Stories of Addiction #2: LL, the Latent Lesbian
When I started my freshman year of college, I had been having sex for less than three months. Like any other teenager, I'd been desperate to lose my virginity. And once I had my first taste, I was all the more obsessed with it. Of course, at the time I would never have thought to associate this compulsive behavior with that of people who start drinking heavily after having their first taste. To make it easier, I was living in the dorms even though I only lived 15 minutes from the school. I wanted to have easier access to the libraries and labs, but it also meant I had space away from the family for easier breaking of commandments.
Into this potential den of iniquity came LL, willingly and eagerly.
There were things about LL that could have easily derailed our potential relationship. First and foremost, we had been friends for 3 years in middle school, then lost touch when we went to different high schools. We ran into each other on campus, but of course the initial impression was to pick up the friendship where it left off. From my point of view, we were just going to be friends.
See, the biggest hurdle was race. Oklahoma isn't the deep south, mind you, but even on a liberal arts campus interracial relationships could get you roughed up. I wasn't thinking about this at first, because I had no idea what she was getting at that night she came to my dorm room. We had talked on the phone a lot for a few weeks (neither of us were making friends as fast as we'd hoped, so a familiar voice became more and more refreshing), and one night she just asked to come over. Something she wanted to talk about, but not on the phone.
She came over, and we talked. I don't remember the words, I just remember thinking that I wasn't hearing what I thought I was hearing: I could swear she was saying, outright, that she was really attracted to me and wanted to have sex with me. Right then. No way I heard that right. Then she kissed me. Again, harder, and not even I was slow enough to miss the message being sent.
With the lovers in my memory, I always remember the first time the clearest. This time, this person, is no exception. I remember how the beds were aligned in that dorm room, I remember turning the light over the bed off. I remember the first feeling of her hand taking hold of my erection through my jeans. Most of all, I remember the first taste of her skin, I remember thinking that there was a difference in the texture from my previous lovers. Looking back, I doubt that was really the case. It was almost certainly my brain playing tricks on me, something that came along for the ride with the fascination of making love to someone who wasn't white and suburban.
To understand, I have to go back roughly ten years or so. I was living with my mother at the time. We were watching a Miss America pageant, in which Jayne Kennedy was doing color commentary. My mother's boyfriend at the time made a comment, either about Kennedy or about a black contestant. Me, in my grand ignorance, asked why he could find this person attractive when she was black and he wasn't. He looked at me, and to this day I believe he was dumbstruck at my naïvety. So he gently explained that beauty is not limited to one color or the other. From that point forward, I was fascinated by all races and colors.
About 7 years later, I met a really attractive black girl through friends of friends and made a clumsy pass, trying for a kiss. The following (high school) football season, I ran into her again, and got mercilessly teased by a group of her (black) friends. So I was more than a little gun-shy when LL came to me that night. But I was also really attracted to her. And, I'm not proud to admit, I was attracted to the novelty of being with a black woman.
So, back to the college scene. We saw each other a few times over the next month or so, which took us to the end of the semester, and winter break. Over the break, I got a Christmas card from her. In it, she said that she wanted to know what the nature of the relationship was. But I was too scared to actually let there be a relationship. My family was too old-fashioned, I could never have brought her home.
Here's where addiction seeps in. And by addiction, I'm pretty sure I can safely point to the both of us.
I didn't hear from her for months. I went by her dorm room once, only to find a small group of her friends who were very terse with the unknown white boy looking for LL. Eventually, I did hear from her. She asked to come over, and we had sex again. A few weeks ago, the same. That time, I could tell she had been drinking. A better person wouldn't have taken advantage of the situation, but I didn't really hesitate.
Well, that's not entirely true. See, I had tried once or twice to call her up and get together. Always, she was unable to come over for some reason or other. But when she was in the mood, I was wise-enough to make time. But because of this, I had learned to let her initiate things. If I got too eager, she would lose her nerve. So always, we made small talk until she built up the nerve to go in for the first kiss of the encounter. (Later, after getting a nice bathrobe as a gift, I took to wearing it when she arrived in order to make for, ehh, easier access.)
Towards the end of my freshman year, I started dating someone. I was with her for just about a year. During that time, I wasn't with LL because of that (I did eventually cheat on that person, but not with LL). That relationship ended towards the end of my sophomore year, which was also when I moved into my first apartment. Shortly after, I started getting calls from LL again.
By this time, LL was engaged to someone (someone I never met), also a white man. I assumed that this meant the end of our dalliances, but I was wrong. She would still call every few months, sometimes tipsy. And I never said no. LL was one of the most passionate lovers I've had. I just never had the will to say no to her. I even learned later that our first time together had been her first time, period. I wistfully wonder if the reason she seemed like such a perfect lover to me, was that I was involved in shaping her views on sex.
LL never mentioned having feelings for other women, until the very last time we were together. I was at her apartment (one of the exceedingly rare times that we weren't at my place), and noticed that she had some Penthouse Letters issues. I teased her, and she confessed that they (she and the fiancé) had them for the stories about threesomes with other women. They were thinking about pursuing that. That fueled my fire, and we turned to other subjects. You generally don't know when the time you make love to someone is going to be the last time. I didn't then, and I don't know if she did or not. But it was really intense, either from her knowledge (subconscious or otherwise) or from my novelty of being at her place. Whatever the reason, it was amazing. She was more responsive than I expected. It was hot, early summer in Oklahoma in an apartment with no air-conditioning. We both sweated a lot that time, and as last times go, I'm glad I have it to look back on.
We graduated that year, and within the next year I had moved to Colorado. A few years later (around 1995 or so), the WWW had started getting big enough to look for people and have a fair chance of finding something about them. I tried this with LL, and found she had finished her Ph.D and was teaching at a small midwestern college. We e-mailed some off and on, but she was married at this point (and several thousand miles away), and I made no effort to rekindle old flames. She had a personal web page, and I noticed that she had a rainbow flag on the page, and some links to local-area gay/lesbian resources. But she was still married, so I assumed it was just a diversity thing. We lost touch again, and I moved to California.
A few years ago, I tried searching again in the golden age of Google. I found that she'd moved to the southwest, teaching at a different school. I wrote again. I learned that she had come out some years earlier. A friend set her up with someone, and they had been together ever since. They were happily partnered together, living a nice white-picket-fence suburban life. I don't know if things would have been different, had I really told her how I felt after getting that Christmas card. If we had actually started a relationship, would we have gone on to marry? Would she still have come out and divorced me, as she had the man she married?
Sexual identity is a lot more fluid than most people want to admit. As someone who's floated around the bisexual scene but really prefers the opposite sex most of the time, I know that tastes can change over time. Maybe she is truly lesbian, but I suspect she's bisexual and just truly happy with her current partner. I've known several latent homosexuals who were desperate to prove (to themselves) that they were straight by having lots of straight sex. Maybe that was what she did. But she didn't carry with her the air of desperation that the others I knew were drenched in. I can't judge, and I won't. I just wish her well.
Looking back, I know I was clearly addicted to having sex, and especially to having sex with her. (Any guy would have been.) But I also wonder if there wasn't something there on her side, too. Something that kept her coming back to me every few months. Addiction? Denial? A little of both, maybe, in that I probably knew her errogenous zones better than anyone else at the time? I miss her, still.
Dausa
Into this potential den of iniquity came LL, willingly and eagerly.
There were things about LL that could have easily derailed our potential relationship. First and foremost, we had been friends for 3 years in middle school, then lost touch when we went to different high schools. We ran into each other on campus, but of course the initial impression was to pick up the friendship where it left off. From my point of view, we were just going to be friends.
See, the biggest hurdle was race. Oklahoma isn't the deep south, mind you, but even on a liberal arts campus interracial relationships could get you roughed up. I wasn't thinking about this at first, because I had no idea what she was getting at that night she came to my dorm room. We had talked on the phone a lot for a few weeks (neither of us were making friends as fast as we'd hoped, so a familiar voice became more and more refreshing), and one night she just asked to come over. Something she wanted to talk about, but not on the phone.
She came over, and we talked. I don't remember the words, I just remember thinking that I wasn't hearing what I thought I was hearing: I could swear she was saying, outright, that she was really attracted to me and wanted to have sex with me. Right then. No way I heard that right. Then she kissed me. Again, harder, and not even I was slow enough to miss the message being sent.
With the lovers in my memory, I always remember the first time the clearest. This time, this person, is no exception. I remember how the beds were aligned in that dorm room, I remember turning the light over the bed off. I remember the first feeling of her hand taking hold of my erection through my jeans. Most of all, I remember the first taste of her skin, I remember thinking that there was a difference in the texture from my previous lovers. Looking back, I doubt that was really the case. It was almost certainly my brain playing tricks on me, something that came along for the ride with the fascination of making love to someone who wasn't white and suburban.
To understand, I have to go back roughly ten years or so. I was living with my mother at the time. We were watching a Miss America pageant, in which Jayne Kennedy was doing color commentary. My mother's boyfriend at the time made a comment, either about Kennedy or about a black contestant. Me, in my grand ignorance, asked why he could find this person attractive when she was black and he wasn't. He looked at me, and to this day I believe he was dumbstruck at my naïvety. So he gently explained that beauty is not limited to one color or the other. From that point forward, I was fascinated by all races and colors.
About 7 years later, I met a really attractive black girl through friends of friends and made a clumsy pass, trying for a kiss. The following (high school) football season, I ran into her again, and got mercilessly teased by a group of her (black) friends. So I was more than a little gun-shy when LL came to me that night. But I was also really attracted to her. And, I'm not proud to admit, I was attracted to the novelty of being with a black woman.
So, back to the college scene. We saw each other a few times over the next month or so, which took us to the end of the semester, and winter break. Over the break, I got a Christmas card from her. In it, she said that she wanted to know what the nature of the relationship was. But I was too scared to actually let there be a relationship. My family was too old-fashioned, I could never have brought her home.
Here's where addiction seeps in. And by addiction, I'm pretty sure I can safely point to the both of us.
I didn't hear from her for months. I went by her dorm room once, only to find a small group of her friends who were very terse with the unknown white boy looking for LL. Eventually, I did hear from her. She asked to come over, and we had sex again. A few weeks ago, the same. That time, I could tell she had been drinking. A better person wouldn't have taken advantage of the situation, but I didn't really hesitate.
Well, that's not entirely true. See, I had tried once or twice to call her up and get together. Always, she was unable to come over for some reason or other. But when she was in the mood, I was wise-enough to make time. But because of this, I had learned to let her initiate things. If I got too eager, she would lose her nerve. So always, we made small talk until she built up the nerve to go in for the first kiss of the encounter. (Later, after getting a nice bathrobe as a gift, I took to wearing it when she arrived in order to make for, ehh, easier access.)
Towards the end of my freshman year, I started dating someone. I was with her for just about a year. During that time, I wasn't with LL because of that (I did eventually cheat on that person, but not with LL). That relationship ended towards the end of my sophomore year, which was also when I moved into my first apartment. Shortly after, I started getting calls from LL again.
By this time, LL was engaged to someone (someone I never met), also a white man. I assumed that this meant the end of our dalliances, but I was wrong. She would still call every few months, sometimes tipsy. And I never said no. LL was one of the most passionate lovers I've had. I just never had the will to say no to her. I even learned later that our first time together had been her first time, period. I wistfully wonder if the reason she seemed like such a perfect lover to me, was that I was involved in shaping her views on sex.
LL never mentioned having feelings for other women, until the very last time we were together. I was at her apartment (one of the exceedingly rare times that we weren't at my place), and noticed that she had some Penthouse Letters issues. I teased her, and she confessed that they (she and the fiancé) had them for the stories about threesomes with other women. They were thinking about pursuing that. That fueled my fire, and we turned to other subjects. You generally don't know when the time you make love to someone is going to be the last time. I didn't then, and I don't know if she did or not. But it was really intense, either from her knowledge (subconscious or otherwise) or from my novelty of being at her place. Whatever the reason, it was amazing. She was more responsive than I expected. It was hot, early summer in Oklahoma in an apartment with no air-conditioning. We both sweated a lot that time, and as last times go, I'm glad I have it to look back on.
We graduated that year, and within the next year I had moved to Colorado. A few years later (around 1995 or so), the WWW had started getting big enough to look for people and have a fair chance of finding something about them. I tried this with LL, and found she had finished her Ph.D and was teaching at a small midwestern college. We e-mailed some off and on, but she was married at this point (and several thousand miles away), and I made no effort to rekindle old flames. She had a personal web page, and I noticed that she had a rainbow flag on the page, and some links to local-area gay/lesbian resources. But she was still married, so I assumed it was just a diversity thing. We lost touch again, and I moved to California.
A few years ago, I tried searching again in the golden age of Google. I found that she'd moved to the southwest, teaching at a different school. I wrote again. I learned that she had come out some years earlier. A friend set her up with someone, and they had been together ever since. They were happily partnered together, living a nice white-picket-fence suburban life. I don't know if things would have been different, had I really told her how I felt after getting that Christmas card. If we had actually started a relationship, would we have gone on to marry? Would she still have come out and divorced me, as she had the man she married?
Sexual identity is a lot more fluid than most people want to admit. As someone who's floated around the bisexual scene but really prefers the opposite sex most of the time, I know that tastes can change over time. Maybe she is truly lesbian, but I suspect she's bisexual and just truly happy with her current partner. I've known several latent homosexuals who were desperate to prove (to themselves) that they were straight by having lots of straight sex. Maybe that was what she did. But she didn't carry with her the air of desperation that the others I knew were drenched in. I can't judge, and I won't. I just wish her well.
Looking back, I know I was clearly addicted to having sex, and especially to having sex with her. (Any guy would have been.) But I also wonder if there wasn't something there on her side, too. Something that kept her coming back to me every few months. Addiction? Denial? A little of both, maybe, in that I probably knew her errogenous zones better than anyone else at the time? I miss her, still.
Dausa
Labels: stories-of-addiction
posted by Dausa at
11:53 PM
1 Comments:
For some, sexual orientation is often one of the hardest (and most confusing) things to define.
On a sexual level, I would be considered bisexual... I find both men and women desirable. But on a purely emotional level, I've never been able to connect with a woman. I've never struggled or felt guilty about the diversity in my sexual desires but I'm sure for some people it's a very hard thing to accept.
That was a very lovely entry. Thank you for sharing.
SD
By
SD, at Thursday, June 16, 2005 7:11:00 AM
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