A Bad Idea: The Straight Girl

In our tiny niche newspaper there were maps and charts and notes everywhere. It felt heroic to work in that shabby little place.

Kassandra hung up the phone more loudly than she had to and typed madly, slamming the last key. "Aaaand that should seal that quite nicely! The mayor is going to be between city hall and the rotunda between those two meetings and his secretary says he sometimes talks on the move. Everything else is ready in the story, so I'll text you the money-shot and once you get boss-man's approval. Can you link to it in social media?"

"Nah nah fuck links, trust me no one clicks the links anymore unless they're hate-reading political posts; let me make tiny versions of the article for every medium."

"Kay."

At about 210 words per minute we spoke faster than anyone else could understand. We had a shorthand, and could just bark facts at each other without context or grammar. But I guess that didn't matter now, as I was leaving. I got that hospital gig. I just had to get through this week, and the giddy excitement was fueling me as well as any cup of coffee. Kassandra ceremoniously brought over the zip drive I'd need and clicked it into my computer for me. The smell of cinnamon and sweat rushed at me as she arrived - for some reason she was always cinnamony. Saigon cinnamon, the kind you make curries with, and something under it... bananas?? What the heck was it, a moisturizer, a perfume? That couldn't just be her actual human scent, no one smelled good, humans are smelly...

She smiled and bounded back, gathering her papers and putting on her boots in a fwooshing hurry. Those brown knee-highs were magnificent, but that's not why I wished she'd just kept them on. She just had to take them off every time she sat down and just kind of gavotte these cute long slender feet around, one in the air as her leg snuggly slipped over her other knee, her ankle with its inexplicable white-girl star anklet tattoos (what did those mean??) swinging back and forth like a happy puppy's tail. In case that wasn't enough on sunny days when she cycled to work she made absolutely sure I couldn't stop thinking about her toes by wearing those ridiculous toe-shoes that everyone hates; and it was so wrong, so incorrect, so absurd that it somehow worked perfectly with those elegant floppy flowy blouses she wore and created a statement of someone both delicate and indefatigable. The floppy blouses and snuggle-me sweaters she wore screamed that she absolutely went on frequent white-girl finding-myself pilgrimages in fucking Japan or Scotland or something. Why are you so ridiculous and why do I want to lick your tummy so much.

Kassandra got a phone call as she was leaving, her brother asked their family to reschedule their Friday dinner. She was a little glum but invited me out for coffee. It was a loud café called "Kafka", filled with boyish philosophers.

As we walked I was telling her about dressing up as Kaylee last year at the Firefly convention, and how fun the hair was.

"I'm always Zoe. Zoe is the kind of woman I would be attracted to if I was a lesbian!" She giggled in what I guess what a punchline.

You're so bi. Or trans or... something. This was like the time she told me she wanted to switch genders with a partner for a day to experience orgasm the way men do. (We don't have boundaries with each other.) There was something going on there and I was not going to poke that bear. Nope, I'm not going there anymore: no more cliché "questioning" "just once to see" unexamined "straight" girls who want to try fooling around with a "girl" one time while awkwardly being all "am I doing this?" the whole time and then quit but then become attached but won't admit they're bi they just like to stealthily fuck and snuggle and make you their best friend... I was never doing that again and why do straight girls do this and no and no. Some of them don't want to hold the men in their lives to high standards so they give us the emotional labour of loving them without reciprocation; some of them don't want the label; and I wasn't going to be anyone's secret anymore and great now I'm literally thinking in Tegan and Sara lyrics.

Our conversations were always saucy like this... We always disturbed the 20-somethings around us with our cackles. They weren't used to hearing belly-laughs from young women. She probably got more than one raised eyebrow when she casually said she was so tired this morning she matched her lipstick to her new panties perfectly, before realizing she couldn't show her coordination off to anybody.

Eventually we were talking about our worst dates. I talked about the person who turned out to be really, really Catholic, and after making out with me in the park, hid in fear from the sudden rainstorm that hit us, convinced that God was really, really angry about what we had just done and was expressing discontent through weather. Kassan was now giving me her run-down. I can't remember all the details, I just remember her innocent face as she innocently said that she trolled a bad date by out-flirting a woman in a bar he tried to distract himself with, and her momentum just sort of continued as she noticed she was having better luck than him, and that they talked for an hour after he left, bored, and went home and laughed at the phone-number napkin the girl gave her, but felt "flattered and almost intrigued".

"Christ let me get this straight. You've noticing bisexual feelings, this is your last day being my co-worker, your evening plans are cancelled, and you're wearing new raspberry panties you're excited about."

"Um, yes? What do those have to do with each other?"

I downed my latte in a hair-thrown-back little flourish and plopped it loudly on the table. "Nothing." I might have unintentionally sounded angry.

We left the café and started walking.

I'm not doing this. This is a bad idea. I'mnotdoingthisI'mnotdoingthis "But that's just a passing feeling, you'd never do anything about it." Oh shut up.

"I dunno! I mean I'm single now! And my mother told me I probably need a one-night stand, she didn't exactly specify who with!" She giggled her punchline.

"Hah, good one."

"It's stupid, and I would have no idea unless I, like, kissed one first."

I don't know which of us was in that moment more of a ridiculous cliché.

"Yeah totally. And that's quite a niche type you chose there, tall and muscular and in brown leather, eh?"

"No, I think that just might terrify me. More like confident? Confidence is sexy."

"Yeah. Welp! Hope you meet that strange woman one day, WHO knows."

"Heh, no, no matter who or WHAT someone is, kissing a stranger sounds like simply an awful idea. More like a friend."

...Is she leading ME down the garden path I'm leading her down? No. No that's not her at all.

"But not too good a friend. Don't want to ruin an important friendship."

"Um, I think I could only ever let someone who knows me through and through put, um, THEIR hands on me. Y'know, like a partner in crime, like we are."

"JESUS CHRIST KASSANDRA." Kassandra looked surprised and confused.

"Um, yes?"

"Seriously? Seriously."

"Uh what? Sorry was that a weird conversation? We've been sharing everything!"

"Seriously, that was just a chit-chat and in no way an exploratory negotiation?"

"Err, negotiation of what? Wait." Oh gosh, she really was that naïve and unexamined. Brilliant, confident, but with a huge blind spot. She was about five seconds from a realization. I could tell because she had shooken her head to reset her thought process and was actually counting something with her hand. This was going to be excruciating.

We were close enough to the docks now that high wind started billowing us both, but there was a lot of sunshine where we stood at that moment, surrounded by swaying trees.

"Nothing. Absolutely nothing. You can't possibly be bi, Kas, I'd know, because I'm bi with a thunderous sex drive, I'd pick up on it, and you're giggling too much to want that for real, and even if so, you haven't actually thought through what it is to make out with a friend, about what comes next, with the questions and the what-ifs."

She was wide-eyed but a little defensive, and a little something-else. "I don't know, I think I could handle myself."

Zoe. She needs a Zoe. I can do Zoe.

"Nope. Don't think so."

"Wanna bet?"

"Yep I wanna bet. Want some proof you can't handle it?"

"Oh try me. Why, wha----"

I waited until the vowel sound in 'What' because I wanted her open mouth to feel my open mouth. So she felt my open mouth nuzzle into hers, not hard, not soft. And I will never, ever let her know I tippy-toed for the moment to reach her and feel a little more in-charge. I opened my eyes quickly, and confirmed her eyes had been closed to receive the kiss. She put on her sarcastic face and said "HI Sadah!"

"Tell me not to do that again. Please tell me not to do that again. I need a direction not to do that again." What I got back was some heavy breathing and wobbliness, and a little bit of elevator-eyes between my lips and eyes, and those elevator-eyes were wide but not shocked wide.

This is a bad idea.

My lips didn't demand, or incur, or encourage... I just approached and made contact with a slight upward movement of both my lips with both her lips, on the soft wet inside of each, breathed her air, and then repeated the whole motion more slowly.  She will have felt the permanent line inside my lip from once playing a lot of clarinet, and I felt a little bump in hers, perhaps from a very physical childhood. Former tree-climbing girl, I'd have bet anything.  I halted our introductory touch to let her fully evaluate whether to shut the whole thing down. Her eyes were still closed, brow thoughtful and half-present.  She was descending into her body, she was listening to it.  She kept almost-opening her mouth, almost speaking with a blink, a lick of the lips, but not getting to the next point. 

Kassandra was obviously a very tactile person, enjoying touch as thoroughly as I do. I had just held onto her waist to centre ourselves, but she shuddered somewhere deep inside when I did, her breathing changed. Now she licked her lips, grimaced a little, but didn't withdraw.

"I think that actually just happened!" she chuckled. She wasn't actually amused, that tone was just how she de-escalated awkwardness.

"Is that okay?" I kept my voice strong but kind. She shrugged her shoulders sheepishly.

"Um I don't know??"

I needed a transition that could lead her either in or out, either friendly or sensual.  The back of my hand breezed her arm, below the shoulder where her floppy satiny blouse folded a little higher than the other side.  She moved into the touch a little, there was consent there. I moved down a little, watching her, up a little, and she opened her mouth and caught her breath and that was the spot... and as she exhaled and shifted her weight closer into the touch I gave her, eyes fully closing again, I interpreted her movement and shifted my hand to her cheek, softly breezing up and down, between her cheekbone and below her ear.

When I grazed below her ear she caught her breath and moved her head toward the hand and that was the spot.  She seemed surprised by the touch but sort of analyzing it. I gave an enquiring kiss on her other cheek as she did so and she answered my silent question, turning toward my lips, and now this woman in front of me wasn't being kissed, for a moment she was kissing; first softly, then a little more open, then slowly and open-mouthed, her hand touching me too, her breath smelling my scent right back. She was completely in the moment and I strongly suspected she would have big questions and perhaps consternations for herself as soon as our momentum plateaued; but for now our moment was explicitly erotic, and she shifted her body forward in tentative eagerness...

...Shifted forward until, tentatively eager for this touch until, about to take full initiative until, about to begin wrapping arms completely around me until - our fronts began touching, and she received signals from her chest and surprisingly warm pelvis that she was being touched by someone with (rather ample) breasts and no penis whatsoever. After one fleeting instant as our thighs brushed together (ohforchrissake) and our breasts interlocked she, presumably very-used to feeling an erection and a hard flat chest right about now, opened her eyes and came back into her head.  Which was fine.  That's fine. She's having doubts. That's fine. I knew it would happen.  This is fine.  You're going to leave me like this.  That's fine. I'm fine. I'll ceremoniously masturbate later.  With the teddy bear whose shaped to make it feel like it's hugging me back and a vibrator but not the dildo one because I'm absolutely not having a penis day and stop thinking about that and be present you're about to be rejected. Okay. I respect your boundaries. Are you about to set a boundary? I'm looking right at you, shift back or forward, should my fingertips close around your cute round waist or should I step back?  Open your eyes. 

She opened her eyes. Her bizarrely dilated pupils drilled into me and she gradually slowed down repressed heavy breathing. She licked her lips. She's processing my taste - that's a sign, right? Finally she started speaking, with a bashful little smile.

"Um, this is very unexpected and I'm not exactly saying that was bad or that I would not necessarily like some more, I'm just... wow."  Her whole body language was in limbo. How do I resolve this ethically. Okay, life hack: consent language!

"Okay, I hear you that you're thinking. Would you like to stop, or would you like me to take initiative and touch you for a minute?"  She seemed to be hit (impressed or worried?) by the idea of me "touching" her. That wasn't meant to be a seduction, just a... heuristic?  Lesbian Seduction was a problematic trope in erotica, bringing up such keyword search hooks as "reluctant", "convince", "shy", or "innocent", normally with a power relationship involved. One major problem in real life with that is the next-morning effect; or, when it came to a kiss, the next-moment effect.  Here she was, "straight" woman with the first taste of woman in her mouth, and dammit every time I answered the siren call of Curious I was met with those What Does It Mean regrettish eyes and I couldn't-

-and she's kissing me. Though not sure exactly how to fit our faces together, she was now kissing me out of bravery.  Not quite eagerly, but in a jump-off-the-diving-board sort of way. 

I felt vindicated by my suspicions about what her mouth tasted like, but pleasantly surprised how soft and vulnerable her touch became. 

Am I doing this?  She gingerly tried switching sides, her arms under mine for a change, and felt my waist, her hands processing the novel fact that the waist she was touching was narrower than what was above or below, teasing it experimentally, up a little on both sides until she found the place below my arms where the skin was softest, where chest becomes tummy, one of maybe 20 places I'd mapped that shocked my libido alive and made me feel loved, and yes I was doing this.  I let my breath inhale sharply through my nose as she touched my hyper-sensitive sides, the sound a universal signal of yesplease.

Knowing the strangest riskiest parts of a first kiss are the instant before and the instant after, I replaced the potential for another awkward moment with the least presumptuous sensuality I could think of. As I gave us some breathing room, a few inches between our faces, my fingers again stroked her arm a little. I like to casually touch to search for tiny places along non-erogenous skin with surprise sexual activation pressure points (everyone has these somewhere), but here the effect was immediate, I watched Kassan gasp, shudder, and swivel a little at my first graze. I touched the top of her shoulder, stroking a little. She gasped again and leaned her head back, mouth open and eyes closing again.

Holy. Cow. It's her whole body. I touched her cheek. She sighed and leaned a little into my wandering hand. Her whole body is one large erogenous zone. I feathered her cheek a little more and her cheek nuzzled sleepily into my fingers. Her breathing wasn't steady. When I went in for another little smooch her mouth was somewhat more eager and explorative. Through her nose she was almost heaving as I touched our tongues together, stroked my large lips against her thin ones.

The face I watched when I opened my eyes again was flushed, all the snark and reluctance having vanished. When her eyes opened she looked hungrily at me, then bashfully, then uncertainly. She obviously eagerly consented but her initiative was like a spinning plate, something that kept going only as long as I kept the momentum going.

Okay. Momentum. This was going to be a careful manoeuvre.

I touched both her collarbones with the backs of my fingernails and waited for her to open her mouth to gasp.

I turned her gasp into an open-mouth kiss, the kind that touched the pink deep inside.

I waited for the flex of her eager kiss back. It came.

After one breath-full of hungry slippery touch, I herded us both into a sit at one conveniently-placed bench right beside us, took her waist, and started the kiss again, quickly, quickly enough that the electricity of the kiss never stopped.

I slid my fingers along her waist and let her pleasure and eagerness upgrade our needy kiss at her own pace.

Now I was being kissed, with ample initiative. My face was in her hands.

My "moves" involve eager consent. I have my fun.

When Kassandra ended the kiss, all on her own, apparently for no other reason than to completely replace her lung's stores, she opened her eyes without doubt. Oxygenated again, she gave me one after-shock smooch. We weren't just friends anymore. But it took me all my effort not to lip-sync the inevitable words I knew were coming.

"So what does this mean?"

Straight girls.

And she wasn't one, not in the least. But she didn't quite know that yet and so it was going to be as though she was.

"We can decide what it means now or later, slowly, if you like?"

"Well I would be remiss if I didn't point out the elephant in the room that that wasn't just some empty physical joie de vivre, Sadah! I hope I'm not presumptuous to think I noticed some sort of emotional aspect?"

"Does it make you feel better to cerebralize all that?"

"And I would be remiss if I didn't point out that there's a second elephant in the room which was my own very interesting emotional aspect." She laughed in sarcastic bashfulness. A power-move of strong women in vulnerable positions.

"I think we're due for a big sit-down chat."

"Oh CRAP I really do have to go. You, young... LADY... made me rather late." She was being quippy again, reasserting the armour. That's okay.

"Coffee tomorrow?"

"Yes that would seem rather prudent..."

I'm clever. I can think in real-time, it's an admin staff thing. The café I chose was very, very close to my home, with quiet corners. It could be absolutely anything from a chit-chat 'tween-us-girls to things I didn't even dare plan. But we planned as we walked, back in business mode (sort of). I won't lie, both our faces were beet-red. So many people were around us, so soon after that very porny make-out.

Our cars were from this point further in tangential directions. We both knew this. Concluding this suddenly-casual walk was going to be a funny challenge. We had turned to each other. I spoke. Naturally.

"So 11:00 tomorrow for that coffee/lunch? I for one would like to catch up some time before long."

"Um I think that would be rather nice - and I think it may be possible to revisit our previous conversation?"