Chronicles of a lesbian in London - Chapter 1

As I type these words, I'm about to go on a date.

With a really cute, nerdy brunette I met at a queer gala last week. So why can't I just embrace the moment, let go of my apprehensions and forget about the one that led me on for nearly six months, only to break my heart three weeks ago?

Well, the answer seems pretty obvious: it was only three weeks ago.

So, let's rewind to last April. I meet this really cool artist online, we start talking, and hit it off immediately. She's fun, very responsive (which is always a plus in this "ghosting" era), and a tad crazy (and by that I mean, she's laughing out loud in almost all her voice notes).

I love it.

I revel in the feeling of having met someone similar to me, after being single for four years. She's freelance; I'm freelance. She's spiritual; I'm spiritual! She's chatty and curious; I'm exactly the same. One tiny little problem, though: she tells me right off the bat that she's not ready for anything serious. "I broke up with someone only four months ago and I need to work on myself. I can't be in a relationship for a while."

What my lesbian ears heard is slightly different: "I'm not looking for love but, but by all means, please try and make me fall in love with you."

At the time, I'm still in France, as I decided to spend the second lockdown with my family, rather than alone and miserable in my small London studio. Our conversations become longer and longer, and we agree to meet up when I'm back. Fast-forward a month later, and we have our first date. She invites me to the opening of an art exhibition in which she's participated. How freaking cool is that? The date is great; she's exactly how I imagined her and we have good banter and chemistry.

I won't give you the details about the five months we spent dating—on and off—because that's another story for another day. But in short, she never changed her mind about not wanting anything serious. And in true Gemini fashion, her words and her behaviour never quite matched. Yes, on the one hand, she often repeated that she didn't want a relationship, but on the other hand, she acted with me as if we were in a relationship: messaging me every day, telling me she missed me, giving me presents, taking me out to dinner dates and all-in-all being an affectionate fluff ball. We agreed to dating other people (if we wanted to) for the first few months, but to only have sex with each other. So... we were basically exclusive, but the door was open to meeting other people.

After a while of this nonsense, I needed the confirmation that we were, in fact, in a relationship. I asked her if she would be okay being totally exclusive, to which she agreed. She said she wasn't interested in going on dates with random people, anyway, and had only been on one over the course of our whole "non-relationship." However, it still didn't feel enough. I wanted to feel special, you know?

I wanted to be her main course, not a cute little side dish. I wanted her to introduce me to her friends, and be proud to call me her girlfriend.

And believe it or not, it happened. One day, I was going to end things for good, and I kept crying over the fact that I knew I was going to lose her. There was no way we could "just" be friends, given our incredible physical attraction. I waited for as long as I could, but ended up crying during sex and telling her I didn't want to lose her. (If this sounds like a lesbian movie plot, it's because at this point, my life had become one.) We spent the next day talking things through, and in the evening, finally, it seemed she had the long-awaited epiphany I had been hoping for. I asked her to close her eyes and imagine her life without me. Then I asked her to imagine the other option: being in a committed relationship with me. "It wouldn't change anything from what we're already doing," I pleaded. "Either way, you gain and you lose something. But you have to make a decision because I can't keep doing this."

"I don't gain anything by being single," she whispered back, her eyes wide with astonishment at having come to such an obvious realisation.

I looked at her with a "duh" written on my face, and we kissed passionately as she guided me to the bed. "I would be jealous if you dated other people," she said as she lay on top of me. "You're mine. I want you to be mine. Please." Needless to say we had really good sex after that (I mean, how hot is it when someone claims you like that?!)

It lasted a week. During that week, my spidey sense alerted me that something was wrong, but I told myself I was just being paranoid because she seemed a bit distant, and not only because she put one "x" at the end of her messages instead of the habitual two or three (welcome to the twenty-first century, where every text is analysed with a microscope!) No, I just felt that something was... off.

She ended things a few days later, arguing that she didn't feel the way she should feel if we were girlfriends, and that the word "relationship" was too sacred to be applied to what we had been doing for six months. She had entered the situationship with the "I need to be single and I can't get too attached" mindset, and she simply could not change it. End of story. She cried as she told me this. I couldn't even look at her. My eyes were fixed on the floor, and I asked her to leave.

"I feel so stupid. I even bought you f*cking slippers!" I huffed as I stuffed the fluffy black shoes in her tote bag.

I gave her the silent treatment for a few days after that. She sent me long texts, apologising and saying the same things she had already told me. I felt annoyed, disappointed and blasé, more than anything else.

Three weeks later, after much work on myself, I met S., the girl I'm seeing tonight. We saw each other across the room. She smiled, I smiled back. Later, she offered me a drink and we got talking. Even later, we went to She-bar with other people, and we danced close. Nothing happened, but we exchanged numbers and agreed to go for a drink the following week. The date was really good, we had a drink, then a meal, then another drink. We discovered we had a lot of things in common: our Italian heritage, our outlook on life, and our spirituality, especially. She asked me if I had ever heard of the app "The Pattern," and I said that I did, in fact, have it on my phone after a friend suggested I download it. We "ran a bond" between our two profiles, and it showed our potential as friends, and as lovers, based on our respective birth charts. A very lesbian thing to do, I gotta admit. The results were very positive, the app judging that our bond was "strong" and "from a past life" and that any potential relationship between us would be "meaningful."

The next morning she invited me to come to her place and watch Carol.

Another very lesbian thing to do. So... that's happening tonight. Will I find out if the app was right? Or could the fact that we have so many things in common give a "best friends" vibe more than a "future lovers" vibe? I guess we'll find out soon enough!

Stay tuned for the next episode ;)