Seducing the Straight Girl: College Lesbian Roommates

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Remember that the room is just as much yours as it is theirs, and you have the right to feel comfortable in your own living space. Don’t be afraid of your roommate’s questions By this point, I was — somewhat unintentionally — quite drunk. We started making out (I was still peeing) and almost right away, I began writing a goofy story about it in my head, thinking about how I’d relay the anecdote to my friends (“So I had sex in the bathroom of a catamaran???”). But there was another part of me that was very much not into it, especially when the makeout gave way to other things and people started banging on the bathroom door. I took care of boys — like my partner, like the person I’d dated before them, even like my cis college boyfriend — because I loved them, and that’s what you do for the people you love. I think there was also a part of me that liked tempering my fastidious long-term planning, my conventionalism, my seriousness with their wild spirits, their rejection of every social expectation. Queer bois, with their embrace of pleasure above most all else, in their refusal to adhere to the rules of heteropatriarchal capitalism — why grow up if it means becoming a cog in the machine? — seemed to embody a radical queer ethos I admired, and maybe felt the slightest bit jealous of. The night before I left on the cruise, two of my best friends got married. Watching one of my friend’s dads talking at the wedding dinner about how much he loved his daughter and her new wife, I teared up a little and said something to my partner about it: “This is actually pretty nice, huh?” But they wrinkled their nose at me. They’re not a fan of weddings — the pomp and circumstance, the big, grand displays of public affection. Part of the reason why is no doubt what anti-trans lesbians (unreasonably) fear: More and more young people are realizing that they identify as a gender other than the one they were assigned at birth — and more and more young people are realizing they’re attracted to people of two or more genders. But even though there are plenty of trans and nonbinary lesbians, and plenty of cis lesbians (like me) who don’t think that “lesbian” should be defined exclusively as “cis woman who’s only attracted to cis women,” our identity still hasn’t been able to shake the sexist, classist, and anti-gay stereotypes of lesbians as uncosmopolitan boomer TERFs, sporting Tevas and cargo pants covered in cat hair.

When we boarded, Dana introduced me to the adorable boomer-millennial pair in charge of Olivia’s Solos Program, which caters to women (single or partnered) who decide to go on trips alone. I got my own Solos dog tag and a pink Olivia bracelet to signify my newbie status. I would write in my journal, the night before leaving: “There’s something so deliriously pleasurable in the idea of trusting myself enough to know exactly what I want.” I would sob in a car to uptown Manhattan, where my friend Alia would take me in her arms and tell me it was all going to be OK.

Again, gossiping about someone is wrong, whether they are LGBT or not. Please avoid gossiping about your roommate, especially about their personal life. Do not be hostile toward them Once, after I came in her hands, I burst into tears (yeah, I know, big dyke energy), and she held me tightly in her strong, sure arms. “You’re OK,” she said. “I’ve got you.” She kissed my hair. The Cranberries - Why Acoustic version of "Why" from the new album "Something Else". Out Now: https://cranberries.lnk.to/SEID Follow The Cranberries: ...

I would worry about which of the many friends my ex-partner and I shared I would lose in the dyke divorce. I’d have to come to terms with the fact that I can’t control how other people feel, can’t hold out for universal approval. Though I would also seek constant reassurance from my closest friends that I wasn’t a bad person for putting myself first, for a change; that, even after blowing up my life, they’d keep on loving me.I would try to separate my feelings for Lynette from my feelings about wanting someone or something different in general — out of a desperate desire to feel some sort of control over my choices — and concede that was pretty much impossible. I settle for some Kelly Clarkson, and after my screechy but enthusiastic rendition of “Since U Been Gone,” five (!) different women approach me, complimenting my performance. One of them tells me her friend thinks I’m really cute, and could she buy me a drink? Just as it is not kind to gossip about anyone, it is not kind to gossip about your roommate. Do not talk badly about your roommate when they are not in the room. Most importantly, do not discuss your roommate’s personal life with others, as you do not want to “out” your roommate to someone they don’t want to be “outed” to. Your roommate’s personal life is not your information to be sharing with others. If you can’t help yourself from talking, avoid talking about them altogether. It’s better to do that than to “out” your roommate to someone they don’t know (or worse, to someone they know, but don’t want to be “out” to). Similarly, I would encourage you to seek out resources. One place on your campus where you can find resources and a community is your school’s LGBT center. They will be able to connect you with people and places you can connect with. If you live in a dorm, another person who could point you to resources is your resident advisor (RA). This is the person you will go to about housing-related issues and questions, but I’m sure they will gladly point you in the direction of some helpful resources. When you have a community and resources, life at college will be much easier. I come from a queer universe where traditional butch/femme identities seem old-school and retrograde, second-wavey, practically heteropatriarchal. There’s a lot wrong with that perspective — for one thing, a lot of the modern queers who shit on butch/femme dynamics aren’t from the working class, where those identities were born — but it’s one I still sympathize with, especially as someone who’d previously been hesitant to claim femme identity as my own.

Of course, we have established that you are under no obligation to explain yourself or to answer anyone’s questions, especially about your personal life. However, your roommate will likely ask you questions once they find out you are LGBT. Questions might make you feel uncomfortable, like you are being interrogated or targeted. However, I want to encourage you to think about these questions in a different way. If your roommate is asking questions, it likely means they care and are trying to understand you better. If they did not care, they would not ask any questions. On the other hand, questions could mean your roommate is trying to accommodate you. This might be the first time they live with an LGBT person, so as long as they are respectful with their questions, try to be patient with them. This communication will help them realize that LGBT people are more similar to them than different. Although you don’t need to give an explanation to anyone, if your roommate is asking respectful questions, I would encourage you to be patient with them and answer their questions. Before I left, I talked to a few of my reporter friends about it, just in case a hookup opportunity should present itself and I decided to partake for, um, research purposes . We decided that my Olivia story fell in some sort of weird journalistic in-between, just like my own job does. I sometimes do reporting, but I’m not strictly a reporter; I’m a writer, editor, and cultural critic. Plus, I wasn’t assigned this story to go and passively report out what everybody else was doing on the cruise; I was supposed to immerse myself in the experience (while, of course, disclosing to anyone I spoke with that I was writing about the trip). And the thing a lot of women on the cruise were looking to experience was, yes, getting laid. Later in the week, Tisha Floratos, the vice president of travel for Olivia, told me that she and her staff think about this a lot. “We’ve talked about how we begin to promote inclusivity while also preserving our core: that this is a company for lesbians. We don’t publicly, historically, say that we’re trans inclusive, but we’re always welcoming to our trans guests.” It wasn’t until the day afterward that we’d realize exactly how much of a spectacle we’d made. Lynette had been chatting with a few women the day before, more than one of whom confronted her in the cafeteria the next morning. “Everyone saw that young blonde hanging all over you last night,” she told her scornfully. “You better be careful.” Another woman caught us goofing around in the pool and reported to Lynette that we were causing a bit of a scene.

2. Going to Halloween parties with friends or families or both.

I love Halloween and get to see all the interesting and fun costumes that the kids wear which is so amazing and awesome. It overwhelmed me, just then, the sudden force of my wanting. I wanted my own big, strong butch. Someone who wasn’t looking for someone to help them grow, because they’ve done most of their growing already. A couple days later — after getting my serious lesbian conversations out of the way — I was about 14 rum punches deep and drunk-dancing on a catamaran. Everything comes together so perfectly in this chorus; Her voice, the high splashing of the high-hat, the strong strums of the guitar. The chorus leads out with the swirling sensation the guitar provides, along with the underlying bass that constantly pounds in the midst of the chaos. 2. “Conduct” from “Roses”

Eventually, once we’d reboarded the boat after our snorkeling, I did start talking with a few of the women I met at the Gen O mixer earlier that week, and it only took a couple of drinks for us to become the best of friends. She endures things that I can’t imagine having to deal with. Comments, remarks, and crude rumors have often come her way, and yet she handles them with grace. Being strong is something we all do, but being strong for something as simple as sexuality shed a whole new light on the topic for me. She’s different. We all go through phases in life when we are curious about a lot of things—a girl may be curious about the body of another girl, but that doesn’t make her a lesbian, even if they take a bath together. I never wanted to know why she wished to see me naked. We never chose that moment to step into the bathroom of a girl's hostel together. We did it because we were curious. Unfortunately, people have a very specific image of what an LGBT person is due to stereotypes (for example, that they are into fashion or going out to bars). If you do not know many LGBT people, you might be tempted to apply these stereotypes to your roommate. Don’t do this! Instead, remember that your roommate is an individual person with a unique personality and set of likes or dislikes. Even if they do happen to match some stereotypes, focus on getting to know your roommate instead of making inferences about them based on the stereotypes. On the flip side, if you are the LGBT roommate: Do not feel pressured to come out if the environment is unsafe Afterward, I had lunch with Dana and some of the other Olivia staffers and asked them about it — why not make the Public Posts more prominent, MichFest style? Especially since the younger people at the first Gen O event had explicitly asked for more sex content. Olivia had run sexuality and intimacy workshops before, and at the lunch, the staffers floated the definite possibility that they will again. I know for a fact that a lot of my queer friends would be way more likely to book a future Olivia cruise, uncool as cruises might be to cash-strapped millennials, if they knew how likely they’d be to get some action.

Lynette is 53 years old, though she looks at least 10 years younger. She was born and raised in London to Jamaican parents. She’d recently separated from her wife, whom she’d been with for 21 years. This cruise was the gift Lynette gave herself in the aftermath. She was starting over. I planned to meet Dana in the ship lobby that morning so that we could wander around for a while before the event. When we set off into town together, she gently informed me that my whatever-it-was with Lynette had not gone unnoticed by the staff, who’d encouraged Dana to encourage me to spend more time speaking with other people and reporting on the ship’s endless entertainment options. What I didn’t expect was everything else that would happen to me — and is still happening to me — thanks to this one little week in my otherwise pleasantly uneventful life. We both like Justin Bieber, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, babies, spicy foods, and romantic comedies, as well as traveling, swimming, dressing up, having sex, being tall, biking (“cycling,” she’d say), and making detailed plans well ahead of time. We also appear, at this admittedly early stage, to be each other’s scarily perfect sexual complement; lesbian sex can look like a million and one different things, and we like so many of the same ones that it is, honestly, a miracle we ever got out of bed and did anything normal, like eat dinner or generally interact with other people. (Turns out, there was nothing wrong with me during my sad stretch of a dry spell after all — I just hadn’t been having the sex I actually wanted to have.)