I'm A Bad Lesbian

I've been out as a lesbian for about five years now and I still don't understand 'gay culture'. I've tried. I've tried my little dyke heart out. But I still find myself bewildered and distraught.

I've never been much for gay pride. I don't go to Gay Pride Parades. The same way I don't go to Blue Eyed Pride Parades, or Born In April Pride Parades or Tall Pride Parades or any other Insignificant Detail About Me Pride Parades. My lesbianism just doesn't have enough impact on my life to have any cultural influence on me. All it means is I find chicks hot. This isn't anything remarkable to me. This isn't anything entirely special, it just gives me something to ramble on about in here. I don't live my life a certain way because I'm a lesbian. I don't dress or act differently just because I'm a lesbian. Lesbianism is one small facet of the things that make up me.

But it's automatically assumed that because I am a lesbian, I am a part of 'gay culture'. As far as I can tell, this means I need to do lots of drugs and have regular orgies. Well, I take a lot of prescription medication and I have indeed spent a good deal of time in the company of seven other people not wearing shoes. But I don't think that quite counts.

I remember I was chatting with some girl once, and it came up that I was a lesbian. She got all wide eyed and exclaimed 'Oh! You're gay!'. Much in the same way teenage girls exclaim 'Oh! You have a puppy!'. It was mildly disturbing. And then she shocked me by telling me 'I bet you have lots of wild sex and do all kinds of cool drugs!'.

I was rather floored. It took me a few moments to gather myself together and form a response. I told her that I drank blhang tea for my seizures and I did just last week have a rather nice threesome with my vibrator and a bootleg copy of Naughty Nurses 3.

I think I disappointed her.

I just don't understand putting so much of oneself into a sexuality. I don't particularly want to be known as just 'the lesbian'. I don't like being judged or measured based on one aspect of myself. And I can't understand anyone else wanting it, either. Call me 'that writer lesbian' or 'that lesbian who makes all those costumes'. Define me by what I do, not what I am or who's fun bits I like.

Other lesbians always try to get me more involved. Dinners, parades, special events... if we want so badly to be treated just like everyone else, why don't we stop separating ourselves from everyone else? Gay bars, sure! Gay nigthclubs? Definitely. Gay book clubs? Alright, I can kind of see it. Gay picnics? Gay bakeries? Gay grocery stores? Gay art shows? gay neighborhoods? Now we're being ridiculous.

And I know the arguments. "We don't want to deal with prejudice!" "We want safe places!". Alright, I get that. I have my safe places, and I need them. But we can't shut ourselves off from the world. We can't keep up this self-segregation and expect society to become used to us and stop thinking of us as different. Because we make ourselves different. This goes beyond having a safe place or a place to go to meet like minded people. This is going into self made leper colonies. Are we lepers? No. So why do we act like them?

I know my views aren't popular. I know that they're why I'm no longer allowed to hang out with certain 'cool gay people'. But I don't much care. I don't see them as gay people, I see them as jerks who can't deal with a differing opinion. And I don't want to keep that kind of company anyway.

I've given up on trying to understand gay culture. Otaku culture is bad enough, and I made the choice to throw my lot in there.

I'll just keep on being a bad lesbian. It works for me.

And the Naughty Nurses don't seem to mind.

Maybe They're Just Old and Horny....

I seem to possess the uncanny ability to attract elderly women. Not only to attract them, but something about me screams 'grope me, please!'.

This is, as of now, a much documented phenomena. All instances occurred in the presence of at least one other person, an eye witness to my trials and tribulations.

It began on my first visit to Seattle, when I was immediately taken for lunch after stepping off of the plane. My friends brought me to a large Asian marketplace, enclosed, with a score of restaurants offering foreign delights! I felt as though I were in an old time marketplace - stands along either side of a great pathway full of tables where families and Asian culture geeks huddled round their food!

I don't remember what I dined on. But I do remember that while I and my soon-to-be girlfriend of the time were finishing, the rest of our group wandered off for shopping. I didn't mind. Soon-to-be-girlfriend (who I shall from this point on refer to as Blond and Brainy) and I could use some alone time, after all. But alone time was not to be had! While I sat, in no way blocking anyone's route to anywhere, an elderly woman in a red coat and bobble hat came up behind me.

"I just need to squeeze behind you, honey," she said. And placed her hands on my shoulders. I froze, as I often do when strangers touch me. I froze even as she slid her hands across my shoulders and through my hair, making a small sighing noise. I stared blankly when she winked at me and said 'thanks, sweet thing' and wandered off.

"What the hell was *that*?" Blond and Brainy exclaimed. A fluke, I thought. Just a strange fluke.

A few months later, I was living in Seattle with Blond and Brainy and a group of our friends. We were just a bunch of video game geeks and anime nerds, and it was a grand old time. My best friend - Bear - and I would wander all over the small suburb in which we lived. Bear and I both share a love of Crowley and rock opera, and so when we discovered a local theater group and put Crowley's 'The Rites of Luna' to music, we had to go. And go we did! We reveled in the lyrical workings of the Beast himself, an orgy of the senses! Erotic wording, bacchanal dancing, young maiden nymphs in gauze and oil-slicked men in nothing but leather trousers. Both Bear and I had much to look at.

And then came the end, and a sort of artistic mosh pit, the audience spilling forth onto the stage to join the actors in revelry. Now here, here was an environment where I was unafraid to display my jerky, limited movements! I danced, or as close to dancing as I could manage. And while we swayed and stomped on the little stage, I felt someone press up against me and grab my rear. I turn, and to my surprise, there is a little old lady behind me. She gives my rump another swat and saunters off, hips swaying like a feisty bar maid's.

There are other incidents, but in the sake of time I will skip to the last and most notable. This takes place two days before I left Seattle. On my last day where I could go out with our favorite housemate - Puppy, for your references, because she is indeed the human representation of a puppy - we decided to grab some sushi and do some shopping. After the sushi, I was in need of a restroom. I stopped off at the University bookstore to use theirs, and when I was finished with my business, there was an older woman, very butch, standing at the sink. She looked about sixty. She caught my eye and smiled. I smiled back.

"You're just as pretty up close as you are far away," she tells me. I blink, surprised.

"I watch you everyday from my window. You always take the same bus. You live in that big old house with the closed in porch, don't you?"

I am caught like a deer in the headlights. Has this woman just admitted to what I think she has? Yes, yes she has. Thank heavens I'm leaving! I nod, and am saved in the nick of time when Puppy pops her head into the restroom to see if I'm alright. I retell my story to her in the elevator, and she listens, wide eyed. I had a stalker of sorts! How long had this woman been watching me? Why did she watch me? Did she watch every young woman who took that bus?

Puppy and I headed home immediately, taking the long way. Just in case.