier.”
“I hope so.” She poured them both fresh water.
Silence. Comfortable silence. They ate their fries. She could sense Jim trying to bring a conversation thread to the front of his mind, but wasn’t sure how to word it, so she waited, patient.
“I think I just never understood why … sex … was so important in terms of conversation,” jim finally said. “I don’t need to want to have sex with someone to also sit and sing at the piano, or discuss the joy of classic literature.”
“It isn’t,” she smiled. “But you have to admit, it’s a lot of fun to argue politics when you’re naked in bed with someone.”
Jim blushed. She took the last fry from the plate.
“But you’re right, you know. Remember what you said to me when I joined the Dumfries Club?” He cocked his head. “It was your tree fort.” They shared a smile. “And I took it away and I took it away because in truth, clubs like that keep women out of the process, out of the deals, out of the networking it takes to get ahead. But, there’s something to be said for a place where people who all think like you are talking about the same things. There’s a reason we are members of the Press Club, after all. This … is just a reminder that you don’t have to be just one way to like something, to feel the power of it.”
They sat there with their waters, the clock moving on toward 3 AM, both of them needing to get home and neither really wanting to. Tomorrow was Saturday and Jim would have the day off. She had an editing session at 1 and Eldin was taking Avery to a children’s art class, so she could sleep in. The server came by to check on them. Jim ordered a milkshake. Murphy seconded it.
“What was her name, if you don’t mind my asking?”
Murphy raised an eyebrow. “Who?”
“The .. woman …”
Murphy ran her finger around the top of her water glass, watching the condensation drip down the sides. “Jesse Bowman,” she said. “She was a photojournalist and we hunkered down in the same house in Vietnam when I was there.”
“Jesse Bowman … I know that name.” Jim tilted her head. “She …”
“She died in what will never be officially classified as a friendly fire explosion. The house we were in was targeted by American troops. They thought we were feeding information back to the enemy. The official word, to this day, is that she was killed in a Viet Cong ambush.”
“Murphy …” she heard the horror in his voice and was suddenly desperate to reassure him.
“Jim, it isn’t like … we were friends. We were very good friends. More than friends, but we barely even …” she chuckled. “I had more sexual encounters at Woodstock than I ever did with Jesse. But she was a special woman. I don’t know if it would have ever been anything than what it was, but I really did care about her.”
“I’m sorry.”
Murphy looked at the ceiling and waited until the milkshakes were delivered to speak. “I think what hurts more than anything else is that I know her family refused to even claim her body. A group of friends did and had a small funeral. The government killed her and her family didn’t want her. And she’s remembered as this asterick in the canon of Western Journalism, not successful enough to be the “female photojournalist who broke the rules” and not obscure enough to be allowed to be forgotten. That kind of limbo terrifies me more than death, Jim.”
“Do you still …”
She smiled at his awkward probing. “No. Truth is, Jim, I love men. You’re a pain in the ass, and don’t get reality a lot of the time, but I love men.” Her mind flitted, for just a moment to Peter. Her lips still tingled from where he’d kissed her just a couple of weeks before, alone in bed, her hand still trailed the path his had taken. She missed him. “I don’t at all regret the experiences I had back in the 60’s, but they were experiences. Some good, some bad. None of them, except for Jesse, lasting. And what we had was barely sexual.” She smiled, “Sometimes, it’s proof that we do in fact put too much emphasis on sex.”
Jim laughed at that, and it was a sound that always made her happy. Everyone thought he was so stiff, so staid. But he had his patterns, his processes. You just needed to get to know him.
“There were two young men I knew in Korea,” he said. “Like, you, I was embedded. I was with a MASH unit and these two men .. at the time, I believed they were just friends. Looking back, I know there was more and it saddens me to think how deeply that had to hide everything just to survive.”
“Which is why you should keep the Anchorman, Jim. Put it in the hands of your manager and stay hands off if you need to, but let yourself give this to that generation of men who need that place to gather.”
He paused. She smiled. “Thank you, Murphy.”
“You’re welcome.” She licked a bit of the whip cream from the milkshake into her mouth. “And no, being uncomfortable doesn’t make you a bad person.”
“There are just things in our generation … things for me … that I didn’t discuss.”
“And we need to talk about them more,” she said. “Silence creates places where death occurs.” She took a breath. “There’s a lot of things we don’t ever discuss, Jim. Society tells us not to. And when we keep talking about them, society tries to make them go away by making them illegal. It isn’t that long ago when Doris couldn’t get a credit card without your approval. When women could be fired for refusing to sleep with their boss, or getting pregnant.” They shared a smile. “We need to keep talking about what bars like yours mean for people who don’t get to do a lot of talking right now.”
“And we need to talk about relationships that might surprise people?”
She smiled at that. “You’d have liked Jesse, Jim.”
“She liked you. Most of the time, that’s enough.”
They laughed. He took a final slurp of his milkshake and signaled for the check.
She was quiet as they exited the restaurant, out onto the street, turning down the block to where her car was, thankfully, still parked.
“It’s why we have jobs though,” Jim said.
“What do you mean?” She looked sideways at him.
“To tell the stories for those who often can’t.”
She squeezed his arm. “Well said.” They arrived at her car. “You’ll be okay getting back to the bar?”
“Yes,” he nodded to the quiet street. “It’s a lovely night and I think I need a walk with my own thoughts.”
“Okay, Jim.” She watched him walk away, a litany of secrets still on her lips. Nights like tonight were the nights to spill them, to leave unspoken memories in the care of the stars. But some moments in time were meant to stay close to the heart. She unlocked her car and slid in, tossing her purse onto the seat. Jim walked away, his stride taking him in and out of the streetlights, his hat docked just to the side, his hands in his pockets. She was sure he was whistling. Murphy smiled, turned the key in the ignition, set the station to all night soul, and turned out onto the road, making her way safely home.
Author: vegawriters
Fandom: Murphy Brown
Series: Come Rain, Come Shine
Pairing: Mentions of Murphy and Peter
Rating: Teen
Timeframe: The Anchorman (season 6)
A/N: “You could have a meaningful experience with someone and walk away enriched by the experience. It was a simpler time.” - Murphy to Corky in Angst for the Memories. I’ve always wanted to explore Murphy’s potential for sexual relationships with women, but I think it’s important to note her own identity must be honored in writing her. I really don’t think Murphy would never consider herself to be anything but “straight” and while fan culture gives us that freedom to explore the queerness in our characters and ourselves through those characters, I think sometimes it’s important to honor the identity of a character as she is written. At the same time, Murphy was a flower child, coming of age during the sexual revolution, dedicated to the activist cause in the 60’s. So, I think there are also avenues to explore. But with caution. Us younger types, we tend to want to throw labels on people who would never label themselves. And while it is an aspect of privilege to not have to “choose” that label, I think we also have to consider how generations looked at themselves. To my mother’s and Candice’s generation: I hope I get this right.
Disclaimer: Even though I sometimes write at work, I don’t make any money off of these fics I write. Exploring this woman is its own reward and I love her.
Summary: Silence. Comfortable silence. They ate their fries. She could sense Jim trying to bring a conversation thread to the front of his mind, but wasn’t sure how to word it, so she waited, patient.
It wasn’t the first time she and Jim had closed down a bar, but Murphy had thought they’d seen the last of how the air touched your face at 2 AM, after the door locked behind you. She leaned against him as they walked down the street toward her car, her hand tucked in the crook of his elbow, the comfortable silence of friendship settling on them.
“Are you okay?” She finally asked, halfway down the block.
Jim paused and then nodded to a nearby all night diner, the window front full of men, many of whom had been in the bar. She smiled and led him in, surprised at how quickly the young, and clearly gay host took them to booth in the back.
“Water, please. And, do you have cheese fries?” She asked as they slid onto the cracked vinyl.
The host nodded. “Yeah. I’ll put the order in for you.”
Murphy nodded her thanks. Jim was still unfocused, and she waited until he’d shredded half of his paper napkin to cover his hand with hers. “Jim?”
“It bothers me that it bothers me,” Jim said, lifting his head. “It bothers me that …”
She quirked her lips, “That along the way, you realized you connected with this entire subculture of men with whom you have everything but nothing in common?”
“How did I not see it?” He leaned back, falling silent as the young host deposited a plastic carafe of water and two slightly foggy glasses before them. Jim poured. “And why is it that a culture where men come together, share songs and story, why is it reserved, it seems, solely for those who love other men?”
Murphy offered him a soft smile, “I wish I had an answer for you.”
“Is it wrong of me to be uncomfortable?” He looked at her, his eyes full of a fear that she wasn’t sure she knew how to address. So she listened. “Murphy, I’ve loved one woman in my life. And I love her with everything I am. It isn’t that I’m worried that I myself could be …”
“Gay?” Her lips quirked. “It’s okay, you can say it.”
His chest jumped, slightly, with a laugh. “It isn’t worried that I am gay, or even that people might perceive me as such. But, when did this … divide … begin?”
The cheese fries were dropped off. Murphy took one from the top, watching the sauce run into the center of the plate. “I don’t think it’s about when the divide began, Jim. I think …” she popped the fry into her mouth, chewed, and put her thoughts in order. “Somewhere along the line, somewhere, somewhen, we started to associate sex with interest. And it goes back, far deeper, than we want to really think about and then society just compounds it all the time.”
“I’m not gay, Murphy. And I don’t know why I feel the need to say that, except that I’m not gay. And … I feel like to not say it dishonors the men who have died over the last decade. I don’t share their struggle. I just … wish I could share their community. At least, the community that formed at The Anchorman.” He picked up his own cheese fry. Murphy looked at her hands.
“I’ve been with women,” she confessed, looking up at him again. His eyebrow raised. “I was even … well … in love might be a stretch.” She sighed. “But it was the 60’s - and before you roll your eyes, the sexual revolution was so freeing for women. And being with women meant you weren’t getting pregnant.” She shrugged. “But I’m not gay, and I have learned something crossing genders in my sexual exploration - it’s that bad sex is bad sex and being a woman doesn’t mean it’s automatically better.” A smirk crossed her face.
Jim barked out a laugh. “So the romance novels?”
“Lie,” she grinned. They both took another fry from the plate. “I think you should keep the bar, Jim,” she said. “I know, you feel like it isn’t your place, but you know what … maybe it isn’t. But that bar, it’s giving men who need a place to gather a place to do so. You know how popular it is. So what if it gets out that Jim Dial owns the Anchorman, which is the hottest gay bar in DC. Right now, more than ever, I think it’s our place to be … what’s the word? Allies?”
“How would you feel?” Jim asked, taking another fry from the plate. “If Avery is gay?”
She looked back down at her hands and then up again. “I don’t know. I know nothing he could ever do would change how much I love him. I know watching him grow up is the greatest thing in my life. He is everything to me, Jim, and I can’t understand a parent who would turn their back on their child for something as beautiful as who he could fall in love with.”
“I hear a but in there …”
“Look at what is happening with gay men right now, Jim. Even with the medications that are available …” She blinked back a sudden wash of tears. “I can handle anything, I really can. But he bumped his head on the coffee table the other day and I almost had a heart attack. He was fine! But I … and now I’m looking down the road 16 years and what if it isn’t any easier for them? What if who he grows up to be gets him beat up or worse? What if he wants to go into the military and he can’t reveal who he really is? What if he can’t get a job because of it?” She shook her head. “So, if he comes to me someday and says “mom this is my boyfriend” I’ll love him just as much as I always will. But it will scare the hell out of me and it won’t stop me from wishing his life could be easier.”
Jim nodded. “Well, maybe in sixteen years, it will be easier.”
“I hope so.” She poured them both fresh water.
Silence. Comfortable silence. They ate their fries. She could sense Jim trying to bring a conversation thread to the front of his mind, but wasn’t sure how to word it, so she waited, patient.
“I think I just never understood why … sex … was so important in terms of conversation,” jim finally said. “I don’t need to want to have sex with someone to also sit and sing at the piano, or discuss the joy of classic literature.”
“It isn’t,” she smiled. “But you have to admit, it’s a lot of fun to argue politics when you’re naked in bed with someone.”
Jim blushed. She took the last fry from the plate.
“But you’re right, you know. Remember what you said to me when I joined the Dumfries Club?” He cocked his head. “It was your tree fort.” They shared a smile. “And I took it away and I took it away because in truth, clubs like that keep women out of the process, out of the deals, out of the networking it takes to get ahead. But, there’s something to be said for a place where people who all think like you are talking about the same things. There’s a reason we are members of the Press Club, after all. This … is just a reminder that you don’t have to be just one way to like something, to feel the power of it.”
They sat there with their waters, the clock moving on toward 3 AM, both of them needing to get home and neither really wanting to. Tomorrow was Saturday and Jim would have the day off. She had an editing session at 1 and Eldin was taking Avery to a children’s art class, so she could sleep in. The server came by to check on them. Jim ordered a milkshake. Murphy seconded it.
“What was her name, if you don’t mind my asking?”
Murphy raised an eyebrow. “Who?”
“The .. woman …”
Murphy ran her finger around the top of her water glass, watching the condensation drip down the sides. “Jesse Bowman,” she said. “She was a photojournalist and we hunkered down in the same house in Vietnam when I was there.”
“Jesse Bowman … I know that name.” Jim tilted her head. “She …”
“She died in what will never be officially classified as a friendly fire explosion. The house we were in was targeted by American troops. They thought we were feeding information back to the enemy. The official word, to this day, is that she was killed in a Viet Cong ambush.”
“Murphy …” she heard the horror in his voice and was suddenly desperate to reassure him.
“Jim, it isn’t like … we were friends. We were very good friends. More than friends, but we barely even …” she chuckled. “I had more sexual encounters at Woodstock than I ever did with Jesse. But she was a special woman. I don’t know if it would have ever been anything than what it was, but I really did care about her.”
“I’m sorry.”
Murphy looked at the ceiling and waited until the milkshakes were delivered to speak. “I think what hurts more than anything else is that I know her family refused to even claim her body. A group of friends did and had a small funeral. The government killed her and her family didn’t want her. And she’s remembered as this asterick in the canon of Western Journalism, not successful enough to be the “female photojournalist who broke the rules” and not obscure enough to be allowed to be forgotten. That kind of limbo terrifies me more than death, Jim.”
“Do you still …”
She smiled at his awkward probing. “No. Truth is, Jim, I love men. You’re a pain in the ass, and don’t get reality a lot of the time, but I love men.” Her mind flitted, for just a moment to Peter. Her lips still tingled from where he’d kissed her just a couple of weeks before, alone in bed, her hand still trailed the path his had taken. She missed him. “I don’t at all regret the experiences I had back in the 60’s, but they were experiences. Some good, some bad. None of them, except for Jesse, lasting. And what we had was barely sexual.” She smiled, “Sometimes, it’s proof that we do in fact put too much emphasis on sex.”
Jim laughed at that, and it was a sound that always made her happy. Everyone thought he was so stiff, so staid. But he had his patterns, his processes. You just needed to get to know him.
“There were two young men I knew in Korea,” he said. “Like, you, I was embedded. I was with a MASH unit and these two men .. at the time, I believed they were just friends. Looking back, I know there was more and it saddens me to think how deeply that had to hide everything just to survive.”
“Which is why you should keep the Anchorman, Jim. Put it in the hands of your manager and stay hands off if you need to, but let yourself give this to that generation of men who need that place to gather.”
He paused. She smiled. “Thank you, Murphy.”
“You’re welcome.” She licked a bit of the whip cream from the milkshake into her mouth. “And no, being uncomfortable doesn’t make you a bad person.”
“There are just things in our generation … things for me … that I didn’t discuss.”
“And we need to talk about them more,” she said. “Silence creates places where death occurs.” She took a breath. “There’s a lot of things we don’t ever discuss, Jim. Society tells us not to. And when we keep talking about them, society tries to make them go away by making them illegal. It isn’t that long ago when Doris couldn’t get a credit card without your approval. When women could be fired for refusing to sleep with their boss, or getting pregnant.” They shared a smile. “We need to keep talking about what bars like yours mean for people who don’t get to do a lot of talking right now.”
“And we need to talk about relationships that might surprise people?”
She smiled at that. “You’d have liked Jesse, Jim.”
“She liked you. Most of the time, that’s enough.”
They laughed. He took a final slurp of his milkshake and signaled for the check.
She was quiet as they exited the restaurant, out onto the street, turning down the block to where her car was, thankfully, still parked.
“It’s why we have jobs though,” Jim said.
“What do you mean?” She looked sideways at him.
“To tell the stories for those who often can’t.”
She squeezed his arm. “Well said.” They arrived at her car. “You’ll be okay getting back to the bar?”
“Yes,” he nodded to the quiet street. “It’s a lovely night and I think I need a walk with my own thoughts.”
“Okay, Jim.” She watched him walk away, a litany of secrets still on her lips. Nights like tonight were the nights to spill them, to leave unspoken memories in the care of the stars. But some moments in time were meant to stay close to the heart. She unlocked her car and slid in, tossing her purse onto the seat. Jim walked away, his stride taking him in and out of the streetlights, his hat docked just to the side, his hands in his pockets. She was sure he was whistling. Murphy smiled, turned the key in the ignition, set the station to all night soul, and turned out onto the road, making her way safely home.