Julia: So Valentine’s Day is this week, and I thought what better way to commemorate it than to share our Worst Valentine’s Day EVER stories?
Julia: So Valentine’s Day is this week, and I thought what better way to commemorate it than to share our Worst Valentine’s Day EVER stories?
Amy: Haha, of course! That’s the perfect way to commemorate it!
Julia: Right? And I have a doozy of a story to start us off.
Amy: Dish.
Julia: Okay, so our tale begins the week before Valentine’s Day 2005, almost exactly one year from the day my ex-fiancé and I split up. (After she announced she was transitioning to be a guy, not because she was trans, but because that way “we could be straight,” and then when that didn’t fly with me, cyber-cheated on me with her boyfriend from high school to prove just how “straight” she was. But that’s another story…)
Amy: Whoa. How can you throw that in some parentheses and not expect me to wanna know that story? Fine. Go on.
Julia: We’ll get to that one another time. Ha. So it’s one year after all of that, and I’ve just started REALLY liking someone for the first time since my big break up and all the ensuing lesbian angst. This new girl is amazing. She sweeps me off my feet, shows up in my gated complex having jumped the fence, IN THE RAIN, to give me flowers or just for a kiss.
Amy: That’s some John Cusack shit.
A tip: the boombox serenade NEVER goes out of style…
Julia: Right?! She was totally the cute andro dyke John Cusack. I was twitterpated like WHOA. So I start letting down my guard and falling for her. And just when I announce to her how much I like her, she drops the bomb: She’s going back to her cheating ex, and can’t see me anymore. But we can still be friends.
Amy: UGH.
Julia: But WAIT! It gets better. Meanwhile, I have been chatting online with a dapper 40’s something butch, who lives in my city (Amaaazing! They’re like UNICORN rare in SoCal) and is this sweet teddy bear who has been acting as my cyberbuddy shoulder to cry on.
Amy: Niiiice.
Julia: If Bachelorette #1 was John Cusack, then Bachelorette #2 was like the Nick Nolte character in a Nicholas Sparks romantic drama.
Amy: HA!
Julia: She was this real responsible type — mid-level management corporate job — and was putting all her extra time and money into fixing up a rundown old sailboat… in which she planned to sail around the world.
Amy: Hot.
Julia: Right? And she was just adorable. So sweet and upstanding, in that teddy bear butch kinda way. So two days before Valentine’s Day, with the cracks still showing in my broken heart from the year before, and the whole thing freshly shattered from Lezzie John Cusack… My dapper friend asks me out on a date, to go to the opera and a fancy dinner, on Valentine’s Day.
Amy: This is a rom-com.
Julia: That’s what I’m sayin’!! My life back then was ENTIRELY a rom-com. I even had the cute little one-bedroom garden apartment, complete with endearingly loveable/quirky neighbors and two cats. (Okay, there would only be ONE cat, if it was a rom-com.)
Now if Lesbian Sailor Nick Nolte had REALLY wanted to win my hand…
Amy: True.
Julia: So Butch Dyke Nick Nolte asks me to go on this date, at which point I realize she LIKES me likes me. I want to like her. I really do. She’s wonderful.
Amy: But…
Julia: BUT… I’m just not feeling it, in large part because I’m still hung up on John Cusack Lezzie. BAD. So on top of my broken heart with the bandaids still on, I have to turn down my sweet friend for this romantic date she has planned for us. Because it would just be wrong to lead her on.
Amy: Totally!
Julia: So I have to break someone else’s heart a little bit on top of already feeling horrible. And I can’t even cry on her shoulder anymore, because, c’mon: tacky. …Making it THE WORST VALENTINE’S DAY EVER!
Amy: How did you tell Butch Dyke Nick Nolte?
Julia: I was honest. Just told her point blank I had feelings for somebody else, and she was so wonderful she deserved to be seeing someone who was actually available.
Amy: Did you ever see John Cusack again?
Julia: Oddly enough, no, and she only lived like, 1/2 a mile away. I think I maybe saw her on the street once while I was driving by. And we’re Facebook friends now. So we exchange pleasantries from time to time.
Amy: Is Nick Nolte on FB?
Julia: I dunno, I kinda lost track of her. I hope she finally fixed up her boat, though! Although I think the last time I talked to her, it had just sunk. Oops.
Amy: !!!! I think that story is so lesbionic. You should write it into your lesbo drama.
Julia: Ha! If I ever write this fabled lesbo soap opera for VP, I will have plenty of material. Just sayin’…
Amy: I really want to see what this sailboating, opera-attending butch looks like.
Julia: Kind of like Lea DeLaria.
Amy: Googling… Niiiiice.
Julia: So how about you? Do you have any Valentine’s Day horror stories to share with the class?
Amy: I don’t have Valentines Day stories. I have a bad memory. But I do have a dreaded anniversary story I could share!
Julia: Ooooh, spill!
Amy: So, it was my first year at Michfest… I’ll pause so you can LoL at that intro.
Julia: LoLoLoL
Amy: God, this is gonna be so cliché and embarrassing.
MichFest: Land of the Lesbian, Home of the Frisky
Julia: Your story is already more lesbian than mine in one sentence! Heck, not even a complete sentence. Way to go, Miller!
Amy: HA! I was standing around a fire/drum circle late at night in the Twilight Zone. And I had my eye on this super butch shaved-head dyke who I’ll call “E.”
Julia: Oooooh. E for Ecstasy-Bringer, Excalibur-Wielder!
Amy: She was drumming and I was trying to be all cool. I couldn’t think of a way to get a convo started, so I asked someone else if I could borrow their drum to join the circle. *Note: I do not and did not know how to drum.
Julia: Awww. Isnt that the whole point of a drum circle though? Way to go with the lesbionic flow, Ames.
Amy: But I pretended like I did and I think I pulled it off pretty well. No one could hear me b/c there are SO many lesbians drumming at any one time at any fire pit, that one off-beat drum wouldn’t really be heard.
Julia: Win.
Amy: Cut to me in her tent.
Julia: Oooooooh! WAIT! Like… in her tent? Or IN her TENT?
Amy: Her real tent. We hooked up and I’m pretty sure it was the first time I ever had what I would have considered “real” sex with a dyke.
Julia: Wow! A real, live MichFest hook-up! And your first time having full-on dykey sex to boot. Way to advance to the head of the class!
Amy: I was all about her. She lived in Virginia though, and I was in Chicago, so after that night we only kept in touch online.
Julia: Aww. Did you ever see her again in person?
Amy: Hang on… Throughout our online relationship, she would often bring up drumming. She was really into it I guess.
Julia: Are you sure that wasn’t a euphemism? I mean, come on… j/k. Kind of.
Bang, bang, bang that drum, baby!
Amy: Since it went on for so long, I didn’t know how to end it. I honestly didn’t think I’d ever see her again, so what was the point?
Julia: Totally.
Amy: Then she announced she was coming to Chicago for a visit.
Julia: Uh oh. Just in time for you to break up with her in person!
Amy: When she got there, the first thing she said was “Where are your drums?”
Julia: omg She did not.
Amy: I said “Oh, ummm… they are being repaired.” HA!
Julia: lmfao Nice save.
Amy: It was a little awk the whole visit. I suggested we go to this lez bar and come to find out, she is only 18 though she had said she was 24. I was like 23. At that age, a five year age difference seems huge.
Julia: Cradle-robber!
Amy: So you’d think after learning she’d been lying to me this whole time that I’d come clean about the drum lie, right? Wrong.
Julia: AAAAAHahahahahaha.
Amy: I kept it up. After she left I’d even say things online like “I can’t wait to see you at Michfest and spend more than one night together. GO to some drum circle workshops.”
Julia: *facepalm*
Amy: August comes, our one year anniversary of meeting. I was with a new gf. I thought I’d probably not see this girl.
Julia: Wait, so you never actually broke up with Drumbait?
Amy: NO! I’m an idiot and just kept it going. So we unload our shit from the car, and we’re walking up the trail to set up camp and she is the VERY FIRST PERSON I SEE!
Julia: Oh, no! Awwwwwkward. I think ex-girlfriends (even when they don’t know yet that they are exes) have inbuilt homing devices.
Amy: I said ‘hi.’ It was awkward, and I kept seeing her around all weekend and was avoiding her. She never found out I lied about drumming. I was so weird in my 20s.
Julia: You were a babydyke, though. We all do weird shit when we’re first figuring stuff out. It’s like being a teenager again.
Amy: So true. Ooooh! I should try to find her on FB.
Julia: (Okay, in my case, I was actually a teenage babydyke, so I can’t use that excuse for all the crap I pulled through my early 20’s.) So you guys never actually had a confrontation or a concrete break-up?
Amy: No. I just avoided her. I’d see her around fires and ignore her. There was no closure. And we stopped talking online after that.
Julia: Awww. That is def a bad anniversary story. But such a good example of baby dyke drama.
Amy: As was yours.
Julia: If my story was a rom-com, yours is like, a little indie screwball dramedy.
Amy: Ha! Totes.
Julia: LoL I’d been out for 8 years when my story happened, so sadly I cannot claim Baby Dyke Drama there.
Amy: Mine’s like a bad lesbian short at a LGBT film festival.
Julia: YES! It is exactly like that. With the awkward ending an’ all. I love it.
Amy: It’ll have no conclusion and I’ll call it art.
A Valentine’s Day spoon full of sugar
Julia: Ha! My rom-com doesn’t have a good rom-com ending though.
Amy: Yeah it does — you end up with your current sweetie! Hahaha.
Julia: True. But don’t call her “current” or you’ll get me in trouble!
Amy: I never realized that indicated there would be a future one. I guess you are right.
Julia: So what, if anything, have we learned from our youthful misadventures in lesbian lovin’?
Amy: Long pause…
Julia: Hmm. I think the moral of your story is 1) be honest, and 2) if the chick you want to sleep with at MichFest talks more about banging drums than banging you? Run.
Amy: GREAT!
Julia: And as for my story?
Amy: And if Bad Romance is good for nothing else (aside from the name of an amazing dance jam), it’ll make a good story/film/book one day.
Julia: lmao Yes! Plus: If your life starts to look an awful lot like a romantic comedy, beware the second act!
Amy: The part two. It’s always way worse.
Julia: Ha. At least we both got happy endings!