Remember that movie? Well guess what: I just lived though it.
I met her last fall. Finally, I thought, a butch my age who will date me. At this point, almost no one, lesbian or not, recognises my history of femininity, including butches. I have recovered a lot from femininity, although I still don’t claim butch. It’s rarely worth correcting people though, unless they seem worth the half-hour explanation, and then three days of ‘letting it sink in’. Not that they believe me after that anyway. Honestly, it gets tiring.
We chatted online, on Skype, and by text for a month before we met. She never claimed to be feminist but got it on that level that only butches do. I had, for good reasons, developed a fear of letting things get sexual over text before meeting, but I didn’t resist when she steered it that way.
She said she had always wanted to be with dykes, as she put it, but was never able to get anyone but fems. She said she had tried for about a year to feminise to attract a butch, but no one fell for it. She still feminised in a number of ways, but as a lifelong butch, the measures she took looked ridiculous. This is a compliment.
I explained to her once that I did not identify as butch and did not want to claim it from a privileged position. She looked dumbfounded and told me gently that I certainly don’t look fem, and as far as my movements and such go, that I have ‘no grace whatsoever’. This still cracks me up.
From almost the moment we met, we couldn’t keep our hands off each other. We met with prearranged play tickets in hand and sat though a night of watching that and then having drinks with her friends. When I thought I couldn’t take any more, she texted me from across the table and said ‘I want you. Every minute we sit here is another minute I haven’t kissed you’. I will never forget that text. I had already fallen in love with her, when earlier that night, before going to the theatre, I had gone to say something quietly in her ear right when she turned her head. Our lips almost touched and, even though we had only been in each other’s physical company for less than half an hour, part of me thought ‘just go with it’. I think she thought the same thing, but then was overcome with shyness and blushed and smiled the most beautiful smile as we looked deeply into one another’s eyes. At that moment, I was done.
When she sent me that text my whole body throbbed. I can’t say ‘I would have done it right there, right on the table’, because I wouldn’t have. I wanted to be alone with her. Profoundly alone. Lost on a desert island, no chance of anyone seeing, hearing, knowing, or even picturing what I wanted to share with her. I wanted the air we breathed to be only for us. Even as I texted her back ‘meet me in the ladies’ I knew it was a shitty compromise.
As much as I enjoyed kissing her in the washroom, which was hard, passionate, and wanting-leaving, it wasn’t right. We sat through another agonising drink until her gay male friend, our charge for the night and her ride home, a three-hour drive from where I car-lessly lived, was ready to go.
Once home, we set up her friend on the sofa and she came into my room. When she approached me by the bed no further words were spoken. We began to kiss passionately and simultaneously unbuttoned and unzipped each other. What followed is not something I will describe to anyone else but was more intense than anything I have ever imagined. It is etched in my brain. I wish it weren’t.
A passionate but tumultuous relationship followed. I made the fatal yet predictable lesbian mistake of allowing her to move in with me a mere two months after meeting in the flesh. Perhaps if she hadn’t lived so far away, it would have been easier.
There are a number of butches out there who claim to want to be a with other butches (or ‘butches’ in my case – you know what I mean). Not a lot, but some. However, most can’t seem to deal with the equality. I imagine they get so used to being put in the ‘male’ role, that they might feel quite lost when that dynamic is removed. Even I struggled a bit, being mostly put in that role myself. However, I want equality, so wanted to remain aware of power dynamics being inserted, from either of us.
She lied. She lied constantly and deliberately. She lied about stuff that didn’t matter. She lied about stuff that did matter. There are things I have painfully come to know about her. One is that she hates herself. She can’t forgive her lack of femininity and the more attracted I was to her, the more she hated and resented me for it. Another is that deep down, as much as she might want to be with a butch, she views them as competition. The lying was a form of control.
She eventually betrayed me in the most traumatizing and life-altering fashion I have ever experienced. I am sorry that she can’t accept love and I’m sorry that I ever met her. As with any liar, it’s hard to know whether you miss them or the figment of your imagination you wished them to be. Either way, it hurts like hell.
