Seducing the Straight Girl: College Lesbian Roommates

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Eventually, once we’d reboarded the boat after our snorkeling, I did start talking with a few of the women I met at the Gen O mixer earlier that week, and it only took a couple of drinks for us to become the best of friends.

Of course, we have established that you are under no obligation to explain yourself or to answer anyone’s questions, especially about your personal life. However, your roommate will likely ask you questions once they find out you are LGBT. Questions might make you feel uncomfortable, like you are being interrogated or targeted. However, I want to encourage you to think about these questions in a different way. If your roommate is asking questions, it likely means they care and are trying to understand you better. If they did not care, they would not ask any questions. On the other hand, questions could mean your roommate is trying to accommodate you. This might be the first time they live with an LGBT person, so as long as they are respectful with their questions, try to be patient with them. This communication will help them realize that LGBT people are more similar to them than different. Although you don’t need to give an explanation to anyone, if your roommate is asking respectful questions, I would encourage you to be patient with them and answer their questions. On the other hand, you do not need to be close friends with your roommate. They are in no way obligated to be your “gay best friend”. If you try to ask them friendly questions and they don’t seem open to talking, don’t make them. Instead, as we will discuss in the next point, give them their space, as this is part of being a respectful roommate. Do give them their space We all go through phases in life when we are curious about a lot of things—a girl may be curious about the body of another girl, but that doesn’t make her a lesbian, even if they take a bath together. I never wanted to know why she wished to see me naked. We never chose that moment to step into the bathroom of a girl's hostel together. We did it because we were curious. When I kissed Lynette goodbye at our appropriately miserable reentry to the real world — Pennsylvania Station in Manhattan — I still wasn’t exactly sure what the hell I was supposed to do next. I would move out of an apartment that I adored, that I’d almost single-handedly furnished, that I thought I’d live in for years to come. I would hug my landlady, crying again because she was crying for me.

Show Me Love (1998)

Once, after I came in her hands, I burst into tears (yeah, I know, big dyke energy), and she held me tightly in her strong, sure arms. “You’re OK,” she said. “I’ve got you.” She kissed my hair. I love Halloween and get to see all the interesting and fun costumes that the kids wear which is so amazing and awesome. Bonding is built into an Olivia trip, which, I realized soon enough, is basically like grown-up lesbian camp. “It’s funny, because on a normal cruise, you’re trying to spend as much time as you can away from other people,” Jamie would later put it. “But we’re all here precisely because we want to be around everybody else.” Now, before we continue, heed my words: if you get anything out of this, FF, you need to know that there was no “decision” here. She didn’t decide to be gay to avoid going out with you. She’s gay because she is. It has absolutely nothing to do with you in the slightest! Zero, zilch, nada, goose egg! So, the only choice of hers you should be respecting is her decision to be honest and tell you something so personal. Capeesh?

It was thrilling, and cathartic, to have such a deep, generous conversation with three smart women about a question that’s been at the center of my personal and professional life for nearly five years now: Can lesbians, and women in general, survive the gender revolution? Similarly, I would encourage you to seek out resources. One place on your campus where you can find resources and a community is your school’s LGBT center. They will be able to connect you with people and places you can connect with. If you live in a dorm, another person who could point you to resources is your resident advisor (RA). This is the person you will go to about housing-related issues and questions, but I’m sure they will gladly point you in the direction of some helpful resources. When you have a community and resources, life at college will be much easier.Part of the reason why is no doubt what anti-trans lesbians (unreasonably) fear: More and more young people are realizing that they identify as a gender other than the one they were assigned at birth — and more and more young people are realizing they’re attracted to people of two or more genders. But even though there are plenty of trans and nonbinary lesbians, and plenty of cis lesbians (like me) who don’t think that “lesbian” should be defined exclusively as “cis woman who’s only attracted to cis women,” our identity still hasn’t been able to shake the sexist, classist, and anti-gay stereotypes of lesbians as uncosmopolitan boomer TERFs, sporting Tevas and cargo pants covered in cat hair. So I’m surprised to say I might actually travel with Olivia again, skeptical as I remain of cruise ethics in general. And that’s because of all the things that happened in the eight days I spent aboard the Summit — things I wasn’t remotely expecting. There is this girl, and after we’ve been pretty close friends for a while, I realized I was attracted to her. Not wanting to just pine for her, and believing that I saw some signs for mutual attraction, I decided to ask her out. She first agreed to the date, then she wanted to wait for after the summer because she was going to be out of the country for a few months. While that wasn’t the best outcome, I thought it was best to give her space and see what happens when the summer was over.

I tried to tell myself that lesbian bed death isn’t real, all the while heartily blaming myself for our increasingly diminished sex life. I was the one who never really felt like initiating, or at least not with anywhere near the regularity we’d had as a hormone-crazed new couple. I assumed, at best, that all passions cool somewhat over the years; at worst, I thought something might be wrong with me. I would tell my partner that I cared about them deeply, and the past five years were among the best of my life. I wouldn’t trade them for anything. But I also felt like we had come to a crossroads, and we weren’t facing the same futures. I had tried so hard to see myself in their dreams, but now I was having dreams of my own. And I didn’t think I saw a future, even a part-time one, in Montana. On a humid July afternoon, months after that conversation, we were watching a movie together. It was one of those days when you skip classes because it’s so hot that you don’t dare to step outside. I always took a bath before having lunch, and I was preparing to go to the bathroom when she asked me nonchalantly, “Do you still want to draw me?” It is hard to do life alone, especially in college. For that reason, I would recommend that you seek out a community. Your community will be a source of support and encouragement for you. They will remind you that even though you might feel alone, you are not. There are many other college students going through the same thing you are. You will be able to offer your support to them, too. It will be a great way to make friends! Again, gossiping about someone is wrong, whether they are LGBT or not. Please avoid gossiping about your roommate, especially about their personal life. Do not be hostile toward them

If you decide to come out to your roommate, do it on your own terms. You could choose to come out to your roommate before you even meet, so you and your roommate can begin your time together knowing this information from the get-go. However, the catch is that you don’t know how your roommate will react because you don’t know them yet. It’s possible your roommate will have a positive reaction and that the roommate-to-roommate relationship will remain unaffected. It is also possible that your roommate will react badly to the news, and you will know to switch rooms as soon as possible! On the other hand, you can mention your preferences in passing once you and your roommate already know each other, so as to not make it a big deal (that is, of course, if you don’t want to make it a big deal. If you want to make it a big deal, you can!). The downside to coming out this way is that it might be awkward to drop big news like that once you have already known each other for a long time. These are simply some ideas, do whatever is best for you and your safety. Here are some indirect ways you can begin to determine if it is safe to come out to your roommate, and here some ways to come out to your roommate. At dinner, we wondered why we couldn’t have both: explicitly lesbian spaces that also explicitly love, and welcome, trans and gender-nonconforming people. Our identities shouldn’t be opposed, but in communion with each other: butch and femme, trans and cis, lesbian and queer. I would write in my journal, the night before leaving: “There’s something so deliriously pleasurable in the idea of trusting myself enough to know exactly what I want.”

I just don’t understand some of these women,” she said, looking around the room at the joyful group of dancing lesbians. “Why do they insist on making themselves so ugly? I’ve never gotten the whole butch thing.” It gives the children to express themselves during the day and wear costumes. 7. Another event that happens during the month of October is Halloween Nights at the Henry Ford in the evenings. Just as it is not kind to gossip about anyone, it is not kind to gossip about your roommate. Do not talk badly about your roommate when they are not in the room. Most importantly, do not discuss your roommate’s personal life with others, as you do not want to “out” your roommate to someone they don’t want to be “outed” to. Your roommate’s personal life is not your information to be sharing with others. If you can’t help yourself from talking, avoid talking about them altogether. It’s better to do that than to “out” your roommate to someone they don’t know (or worse, to someone they know, but don’t want to be “out” to). I was scared of so many things, and worried about, as usual, lesbian stereotypes — moving too fast, feeling too much. And I said so. It was one of our talents that week: saying absolutely everything that was on our minds, and processing until we felt we couldn’t possibly process anymore — at least, of course, until the next night.

Throughout the trip, Matie and Jamie would have a number of tearful conversations about trans inclusion with some older passengers who refused to accept trans women as their fellow sisters. But they also got many women to reconsider their more middle-of-the-road views on trans inclusion. “Those are the people who matter,” Jamie would later tell me, recalling her latest conversions over coffee in the cafeteria. On the flip side of the coin, if you are the LGBT roommate, please do not feel forced to come out at all. If you do decide to, make sure it is safe and it is what you want. Finally, seek out a community and resources to help support you through your college experience.