When I first met Jess, I paid more attention to her clearly thrifted button up than I did her face. It was lightweight and cute, and it matched the fact that this was the kind of girl to wear Velcro Pumas regardless of the rest of her outfit. A late 20′s neo-hippie type. We made idle conversation and smoked weed, had lunch, talked. She wasn’t a pretty girl unless you meant it in an Ani Difranco kind of way, but she was interesting and her smile was nice. My obsession with teeth goes deep.
Waiting for a delivery in the front of the building, we start talking about college – I tell her I didn’t graduate because I think college is for chumps. She smiles, but doesn’t say anything until I finish up my three sentence thought on the topic. She’s back from Chile after teaching children English there for the past year, following receiving her Bachelor’s degree.
Someone has a degree, and someone else has her foot in her mouth – both of them, actually. I like her more for not taking offense and letting the conversation continue to flow. We talk tattoos, or rather, she asks me about mine. She’s quick to compliment, lightly touching when it’s not awkward. My baby crush begins to swell, but over the next few weeks I only see her in passing or when taking a quick smoke break behind the building.
It’s gay pride weekend and she’s standing at the door to the office, smiling and asking me questions. She’s leaving in an hour to volunteer at the event but hanging around… curious about all of my tattoos, what kind of weed I like to smoke, what I do when I’m not at work. Lately I’d been seeing women I’d want to sleep with everywhere, or wondering if that was even something I wanted to do. It’d been years since my last bisexuality stint that meant having a girlfriend. I’ve zoned out on her small belly, pushing against the fabric of her t-shirt. I’m entranced by it, though not sexually stimulated. She says my name, having clearly caught me staring.
“Sooo… do you have a boyfriend/girlfriend? Are you seeing anybody?”
She’s not sounding overly interested as she asks, but this feels like a probing question. I try to keep the conversation brief, summing up my few years of singledom and explaining them away with the fact I like to keep myself busy. When I ask her the same she tells me about some girl from California she’s been seeing, but is quick to tell me that it’s nothing serious since they’re not living near each other.
One of the older male clients is sitting a few feet from us as she explains her not-relationship, I wonder what he’s listening to this conversation. Is she just expressing a healthy level of interest in my life or does she want to see me naked? A few weeks ago I was thinking about how cute she was but I’m not feeling it today. Some element from before is missing.
Maybe it’s the horrible swooshy capri pants she’s wearing, or the fact she just got done telling me how she attends a Native American sweat lodge every Saturday night. Beating drums, singing songs, sweating in a mud hut… this girl might not smell like patchouli but I’m willing to bet she owns some. She might own bras too, but as far as I can tell she’s not wearing one. We’re too close to the swamp cooler to be comfortable, I feel how hard my nipples are under my shirt when I see hers. This line of thinking is making me feel so awkward; I am such a creep… I’m not even gay. (I think.) Maybe I just shouldn’t get so high at work anymore. Thinking this stuff is normal, right? Right.
She asks what I have going on for the weekend, I mumble something about not making plans and wonder if she’s going to invite me over before we’re interrupted. And she’s on her way out the door, off to talk about lesbo-rights with all her roller derby chick buddies.
This girl is my type, the kind I’m constantly trying to convince myself isn’t my type. They’re never that pretty but they’re into social activism and wearing bandanas over their hair in the heat. Nose piercings, chunky metal and stone rings on their fingers, light on the makeup. I’ve never slept with a woman that would be confused for a beauty queen. They’re always thicker in the hips, wry witted and mildly amused by my not-gay-only-sometimes outlook on sleeping with them.
I’ve seen her intentionally sculpted biceps, seen the muscles of her hands flexed. I shouldn’t be surprised at how strong she is as she works the tension from my shoulders late the next afternoon. I’m still not sure if I’ve read the signs correctly – I speak the language but only in bits and pieces, you know? I shouldn’t be letting her do this, I should, it feels nice. She plays with my hairline and I struggle not to freeze up. Am I supposed to say something? Is there a hand sign for “not gay, not really”?
“I like your shirt,” she whispers, her hand sliding below the neckline of my tank top. There’s a sparkly rainbow with a pegasus and DREAMS across the front in huge white letters, but that’s not what I’m focused on as I look down. The fabric moves, her hand underneath as she lightly runs her fingertips over my skin. She starts working her hands in an entirely new way, mouth against my earlobe as we move to the employee lounge. The door’s been left open and I mentally make note to close it next time something like this comes up.
I’m practically panting out of anxiety instead of arousal. I can’t breathe. The counter is cold on the backs of my thighs as she pulls my shirt up over my head. The No Bra Club had it’s first meeting of many that afternoon, alternating between too cool and too warm as the cooling system clicked itself on and off. Following a courtesy surface-wipe down, she sits down at the table and sets to work breaking up weed. She’s smirking at the joint she’s focused on rolling, not looking at me as she idly talks about her Ms. California. Was this her version of a post-coital glow? Talking about the girl that she probably wasn’t supposed to be fucking around on? The room smelled like pussy and pot until I opened a window, convinced everyone would notice when they got back from lunch. And they did, I think. But they didn’t say anything, and that was as good as permission to continue doing it in my mind.
Jess and I were sometimes-coffee and lunch friends by day, rarely lovers by night. We never held hands or kissed in public; I met a handful of her friends while making sure she never met any of mine. August rolled around, and she asked me where I stood when it came to the two of us. I didn’t realize that what was a low-key non-arrangement for me had become an emotional investment for her. I urged her not to fall in love with a straight girl–a few days later she told me she was going to give things a shot with the California girl over iced lattes.
I wasn’t sad things were over, but she was and that rubbed me the wrong way. I didn’t mean to be some shitty straight chick in it for something different, though in the back of my mind I knew that’s what I was doing. After her last two weeks were up at work, I thought about texting her to wish her luck before deciding that was a bad idea. By the end of the year I had put the armpit-shaving hippie/roller derby girl I’d spent a splinter of my summer between the thighs of at the back of my mind.
Driving downtown yesterday, I spotted a cute girl with a pixie haircut in a wheelchair waiting to cross the street… it brought back the memories. I was queued up, even thought about pulling over to introduce myself for a split-second. Twenty minutes after remembering the last girl-on-girl tumble I’ve had in years and I was ready to meet new women that would wind up hating me later.