Book Review: Girls Can Kiss Now by Jill Gutowitz

***3/3***

This book is written half as a collection of essays and as a continuous narrative.  My first lesbian play partner ambled into my life as I was reading it.  She didn’t rate it and ended up not finishing it.  She missed out.

The book feels a bit like it is in three sections.  Childhood and being different.  Teen years and early adulthood, discovering and being attracted to girls.  Settling into being an adult and discovering that it was okay to be a girl who loves girls.

My friend didn’t make it past the first bit.  The first bit doesn’t flow quite as well as the rest of the book.  It feels a wee bit disconnected from the rest, particularly since the very beginning starts out later in life before segueing into something more time sequential.

I rather like the origin parts of origin stories…it places everything else in context, helps you to understand why people are the way they are.  This was no exception.

Gutowitz writes opinion pieces about such pop-cultural and other topics as being ‘outed’, celebrity gossip, our fascination with Taylor Swift, or the train wreck media circus surrounding Lindsay Lohan…all seen through the lens of her own coming-of-age as a lesbian.

What did I really like about this book?  When she describes the feelings she would get in her body when falling for someone, the way she was crushing on someone, apart from writing about it beautifully, the feelings she described are so different from what I think most people feel when in the flush of love-lust in a straight pairing. And that feeling really resonated with me, as in, I know what it feels like.

I mention often how a lesbian domme in my past, who is now no longer a lesbian nor a domme, but is a trans man tattoo artist and performer, used to describe to me the nature of attraction.  I refer to it often because her words gave legitimacy to my feelings. 

When I am attracted to someone, I want to be them.  At least a little.

I remember meeting a Princess.  A real-life Princess.  I was with friends who were visiting us from abroad, and my family, wife, kids.  We were at a major art site in Italy, the Giotto Frescoes in Padova at the Scrovegni Chapel.  They are incredible and worth the trip.  But they are very sensitive to everything, so are in a temperature controlled environment, sealed up in a giant Perspex box—a building has been constructed around the chapel they are part of.  You can read about them from the linked text above.

What is relevant for this story is that they only let a few people in at a time.  There was a VVIP family who were getting the red carpet treatment and somehow it ended up being us that went in with them.  Nobody else.  I recognised them.  My wife did not.  My friends did not.

The husband is not only a famous heir to even more famous fortune, but is a colossal and impressive success in his own right.  Quite the catch.  I might even indulge with a man for someone like that.  He puts out powerful sex appeal.  But the wife.  OMG the wife.

Elegant, so subtle in her style and beauty.  Embodied grace.  What was she wearing?  Nothing special.  Or…she wore a plain white dress shirt.  It looked a bit like brushed cotton.  Simultaneously soft and crisp.  She wore beige chinos and slip on shoes.

Do you know what the difference is between $100 chinos and ones that cost thousands?  They look like they cost thousands.  Studied indifference?  They caressed her curves and gently fell on her body.  She wore precious little jewellery.  Small diamond studs.  A fine white gold chain with nothing hanging from it.  A modest wedding band.  She is to be found often on the pages of Italian gossip magazines, bedecked in jewels.  I know she wears them well.

The family had a very informative guide, so I listened in.  I asked if they minded.  “Of course,” the husband said, “certo.”  It was an interesting tour.  All I could think of was how badly I wanted a pair of pants like hers.  How badly I wanted a pair of pants to fit me like those fit her.  How I just wanted to be like her.

My wife picked up on something, thinking that I was hitting on her.  It ruined her afternoon.  She thought I was ‘disgusting’.  There was really no point in explaining to her any longer.  I knew she wouldn’t understand it.  We’d been there before.

Author Gutowitz describes this kind of attraction as something she feels often, and recounts many such crushes.  I don’t know many gay men, but this does not seem to be the kind of thing that gay men feel.  And of course it makes no sense that a straight person would ever feel this way.  But lesbians?  It is apparently quite common after all.

The other type of attraction described in the book is hilarious and also very familiar.  That when you crush on someone you want them to hurt you.  She uses phrases like, “I thought she was hot.  I wanted her to stomp on my face.”  I get this feeling a lot.  For me it is usually that they strangle me or pull my hair.

I find myself bringing a crush’s hand to my throat if we start kissing and I am falling hard for her.  Lesbians seem to know what I am doing, and most will respond.  Case in point.  I was on a course recently.  One of the other participants had said “I’m just a girl who likes to kiss girls,” when she introduced herself.  I said to her during a break I loved that expression, “a girl who likes to kiss girls.”

We ended up making out.  After that ice was broken, and a few days later, and having established that we both thought the other was a fabulous kisser, I was washing my hands in the bathroom when she knocked, and then pushed in without waiting for a response.  She saw I was facing the basin, but when I saw who it was I turned around and smiled.  She put her hand behind my neck and guided me away from the sink and up against the wall.

Her forearm went up against my throat and she pinned me there, pulled my hair with her free hand, and then kissed me hard, pushing her body up against man, jamming her leg between mine.  She already knew me.  She was showing me that she could eat me alive.  My kinda gal.

I went out with a straight girl I have known for a very long time and with whom I have had a decades long flirt with.  Never consummated.  But fun.  The spark is not gone, and this time she couldn’t take her hands off of me.  I didn’t want her to.  Sometimes when someone touches you, their touch is just so welcome.

If you would like to read a “real review” you might look at this one…