Filthy what

MY BRASH RED-HEADED COWORKER WOULD BRAG OF HER ENDLESS CONQUESTS. HER LECTURES ON LUST OOZED WITH BOGAN REGALITY. I LISTENED TO HER CARNAL RE-ENACTMENTS GREEDILY. SHE BOASTED OF NEVER LETTING A MAN STAY OVERNIGHT. THE ROOM HAD A PINK CANOPY BED DRAPED WITH LACE AND FAIRY LIGHTS. AFTER ONE AFTERNOON OF MAKING CALLS, IN BETWEEN MAKING JOKES OF ESCALATING DEPRAVITY, HER TONE GREW GENTLE. HER GENUINE CURIOSITY WAS BARELY HIDDEN. “REALLY THOUGH, HOW DO YOU LEZZAS HAVE SEX?”

I was AGHAST! My co-worker, modern Boadicea, didn’t know how to have good sex. I found out how cis-women cum when I was twelve, so I’ve never wondered how lesbians have sex. A slim tome called “She Comes First” was hidden behind blushing historical fiction on a sticky oak bookcase. The glittering orange papaya on the cover glimpsed coyly at me, the dozens of beetle black shiny eyes delving deeply into my own. I f*cked myself with clinical determination by candlelight, following the written instructions carefully. I should have answered my co-worker like this: with fingers, with thighs, with cucumbers, with sweaty mouths, with fists, with feet, it doesn’t matter, just together.

Instead I said: if you are genuinely interested you should Google it. I felt a stinging bolt of sadness. I get the “Oi! How do lesbians really have sex though?” from: friends, and strangers, and drunk guys at midwinter festivals who joke they’ve slipped something in my drink, and my Mum.

After glasses of bloody, tumescent wine, Mum told me that she was sure I was just one of those people who just appreciates beauty in all things, like her formerly lesbian nursing friends. “I like women Mum. I’m not sexually attracted to men right now.” She shuddered deeply. “Do you have to talk about it like that? All I can picture is you having sex. How would you like it if all you could picture when I talked was me and Dad having sex?”. I thought about it graphically for a moment, the halfmuffled groans, and found myself a little too unperturbed. “Surely if I had a boyfriend you would have the same issue though? Whenever I’d bring him home all you’d be able to think about is us having sex.”

Mum paused for a second, swirling the bitter wine. “Yes, of course I would. But the difference is, at least I know what that looks like, so it’s not as shocking.”

Later, I am at my girlfriend’s mum’s house (Dee). “Stop it! You two are basically having sex on the couch!”, Dee screams in her cockatoo lilt. Zoe has me in a light embrace and she rolls her eyes, punctuated with, “Oi, we are not Muuuuuuuuum! Passs meeeee the vegan aioli.”

“This whole time, I always wondered why she didn’t bring any boyfriends home. And now I know! She was secretly a big filthy dyke!!” Dee laughs at herself. “Have you even thought about how you’re gonna have babies?”

“We’re gonna use Matt’s sperm!” my girlfriend says, without looking up from her phone. She has no shame.

“You can’t have sex with your own brother!”

“NO, like Niamh is gonna use Matt’s sperm to pop out a kid!!!”

“What makes you think Matt is gonna want to give you his sperm? He’ll probably be too busy making passionate love, with some woman…”. Dee trails off and stares into middle distance, fumbling with her Scrabble letters.

I’m a little offended at Dee’s insinuation that mine and Zoe’s lovemaking isn’t just as wetly passionate.

The sex I have with other women isn’t sanitised, whimsical or a porcelain stage production. Lesbian sex is corpulent, ardent, fleshy, bloody, bile inducing, and debaucherously dirty, and you probably wouldn’t like to see it. Until explicit instructions become tattooed on newborn’s eyelids under my nightmare dictatorship, I hope that all people come to know this. I don’t think the intense pleasure that can be had without reliance on a penis should be the exclusive possession of filthy dykes like me.