A Bad Idea: The Straight Girl

"I'm ready whenever you are."

"Actually I can't at 11, sorry! How's... later on at 7?"

"Sure!"

Uncertain where to land, we giggled and hugged, rather closely. A bridge between the different contexts. She walked away, in an overly polite way, belied by her knee-high boots and colourful stockings.

The whole thing was like a spell that would disenchant if it was named.

While I didn't share her novelty and uncertainty about the whole Girls thing, it was all just as awkward for me. I can persist for a long time without being sexual. But once someone wakes up the bear...

But it's a big fucking problem to kiss a straight girl. Lesbian 101: don't fuck the straight girl. It's nothing but drama and uncertainty and for a while they make you their little secret and then they vanish and you're left with a crush and an affair you let yourself think was more and weeks of sexual frustration.

But the look on her face when I touched her was fucking perfect... that trance of vulnerable pleasure on a strong face, a moment of trust and desire before her whole devil-may-care persona resurfaced. That was a compliment: to be trusted by a dragon.

I guess I don't have to specify that yes, I went home, took off my skirt and panties, and screamed into my pillow as I plunged half my hand into myself, hooking my fingers to reach that one wall at the front of my vagina. I'm usually a little more deliberate and slow with myself. I was soaked before I was in the door, and it wasn't until afterward that I realized I was still wearing my boot-heels during the whole thing.

That must have been quite the image.

Okay. Maybe I wanted some more after all.

The café visit wasn't exciting but it was nice. As I predicted, the polished persona I knew so well showed up, and we made jokes and shared awkward moments and made more jokes. I set a tone with a desserty treat. A tiny little unassuming hint of what the theme of the visit was. Eventually one awkward moment caught us like a snare. Another make-or-break moment. But I remembered what my mentor and boss had taught me: to be comfortable in silence, not to try to fill it. Give someone else a turn to come up with solutions. I just kept a smoky smile in her direction. We existed in a quiet little moment, and our awkward smiles (hers sarcastic and mine sly) became a little more bashful as I noticed (and she too I'm guessing) that we could taste each other in the air between us. I didn't realize we were that close. I tasted the air I had inhaled during our kiss. That meant she was tasting my kiss too.

I looked for a primer and chose her hair. Her chaotic hair was always everywhere. I corrected a few tufts. I was becoming pretty good at this whole ambiguous-intimacy thing. My other arm's wrist suddenly felt warm. Thank goodness. She was touching me.

This was such a bad idea.

Kassan glanced surreptitiously about, pretending she was pretending to be stealthy, only now noticing how secluded this one table was. She probably assumed this was some lucky fact that fate had offered.

"Interesting choice of a table." Okay, I'm in the presence of another master, game appreciates game. "So whatever to do about this? I am rather curious what you might possibly have in mind."

"Well, okay, here's the thing: inasmuch as there is anything at all that... keeps happening, there is no ignoring the fact that we are not strangers, we're friends, we matter to each other, and so anything that happens couldn't possibly be... unemotional, or without... ramification?" I had to race through that statement, I predicted that if I stopped on the first part of that statement for too long, she would assume that I was halting everything to protect the friendship. That was NOT the message I was sending.

"So... what does that make us?"

"Right now? Interested. It makes us interested."

"I think I'd use the descriptor 'intrigued' myself..."

"...And this is uncharted territory for you, and I can't pull you into labels or... actions? unless you would like to embrace them. So I hate for the ball to be in your court, but at least you don't have to decide now."

Welcome to the world of lesbian negotiation. We're just like this.

"...Labels, huh!" Kassandra looked around the café again. "Um, I just realized that it's entirely possible that I'm on a date right now. Am I on a date right now?"

Flashpoint. Do something.

I smiled, scarfed down my oversized brownie, took her hand as I stood up, and mumbled through my full mouth, "COME on, girl."

I was stupid to choose my own turf, I don't know what I was thinking. I think I even subconsciously chose my panties prudently, just in case the occasion arose to show them. I'm an idiot.

We walked quickly, giggling and chatting, and soon we heard the clang of buoys and a distant horn of a tugboat. The festival/artiste haven of a marketplace along the bay somehow had the right tone to it, and I believe I had been herding her there, but it was natural enough that I can't tell. There were very few people there, the theatre was closed that day and the bakery was shutting down. So we just walked along the water, which was beginning to glimmer with distant lights from opposite shores, and everything floating in the water between. As the sea breeze flew through our hair, something relaxed and we could just be. I have so little memory of that chit-chat.

I'm trying to remember her line at that moment, but I can't. I don't know how she broke the ice here, how she addressed the idea, but she was slick, she was good. I remember that wading our feet in the water was her idea, I would have remembered coming up with an idea like that. Feet are very, very erotic to - to who? People? Women? Just me? Every time I got a foot massage the nerves were a bee-line to my clitoris. And just the look of a woman's bare feet and ankles was just sensual, intimate.

As she took off her shoes, I realized they weren't her toe-shoes, or her too-tall-to-be-combat boots. They were dressy black leather sandals. I had no idea what that potentially meant but it probably meant something. Anyways, there were the toes I had spent so long checking out. Her legs were bruised in little dots - adventurer's legs, a woman of action, a woman of nature. She explored a lot.

So, together, we sat on the tip of the little dock-let and dipped our feet and ankles into sea-scented evening water. We giggled at the temperature.

Then she looked up at the sky. And she closed her eyes. Her head was still pointed up. I realized eventually she was listening and smelling. I heard seagulls, thumping tugboats, very distant cars on a bridge, and of course teeny wave splashes. I smelled seasalt, and shampoo. I watched her listen to the world.

I finally looked away, watching the water splash my ankles, and my knees with one larger wave. There was something deeply personal but innocent about being barefoot in ocean together. That made me think of Kassan again and I looked back up at a face looking at me. I recognized the new look. It was the "Am I doing this?" look.

Looking at her face, that strange interested look she gave me, it somehow made me think of the moment we met. I was overhearing her talking about some interesting academic topic with some office rando who had little to add. I called across the room, made a response of intrigue. At once she navigated swiftly towards me to within a foot while giving an interrogatory response. I said my clever answer and she smirked, offered her hand and said "Hello I'm Kassandra..." and gave me a strong professional handshake with a tiny mischievous grin. I wish very much I remembered more than that... what did I say to impress her, what clicked her onto me.

And here she was giving me that look, tasting-air distance from me. And, eventually, like a cat might, the tip of her nose nudged beneath my nose, and then once more she stroked my nose with hers. The movement was surprisingly intimate, and it induced us both to be so close I could feel teeny brushes of the vellus around her lips touching my lips, electrically brushing against me. It simply wasn't possible for either of us not to then touch, to brush our lips against each other. For a moment we weren't even officially kissing, our lips didn't grasp, they just slid dryly along each other, gradually opening each other deeper in, and by the time we were kissing, it was an elaborate, slow, adventurous little journey deep into each other's mouths.

And when I felt it wane, that was when I started to really kiss back, nuzzling deeper. I felt her activate at it.

When it was over, at that moment when both parties both silently consent that it's time to breathe, there was nothing to say about the most patiently sexual kiss either of us had likely encountered. There was nothing to say about it either, as we gazed out at the water again. I admit I also gazed at her gazing at the water, and by then she was lost out in it.

Kassan can enjoy nature endlessly. It didn't matter that bits of our conversations and little touches happened many, many minutes apart each. We made a joke about sunset passing us by. We weren't at all hungry. My tummy was churning a little, good churning. This was proto-girlfriendy to me, but I had to remember not to presume with the straight girl. I had a friend who was suddenly experimenting with me. Because I'm an idiot.

My home was not quite urban and not quite sub-urban. We could see downtown to the West in the gorgeous view, as my hilltop neighbourhood overlooked the city with complete visibility. The only anonymity was distance and nightfall. Midnight had already happened, and most of my (elderly) neighbours had fallen asleep some time around dusk. My silly optimistic brain told me all these facts to size up the situation, testing the risk of embarrassment and the possibility of exploration together with or without my intention to act on these thoughts.

Kassandra was talking again.

"Um I have no script for this. I mean I rather enjoyed our moment by the water but we're not exactly, um, girlfriend and... girlfriend? so I don't know what to do with my brain reminding me of kiss-goodnight customs. It seems... ridiculous."

"I don't like customs either. It occurs to me, though, it would feel a little less awkward if a kiss wasn't a goodbye? Want to stave off our curiosity, and then chat more for a bit?"

Kassan pondered this for a moment. "Wow I think that just might make way too much sense..." I cracked the last bit of code of her awkwardness with a stroke along her arm, and when her eyes were closed, leaning into the situation, I opened my mouth into a kiss just beside her ear, along her jaw. Kissing again and again across her cheek, I playfully ignored her movements closer to a make-out, finding more places on her face to taste. It worked: when she turned more aggressively to kiss me, she was suddenly very-much kissing me, once again not merely being-kissed-by-me, lapping up the taste of me, holding my shoulders. I leaned indulgently into our strong wide-mouthed exploration.

We kissed for long minutes. Time after time, Kas came back for more, and at last, I let the moment end, confidently. She didn't have any hesitation. We naturally sat down in the grass overlooking my neighbourhood's view, and we chatted while looking at the city. We chatted as friends, almost, about work and the future, but when I kissed her neck a little I heard her playful giggle and saw no hesitation and it was okay for now.

There was no ambiguity about it: two nights later, we met again, had another long walk, found each other holding hands, and I can't tell you how happy I was that she had picked up a habit of exploring my arms and shoulders and hands with her fingertips. She just watched herself touch my skin for moments at a time. Those were good times.

We came back to the exact same place as the other night, though this time in her car. Before we started kissing again, she bunched up her mouth bashfully, sarcastically (like the sarcasm was an incantation that allowed all this to happen), and said, "I still have no idea what on EARTH I think I'm doing."

"You sound like you're your own mother. Maybe I'm your midlife crisis? Hot young thing in your midlife crisis car?"

"Sadah I'm younger than you and you know it. And this is a sports car who will not be insulted by-" I knew this was the perfect moment to kiss. Perfect mixture of sarcastic and serious, if it was a strong enough kiss. The sarcasm is what she needed right now, and that was okay. But I powerfully held her and powerfully kissed her, and she received it, and with her first exhale once her mouth was free she said, "Gladly". She knew it was an affectionate "shut up" kiss, and she probably knew but couldn't admit she knew that it was a "You don't yet understand how much I like you" kiss. We started again, and she was not too bashful in the least to unbuckle herself to turn her torso heavily onto mine.

Our tenaciously persistent moment together lingered on and on, neither of us risking coming back to reality again.  I accepted her procrastination to ask the big questions to herself and she eagerly continued in every touch familiar to her libido: she enjoyed kissing, aggressively but softly; she enjoyed exploring with fingers stroking and mapping, along neck, cheek, hair, shoulder; and she kept my pelvis close to hers, gently pressing us together pulse by pulse. She had no script but desired the touch. She was enjoying me, and I kept just enough headspace to keep an eye on any lingering doubt.  I could never bear to touch someone who didn't truly want it, but there she was, bashful at our act but visibly reacting to a budding hunger within her, possibly a little enhanced by how good it must feel to be kissed by someone who's wanted to kiss you for a long time.  

She was eager but so gentle as she cupped my face.  Our rhythm was slow and delicate, with sudden moments of fervour, each time upgrading the intimacy of it all.  She had no further hesitation to interlock or push-together our breasts, softly heaving our nipples against the other's skin.  She reacted powerfully to that, and I noted to be ginger with her obviously sensitive B-sized breasts.  In 10ish-second increments, we would break our kiss, gaze at each other for a tiny instant, plan our next touch, and come together again, lips softened and wide open, pressing against each other through thin fabric.

When she relented to her lungs and heaved, her gaze was sleepy and aggressive. Her chest was proudly heaving in my direction.

Fine. We were both grown-ups. And we're sitting in the same car seat, neither of us quite on top of the other, more interlocked. Time for a risk. A really stupid risk.

I let my fingernails curve swiftly around each breast in a series of grazes and watched her electrify. Finally she gasped a "Jesuschristsadah" and collapsed her entire self into my seat atop me, tasting my mouth and neck, accidentally tasting under my collar, where my body is soft and officially breast territory, not sure how to proceed having done that.

"Kassan? I'm not about to ask you to have sex with me. I think that would feel a bit much." From the look on her face, I'd bet anything she was actually trying to picture what that would logistically look like. "But I think I'd like to be a little more naked right now. What do you think."

"Um that sounds maybe amazing in a terrifying way? Although there is at least the possibility of passersby and I don't know what I'd say to a police officer right now."

"You bet. Well it occurs to me that clothing beneath our waistline isn't visible from the windows...? Is that crazy?"

"Um... again, I think that might just make way too much sense... Although maybe a little too close to home, in that department?"

Good boundary. She was saying no to panties being off. Good for her.

"Okay, leaning far, far into the whole naughty-teen act we have going on, those back seats are just tinted enough to be imperceptible around midnight..."

It is a testament to how dedicated we were by then to what was happening that we were able to giggle through the awkwardness of climbing over seats onto other seats, and then once again fondle each other without feeling ridiculous. Once we were back there, we took off our blouses and when we kissed again our bras and tummies pressed very warmly together.

We didn't get any nakeder that evening. Midnight had passed and our timeline was in "long night out" territory without quite being in "stay the night" territory. But I played and played and played with the fact that her whole body was one big erogenous zone, feathering her waist and her breasts and her shoulders as she got very, very used to kissing someone with earrings and breasts. She wasn't ready to touch them, but as we made out she pulled my body tightly into hers, with all four of her surprisingly strong limbs, and my chest and pelvis pushed against her. Her hands sought out the skin on my back, and I could feel her hands marvel and explore the fact that the skin she was caressing was very, very soft.

Our pelvises pushed and ground into each other, asking for please-more, please-more, and after each kiss we were dizzy, beaten-up, and a little too horny to smile anymore. And a part of me loves that that's how we left each other that night: wanting more, knowing we're not ready for it and respecting that, but enjoying that we wanted it. Seeing in her face that she wanted me and realized it and wasn't scared of that.

We helped each other untangle our hair and watched each other fix our spiralled-around clothes. With almost no dignity to dredge up whatsoever, we got out of the car, closed the back door stealthily, touched each other's arms, and watched each other go away.

We texted a lot for several days. During the daytime it was snarky jokes. During nighttime it was tiny little intimate honest truths and feelings. The next time we decided to "hang out" (this is so high-school now) she had just been talking about an indie-movie, and not a new one, and so when she said we should watch it, it logically followed she was not inviting me into a room with a hundred other people in it, but inviting one of us to the other's property to sit on the same large comfy seat.

And I have a libido like a steam engine, but keep in mind this is my partner in crime, my uninfringeable friendship, so this was no booty-call for either of us. I'd say yes in a heartbeat to a movie with her if we both were 90 years old and too tired to ever fuck again. She's Kassandra, she's my friend. So we met, I made chocolate fondue, we watched the movie, we laughed loud enough to annoy neighbours, we ripped apart the plot from a complicated anarcho-feminist standpoint, we chatted about career steps and job wishlists, and it really didn't mean anything when our legs pretzeled together during one of our stories.

But. Between one of those conversations and the next, we noticed each other's faces, and blouses, and breath. As always, she had to unlock the moment with a clever remark. "Oh yeah!" she said in mock-surprise. "We're two people that make out now, apparently!" She giggled.

"Thanks for the present-tense description. It is a present-tense description?"

She said something ridiculous and sarcastic I don't remember. She had a strong arsenal of sarcastic de-escalators. Her cleverness was a shield, and she's allowed to have a shield. She didn't understand I had to ask for permission past it.

"You're allowed to opt out at any time, you know. This train stops on command. If you're having big doubts about a woman or me in particular touching you, I won't touch you. Do you want off the ride?"

She sheepishly toussled her head back and forth in consideration. "Um thank you? But yes no I think I may be... a little too way-too-intrigued and way-too-attracted? Which is a feeling I can't quite complete processing." She giggled. I heroically managed to stop from rolling my eyes at the finding-myself stage. One last check.