Two Sided Coins

The phrase "both sides of the coin" seems to come up a lot with me. It came up in Updates/Desires, in my first Lesbian/Bisexual post years ago, in my very first post here.

I am two sides to the story, I am two points of view - so much so, that sometimes it feels like I'm two people. I'm butch and femme, gentle and fierce, hardworking and lazy, kind and mean, ugly and beautiful, educated and gullible, elegant and clumsy. I am pro-troops and anti-war, pro-charity and yet I don't give, pro-women's rights yet still uncomfortable with high abortion rates, a lover of art with no talent or background, a musician too scared to play, a writer - published - who now can't undertake anything more than a blog.

I am an amalgamation of people. So many paradoxical ideas - all living and breathing and trying to coexist inside one body. Over the course of this blog, some of you who have been with me since the beginning have seen me search for who I am and what my box is. I don't fit in a box.

But maybe I went searching for my box the wrong way. I went searching for everything I wanted to be, so confused, so naive and drowning in a world of terms and relationships that I didn't understand. Not once did I ask myself what I wanted. Not once did I ask myself what I needed. So caught up in figuring out what was wrong with me, I just assumed that anyone I fell in love with would be perfect, would be right.

And to some extent, every girl is perfect. Every girl fits some piece of me, some part that longs to blossom into life and is nurtured along by her and I can be happy with her. But not every girl can understand that I see through a fractured crystal of a lens, and all the fragments blink back eighteen different images rather than the solitary one an average person sees.

Maybe if I'd asked myself what I need in a relationship, the compassion, the giving heart, the fiery spirit, the conviction, and maybe the ability to see or understand how I see the world, I would have found myself sooner. Would have realized that instead of trying to fit into the butch/femme dynamic, I live both inside and above it - like an umbrella, understanding what lies beneath but ultimately too much and too widely spread to say I belong.

Both sides of a coin.

Here's your Christmas Present: The erotic tales of Caci and Natalie beginning and conclusion on Rainbow Sprinkles ;) You're Welcome! 


This just seems to fit all the themes going on my head this week, and when I wrote this post it ended up getting stuck in my head.

Hot Mess/Comfortable

It's weird, going back so far in time and maturity to write my first:girl series. It's hard to get back into that head space where I was so young, awkward, naive, unsure, uneducated. It's hard not to cringe at the moments when I didn't know what it meant to be "butch" or what the Stonewall Riots were. I've had to delve into old journals to remember what I was thinking during that time, even though some exchanges are burned so clearly into my memory. Proof reading my first:girl series was like watching a video tape of someone else drowning. I want to swim out and help me, but I know I can't. I'm not there anymore. I had to learn to sink or swim on my own.

Even looking back on my first posts here, not nearly as far back as my love story, I was all over the place. I was a big, hot, lesbian mess, trying to fit myself into any box I could find. I'm so glad I found these beautiful safe spaces which helped me grow. Places like Sugarbutch, CCL, Dorothy Surrenders, and Alphafemme, with real authors, honest people who shared their experiences and their lives with me so that I might grow and learn. I can't thank them enough, especially Sinclair over at Sugarbutch, for the impact they've had on making me feel safe and like I wasn't alone on this journey.

But I have become someone extraordinarily different from who I was back then. I am confident, self-assured. I know what I need from a relationship and how to get it. I know how to give love, how to accept it, and how to walk away when I'm not going to get it. I am a sane, competent individual who understands different types of relationships, differing needs and wants and paradigms. I am someone who can stand my ground and hold my own beliefs without needing to blind myself to the opinions of those around me. I am no longer spectrum banging, but comfortable in the person I've settled into. That's not to say I don't shake things up occasionally, but everything is essentially me. I can also still be a hot mess when I'm running late for work and haven't done laundry or gone to the market and forget to comb my hair when I get out of the shower and look like Jane Porter (this is a chance for you to show me that you read).

I hope that you, wherever you are on your journey, in the closet or out for years, can come upon this feeling. That someday, you can stop chasing down and looking for who you really are, because you are comfortable in yourself. All that running is exhausting, and knowing the basics of who you are and what you want is really enjoyable.

Day 20 Heartbreak

30 Day Letter Challenge

Day 20 — The one that broke your heart the hardest

Sorry, guys, you know what this is going to be. I think it's about time you got the back story on first:girl. It's going to read kind of like a story, so, this should be fun. Because isn't heartbreak always?

Okay, going back into this, years ago, you need to know who I was.

You have to understand, going back in time, that I had questioned my sexuality for years but was only just beginning to act on it.  No one had ever expected me to be anything other than very straight, and very young. While I was smart, my social sense was underdeveloped. I was a social butterfly who didn't understand the games people played, a naive girl who believed in rainbows and acceptance and "true love conquers all."  I had just gone through a very confusing year, and the start to my summer hadn't exactly gone as planned (see Awakening) when I was totally rejected the first time I asked a girl on a date.

The second half of my summer started to look up when I got hit with a bolt of lightning at work one day.   

She was absolutely everything I ever wanted but never knew I could have.

I'm posting all parts of my first:girl story over at tabbyqt.wordpress.com 
They are password protected, but just tweet me @tabbyqt or email me at tabbyqt@hotmail.com and I'll send you the password, no questions asked.

Gay is Definite

I'm gay.

With all the labels and all the struggles- trying to find a term that fits everything I am, only one word seems to encompass it all.  Queer, femme, butch, lesbian, woman, genderqueer, genderfuck, and dyke have all been tried on with varying degrees of success. Each one felt like a plaster mold into which I was pouring and conforming myself to meet its definition.

When I stopped writing over these past two years, I stopped trying on words, frantically, as if they were outfits five minutes before a date. I took my time and slowed things down. I came out to my family. Coming out to strangers had been no problem in the past, but my uber-religious family was scary. Turns out I didn't have much to be frightened of. But in the time that I stopped searching for words to mold myself into, I found the word that molded itself to me.

Gay.

Such a simple, unhindered word, traditionally used for the male sex, but that doesn't hang me up. People understand it immediately. Unlike other terms which begin a lengthy discussion of who I am and what I identify as (don't get me wrong, I love lengthy discussions, but not every time) the term "gay" is very quickly grasped. 

To be gay in society has a certain connotation.  Gay is not a phase, not something to be outgrown or moved past with "the right person." Gay is not a lifestyle choice. Gay is unchanging; gay is forever.

Gay is definite.

Everyone has a word they feel most comfortable with, and when they say those words with pride, when they announce to the world, "I identify as genderqueer," or "I'm a femme," it gives that person strength, power, joy- a sense of self and confidence.

But for me, each time I tried to label myself, the words rang false. Instead of joy and pride, I felt an emptiness and a longing.  Until now, when people ask, and I can simply say, "I'm gay," and it makes me smile. If it's with a random passerby, the inevitable question thereafter is, "so are you butch or is your girlfriend?" because a lot of people still believe all lesbian relationships are butch/femme.

"I'm just gay," I laugh, and who cares if they're confused. It's my word, and the freedom attached to it has never felt so good.

Awakening

I dated boys for many years.  It started when I was 12.  When I was 13 I was dating a 16 year old, but he was my best friend, and very gay.  He was the best boyfriend I've ever had.  When I was 14, I had a "friend with benefits" open my eyes to the underbelly of the internet that the school had blocked.  Oh my God, girls could do that?  To each other? Obviously, he found it hot, but I don't think he expected it to turn me on so much.  Whatever got me in the mood, though, so he soothed me, convinced me it was absolutely normal for straight girls to feel aroused by it as he palmed his way under my shirt.

I will be forever grateful to him for showing me the true use of computers. 

However, it was with this way of thinking that I spent my high school years.  I was in unsatisfactory relationships, seeking adrenaline rushes, boyfriends, affairs, and taboos to feed this sexual void in me.  I couldn't figure out what was missing.  And then I slowly began to wake up.

m:2, we'll call her Mary, was my first girl crush that had me thinking sexual thoughts. I was in year 12, so ready to be done with high school, and she was a grade below myself. She had curly black hair (do you see a trend?) that was always in a ponytail, and a huge silver guitar for a belt buckle. She rocked out on it with headphones over her ears like she was practicing for a garage band.  She wore jeans and pullovers and the skater sneakers that make your feet look huge.

She was funny. She had a dry humor, a sarcastic wit, and her responses were lightning fast. Her brown eyes could swallow you. She never really smiled -it was always more of a half smirk, but that fit her perfectly.

At the time, I was convinced that I did not have a crush on her. Me? Gay? No way. I went to school with lesbians, I was friends with lesbians, I was part of the GSA. I'd heard them all talk, when you're gay you know it all the way from when you're a kid.

I remember the first time Mary hugged me. There was skin to skin contact and it was a long time before I let her go. No boy had ever made me want to hug him like that. She smelled wonderful and her body fit along mine like we were two halves of the same whole. I fantasized about hugging her, kissing her, seeing her without her sweatshirt. We went on this school trip and stayed at a hotel, and when we all went swimming she had the most amazing body. Her arms were like woah. But of course that didn't mean that I was gay. As my feelings grew I passed them off as a fluke, a one time thing with just one girl. It helped that Mary wasn't gay, so what was the point of trying to talk to her about it?

I graduated, and found out two months later that she came out and was identifying strongly as a butch lesbian. Way to go, me.

I started college that fall. Again, I found myself crushing on a girl. Luckily, m:3 (I'm realizing that I like a lot of girls whose names start with M) was not the girl I was sharing a room with. My roommate and I got along well enough. m:3 had the room next to ours, and she was something else. She was slightly taller than me and much curvier. She was gorgeous. We traded clothes, dresses, makeup. We hugged all the time or snuggled on the couch together under a blanket watching TV. She would curl into my arms and beg me to play with her hair and it was so long and beautiful and felt like silk between my fingers. We sometimes cuddled and fell asleep in the same bed or on the couch, but she was firmly straight, so I couldn't possibly think of her that way at all.

We started having crushes on the same guy, and I realized that I was jealous. I didn't want them to date because then she wouldn't be spending time with me or cuddling with me. I never had dreams about kissing her, never thought of having sex with her, but I craved skin to skin contact. She was so soft, so smooth, so warm that I snuggled up to her like a cat. I was happy just being next to her, sleeping beside her.

I went nine months in silence, not thinking that I liked her in a lesbian way, but I knew something about my feelings for her was different. She graduated and moved away after I let my jealousy get the better of me.  She refused to speak to me and I was crushed.  Soon after, the summer of my life stormed in like a hurricane.

It began with Patty: she was a very short, curvy thing with gorgeous black hair and dark eyes. She had an attitude that was so strong, confident, sexy. I couldn't take my eyes off her. After m:3, I was a little wary about all of my wonky feelings around girls and I wasn't about to get heartbroken again. I befriended Patty quickly during our shifts together at work, and her laugh was extraordinary. She taunted boys and girls both with her bountiful assets, but I couldn't get a read on her. Would she be offended if I asked her out?

She was constantly teasing the lesbian girl who worked with us. I knew her vaguely- she had been infatuated with m:3 and made her extremely uncomfortable, but Patty didn't seem so uncomfortable, so maybe she'd be open to the idea.  I remembered that m:3 was no longer talking to me and I decided I'd be damned if I let another girl slip away.

We were joking one day at work and I tried to be casual about it. "So, Patty, you want to go out on a date sometime?"

"Tabby, you're such a charmer!" she laughed. "Ran out of cute guys to ask?"

"You're prettier than they are," I threw out the compliment unabashedly, but she laughed and took a sip of her water. "God, I wish more people were as sweet as you," she said and walked out.

I sighed and leaned my head back against the wall. She thought I was joking.   She thought I was super sweet, which was great, but also that I was straight and joking.

That night I went out to a party, got drunk, and made out with a boy. It was wholly unsatisfying. The next week, Patty began dating the lesbian girl from work. Shit.

Derailed/Spectrum

It's been a while since I've really written about sexuality and gender theory. It seems that somewhere during the holidays I became very self involved and only wrote my personal issues, which was not how this blog was intended to be. Yes, it is about me, but it is about me exploring my sexuality and becoming more acquainted with the LGBTQ community and issues.

I'll admit I have been overwhelmed by the term "spectrum banging" (Yes, Mr. Sexsmith, I blame this piece of enlightenment on you). A few years ago, I had big boobs (which I emphasized all the time), long (blonde) hair, never left the house without mascara, equally loved jeans, blouses, and dresses. I liked to play dress up, and I loved to use my body to entice classmates into having dirty thoughts. I liked feeling sexy, liked feeling used (Read:CoDa).

Then, after I found out first:girl was not in fact falling madly in love with me as I was with her, I explored different ways of being. I started spectrum banging, which I'm just starting to figure out was a huge part of my underlying identity struggle. Since the me I was wasn't cutting it for first:girl, I did everything differently. I cut off all my hair, dyed it back to its natural brown, stopped wearing makeup, wore jeans and wifebeaters, never wore jewelry, and made myself as masculine as I could (without binding). That's when I started reading SugarButch, and found a piece of myself in his writing. That is when butch started feeling sexy. I found my love for femmes, and the deep traits of chivalry and respect. After reading for months, I then started to feel sexy and butch without needing the physical appearance, but it still just didn't fit. I think it was because I wasn't doing it for me. I was doing whatever I thought would get first:girl back. I tried this for so long. A year, maybe more? That didn't work either. She still didn't want me, and I was tired of trying so hard.

That's when my old habits started creeping back in. I still had short hair, but now I spent time on it, curled it, straightened it, wore a beret, whatever. I started wearing mascara every day, bought new skinny jeans and two pairs of converse to go with my shirts and tank tops.


During this blog, which has not been running for very long, you have seen me swing from one side of the spectrum to the other within days. I went from wondering if I was butch or femme, to wondering if maybe I should be ftm, to being full on femme for a week.

My hair has grown out to my shoulders now, I wear makeup when I know I'm leaving the house, and occasionally I'll wear a bra, or something that highlights my breasts. I'm not femme, but am definitely more on the feminine side of the spectrum. Do I still have butch days? Occasionally. Maybe more soft butch, or just butch in manner rather than appearance.

I can't say that I'm done spectrum banging, but I can say that I'm finally more comfortable in the middle, at least for a little while. For now I can be a homogeneous mix of the two ends. And wouldn't you know it, I feel a lot like I did before first:girl came along. I still can't tell if that's a good thing or a bad thing yet. Feeling like I did back then makes me uneasy. It makes me feel (and I'm embarrassed to admit it) less gay. Maybe when I started to change myself for first:girl, I also started to change myself to feel more gay, because (of course) being gay should feel different. That should be a load of crock, but it's ingrained in me to feel that way: that straight!me and gay!me should feel differently.

I'm still waiting for that unease to go away.

Homework/Discovery

I decided to write a separate post for this, because whilst the other one is somewhat whiny, this is about discovery, and the need to separate those two topics is bred deep within me.

Sinclair posted about the homework which she gives to Kristen, which in turn sparked Alphafemme's different kind of homework (which I think is truly brilliant).

I decided to jump on the bandwagon and discover what I feel most comfortable with about my sexuality. I feel like the only way I will ever grow and discover what I like is to push myself. This week's topics were femininity and self appreciation. I was walking around my room undressing to put on pajamas, when I caught a glimpse of myself in my full length mirror. The light on my nightstand was on, and it cast shadows across my body that hypnotized me and stopped me where I stood.

I've never been very proud of my body, never loved it for what it is, but just then I was enamored. I was caught up in the curve of my hips, the slope of my breasts, the shape of my tummy, the length of my legs, the strength of my calves. For the first time I felt how soft my skin was, felt the thickness of my hair, the silkiness of my neck, the satin feel of my shoulder blades.

I realized how perfectly my ass is shaped, how my ankles invite the brush of a finger, how the dimples in the small of my back invoke happiness and sweet memories, how the curve of my back begs to be cupped, how my spine is slightly crooked and juts out from my skin like a message in braille, showing the reader a map of my body. I noticed my jawline, the softness of my figure, the way my nipples respond to touch and how hard my stomach muscles are underneath all the cushion.

For the first time, I drank myself in in the half light, excited by what I saw, delighted in who I was and what I looked like.

This sparked in me the need to take care of myself. The need to pamper myself and rejoice in the beauty of my own body. It was enough to bring out the coconut butter that I used to adore, enough to make sure I used lotion under my makeup and put on an extra coat of mascara. From this spark and the aforementioned posts about homework, I decided to assign some for myself.

I wanted to be high femme for a week. I spent half an hour curling my hair every day. I bought new lipstick, eyeliner, mascara, and used them religiously. I wore earrings again, and a necklace that spoke to me with simple elegance and quiet beauty. I wore high heels and dresses, and everything matched. I brought coats out of hiding and coordinated them with my outfits. I wore underwear that made me feel sexy, and I didn't wear bras, which also made me feel sexy.

While it did take up more time in my morning routine, I rather enjoy the feeling of primping for myself. Of feeling sexy for myself.

While I won't go into detail for fear of revealing way more that you wanted to know, I finally had an orgasm. Talk about being excited about the prospect of sex all over again. Now that I know that I can at least give myself one, the possibilities of sex are now even more appealing than they used to be. It may not become a common occurrence, but to know that at least I can, at least I won't go my whole life without one, it's kind of a relief. I don't expect it to happen again anytime soon but...here's to hoping, yeah?

I feel like maybe I need to push myself to the butch extreme to figure out what I like about each and find a happy balance, but I'm enjoying the femme side so much that I don't want to let it go yet, even though I know I don't want to keep it up forever.

What are other ways I can push myself in this area? What do you consider as feminine qualities that I should experience?

Ignoring/Holidays

So, every time I try to write about first:girl, I have a major block that won't allow me to write anything at all. Therefore, I just feel like I should not try to write about her for a while, until I can really get a handle on things.

I realized, through lesbo's comment, that I have never really talked about schooling before, which is kind of a big topic for me.

I am an alumni of a performing arts college, but have recently decided to give up that career path in favor of something else. I was never really a great singer/actor/dancer and I also rather enjoy watching other people perform instead of doing it myself.

That being said, I made the career switch to journalism. I would love to be a theater/art/dance/literature critic, as well as articles about society's positive/negative impact, gender studies, queer theory, etc. Anything I can write about, I want to write about. My major is Journalism, and I'm hoping to minor in gender studies or psychology. Or maybe something else I've never thought of! Let me know if you have a suggestion that I should look into!

In other news, the holidays are approaching quickly, and this is the first year that I've been single and aware that I'm a lesbian. I know that I don't do well with men. I don't trust them, I don't like to be sexual with them, and I don't really like to be in relationships with them.

However, I've had a few guys who were more than happy to chat me up and be suggestive with me this past week, and I have been so lonely that I honestly thought about making out with one of them. I haven't been physical with someone in so long that the thought of kissing anyone is somewhat appealing.

This, of course, has thrown me into a tizzy. Does it mean I'm not gay? Does it mean I'm bi, does it mean I'm straight, does it mean that relationships with men may now work out because I fantasized kissing one of them? Does it mean I still love girls but am lonely?Do I even care what label I am anymore? It won't make life any easier for me once I've found a label for myself. And who is really going to come up to me at a bar and ask me to identify myself before she'll chat with me?

I had this thought the other day that maybe I want to date girls because I was so in love with first:girl that I'm trying to find her clone. Then, of course, I remembered that I liked girls before she came along.

I think it's just hard to be lonely.

Femme Headbands/Gender Quotes

I watched "12 Men of Christmas" last night. Make fun of me all you want, but gay or straight I still like romantic comedies. Anyway, the movie takes place in a small town in Montana which has a total of 19,000 people.

My town has 5,000. Talk about a realization there. I hadn't really thought about my town as small, mostly because we have a lot of tourists flitting in and out. However, when it comes down to it, the people who are here for more than a few hours are sheltered, religious, not-queer people. This makes finding people I connect with (much less date) very difficult.

I saw this gorgeous woman in the parking lot today, and I wanted to go chat her up. She looked dressed up, like she was going out to dinner in a place where you didn't have to be fancy but you dress up because it's the only chance you get. It was the headband that threw me off. She looked sensational in her skinny jeans, high heels, and trendy black double-breasted coat, but she had her hair back with this cute cloth looking cream-yellow headband that did not go with the rest of the outfit. It doesn't really matter to me whether the headband matched at all, but it just stopped me in my tracks with it's little girl look. It punched me in the stomach and set up a big neon sign that said "She's totally straight, not your type, and will never date you." So I just kept walking to my car.

For all you lovely ladies out there, how do you feel about headbands without a dress? For some reason it seemed girlish with normal clothes, rather than when it's paired with a retro dress and is sassy. That, however, is only my opinion.

The other thing I ran across today was Genderfork. Which is made up of anonymous quotes sent into the website. I identified with so many of them and just wanted to share a few that really struck me.

"I've learned enough about gender to be utterly confused by the term."

"I love letting the top of my boxers show above the waist of my sari."

"I've come to realize that I don't feel like a lesbian- I feel like a female-bodied-androgynous-male-who-likes-girls."

"I don't mind people treating me like a lady, as long as they don't mind me acting like a gentleman."

"When I tell people I'm 5% male, 5% female & 90% genderless, they seem to forget one very important thing: I'm also 100% human"

"Kids get it. They dont care what I am. They just like it when I play with them. I wish adults could be more like that."

"How can I fuck with my gender more if I am a "str8-looking" lesbian and feel most comfortable that way?"

The bold/italicized ones are the ones I personally identify with. Do you have any gender/sexuality quotes that you identify with and want to share?

Lost my Identity

The Butch/Femme dichotomy. The perfect relationship. The give and take between two fierce personalities, two extreme forms of beauty.
 

Why don’t I fit in?

When I realized what was going on with me, I read Mr. Sexsmith’s blog, and it made so much sense. I understood the struggle of power, the need to find my own identity, the love of topping, the admiration of femmes. But I’m not butch. I feel like a gentleman sometimes; I love to pay for dinner, open doors, pull out chairs for the beautiful woman who has my eye. However, if I am with a more emotionally masculine or dominant woman, I love to play to her longings, let her pull out my chair for me or tuck a stray hair into place. I love to catch her eye from under my lashes and make her feel powerful. 

On the superficial scale of butch and femme, I believe I don’t look good enough to go out of the house without mascara, even if I don’t put anything else on. However, I also hate dresses, wear heels only when necessary, and I don't like lipstick.

I want to fit into this beautiful power play. I want to be a part of this gender society where your partner helps your identity along and the power exchange is intense. Where you feel butch because of the way her body melts in your hands and her fingers flex against your back as you enter her. Where you feel feminine because of the way she protects you, the way she envelopes you and makes it safe to be fragile. 

I think it would help if I had sex. With somebody. Anybody. I always thought that when people figure out they are gay they experiment, they have relationships, they have sex, they figure out what they want in the sexual aspect of the relationship. Top, bottom, dom, sub, switch, whatever.

It seems all I do is fall hard for women who don’t want me for one reason or another. I’m a floundering baby dyke in a world where no one believes I’m gay because I’ve never had sex or a relationship. How does a girl who has never had a relationship with a man know that they are straight? Because of who they fall in love with, right?

I’m gay. I’m just a fish out of water. I am an inexperienced 13 year old surrounded by women who have gone through hell and heartbreak.

I am so out of my league here.