Learning to Live Life as a Lesbian

Lesbian woman steps out of the closet and finds love.

*

Alone with her thoughts of making love to another woman, kissing her, touching her, feeling her, holding her, being kissed and touched by her, Janice's frustration with her lack of a sexual life was unbearable. She didn't want to spend, yet, another summer alone. Whenever she wished she could have hot passionate, sweaty sex with another co-ed, which was all the time, restraint and composure is what she used to pretend she wasn't who she was. She was a phony having to live a lie. Every day she pretended she was someone else, was another day she lived life alone and lived a life she didn't want to live.

She ignored the buzzing sound of her busy vibrator for it not to ruin her sexual fantasy. From kissing their lips, to slowly stripping them naked, to exploring every inch of their naked bodies, to feeling and sucking their tits, to licking and fingering their pussies, and/or just lying in bed sharing intimate laughter and sexy conversations, while basking in the afterglow of hot sex, she had fantasized about nearly every woman on campus, mostly the good looking ones. Once a model and a beauty queen, she was just as shallow as the horny men were, when it came to choosing a tall, shapely, and beautiful woman over a short, obese, and homely one. Glad that classes were over, always so horny, especially in the summer, it was more difficult concentrating on her studies then. Yet, boredom replaced her dedication and hard work.

So, horny and so sexually unsatisfied, most times for her to get interestingly aroused, all it took for her to become preoccupied with sex and for her to have a sexual fantasy was to hear the laughter of a pretty woman or to overhear a conversation, to see someone with nice hair, or to watch an attractive woman who looked good wearing a certain outfit. Wanting to get up out of her chair and befriend her, kiss her, hold her, and make love to her, how do you approach another woman for sex without revealing that you're a lesbian? Not wanting anyone to know she preferred women to men was her dilemma. Living in a world controlled by men, especially in the world of academia, she had much to lose and nothing to gain by declaring her sexual preference.

She couldn't. She wouldn't. She had to wait until the time was right to reveal herself, but sexual frustration and loneliness was the high price she paid to pretend she wasn't who she was. It shouldn't be this difficult to find that one special person and fall in love, but it was. Handicapped by judgmental criticisms of arbitrarily accepted norms and discriminated against by a puritanical society, she should be allowed to live her life in the way she wanted to live it without apologies to anyone. What she does with her body is none of anyone's business but her and her lover. Yet, even though she believed all of that, she still feared being discovered and revealed for her true self.

Most times, it was easier for a woman to pretend she wasn't lesbian than it was for a man to pretend that he wasn't gay. Unable to hide it as well, sometimes not avoiding confrontation but welcoming it with their in your face homosexuality, guys were more obvious about their sexual orientation than women. She couldn't wait for the day when she could emerge from the closet and live her life in the way that she wanted to make herself happy and needed to make herself whole. Tired of pretending, she was tired of being someone else. She yearned to have a special someone in her life, a close friend who was also her lover, someone she could love and share all her secrets without fear of being judged or ridiculed.

In the meantime, she had to follow the rules of the game she was playing. She learned long ago how to befriend men to get what she wanted by using her good looks and to beguile men to receive what she needed by using her amazing body. Everyone thought she was happy, well adjusted, and put together. Instead she was a mess, a woman who'd fantasize and masturbate over her hidden sexual fantasies numerous times a day. She was horny, lonely, and unfulfilled.

Janice wasn't looking forward to spending another summer alone. She remembered last summer and the summer before, she went nowhere and did nothing. It's such a travesty to live close to such an exciting and historic city as Boston and not want to explore it, but it's no fun doing things alone. She was tired of being so alone and feeling so lonely.

She thought things would be different, moving from a small town to a big city. Only, she felt the same way here that she did there. Basically, she was a leper. Between her sexual attraction for women and the sexual attraction that men had for her, judged solely by appearance, stuck between her needs and desires that struggled against the wants and expectations of men, she was a square peg unable to fit a round hole. Having no safe haven to let her hair down, always feeling as if there was something wrong with her, she didn't fit in anywhere. She wished she had someone to talk to, a support group, but she'd have to step out of her protective closet to do that and she wasn't ready to be labeled as a lesbian, just yet.

Even though this was the 21st century, perhaps because it undermined men, lesbian women were met with too much discrimination, an understatement, and she had too much at stake to expose herself in that way. The doors her beauty could open as a straight woman would quickly slam shut, once she admitted that she was a lesbian and not interested and aroused by a man. Without a doubt, a gay man in a straight society had an easier going of it than a lesbian woman in a man's world.

Weighed down with conventions written by men, women are supposed to get married and have babies. Women are expected to be subservient and dependent on men. Women are supposed to be attracted to men. Women are supposed to need men and not be able to live life without men. Men, men, men, manly men, macho men, machismo men, even in this enlightened society, it was still all about men. Even after the sexual revolution and even in this new age of Aquarius, needing the gentle touch of a woman, instead of the horny grope of a man, women aren't supposed to have sexual needs and urges that men can't satisfy.

Much like that song by the Pointer Sisters, I Need A Slow Hand, instead of wanting the slow hand of a man, Janice wanted a slow hand of a woman. She needed a female lover with an easy touch, someone who will spend some time, and not come and go in a heated rush. She wanted someone who would understand, when it comes to love and what she wanted and needed, only a woman could do that for her, not a man, never a man.

She had several more years of this internal struggle. Once she graduated from college, once she finished graduate school, once she got a job, an apartment, and a life of her own, is when she'd step out of the closet, but not now. With school and career choices at stake, getting internships and grants, applying to professors for research projects, she had enough on her plate and there was too much going on to somehow squeeze a sex life in the equation, too, especially one, as a lesbian, that would certainly exclude her from selection in a man's world.

She'd have to put sex, love, and romance on the backburner because she'd have a much greater chance of being chosen for all of the above, if her male professors thought she was a straight woman and interested in them seducing not only her mind with knowledge but also her body with sex. If they viewed her as a potential sexual plaything for them to believe that they were using and taking advantage of her, instead of the other way around, she'd use them for what she needed and take from them all that she wanted. If her male mentors flattered themselves that she wanted them and that they had a chance with her, she'd stay ahead of her competition by enlisting their academic help with her good looks. It was a game she played and for her to stay playing the game, she needed to suppress her natural born desire to be a lesbian.

Her highlight over the summer last year was going across the Charles River to Boston to watch the Boston Pops fourth of July concert and the fireworks display on the Esplanade. Alone and not knowing her way around the city, with everything looking so different in the dark than it did in the daytime, looking for the subway entrance, after the concert to return home, she got lost on her way back. Thinking she was taking a shortcut, instead of walking all the way around the block, she turned down the wrong alleyway.

Filled with narrow alleyways behind the residential buildings that run parallel to the main streets, Boston has a way of making visitors feel safer than they are. She was groped, mauled, sexually molested and practically raped by two drunken sailors, had a shouting homeless man not come to her rescue by creating such a ruckus with his bottle and can filled shopping cart. The residents scared the sailors away, when they opened up their back windows to see what the disturbance was.

With school over for the summer and a senior in September, she's again facing the same summertime reality, boredom. All of her so called friends, even her roommates, hookup with someone during the course of the year and are busy partying and having sexy fun with their boyfriends. Then, in the summer, they had the money to either travel or return home. She couldn't afford either.

Now that she thought about it, she hasn't felt close to another female since junior high school. Because of her goals and aspirations of trying to make it in a man's world, hiding her sexual preference away in the closet, what should have developed naturally and normally hasn't had a chance to flourish. From her father, to her brother, to her male friends, and male classmates, directly and indirectly in the way, men were always there to interfere, interrupt, intercede, and ruin whatever relationship she thought she was developing with a woman and a potential lover.

"Stop! Just leave me alone. Let me live my life the way that I want to live it," she wanted to say, but never did.

Instead she played the role that was expected of her to play, she played the straight role, instead of the lesbian role. She played the good daughter, the caring sister, the close friend, and the friendly classmate. Born and raised in Texas, stuck and labeled a real beauty queen in a straight society, she played the straight woman and not the scarlet lettered lesbian, who preferred women to men

Once her friends and those she was attracted to started getting into boys, hormones stopped the fun she had with her female friends as a pre-teen. Then, when she was in high school, she wasn't included, when it was all about pretty clothes, hair and makeup, fad diets, cheerleading, and boys. There were whispers about her being lesbian, but she was already good looking enough for her supporters to label her detractors as just jealous and to label her as studious instead. Now that she's in college, 22-years-old, and in a city far from home, even after living here for three years, she doesn't know anyone well enough to want to hang out with them. In trying to keep it hidden from men and straight women, her secret regarding her sexual preference has always gotten in the way of developing friendships with women.

Instead of helping her, they hindered her and her good looks got in the way of her making a real love connection. The boys just wanted to fuck her and the women were jealous of her, while being overly protective of their boyfriends. If only they knew, it wasn't the boyfriends they had to worry about with her. It was them.

Her excitement about joining a club or doing a special project or volunteering for extra work with an unpaid internship at the end of the semester were all short lived, as everyone went home for the summer. With so many schools in such a small area, the student population that converged on Boston, in late August, disappeared in late May. The only students who stayed here, lived here, and/or had summer jobs here.

Lonely and alone, she could go home, but why should she? She's here, on the other side of the country, because she wanted to get away from her family and live her own life. Besides, not knowing how to accept her, sensing their disappointment, her parents, even her sister and brother, were happy to be rid of her. Still, feeling so alone, missing seeing a familiar face, she'd settle for a trip home, if only she had the money.

Money, it was always about money. She'd have money today, if she wanted to settle for a life with Billy Bob, Roy, or Elvin back home. For sure, she'd have had at least one child with another one on the way, by now. Saturday night barbeques and coffee clutches and gab sessions with the girls, while the husbands were out drinking with the boys, no thank you. Forsaking her education to care for some drunken, skirt chasing, sports crazed man was not the life she wanted to live. She wanted to make her own way and if she had to use men to do that, then so be it. God had blessed her with good looks for her to make use of them and not for someone else to take advantage of her, namely men. This was her life and she only had the one to live it her way.

Just because she was pretty, prettier than most, she was tired of men looking at her, as if there was something wrong with her, when she didn't return their unwanted attention and unsolicited affection. She was tired of being treated as an object. She was a woman, not a thing.

"You're such a pretty, little thing, aren't you?"

Not so little, at 5'9" tall and taller, when wearing her cowgirl boots and cowgirl hat, she was taller than most men.

"And you're such an asshole, aren't you?"

Weary of being called stuck up, she was tired of men asking her out and her declining. She was tired of the looks that some men gave her, when wondering if she was lesbian, just because she declined their invitation. It would be easier if she could live her life in the way that she wanted to live it, but she was a prisoner to her secret.

She hated to be one of the few students who lived here on campus in the dorm during the summer because they couldn't afford to go home or had no home to go to, even if they had the money for roundtrip airfare. Too many of the students, who attended school here, had money. There was a large Asian, Indian, and Middle Eastern population of students and they all went home or traveled Europe for the summers. Even if she had the money for the airfare, she wouldn't go home. There was nothing for her there but the heartache of disappointed expectations her parents put on her and the headaches from the arguments in refusing to be molded in the image of her sister and her mother.

Her parents were proud of her older sister, Michele, and the grandchild she gave them, after she married the biggest catch in the county. When they weren't talking about her and that damn kid, as if he was baby Jesus, they were bragging about her younger brother, Wayne, for winning a football scholarship to Ohio State. No doubt, with his talent and size, so long as he doesn't get hurt or do something stupid, he'll be turning pro. Then, watching him play every Sunday on TV, they'll be no stopping her Daddy from idolizing his son.

The middle child, she was left out in the cold and they humored her, when she wanted to go off to college and get an education, instead of getting married and popping out babies. Living in the past in their small town and in their small minds, this isn't the 19th century, where women sacrificed their lives for the betterment of a man. Her parents never showered her with the attention and the affection that they gave Michele and Wayne. Obviously, Michele was her mother's favorite and, of course, living vicariously through his son, Wayne was her Daddy's pride and joy.

What about her? Where was their pride and their joy for her? She wasn't a bad daughter, she was a good daughter, but she was never the apple of her mother's eye nor daddy's little girl. After winning a few beauty contests, she even had a brief modeling career, something both her parents forced her to do and encouraged her to continue. This was Texas, after all, the land of the tall, blonde, and built beauty queens, but she drew the line at learning to twirl a baton and riding a float wearing a gown and a crown. She hated how men acted when they were around her, undressing her with their eyes and talking in innuendoes, but she made enough money modeling to come east and live without having to work through the summers.

Always making the best grades in school, she had her pick of colleges to choose from, Brown, Yale, Harvard, Penn State, and Dartmouth all made their interest known to her, but she picked Tufts University. That was the only school that had a veterinary school of medicine, something that interested her. She loved animals, especially dogs, cats, and horses. Animals accepted her without question and, more importantly, without judgment. For sure, her sexual secret and lifestyle choice was safe around animals.

Her parents were disappointed that she didn't choose Harvard, an understatement. They couldn't believe she turned down Harvard for Tufts University. They never heard of the school, but many educators and educated people knew it to be a top university.

Had she gone to Harvard, that would have given her parents something to brag about her to their friends and relatives in Texas. Only, Harvard didn't put any money on the table, in the way that Tufts University stepped forward and offered her a full scholarship, including room and board. Obviously, with their huge endowment, Harvard didn't have to pay students to attend their school; they had enough rich students paying their own way.

With Cambridge and Boston a short subway ride away, there was always something to do and someplace to go, so long as it included copious amounts of alcohol but, after nearly being raped, she didn't want to go it alone anymore. She was tired of being alone. Without doubt, in the way that she looked, she could have the pick of any man she wanted. Only, it wasn't a man that excited her; it was a woman.

One by one, she watched her roommates leave, then her dormitory mates disappear. If she thought she was lonely before, the few students left on campus made her feel even more alone. Just as the university started looking more like a ghost town than a campus, she saw a familiar face outside her room in the corridor.

"Hi, Donna," she said to the woman, who roomed across the hall.

Janice knew her to chat with her, but never really talked to her. They shared a couple of classes, but never hung out together. Donna was one of the rich girls and she lived a different lifestyle and associated with a different group of people.

It was odd that she was one of the few women that had never appeared in one of her sexual fantasies and by the looks of her now, she should have. She looked hot in her cool, short, strapless summer dress. Maybe later, when she found herself alone with her hand down her panties, she'd think of Donna eating her pussy but for now, it was good to have someone to occupy her time and allay her boredom.

"Still here, Janice? I figured with your looks you'd be traveling Europe with some millionaire playboy and sipping champagne aboard a yacht docked off the coast of the French Rivera."

"I wish. Fat chance of that ever happening," said Janice with a laugh.

"Are you staying here for the summer?" Donna gave her a look of distain, as if the caviar on her plate had gone bad or the champagne in her glass had gone flat.

"Yeah, I don't get along with my folks and, even if I did, I can't afford the airfare there and back," she said admiring Donna's expensive looking shoes. She had beautiful clothes, nothing but the best. Donna's designer handbag cost more than Janice's entire wardrobe, no doubt. "What are you still doing here?"