Pic by stocksy
When you initially head out of this dark colored, stifling cabinet, your own queer parents prep you for
specific
situations.
»
Your mother
could be shocked to start with, but with time, she’s going to appear about,» an adult dyke family friend dutifully schooled me personally over a mentoring alcohol once I ultimately confessed my truckers gay to her.
«precisely what does a lesbian provide a second day?» a smart older lez I understood from work asked me personally, the woman sight twinkling. We stared at the girl blankly. «A
U-Haul
!» she cackled, immediately following in the classic Sapphic laugh with a comprehensive definition of exactly what «U-Hauling» exactly is actually and just why I should withstand the
desire to mix
.
«being released of working can be complicated. Your work colleagues may well not address you prefer âone for the girls’ any longer,» a nice little lez I contributed a change with at a makeup products counter in an office store directed myself even as we sanitized lipsticks.
«A
gold star
lesbian is a lesbian having never ever had intercourse with men. Very, you are not a Goldstar,» a bitchy, territorial, hot lesbian the lesbians I knew coveted, wickedly purred in my experience, blowing a ring of cigarette smoke in my face. «i will be,» she said cooly, flicking the girl ash directly into my champagne (true story).
It appeared like almost everywhere We moved, I happened to be receiving endless gems of advice from gays.
Nevertheless
. Not one person said exactly what a »
pillow princess
» had been. That one I got to figure out alone.
*
I happened to be seated on a porch at a party for the Hollywood Hills with a number of cool women i did not know well. They certainly were all from Orange County and Long seashore, and all sorts of had pin right tresses, dyed jet-black and designed into those exaggerated very early 2000s emo side bangs. They all wore «snapbacks» together with fragile
tattoos
and pierced septums and gracefully whizzed about LA on skateboards.
We, on the other hand, decided a total Los Angeles bitch near to all of them, with my overstated tan and shows and sky-high pumps and tragic hair extensions that dropped past my hipbones. I happened to be a slutty
Lindsay Lohan
in a room chock-full of faux-punk Avril Lavignes. The entire scene ended up being a trend catastrophe, however once more, the first 2000s elicited a certain method of ratchetry that nobody in my generation was protected from. It was the age of hot Couture sweats hidden into Ugg footwear and Von Dutch trucker caps!
I’d in some way obtained an invite for this special, youthful lez California celebration and though I seemed and decided a fish out of drinking water, I was obtaining the time of my entire life. I found myself very excited becoming getting together with gay girls that I was capable hunt at night snapbacks and tribal tattoos.
«You’re pretty. Are you presently gay?» a girl with a bob therefore shiny it gleamed inside moonlight, sweetly asked myself, using a swig of the woman alcohol (what was it with lesbians and alcohol?). «i am merely asking because my good friend thinks you’re pretty.» She flashed her alabaster pearly white teeth and indicated to a
chapstick lesbian
in a hoodie to the woman remaining. The chapstick lesbian was
totally
my type and that I was actually elated. «I’m a lesbian,» I stated with pride, basking during my newfound homosexual glory.
Instantly a bellowing vocals boomed through canyons. «Exactly who within this room seems possib a PILLOW PRINCESS?» roared the voice. I squinted my personal sight to see who this earth-shattering voice belonged to. That is once I saw
the girl.
We knew she was actually a bully, because We, like most ladies, were both endowed and cursed with a strong, internal bully radar. Her sight had a jarring maniacal gleam for them, similar to a cat prepping to pounce on a mouse. I braced myself. This lady held a toxic, misogynistic, power and I intrinsically understood that
I
, the red lipstick sporting beginner in the area, would undoubtedly function as bait of her intimidation.
«we guess you’re a f*cking pillow princess!» the bully loudly shouted, directed at me personally. «Actually, I bet this is exactly why
you imagine
you are a lesbian. You just relax and let shit occur.» The area started initially to chuckle. We gave the
bully
among my personal soul-penetrating demise stares. The sort of gaze that always burns off openings all the way through the weakened flesh of vulnerable bitches. The stare which had offered as my personal gun up against the perfectly-blow-dried mean ladies in my twelfth grade. It had been, the very first time, genuinely inadequate. She provided me with the death gaze right back. We decided I found myself being hazed. Along these lines was actually a lesbian sorority and that I ended up being the girl who had getting started in order to be accepted in to the Sapphic group. We gulped. I scanned my personal head for a comeback, but I found myself stunted.
What the hell had been a «pillow princess» anyhow?
«would you even know just what a pillow princess is actually?» the bully hissed through her teeth. I could smell alcohol and beef on her behalf breath. We gagged but stayed stoic and hushed. «Oh, you are brand new, huh?» the bully taunted.
»
A pillow princess suggests someone that just lays in sleep and doesn’t
drop on
the woman girlfriend. She only receives,» a bubble-gum-smacking lady with feet a long time they came across her ears, chimed in, informatively.
I believed my face burn. I found myself numerous things: a flake which sucked at returning calls and answering text messages. An out-of-work actress that hasn’t scheduled a gig in a-year. A dreadful driver which cried whenever she drove on the highway. An acne-ridden twenty-something with a questionable rodent’s nest of a weave. A chain-smoker with an alarmingly high threshold for gleaming drink. However, a pillow princess
I
was not.
I might have merely come out of the closet and I also may possibly not be a south Ca woman you never know tips skateboard, but i believe i have been hooking up with women much more than these hoes.
I was thinking to myself personally, gritting my personal teeth, given that yellow mist of rage worked its way across my eye-line. We pulled a Parliament light 100 away from my knockoff Prada mini backpack, that I’d purchased off a sickly searching teen on Canal Street final summertime. «the trend is to ask my personal ex-girlfriend easily’m a pillow princess?» I mentioned slowly, raising my left eyebrow excessive i possibly could feel it get to the performers. «Bitch,» I hissed loudly.
The sweet-faced lady together with the shiny locks who’d approached me personally earlier walked toward me personally and lit my smoking personally. «I really like you,» she squealed. «In addition, she is only pissed because she never goes down on some of her girlfriends, and she actually is threatened by you because you’re hot and brand-new.»
«I became only joking!» the bully sing-songed, playfully jabbing myself inside the elbows as if we were outdated senior high school friends. It reminded me of how fast the child who had composed SLUT in black ink to my locker in middle school had are available about after I socked him amongst the sight at recess.
That’s with regards to hit myself. Even yet in the lesbian scene embracing the real girliness will be regarded as a weakness. The love of femme-y trend is likely to make other individuals imagine they’ve the right to chat down seriously to you, humiliate both you and create presumptions about who you really are. Inside the secure lez globe, a very masculine energy sources are often regarded as «dominant» in intimate connections. It’s regarded as
the huntsman
, and you will be regarded as the baby Bambi waiting to be hunted.
Screw that. I’m no Bambi.
We knew I’d a choice. I possibly could dumb down my personal fabulous, brutal, high-femme style and become taken seriously, but die slightly interior. OR I could continue to be my authentic crop-top-wearing, ratty-weaved self and refuse to let the lesbian patriarchy winnings. I chose the latter, needless to say, darling.
Views particularly that replayed and always replay for the totality of my lesbian presence. We nevertheless never allow it slip, girl. Because everytime I react, i see a young femme for the history seeing, cheerful. And I also understand during my gut that she will fight the second lez which undermines her girly-ness and eventually we’ll snuff aside ridiculous presumptions about femmes produced by people who find themselves endangered by divine powerful goddess that life inside each girly-girl.