Lesbian I Love You Quotes

I don't care if you're black, white, straight, bisexual, gay, lesbian, short, tall, fat, skinny, rich or poor. If you're nice to me, I'll be nice to you. Simple as that.

I don’t understand the hatred and fear of gays and bisexuals and lesbians… it’s a concept I honestly cannot grasp. To me, it’s not who you love… a man, a woman, what have you… it’s the fact that you love. That is all that truly matters.

She puts her hands on either side of my face, and the room falls away. I have never gotten so lost in a kiss before. And then, the space between us explodes. My heart keeps missing beats and my hands cannot bring her close enough to me. I taste her and realize I have been starving. I have loved before, but it didn't feel like this. I have kissed before, but it didn't burn me alive. Maybe it lasts a minute, and maybe it's an hour. All I know is that kiss, and how soft her skin is when it brushes against mine, and that even if I did not know it until now, I have been waiting for this person forever.

You don’t need princes to save you. I don’t have a lot of patience for stories in which women are rescued by men.

I have been in love with no one, and never shall," she whispered, "unless it should be with you." How beautiful she looked in the moonlight! Shy and strange was the look with which she quickly hid her face in my neck and hair, with tumultuous sighs, that seemed almost to sob, and pressed in mine a hand that trembled. Her soft cheek was glowing against mine. "Darling, darling," she murmured, "I live in you; and you would die for me, I love you so." I started from her. She was gazing on me with eyes from which all fire, all meaning had flown, and a face colorless and apathetic. "Is there a chill in the air, dear?" she said drowsily. "I almost shiver; have I been dreaming? Let us come in. Come; come; come in.

Anyway, how are you and Ramona doing?' Uh... you know. Pretty good.' Have you said the L-Word yet?' The L-Word? You mean? Lesbian?' Uh... No. The other L-Word.' ?' Okay. Uh, It's "love." I wasn't trying to trick you or anything.

Darling, darling. I live in you, and you would die for me. I love you so.

All I can tell you is this. Some hearts break from grief some from joy. Some even break from love. But hearts break because they are too small to contain the gifts life gives us. Your task will be to let your heart grow large enough not to break

What do you want? I want to stop living in fear. I want to stop coming up with excuses about why I'm not interested in dating. I want my family to know me. I want to get to learn more about Lisa. I want to stop feeling like everything I am is inadequate or makes me unworthy of love because of something I can't help.

If you are a woman, if you're a person of colour, if you are gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, if you are a person of size, if you are a person od intelligence, if you are a person of integrity, then you are considered a minority in this world. And it's going to be really hard to find messages of self-love and support anywhere. Especially women's and gay men's culture. It's all about how you have to look a certain way or else you're worthless. You know when you look in the mirror and you think 'oh, I'm so fat, I'm so old, I'm so ugly', don't you know, that's not your authentic self? But that is billions upon billions of dollars of advertising, magazines, movies, billboards, all geared to make you feel shitty about yourself so that you will take your hard earned money and spend it at the mall on some turn-around creme that doesn't turn around shit. When you don't have self-esteem you will hesitate before you do anything in your life. You will hesitate to go for the job you really wanna go for, you will hesitate to ask for a raise, you will hesitate to call yourself an American, you will hesitate to report a rape, you will hesitate to defend yourself when you are discriminated against because of your race, your sexuality, your size, your gender. You will hesitate to vote, you will hesitate to dream. For us to have self-esteem is truly an act of revolution and our revolution is long overdue.

She used to place her pretty arms about my neck, draw me to her, and laying her cheek to mine, murmur with her lips near my ear, “Dearest, your little heart is wounded; think me not cruel because I obey the irresistible law of my strength and weakness; if your dear heart is wounded, my wild heart bleeds with yours. In the rapture of my enormous humiliation I live in your warm life, and you shall die—die, sweetly die—into mine. I cannot help it; as I draw near to you, you, in your turn, will draw near to others, and learn the rapture of that cruelty, which yet is love; so, for a while, seek to know no more of me and mine, but trust me with all your loving spirit.” And when she had spoken such a rhapsody, she would press me more closely in her trembling embrace, and her lips in soft kisses gently glow upon my cheek.

Nim handed me a mug of tea. I took a sip and it was just how I like it, strong and sweet. If you added psychotic and emotionally unavailable to that, it would also cover my taste in women.

If Harvey had not been taken from us 30 years ago, I think he would want me to say to all the gay and lesbian kids out there tonight who have been told they are less than by the churches, by the government, by their families, that you are beautiful, wonderful creatures of value, and that no matter what anyone tells you, God does love you and that very soon, I promise you, you will have equal rights, federally, across this great nation of ours.

I wrote too many poems in a language I did not yet know how to speak.

June, you have killed my sincerity too. I will never again know who I am, what I am, what I love, what I want. Your beauty has drowned me, the core of me. You carry away with you a part of me reflected in you. When your beauty struck me, it dissolved me. Deep down, I am not different from you. I dreamed you, I wished for your existence. You are the woman I want to be. I see in you that part of me which is you. I feel compassion for your childish pride, for your trembling unsureness, your dramatization of events, your enhancing of the loves given to you. I surrender my sincerity because if I love you it means we share the same fantasies, the same madness.

No. I don´t think it does go away. I know it won´t for me. I will keep busy. I will distract myself. I will eventually have days when I don´t have to remind myself to breathe. I know Nasrin will exist, maybe even be happy, and I will be okay. I ´ll bury my love, but it will never really go away.

Hate like that—when it's disguised as love, or righteousness or pity—I'm not going to subject you to hate like that.

Ah, yes. So that people won’t know you’re a lesbian.” I hated being called a lesbian. Not because I thought there was anything wrong with loving a woman, mind you. No, I’d come to terms with that a long time ago. But Celia only saw things in black and white. She liked women and only women. And I liked her. And so she often denied the rest of me. She liked to ignore the fact that I had truly loved Don Adler once. She liked to ignore the fact that I had made love to men and enjoyed it. She liked to ignore it until the very moment she decided to be threatened by it. That seemed to be her pattern. I was a lesbian when she loved me and a straight woman when she hated me.

When I was 13 years old, my beautiful mother and my father moved me from a conservative Mormon home in San Antonio, Texas, to California, and I heard the story of Harvey Milk. And it gave me hope. It gave me the hope to live my life; it gave me the hope that one day I could live my life openly as who I am and that maybe even I could fall in love and one day get married. Most of all, if Harvey had not been taken from us 30 years ago, I think he'd want me to say to all of the gay and lesbian kids out there tonight who have been told they are less than by their churches, or by the government, or by their families, that you are beautiful, wonderful creatures of value. And that no matter what everyone tells you, God does love you, and that very soon, I promise you, you will have equal rights federally across this great nation of ours.

I hate sour cream and onion Pringles," I told the dashboard where I had my feet planted until Ruth pushed them down. "But you love Pringles," Ruth actually rattled the canister. "I hate sour cream and onion anything. All lesbians do." I blew heaps of bubbles into my milk with the tiny straw that came cellophaned to the carton. "I want you to stop using that word," Ruth jammed the lid back onto the can. "Which word? Sour or cream?" I plastic laughed with my reflection in the passenger-side window.

But you know! You get it. I'm not trying to trivialize anyone else and what they have to do, but if I go to my parents and say I'm a lesbian, they would know what I meant. If I went to my siblings and said I'm bisexual, they would know what I meant. If I tell anyone I'm asexual, they're going to look at me like there's something wrong. They're going to tell me to go to a doctor. They're going to tell me I'm too young to know what I want or I'm still developing. Or they'll tell me how important sex is to finding a good man. Or they'll think they can fix me, that I'm lying because I don't want to sleep with them. It's hard enough trying to explain that word, so how in the hell am I going to explain I'm biromantic asexual? They're really going to think I'm making this shit up.

It's no use Mother dear, I can't finish my weaving You may blame Aphrodite soft as she is she has almost killed me with love for that girl

I just wish he didn't have the power to get to me." "I know, but you're a human being Hunter, and you have feelings. What would be weak is if you didn't.

You asked of me once, how high, high can beor if there was an exhibit.. I smiled and then whispered.. My thighs are the limit…

I am the woman who lost herself but now is found, the lesbian, outside the law of the church and man, the one who has to love herself or die. If you are not as strong as I am, what will be make together? I am all muscle and wounded desire, and I need to know how strong we both can be.

Once," Fran says, settling against the worktable, folding her arms, "I knew this kid who very bravely and bossily came out of the closet when she was only fourteen years old. She told me then that we can't choose who we love. We just love the people we love, no mattter what anyone else might want for us. Wasn't that you?

Listen, we’ll come visit you. Okay? I’ll dress up as William Shakespeare, Lucent as Emily Dickinson, and beautiful ‘Ray’ as someone dashing and manly like Jules Verne or Ernest Hemingway...and we’ll write on your white-room walls. We’ll write you out of your supposed insanity. I love you, Micky Affias. -James (from "Descendants of the Eminent")

I want to love like my grandmother, who loved a woman like Joseph loved Mary. Someone so imperfect, so human, brave enough to love someone who already knows God.

The world is full of unrequited love,' I said finally. 'You and Patrick having problems?' Dad said, reaching around to get the butter out of the fridge. 'No, I was just wondering what you would say if I was a lesbian.' 'Come again?' said Lester. 'I'm having a hard time following this conversation.

The stars are the one thing that I miss about the earth. They're so constant, steady, bright. I've always loved the stars. You reminded me of them, Persephone," she added quietly.

When I say I love you, Ash, I don't mean that I love you in the way that I love Basquiat or oat milk lattes, I mean that I love you. All that you are and all that you will be and I can't wait to find out who that person is.

Normally if I met a guy who was unemployed and illiterate who hadn't bathed in a couple of weeks, I'd be standing in a puddle with excitement, but I'm sort of in a bad mood tonight, so take this bag and give me the fu**ing paper before I pop your head like a zit. He said, you're a lesbian, aren't you?

I can remember thinking I’d been turned inside out. Kind of like the first time I saw you.

I already know you´re gay" he said. "You don´t even know what that means." "It means you love Sarah.

Only people who've been discriminated against can really know how much it hurts. Each person feels the pain in his own way, each has his own scars. So I think I'm as concerned about fairness and justice as anybody. But what disgusts me even more are people who have no imagination. The kind T. S. Eliot calls hollow men. People who fill up that lack of imagination with heartless bits of straw, not even aware of what they're doing. Callous people who throw a lot of empty words at you, trying to force you to do what you don't want to. Like that lovely pair we just met.” He sighs and twirls the long slender pencil in his hand. “Gays, lesbians, straights, feminists, fascist pigs, communists, Hare Krishnas-- none of them bother me. I don't care what banner they raise. But what I can't stand are hollow people. When I'm with them I just can't bear it, and wind up saying things I shouldn't. With those women--I should've just let it slide, or else called Miss Saeki and let her handle it. She would have given them a smile and smoothed things over. But I just can't do “do that. I say things I shouldn't, do things I shouldn't do. I can't control myself. That's one of my weak points. Do you know why that's a weak point of mine?” “'Cause if you take every single person who lacks much imagination seriously, there's no end to it,” I say.

Sunshine If it were possible to place you in my brain to let you roam around in and out my thought waves you would never have to ask why do you love me? This morning as you slept I wanted to kiss you awake say I love you till your brain smiled and nodded yes this woman does love me. Each day the list grows filled with the things that are you things that make my heart jump yet words would sound strange become corny in utterance. In the morning when I wake I don’t look out my window to see if the sun is shining. I turn to you instead.

When you read the words of Langston Hughes you are reading the words of a Black Gay man. When you read the words of Alice Dunbar-Nelson and Angelina Weld Grimké, poets of the Harlem Renaissance, you are reading the words of Black Lesbians. When you listen to the life-affirming voices of Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey, you are hearing Black Lesbian women. When you see the plays and read the words of Lorraine Hansberry, you are reading the words of a women who loved women deeply.

Must love decorating for holidays, mischief, kissing in cars, and wind chimes. No specific height, weight, hair color, or political affiliation required but would prefer a warm spirited non racist. Cynics, critics, pessimists, and “stick in the muds” need not apply. Voluptuous figures a plus. Any similarity in look, mind set, or fashion sense to Mary Poppins, Claire Huxtable, Snow White, or Elvira wholeheartedly welcomed. I am dubious of actresses, fellons and lesbians but dont want to rule them out entirely. Must be tolerant of whistling, tickle torture, James Taylor, and sleeping late. I have a slight limp, eerily soft hands, and a preternatural love of autumn. I once misinterpreted being called a coal-eyed dandy as a compliment when it was intended as an insult. I wiggle my feet in my sleep, am scared of the dark, and think the Muppets Christmas Carol is one of the greatest films of all time. All I want is butterfly kisses in the morning, peanut butter sandwiches shaped like a heart, and to make you smile until it hurts.

You’re more than my desire, Sabine. If I’m your home, then you’re my safe harbor. The sanctuary where I can finally rest. You’re my everything—my truth, my strength, my trust, my hope, and all my love. You’re the rest of my life.

You see, I have been content with the darkness. But then you came, with your fire. And you reminded me about the stars, shining in the dark, never wavering.

You are cruel even in love," Iona whispers, "How can you make me feel this way? I ought to hate you. I wanted to hate you.

I take a deep breath, which is meant to clear my head but which only serves to remind me that teen boys, as a group, really need to learn to stop using cologne as a replacement for deodorant. Reason number 2,347,683 why I love being a lesbian.

Being your friend and knowing that you're happy, even if it's with someone else, even if my heart is breaking, is worth it. But if you love me? If you love me Mia, then be brave and love me.

I swear to love you always. To back you up even when you're wrong. To make you laugh when you realize you've built that IKEA bookshelf all backwards. To indulge every whim and passion. And to always be your number one fan. Until death do us part, I will stand by your side.

If you're reading this and you think that maybe you could love someone of the same gender (or nongender), all I have to say to you is this: Congratulations! You're perfect and wonderful and more alive than you ever knew. Be proud of who you are because you're already more than enough.

And I'm so, so sick of not the getting to tell you every day that I love you, to get to wake up next to you in the morning and kiss you.

. . . you can read my mind,” Parmida realized. “When it is open to me,” Azra admitted apologetically. “. . . I love you too, by the way.

I was there, and she was too, and that was more than enough.

You're a wonderful person! You're patient and kind and level-headed and hardworking and responsible and I'm in love with you, too!

She just kept staring at her," she lamented. "Like I wasn't even there." ..."The trouble with lesbian love triangles is you can't tell which 'she' and which 'her' we're talking about.

AVA God you are a delight you have delivered what I like heaven delivers a gift with lips heaven delivers a gift with hips God you delivered what I like oh God you are in the spotlight

Now tell me, briefly, what the word ‘homosexuality’ means to you, in your own words." "Love flowers pearl, of delighted arms. Warm and water. Melting of vanilla wafer in the pants. Pink petal roses trembling overdew on the lips, soft and juicy fruit. No teeth. No nasty spit. Lips chewing oysters without grimy sand or whiskers. Pastry. Gingerbread. Warm, sweet bread. Cinnamon toast poetry. Justice equality higher wages. Independent angel song. It means I can do what I want.

I’ve learned that love is about finding someone who pulls you to them even when reason might tell you otherwise. Someone who pushes you out of your comfort zone, not because of them doing or saying anything, necessarily, but because they make you want to try new things. They make you want to be daring, because maybe something new and scary doesn’t feel quite as scary by their side.

Does it go away?" she asks. "Missing each other?" I think about how much I missed Maman. I still do, though it isn´t as acute as it once was. "A little bit," I whisper. "Enough so that life continues. In a year you won´t even think about me. " She turns around in my arms and looks up at me, tugging at a strand of my hair. "don´t say stupid things, Sahar. You´re smarter than that.

Is this too dressy?" is Southern Lady code for: I look fabulous and it would be in your best interest to tell me so. "I'm not crazy about it" is code for: I hate that more than sugar-free punch. "What do you think about her?" is code for: I don't like her. "She's always been lovely to me" is code for: I don't like her either. "She has a big personality" means she's loud as a T. rex. "She's the nicest person" means she's boring as pound cake. "She has beautiful skin" means she's white as a tampon. "She's old" means she's racist as Sandy Duncan in Roots. "You are so bad!" is Southern Lady code for: That is the tackiest thing I've ever heard and I am delighted that you shared it with me. "No, you're so bad!" is code for: Let's snitch and bitch. "She's a character" means drunk. "She has a good time means slut. "She's sweet" means Asperger's. "She's outdoorsy" means lesbian. "Hmm" is Southern Lady code for: I don't agree with you but am polite enough not to rub your nose in your ignorance. "Nice talking with you" is code for: Party's over, now scoot.

Perhaps it was a statement after all: I don’t want to die without knowing you. Do you feel the same way, Carol? She could have said the last question, but she could not have said all that went before it.

The terror of Black Lesbians is buried in that deep inner place where we have been taught to fear all difference—to kill or ignore it. Be assured: loving women is not a communicable disease. You don’t catch it like the common cold.

Listen. You're a hell of a good guy, and I'm fonder of you than anybody on earth. I couldn't tell you that in New York. It'd mean I was a faggot. That was what the Civil War was about. Abraham Lincoln was a faggot. He was in love with General Grant. So was Jefferson Davis. Lincoln just freed the slaves on a bet. The Dred Scott case was framed by the Anti-Saloon League. Sex explains it all. The Colonel's Lady and Judy O'Grady are Lesbians under their skin. (101)

It was done the day you took me to that house in Bryanston Square, she said. Or even, the time before that, when you bought me tea. We stood in the sun, and you closed your eyes and I looked at your face...I think it was done then, Julia.

I am not so much fun Anymore; Couldn’t carry the role of ingenue In a bucket, you say, laughing. And I want to punch you. I was never innocent, but Thanks to you I know things I wish I did not remember. You don’t like it When I talk to the man myself, Specifying quantities and Give him the money Instead of giving it to you And letting you take care of it. You keep asking me, Where’s the dope? Until I finally say, I hid it. The look you give me is Pure bile. Well, fuck you. This isn’t like Buying somebody a drink. You don’t leave your stash out Where I might find it. Finally I think I’ve made you wait Long enough, So I get out the little paper envelope And hand it to you. You are still in charge of This part, so you relax. Performing your junky ritual with Your favorite razor blade, until I ask you how to calculate my dose So I won’t O.D. when I do this And you’re not around. Then you really flip. You tell me it’s a bad idea For me to do this with other people. ** Was it such a good idea For me to do it with you? Do you wait for me to turn up Once every three months So you can get high? Is this our version of that famous Lesbian fight about Nonmonogamy? Let me tell you what I don’t like. I don’t like it when you Take forever to cut up brown powder And cook it down and Suck it up into the needle And measure it, then take Three times as much for yourself AS you give me. I don’t like it when you Fuck me After you’ve taken the needle Out of my arm. You talk too much And spoil my rush. All I really want to do Is listen to the tides of blood Wash around inside my body Telling me everything is Fine, fine, fine._ And I certainly don’t want to Eat you or fuck you Because it will take forever To make you come, If you can come at all, And by then the smack will have worn off And there isn’t any more. I’m trying to remember What the part is that I do like. I think this shit likes me A lot more than I like it. Now you’re hurt and angry because I don’t want to see you again And the truth is, I would love to see you, As long as I knew you were holding. So you tell me Is this what you want? I bet it was what you wanted All along.

I breathe deep. I look into her eyes. I wish I could take her face in my hands and kiss her, but I know she needs more than that right now. Even though I want to give her everything, I’ve learned enough in the last few days to only promise what I know I can deliver.

Like that breeder-woman sitting at the bar, who thinks it's a buzz to go into a gay joint and has no doubt heard somewhere that this is one. Her lurid get-up's a joke, ludicrous. She's the type who dons the camouflage-green combat trousers, wraps a bandanna around her head and paints herself with black lipstick, imagining all the lesbians in the joint'll have the hots for her. Not so much imagining as secretly hoping. Naturally, no one goes and sits with her. She's been here before, and everyone gives the ice-cold shoulder, yet she still turns up again and again. Someone might argue we're zoo animals for her. But I've another theory. For her, we're noble savages, a kind of grey area outside the respectable, minutely organized community, an untamed wilderness it takes a lot of guts to step into. But if you do dare, there's a glorious smell of freedom floating around your trousers and giving the finger to society, making whoever an instant anarchist. Certainly, for her, coming here is like putting a washable tattoo on your shoulder : there's the thrill of deviance with none of the dull commitment - and she'll never have to wonder whether she's too weird to be seen out before dark.

When i make love to you i try with each stroke of my tongue to say i love you to tease i love you to hammer i love you to melt i love you and your sounds drift down oh god! oh jesus! and i think here it is, some dude’s getting credit for what a woman has done again.

There's something about you I like.' She shook her head, pressing on. 'All I care about is that you drive me wild and I can't stop thinking about you. And if there’s a chance that you feel something similar, I’m going to take it, because God knows, my life isn’t going to be this exciting again!

Words today burn at my lips to speak and smolder in ink on the page as I write. For I have captured our love in every shade. The sweet stroke of brush upon canvas, the exquisite memory of us. I long to paint you again and know you yet more with every new glance until no part of you is foreign to me.

You've broken through all my barriers, and I love you for your tenacity. I love you for how dedicated and loyal you are to the people you love, and I want to be the one you love the most. You make me want to be a better person. For me, for us. So, Aimee, will you spend the rest of your life with me?

I'm not a pessimist, I'm just thinking about how she said, 'I love you,' while I was having a panic attack and how that means she's probably a liar and how she'll likely cut off her own nose to prove me wrong and how then she won't smell my pheromones and how then we'll both die of lesbian bed death.

Black Lesbians are not a threat to the Black family. Many of us have families of our own. We are not white, and we are not a disease. We are women who love women. This does not mean we are going to assault your daughters in an alley on Nostrand Avenue. It does not mean we only think about sex, any more than you only think about sex. Even if you do believe any of these stereotypes about Black Lesbians, begin to practice acting like you don’t believe them.

You know, I’m gonna marry a girl just to piss you off.” Mom laughed. “Then you’ll deserve estrogen-fuelled psychotic rants about shoes and cellulite.” “Isn’t that a little stereotypical?” “Of course it is,” Mom said nonchalantly. “Just like saying all gay men love cock and lesbians love to munch clams.

Her friend - and her partner on the stage. You will not believe me, but making love to Kitty - a thing done in passion, but always, too, in shadow and silence, and with an ear half-cocked for the sound of footsteps on the stairs - making love to Kitty and posing at her side in a shaft of limelight, before a thousand pairs of eyes, to a script I knew by heart, in an attitude I had laboured for hours to perfect - these things were not so very different. A double act is always twice the act that the audience thinks it; beyond our songs, our steps, our bits of business with coins and canes and flowers, there was a private language, in which we held an endless, delicate exchange of which the crowd knew nothing. This was a language not of the tongue but of the body, its vocabulary the pressure of a finger or a palm, the nudging of a hip, the holding or breaking of a gaze, that said, You are too slow - you got too fast - not there but here - that's good - that's better! It was as if we walked before the crimson curtain, lay down upon the boards and kissed and fondled - and were clapped, and cheered, and paid for it!

Jane.” Miss Johnson set a hand on her employer’s shoulder. “Why don’t you go speak to the staff and inform them of what is to come? I’ll talk with Lady Amanda.” No. Amanda felt her eyes widen in panic, but she could hardly cling to Mrs. Marshall and beg her to stay. What was she to say? 'I’m afraid of your secretary. She’s too pretty'.

Hey ladies - I got hands. They are exquisite and highly trained from years of fingering and fisting. My hands can kick your new boyfriend's hands' ass. All I'm saying is go for something a lesbian can't give you, like testicles or musk or unwanted pregnancy. Don't be bragging about how your man cries or listens to you. You can get that with us.

And you don’t think it was hard for me to tell a woman I just met that I can’t stop thinking about her when I’ve never thought of a woman that way before in my life?

You saved my life, Persephone." "I didn't..." "You are, even now.

I'm crazy in love with you, Ryan. It's fireworks and Fourth of July. I want...I want to stay. I want to stay here.

You… Why are you worrying about me, Lotte?” Her words sound so unsure, so genuinely confused, that it breaks my heart a little. “Because somebody should,” I reply.

Tell me. Tell me everything. Tell me the most boring parts of your day that don't even interest you, tell me how you wake up in the morning and how you sleep at night. Tell me what scares you and what your deepest desires are. I want it all, all of your mind and all of your thoughts, give it all to me and only me…because I don't think I can breathe without it anymore.

Andi, I'm still head over heels in love with you. I want a chance at a life with you, just like I wanted a chance at a life those years ago. with you all I want to be there for all of it.

I've never slept with a girl. I couldn't. I wouldn't want to. That's abnormal and I'm not, although you can't be normal unless you do what you want and you can't be normal unless you love men. To do what I wanted would be normal, unless what I wanted was abnormal, in which case it would be abnormal to please myself and normal to do what I didn't want to do, which isn't normal.

cheers to the bisexuals the lesbians, gays, and queers cheers if you liked to be called all three cheers to the trans folks to marsha p. johnson and sylvia rivera thank you for letting me be here cheers to the two-spirit to the nonbinary the questioning the not sure yet cheers to the allies cheers to everyone who did work so i could fully be me sexual experiences don’t have to define your sexuality

In this country, lesbianism is a poverty-as is being brown, as is being a woman, as is being just plain poor. The danger lies in ranking the oppressions. The danger lies in failing to acknowledge the specificity of the oppression. The danger lies in attempting to deal with oppression purely from a theoretical base. Without an emotional, heartfelt grappling with the source of our own oppression, without naming the enemy within ourselves and outside of us, no authentic, non-hierarchical connection among oppressed groups can take place. When the going gets rough, will we abandon our so-called comrades in a flurry of racist/heterosexist/what-have-you panic? To whose camp, then, should the lesbian of color retreat? Her very presence violates the ranking and abstraction of oppression. Do we merely live hand to mouth? Do we merely struggle with the "ism" that's sitting on top of our heads? The answer is: yes, I think first we do; and we must do so thoroughly and deeply. But to fail to move out from there will only isolate us in our own oppression- will only insulate, rather than radicalize us.

He considered her request before answering, and she could tell he was enjoying this. Jay loved this particular weakness of hers. “You can guess, but I’m still not telling.” “What if I guess right?” “Then you’d be pretty freakin’ amazing.” She pretended to be offended. “So, what if I don’t figure it out . . . ?” His uneven grin made an appearance. “You’re still pretty freakin’ amazing, Violet.” He lifted her hand, pressing it lightly to his lips. Violet felt herself blushing. She knew how to handle his teasing, but she still hadn’t gotten used to this gentler, sweeter side of him. “You’re such a girl,” she chided, but somehow the words came out too soft . . . too tender, and ended up sounding like a compliment. Jay just laughed. “So what does that make you, the guy?” He squeezed her hand even tighter, keeping it buried in his. “Or some sort of lesbian,” she teased, raising an eyebrow. “Maybe we should try out a little girl-on-girl action.” “Nice, Violet. Do you kiss your mom with that mouth?” His eyes glinted as he watched her. She leaned closer to him in the darkness of the car’s interior. “No, but I’ll kiss you with it.” He set her hand back in her lap. “Watch it, Vi, or I might pull over right now and we’ll never make it there.” She raised her eyebrows. “Make it where?” “Nice try, but you can’t distract me that easily . . . it’s still a surprise.

There is a very common feeling among sapphic people where you feel slightly predatory for being interested in girls. I think that comes from a lot of deep-rooted homophobia, which perpetuates the idea that queer attraction is depraved.

When you are walking down the road in Bali and your pass a stranger, the very first question he or she will ask you is, "Where are you going?" The second question is, "Where are you coming from?" To a Westerner, this can seem like a rather invasive inquiry from a perfect stranger, but they're just trying to get an orientation on you, trying to insert you into the grid for the purposes of security and comfort. If you tell them that you don't know where you're going, or that you're just wandering about randomly, you might instigate a bit of distress in the heart of your new Balinese friend. It's far better to pick some kind of specific direction -- anywhere -- just so everybody feels better. The third question a Balinese will almost certainly ask you is, "Are you married?" Again, it's a positioning and orienting inquiry. It's necessary for them to know this, to make sure that you are completely in order in your life. They really want you to say yes. it's such a relief to them when you say yes. If you're single, it's better not to say so directly. And I really recommend that you not mention your divorce at all, if you happen to have had one. It just makes the Balinese so worried. The only thing your solitude proves to them is your perilous dislocation from the grid. If you are a single woman traveling through Bali and somebody asks you, "Are you married?" the best possible answer is: "Not yet." This is a polite way of saying, "No," while indicating your optimistic intentions to get that taken care of just as soon as you can. Even if you are eighty years old, or a lesbian, or a strident feminist, or a nun, or an eighty-year-old strident feminist lesbian nun who has never been married and never intends to get married, the politest possible answer is still: "Not yet.

At that time a psychologist appeared in Oslo, and wrote interesting articles in the paper about how to cure homosexuality. … This man is a pervert. He wants to change nature. He wants to change the natural growth of love between a woman and a woman, or between a man and a man. If society itself wasn't hostile to love, he would never have been allowed to do that. Can't you see? Why can't you ever get it out of your head that love is against nature? Because that's what you're saying when you say homosexuality is against nature. Didn't nature make me? Or was I the result of some mysterious embryonic experiment, conceived on another planet, and planted in my mother's womb? Because I can assure you: I was born a lesbian. I was a lesbian the moment I came out and said, Boooooo.

Julia watched Maddie's face, the love shining clearly in her open gaze. Julia knew that she had never wanted anything more than she wanted this woman, that she had never loved anyone quite like this before. She pulled Maddie into her arms and held her gaze. "I'm in love with you.

Before entering Joaquin’s house I always reminded myself that this wasn’t exactly where I was meant to be, but pit stops are okay on the road of life, aren’t they? I thought of myself as some kind of spy, undercover as a girl with low self-esteem, bringing back detailed intelligence reports on the dark side for girls with boyfriends who looked like lesbians and watched Friday Night Lights with them while eating takeout. They could have their supportive relationships and typical little love stories. I’d be Sid and Nancy–ing it up, refusing to settle for the status quo. I’d be cool.

I went into a lather of misery watching them, and thinking of you, and how in the end you'll all be locked together, like the poor beasts that get their antlers mixed and are found dead that way, their heads fattened with a knowledge of each other that they never wanted, having had to contemplate each other, head-on, eye to eye, until death; well, that will be you and Jenny and Robin.

She’s a lesbian?” Ray broke in. Gotlieb looked at him quizzically. “A what?” “You know, a woman who...uhh...likes other women…a lot.” Gotlieb’s eyes flashed in recognition. “Ah, I see you what you mean, old man. No, we don’t have a special name for anything like that. But these days, pretty much everywhere in the Alliance, you can get married to a man, woman, alien, whoever or whatever you want, as long as it’s legit. Marriage is for love.

Near the end of the session, a slight, middle-aged man in a dress shirt approached the microphone. “I’m here to ask your forgiveness,” he said quietly. “I’ve been a pastor with a conservative denomination for more than thirty years, and I used to be an antigay apologist. I knew every argument, every Bible verse, every angle, and every position. I could win a debate with just about anyone, and I confess I yelled down more than a few ‘heretics’ in my time. I was absolutely certain that what I was saying was true and I assumed I’d defend that truth to death. But then I met a young lesbian woman who, over a period of many years, slowly changed my mind. She is a person of great faith and grace, and her life was her greatest apologetic.” The man began to sob into his hands. “I’m so sorry for what I did to you,” he finally continued. “I might not have hurt any of you directly, but I know my misguided apologetics, and then my silent complicity, probably did more damage than I can ever know. I am truly sorry and I humbly repent of my actions. Please forgive me.” “We forgive you!” someone shouted from up front. But the pastor held up his hand and then continued to speak. “And if things couldn’t get any weirder,” he said with a nervous laugh, “I was dropping my son off at school the other day—he’s a senior in high school—and we started talking about this very issue. When I told him that I’d recently changed my mind about homosexuality, he got really quiet for a minute and then he said, ‘Dad, I’m gay.’ ” Nearly everyone in the room gasped. “Sometimes I wonder if these last few years of studying, praying, and rethinking things were all to prepare me for that very moment,” the pastor said, his voice quivering. “It was one of the most important moments of my life. I’m so glad I was ready. I’m so glad I was ready to love my son for who he is.

This week I was watching the Rachel Maddow Show (you'd love her: she's funny and brilliant and just happens to be a stunning butch), and she was interviewing the outgoing attorney general, Loretta Lynch, about the country's post election future. The entire show was like a burst of hope so bright I almost had to put on sunglasses. The African American attorney general, prim and plump, sat perched on a barstool talking to a white butch lesbian who has her own national television news show! The event was being recorded in the Stonewall Inn, the site of one of the first places where queer people fought back against police violence! (I was so nervous about being a lesbian in 1969, I hid the tiny newspaper clipping from you.) Simply that the interview was happening made me remember that there are people in the world who are not such egotistical, political careerists as to believe that human rights don't matter. Then, as if just showing up wasn't enough, Attorney General Lynch spoke a truth that is hard to remember from our short-lived perspective: "History is bigger than one turn of the electoral wheel." During your eighty-eight years on this plane, you saw numerous turns of the wheel, and many of them did not land on a prize. Still, toward the end of your life, you took me in and bestowed not just a roof and clothes and food but the gift of your history and the knowledge that we find hope inside ourselves.

And you, my dearest, you are something unutterably familiar to me, you are really I myself! We are truly a wonderful idea. My life up until now was not lacking in love, God knows, but was empty of life, real life. I have spent years living for nothing, have wasted my life. And that is not what life is for. I want to live, to love with all the fire in my heart, to savor life and love to the fullest. I will never stand before you empty-handed. I will look after you, be your homeland, your home and family. I will give you everything you lack, and I know that my call in life is to make you happy.

Barbara took her accustomed place by the door but as the singing began Margerit beckoned her over to her side. "I haven't been following much except that it's all ancient Greeks and battles and such. What's happening now?" Barbara knelt beside her and leaned close to whisper so as not to disturb the rest of the party. A brief synopsis of what had gone before took up the time while the chorus escorted the principles to the centre of the stage. "I haven't seen this performance before," Barbara added, "but I imagine this will be the grand love duet." As the soprano began, she concentrated on the stage to follow the opening phrases. The chorus had abandoned the field to the principles who faced each other against a backdrop of fluted columns. "O! What strange fate is mine!" Barbara paused as the signature line was repeated several times. "I loved you in the guise of Mars, but now I am betrayed by Venus. The iron in your glance turns soft beneath my touch. I am undone. O Venus, you are cruel to mock me so." It continued on in the same vein until it was the mezzo's turn. Her lyrics ran much parallel with the soprano's. With less concentration required, Barbara ventured a glance to see Margerit's reaction. Margerit turned at the same moment and their eyes met as Barbara whispered Ifis's lines. "O! What a strange fate is mine! In the guise of Mars I love you but now as Venus I'm betrayed. The Iron in my soul turns soft beneath your touch." Unconsciously, Margerit placed a hand on hers where it lay on the arm of her chair. "Fire runs through my veins - I am undone." Fire indeed ran through her veins. Her hand burned sweetly where Margerit touched it and she dared now take it back. Her voice grew husky. "Why do the gods mock me with desire I cannot sate?" Their eyes were still locked and Margerit's lips had parted in a little "o" of wonder. "O Venus, have mercy on one new come to your shrine." When the soprano joined again for the duet, Margerit breathed along with her, "O! What strange fate is mine!" With effort, Barbara wrenched her gaze away.

Then, she stepped hard on something soft. “Ouch!” exclaimed an urgent, musical voice behind her followed by another blast of that scent. That voice rang out in the night like a small bell. Damn, thought Carmen. These late-night stragglers always show up just as I am closing! “We’re closed,” she commented impatiently, not even bothering to turn around. “I can’t get you anything, my cash register is empty. And, I definitely can’t get you any gasoline. The pumps are shut down.” “You’re on my foot!” said the small, feminine voice again, protesting more loudly. “Get off!” The girl laughed. The street lights came on, as if the pressure of stepping on this person’s foot had turned them on. Carmen laughed at the synchronicity. She felt a small hand on her waist as she moved her foot off the soft place it had landed. It had been years since she had felt a woman’s touch. The feminine voice said quietly, “That hurt.” Carmen whirled around to face the girl she had stepped on, and almost lost her balance. Her eyes met the huge violet eyes of the most beautiful country girl she had ever seen standing directly behind her. Obviously, she had stepped on her. She apologized until she was speechless. Then, she coughed and indicated her truck. The girl had straight, healthy blue hair, delicately shaved over one ear and well-done light makeup with a few rhinestone studs in her ears and nose. Carmen had sucked her breath in audibly at the girl’s appearance. This diminutive girl was stunning. She was a real beauty, set in the dark country night like a diamond against the warm obsidian of the sky. And that fragrance!

As for us, we saw the police as a natural catastrophe— like floods, fires, earthquakes. There was nothing you could do about these things except to try and escape them. We had no analysis, no understanding that society could be changed. We simply tried to survive, as ourselves, as kamp girls, natural rebels. We did not feel that the police might not be entitled to hunt us, but accepted them as inevitable. I was beaten up for suggesting that a woman ask for a lawyer. It was seem as a stupid— even dangerous— suggestion. Fighting back with threats of lawyers would only make the police even angrier at us. But part of me felt that what was happening was unfair and unjust, though I had no idea how things could ever be different. Melbourne and Adelaide were exactly the same. The public lesbian scene was dangerous and difficult. There were many other New Zealand lesbians around, too. In spite of everything, I loved it. The “mateship” was amazing and close, important enough for any risk. And the freedom to be ourselves, to be real, to be queer, affirmed us. There were private, closeted scenes too, but they were hard to find and cliquey. They were fearful of being “sprung” by kamps who were too obvious. They were mainly older middle-class women. I knew some of them, learnt many things from them— like how to behave in a nice restaurant if you are taken to dinner. But they too had no sense of anything being able to change— except for the one strange woman who danced naked to Beethoven and lent me de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex. She sowed some wild ideas, more than a decade too early for them to make any sense.

Because I love you, Mia Sharpe. You are my route to happiness. All of my routes to happiness lead to you, and I haven’t ever found anyone else that has even come close. I love that you are willing to sit in an empty apartment until you find just the right piece of antique furniture that speaks to you even if it takes months. I love the way you call me Beckett most of the time, and Ellie only when it really matters. I love the way you tell people what their gift is when you hand them a wrapped present. I love that you became a firefighter so that you can save people from suffering what you’ve suffered. And I love you so much, that I’ll love you through all of the times where you find it hard to love yourself. Every day. Because there isn’t a piece of you that’s ruined inside, no matter what you might think on your worst days.

But since we’re on the topic of identity and narrative voice - here’s an interesting conundrum. You may know that The Correspondence Artist won a Lambda Award. I love the Lambda Literary Foundation, and I was thrilled to win a Lammy. My book won in the category of “Bisexual Fiction.” The Awards (or nearly all of them) are categorized according to the sexual identity of the dominant character in a work of fiction, not the author. I’m not sure if “dominant” is the word they use, but you get the idea. The foregrounded character. In The Correspondence Artist, the narrator is a woman, but you’re never sure about the gender of her lover. You’re also never sure about the lover’s age or ethnicity - these things change too, and pretty dramatically. Also, sometimes when the narrator corresponds with her lover by email, she (the narrator) makes reference to her “hard on.” That is, part of her erotic play with her lover has to do with destabilizing the ways she refers to her own sex (by which I mean both gender and naughty bits). So really, the narrator and her lover are only verifiably “bisexual” in the Freudian sense of the term - that is, it’s unclear if they have sex with people of the same sex, but they each have a complex gender identity that shifts over time. Looking at the various possible categorizations for that book, I think “Bisexual Fiction” was the most appropriate, but better, of course, would have been “Queer Fiction.” Maybe even trans, though surely that would have raised some hackles. So, I just submitted I’m Trying to Reach You for this year’s Lambda Awards and I had to choose a category. Well. As I said, the narrator identifies as a gay man. I guess you’d say the primary erotic relationship is with his boyfriend, Sven. But he has an obsession with a weird middle-aged white lady dancer on YouTube who happens to be me, and ultimately you come to understand that she is involved in an erotic relationship with a lesbian electric guitarist. And this romance isn’t just a titillating spectacle for a voyeuristic narrator: it turns out to be the founding myth of our national poetics! They are Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman! Sorry for all the spoilers. I never mind spoilers because I never read for plot. Maybe the editor (hello Emily) will want to head plot-sensitive readers off at the pass if you publish this paragraph. Anyway, the question then is: does authorial self-referentiality matter? Does the national mythos matter? Is this a work of Bisexual or Lesbian Fiction? Is Walt trans? I ended up submitting the book as Gay (Male) Fiction. The administrator of the prizes also thought this was appropriate, since Gray is the narrator. And Gray is not me, but also not not me, just as Emily Dickinson is not me but also not not me, and Walt Whitman is not my lover but also not not my lover. Again, it’s a really queer book, but the point is kind of to trip you up about what you thought you knew about gender anyway.

Dream House as Fantasy Fantasy is, I think, the defining cliché of female queerness. No wonder we joke about U-Hauls on the second date. To find desire, love, everyday joy without men’s accompanying bullshit is a pretty decent working definition of paradise. The literature of queer domestic abuse is lousy with references to this(27) punctured(28) dream(29), which proves to be as much a violation as a black eye, a sprained wrist. Even the enduring symbol of queerness—the rainbow—is a promise not to repeat an act of supreme violence by a capricious and rageful god: I won’t flood the whole world again. It was a one-time thing, I swear. Do you trust me? (And, later, a threat: the next time, motherfuckers, it’ll be fire.) Acknowledging the insufficiency of this idealism is nearly as painful as acknowledging that we’re the same as straight folks in this regard: we’re in the muck like everyone else. All of this fantasy is an act of supreme optimism, or, if you’re feeling less charitable, arrogance. Maybe this will change someday. Maybe, when queerness is so normal and accepted that finding it will feel less like entering paradise and more like the claiming of your own body: imperfect, but yours. --- 27. “I go to sleep at night in the arms of my lover dreaming of lesbian paradise. What a nightmare, then, to open my eyes to the reality of lesbian battering. It feels like a nightmare trying to talk about it, like a fog that tightens the chest and closes the throat…. We are so good at celebrating our love. It is so hard for us to hear that some lesbians live, not in paradise, but in a hell of fear and violence” (Lisa Shapiro, commentary in Off Our Backs, 1991). 28. “What will it do to our utopian dyke dreams to admit the existence of this violence?” (Amy Edgington, from an account of the first Lesbian Battering Conference held in Little Rock, AR, in 1988). 29. From a review of Behind the Curtains, a 1987 play about lesbian abuse: “By writing the play [and] by portraying both joy and pain in our lives, [Margaret Nash rejects the] almost reflex assumption that lesbians have surpassed the society from which we were born and, having come out, now exist in some mystical utopia” (Tracey MacDonald, Off Our Backs, 1987).

I realized that I’m not a lesbian anymore. I realized that women don’t have fun together. I realized that that’s not love. I realized that men are heroes after all…” “What is your definition of a hero?” she asked. “A hero is someone you can be proud of,” the woman said. “To be proud of someone he has to be bigger than you so you can look up to him. You can feel safe when he is near you. Especially a man who has soft skin. When a man is near you who has soft skin, soft and sloping like a woman’s, then you can feel safe.” “But he’s not a woman?” “No.” …She knew this word he. She’d heard it before in every circumstance of her life. But what did it mean? What did it really mean? “What’s your definition of fun?” she asked. “Fun,” the woman explained, “is when you get what you’ve always imagined. When you’ve always known what you want and then you get it. With a woman you can’t have this because you’ve never imagined what you’ve wanted. There’s no gratification. No gratification at all.” …”There’s something very important that I don’t understand. How can I be a woman and still be happy?” “Shut up,” the woman said. “Don’t tell me what to do.

I’ve experienced all kinds of discrimination,” Oshima says. “Only people who’ve been discriminated against can really know how much it hurts. Each person feels the pain in his own way, each has his own scars. So I think I’m as concerned about fairness and justice as anybody. But what disgusts me even more are people who have no imagination. The kind T. S. Eliot calls hollow men. People who fill up that lack of imagination with heartless bits of straw, not even aware of what they’re doing. Callous people who throw a lot of empty words at you, trying to force you to do what you don’t want to. Like that lovely pair we just met.” He sighs and twirls the long slender pencil in his hand. “Gays, lesbians, straights, feminists, fascist pigs, communists, Hare Krishnas—none of them bother me. I don’t care what banner they raise. But what I can’t stand are hollow people. When I’m with them I just can’t bear it, and wind up saying things I shouldn’t. With those women—I should’ve just let it slide, or else called Miss Saeki and let her handle it. She would have given them a smile and smoothed things over. But I just can’t do that. I say things I shouldn’t, do things I shouldn’t do. I can’t control myself. That’s one of my weak points. Do you know why that’s a weak point of mine?” “’Cause if you take every single person who lacks much imagination seriously, there’s no end to it,” I say. “That’s it,” Oshima says. He taps his temple lightly with the eraser end of the pencil. “But there’s one thing I want you to remember, Kafka. Those are exactly the kind of people who murdered Miss Saeki’s childhood sweetheart. Narrow minds devoid of imagination. Intolerance, theories cut off from reality, empty terminology, usurped ideals, inflexible systems. Those are the things that really frighten me. What I absolutely fear and loathe. Of course it’s important to know what’s right and what’s wrong. Individual errors in judgment can usually be corrected. As long as you have the courage to admit mistakes, things can be turned around. But intolerant, narrow minds with no imagination are like parasites that transform the host, change form, and continue to thrive. They’re a lost cause, and I don’t want anyone like that coming in here.” Oshima points at the stacks with the tip of his pencil. What he means, of course, is the entire library. “I wish I could just laugh off people like that, but I can’t.