Dear Mom: Can I finally be a lesbian?

My mother called me a “fag” when I was 11.  She found that I had a ballerina outfit in a suitcase in my closet.  It was the stuff of dreams.  A suitcase of dreams.  And just like that, it was fantasy made real, as I soften dreamed of being a ballerina as I drifted off to sleep.  Dancing tights on my skinny pins felt electrifying on the sheets of my bed, as any woman would know what it feels like to crawl into bed post depilation.

“I’m not a fag,” I said, aware of the word, though it was not really in use in my world.  I knew it described a boy who liked boys.  Wrong on two counts.

“I went to an all-boys school,” I said to my date.

“All but one,” she said.

I told my mother I liked girls and thankfully she didn’t take away my clothes and throw them out as so many other parents seem to do.

My not-soon-enough-to-be-ex-wife [yes, this nonsense is still going on] calls me a lesbian and says that she most definitely is not a lesbian.  She might call me that as a slur, but I consider the term aspirational.  And so affirming.  But I also don’t feel comfortable enough in my lady skin yet to say that I am one.

In small ways, each day changes that.  In December, I received a new birth certificate which shows that I was born female.  This is a needed step mainly because the political storm that is coming and is already here about trans people means that any chink in the definitions doom us to discrimination.  It isn’t enough that a ballerina giraffe kind of stands out?  This window is closing fast in the UK, and is beginning to close in the US, and will slam shut should the Democrats lose the White House in the upcoming elections.  There is a mad rush to get things sorted.  I am part of it.

This week, I received my first legal document, a driver’s license, showing my sex as female.  My new friend, an adorable woman who keeps several men, and I can so see why, told me I look like a “Boss Bitch” in my driver’s license picture.

“I could so work for you,” she said.

“You’re such a keeper,” I said.

“Can I smudge you?”  The next thing and she was chanting from a book, asking me to repeat her words, and was burning sage all around me.  She wants to be part of my care team as I recover from surgery.  Her dog is so protective of me.  

“I can tell what your like from my dog,” she said.

“He’s a cute dog.”

“You have good energy.  Dog’s always know.”

Whenever I got home or was sitting in my room and she was cooking in the kitchen or talking to me, the dog would come into the room and stand sentinel with me, watching her with me.

She has really beautiful dominant energy.  I will have to write about that someday.  She got me onto a dating app.  That made for a hilarious evening.

“Are you going to be home tomorrow at noon?”

“No, I’m out all day.”

“Good,” she said, “I mean, of course you’re welcome, but a guy I like is coming over.”

“Cool,” I said.

“We’re going to fuck.”

“You know that already?”

“Yeah, that’s what we do.  He’s married.  Open relationship.  His wife’s cool.  He has two partners, me and one other, plus his wife; she only has one.”

“Is that a polycule?”

“No, because none of us friends.”

“The best thing about him is that he’s hot and he has no idea how hot he is.”

“That is good.”

I got to think out loud with her about being a lesbian.  My word for what I am is Sapphic.  That sounds so much better than gyno-phyllic.  It just sounds gentle and sexy.  I can’t use “lesbian” just yet because I don’t want to take my womanhood for granted, and I know that some people do.  Would begrudge it to me.

I went to a lesbian “munch” (what a perfect word for such an event!)…this is a casual get together where you can socialise and meet like-minded people.  There was a super cute trans girl who was successful and not in tech.  She was hot and she knew it and was there with a cis female date.  She still chatted with me for quite long time.

The slightly odd thing for me was that not one of the women present, 30 or so in total, put out any kind of vibe that they were interested in me.  If I go to a party with 30 straight women, I get eyes all night, numbers, dates, flirt.  Here, nothing.  This “fact” landed on me like a brick.  I went home all dejected.  My queer sisters don’t have the hots for me.  In a way, that is very unaffirming.  Of course, I can’t say that they should just be affirming and flirt with me.  Now wouldn’t that be privileged?!

After the party, I looked through all the women’s profiles and was struck by how many of them are married to men.  Wild.  They are clearly not satisfied at home, and this is probably a negotiated and acceptable outlet.  How many of them are looking for unicorns?  Yuck.  Not my thing.  My new friend agreed.  I think I will call her Earth Song.  She is seriously into music, all things nature related, and lives with a commitment to keeping a small footprint that everyone should adopt.  Everyone.

So, all these married women, of course I don’t fit the brief.  It made me feel a little better.  But then I read the profile of the young trans woman.  And there was a word in her bio that had the air vibrate.  Domme-leaning.

A week later I was at a party and there she was.  Domme-leaning was not correct.  If there was any leaning, it was leaning into being a Domme.  She looked amazing.  And she totally ignored me until she discovered that the host and hostess were friends.  Suddenly she was in front of me, talking to me, engaging me.  I was the one who looked like a slob, coming from “work”…I was wearing yoga gear.  Right now, and for the next 40 days, my job is fitness.  If I was ever an exercise bunny, it is now.  I have been cruising up to 2-3 workouts each day.  Living in exercise gear and eating better and better.  Apart from the corn nuts I just ate whilst writing that paragraph.  Bad girl!

I have hired a personal trainer.  She is better than a pro-domme on many levels.  For one, she is affordable.  Two, she has done a phone takeover, and is so deeply embedded in my phone, having me track my sleep, everything I eat, my exercise, and is dishing me instructions about all of it on the daily.  And she is relentless.

“What is getting in the way of you achieving your goals?” she asked.

“I need someone to boss me around,” I said.  “And I’m not a brat.  I’ll do what I’m told.”

“You sound like the perfect client,” she purred.

I’ve been so exhausted since she took over, and even though I am not eating as much as she wants, I am not losing weight.  Next week we tighten the screws.  At least that’s what I hope.

I stopped drinking.  Not that I drank much in the first place, but I do love a glass of wine.  No alcohol at all for 6 months…and then we will see.  I am dropping anything from my diet that interferes with gut health and body health, and the body’s ability to heal itself.

About 6 months ago I was on my first all women’s retreat, and one of the facilitators described being Queer, and I knew at that moment, that how she described herself is how I feel.  ‘Queer’ as a word is beautiful and reclaimed.  Had my mother used “queer” instead of “fag” the outcome would have been no different, as it was still a sneer.  

I am Queer.  I told my kids that.

“We know, Dad,” they deadpanned.  I thought they would be excited to hear the news, but I guess it isn’t news.  Thank goodness for the younger generation.

Have you ever wondered if there is a changing of the guard going on?  Around stewardship.  I can’t help but think that the next generation is going to do a better job at showing global leadership on everything than this current generation.  And that is a palpable difference from historic precedent.  What generations which came before felt that the next generation was better?  Never.  There was more often the belief that they had no morals, they were too loose, different values, not old-fashioned enough…that kind of thing.  Resistance to change.

This new generation is different.  The current leadership says and does so many things that are manifestly net bad for society and planet.  The new generation sees us squandering their future, and they are right.  The current leaders have lost the moral and temporal authority to rule.  Not fit for purpose.

Earth Song, a self-described Queer, though she only sleeps with men, gave me a pep talk about lesbians.  And then we wrote my social profile.  Well, the day she had sex, so did I.  Wouldn’t you know it.  I want to write about it, but I won’t, because it feels like kiss and tell.

Well, what did I learn?  That a trans gal, this trans gal, can be appealing to a lesbian.  I also found that other lesbians presented regarded me differently the next day.  Smoke signals had been sent out.  It felt as if some kind of acceptance ritual had taken place.

We have this word “transbian” which is technically meant to describe me.  What a terrible lust we have to name things, to put them in boxes.  Rather tiresome.  I get the thinking behind the word.  But I don’t want that for me, a special word.  I’d be more than happy to just be a gay woman.  

Anyway, I was feeling like a for-real sex witch when I woke up the next morning.  The confidence it brings me as I go to see my Sugar Mama is huge.  I am genuinely attracted to my Sugar Mama…she is quite a bit older than me, but she is very, very attractive.  Bound up in that attractiveness is just how much of a player she is in her world.  A figure in her industry.  A powerful woman.  She is a strong and driven and spiritual woman, kind of like what my wife used to be like…only she is way more successful.  There are weird resemblances.  One woman said to me, “don’t marry your wife all over again, thinking of their superficial similarities.  That’s what everyone does, and it’s always worse the second time than it was the first time around.

I’m not marrying anybody.  I just want to be a sex witch and play.