of my first lesbian experience

My friend Mandi recently wrote about her waxing-with-a-happy-ending experience and that reminded me of my own encounter with a lesbian (well, TWO lesbians) when I didn’t even know girls did sex to each other. I also didn’t really know what doing sex meant, thanks to Bollywood and a bunch of shaking flower bushes obscuring the fucking scene. Literally. Thirty year olds who grew up in India know exactly what I’m talking about.

This is a story from September 2002, precisely 12 years back in time. I was working at a call center called Daksh (now IBM Daksh I think) in Gurgaon. Well not technically working, coz I had joined only a month ago, and had just finished being trained on how to say kh/ph/th just like the firangs did. On the first day of training I fell in love with my trainer. Later I found out he was sleeping with half the people in my batch. And notice that I said “people”. I found out years later and that broke my heart.

Anyway. In September, our training batch finished training and was invited to a grand ‘graduation party’. I remember feeling giddy as I walked in. It was lit up all over and I could hear loud music and laughter. I caught a glimpse of a few girls giggling holding drinks wearing dresses and makeup, generally oozing confidence and prettiness. I had never seen something like this before. So. Much. Skin.

I was wearing my usual work clothes – jeans and a tee. I was really skinny so my Ugly Betty clothes sorta hung on me like they would from a hanger and it didn’t matter what I wore, because nobody made clothes my size. Aside: I’m not shitting you. I had to buy jeans with a 24 inch waist and the get them altered three inches so they would fit my 21-inch waist.

Anyway. I was wide eyed with disbelief at everything I saw but nobody had seen me enter. Or walk around with a plateful of paneer tikka in my hands for about twenty minutes. So there I was feeling like a misfit, like I always do. And then I spotted some people I knew. I went cartwheeling across the garden and hugged the first person I ran into. And then realized I had just hugged a boy I had never spoken to before. Shame shame puppy shame rang in my ears all week. He looked perplexed. Hi, I’m SN, he said. Have we met before? I developed a bit of a crush on him. Instantly. How was I to know that he would be someone I would become good friends with, come to trust deeply, and eventually be sexually assaulted by? After a bit of humming and hawing over how girls were drinking and being slutty, I went to the restroom. As I entered, I thought I saw two girls kissing. I flipped out. My brain couldn’t process the images my eyes sent its way. So I just assumed I had imagined it and it was nothing. An optical illusion at best. We made a little bit of conversation mostly centered around the metal skull that was hanging from my neck. (You didn’t know about my obsession with skulls, did you? What can I say, I am mysterious!) They seemed really nice except that one of them was drunk and suddenly perched up on the slab (where the sink is). I told her she was drunk and should come down from over there. What she did next was something I had never EVER seen before (or after) in my life. Let’s just say she said: When she finished, her dress was riding all the way up to boobietown. I told her she probably needed to straighten it, and she asked me to do it for her. Her friend giggled and told her to leave me alone, and I swear I saw her do way more than just straighten that drunk girl’s dress. Then she jumped off the slab and twisted her ankle and then passed out. Whether it was because of pain or drunkenness, I don’t know. What this meant was that the other non-drunk girl and I were going to have to support the hoebag out of there. And she was no featherweight, if you know what I mean. We started to descend those dimly lit stairs; I was on the left, the other girl on the right and the drunk girl in the middle. It felt pretty much like we were stowing away a dead body. And then it happened. The drunk girl who couldn’t lift her head suddenly found it in her to lift her arm and cup my non-existent boob, and then give it a gentle squeeze. To this day I think it’s because of her that I have small boobs. That bitch scared them and now they won’t come out.

I dropped everything (everything being the drunk girl) and ran back towards the party, where I ran into SN again. No, literally, I bumped into him coz I was running. After a little bit of customary awkwardness, I told him what had happened to me. And he told me what lesbian meant. Thus began my foray into true adulthood. What about you? Have you ever been hit on by a member of the same sex? Do you find it flattering when a same-sex-someone hits on you, or does it bother you?

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Author’s note: Those of you who read this early in the morning may have spotted a typo or two. I had literally ten minutes to type this out before I left for work and didn’t do a good job of editing this post. Sorry!