“Forgetting who you are is so much more complicated than simply forgetting your name. It’s also forgetting your dreams. Your aspirations. What makes you happy. What you pray you’ll never have to live without. It’s meeting yourself for the first time, and not being sure of your first impression.”
Jessica Brody, Unremembered
Writer: Carmen
More about her stories:
Urban Freakonomics – The Value of a Female (Human) Life
The Bachelor – Afraid of True Love
It has been my intention for quite some time to expose myself to more real life lesbian experiences. It is something new and exciting but also hugely intimidating and so one could say that even though I’ve been making an effort, they have been somewhat self-sabotaged. I signed up on a dating website, winked at a few prospects and took a passive approach to see who goes for me. The experience, for want of a better word, has been ego destroying. The talent that I pull as a professional is of a much higher standard than what I attract in real life. The women who are into me mostly look like blokes. It stands to reason that if I wanted to have sex with somebody who looks like a man, then I could simply have sex with a man. Apparently not; there is a lot of role playing in lesbianism which I have yet to comprehend. Whilst surfing through profiles it occurred to me that sex with a woman is not really what I want. I have had it before many times professionally and although somewhat farcical, it has never bothered me and sometimes I quite enjoyed it. It certainly didn’t move me one way or the other and did not result in an identity crisis. I have issues with pussies and hygiene so there has to be some other kind of attraction to incentivise my jumping in there but since I have been on a man diet so long, a change is as good as a holiday.
I realised that what I actually want is an emotional relationship that does not conflict with the one that I am having now. A friend that I can confide in and find pleasurable ways to pass the time. As a compartmentalised person, I can justify having sex with people and not see that as a breach of my emotional boundaries, but the problem is that I want deeper interactions with people and I’m not comfortable with pushing those boundaries with clients. What I want is an emotionally dependant relationship with a person that does not clash with my main relationship and I believe this is my main motivation for considering a woman. Because of my occupation, I have a high sex drive but this has not really been a problem until I met someone who stirred up my ovaries. Fixated on thoughts of my new lover, supply is not meeting demand anymore. Clients have become living dildos and I find myself using them for my own satisfaction more than vice versa. The power balance has shifted and I have to find another way to make things right with the universe.
After my horrific experience of trying to find a lady friend online, I decided to take a second look at acquaintances and rather leave myself open for opportunity. This will not help me find a working partner but at least I have good taste in people and am better able to pick in real life. For the past couple of weeks, I have suddenly begun to notice my female surroundings and wonder how many opportunities I’ve missed in the past. What I’m finding is that physicality does not have much to do with it. I am attracted to intellectual, sophisticated and sensual liberals. I shop way out of my league and my list of demands is so tall that finding said person is almost impossible. I am like a Continental floating around in a South African corps. I find our guttural sounds unappealing and somehow, we just lack finesse. There is something about the way European women glide as they walk and gesticulate while they talk; they are expressive in every aspect of their life. Character, personality and femininity shines through everything that they do. My theory is that they have never had to fight for liberation and therefore never had to over-compensate for perceived inadequacies with masculine behaviour, dress and body language. European women fall in and out of bed sometimes with each other but don’t necessarily feel the need to rebrand themselves the next day as lesbians. It’s just an experience and life is an accumulation of experiences, is it not?
There is this one woman I have noticed on and off for years. I always see her about Sandton. I rarely find people interesting enough to stare at but when I see this woman, I cannot avert my gaze. After deep introspection it occurred to me that when I stare at her what I am experiencing is pure, unadulterated jealousy. I am embarrassed by this character floor but I’m very impressed by the standard at which I begin to jealousify and I would imagine in large crowds, that I am not alone. She is so overtly not of our kind and does not belong in the masses of the ‘ordinary’ wandering around shopping malls. She wears long greyish blonde hair tied back in a ponytail that reaches down almost to her bottom. Not a stitch of make-up. She is petite and fairly short like me, but she walks taller than anyone else in the room. I estimated that she is in her early fourties. Her face has no wrinkles but the hair gives her away. South African woman dye their hair as soon as a few grey strands appear but this woman does not seem to understand that greying hair is something to be embarrassed of.
Whenever I saw this woman, I set my eyes on her until she disappeared off my horizon. My mind plays a thousand scenarios of who she may be. Where does she come from? What is her story? What is her husband like? Do they love each other? What does the inside of her home look like? I want to know everything there is to know about her so that I can learn her secret. I want the formula; I want a step by step recipe. She always walks alone but she must be in South Africa with her husband because I always see her in casual clothes during the day. She knows that I stare at her but is quite at ease and often looks straight back at me as if to let me know that she knows I’m watching. If I catch somebody staring at me, I usually stare them back down with aggression until they back off. I don’t like people staring at me and I am conscious not to stare at other people with the exception of this one lady. I don’t care if she thinks I’m rude, I must know everything there is to know about her. I have no idea who she is or how she lives, all I know is that I want to be her. She seems to understand that my motivation for staring is not hostile and is quite content to let me devour her with my eyeballs. In fact, it is almost disturbing how at ease she is.
In the most recent years our encounters have become less and less frequent so you can imagine my surprise when I arranged a meeting with a company to order a certain product not found in this country. They sent back an email referring me on to one of their representatives based in South Africa and within a couple of days I have an appointment to meet with a French-Swiss lady who I will refer to as Josephine. She sounds stiff and formal on the phone but very polite and as it happens also very punctual. She pulled up outside my house at exactly 14:00pm and to my surprise, who should happen to arrive on my doorstep but the amazingly beautiful and mysterious lady from the mall. We greet and she tells me that I look familiar. I told her that I spend quite a bit of time in Sandton and have seen her around quite regularly. She squints at me and then agrees that she recognises my face and that it will probably come to her later. I don’t know if she was making excuses for me or if she was maybe being polite. Maybe I imagined the whole thing. She is so convincing, I even doubt myself. We sit down in the dining room and she presents me with a catalogue of products and an order sheet. The rest is pretty self-explanatory and so we end up discussing how long she has been in South Africa, her reasons for coming here and her general happiness.
It turns out that she has a very unromantic view of the country, she came out here with her husband who is a management consultant contracting to a very large company. She has lived in Johannesburg for over five years now, and her friend is the owner of the company that I made contact with. I have spent so many years pontificating what her story may be…. when I finally had her hostage in my dining room, I wasted no time dissecting the intricacies of what makes her tick. As she speaks, I watch her fine bony hands waving about and she seems almost fragile to me. Not what I had imagined when I saw her in the mall. She is radiantly beautiful but hides a sadness behind her eyes. I ask her whether she is happy and she answers “so so”. I ask why and she tells me that she does not particularly enjoy this country. Josephine does not have many friends, her husband is always travelling and although she spends several months of the year at home in Switzerland, after five months back here, she is homesick again. Reading between the lines it seems that she and her husband are estranged and she does not even remotely live the life I imagined she would albeit opulent. The life that I had coveted seemed quite vacant although I think her life would still be better than mine even on one of her bad days. After a certain number of years of disappointment, some people seem to accept it as part of life and stop fighting it. The reason I suffer is because I constantly fight it, she has limited her suffering by lowering her expectations. She turns the conversation to me and asks me all about my life in South Africa and my involvements. I give her the civilian version of events. She made a derogatory comment earlier in our conversation with regards to woman with no morals and I felt that if I told her the truth she might judge me harshly. Ever the chameleon, I catch myself lying for her approval and she does seem quite impressed. Of course no life can realistically be perfect so I tell her about my affair with a married man to balance things off. I grab every opportunity to talk about him because he is so wonderful and I am so happy and because I am so proud to have him, I am happy to tell anyone who will listen all about him. She listens intently and then tells me about her husband’s affair with a colleague. I die in horror as I have now exposed myself in the role of other woman and she clearly still has open wounds. Josephine is tolerant and does not seem to judge me harshly. I feel awful as I have been going on about how happy I am and try to divert the subject by offering her another cup of coffee.
We set off to the kitchen and she leans her hip against the counter whilst I make the coffee. She tells me about her husband and his colleague, how she found out and her loss as to her future plans. It seems they have agreed to stick together at least until the end of his contract in South Africa. Their house in Europe is being let out fully furnished and she cannot return home to live there until the lease is finished. I offer her a whiskey and I lead her to the couch to sit down. She takes a big gulp and apologises for being emotional. I tell her that a woman like her should never have to fear being alone. As soon as the male market hears of her availability she will be snatched up to live in another, potentially even grander mansion. She feigns a smile while a tear escapes from her eye, I use the corner of my sleeve to wipe away her stray tear and as I do another falls on her chest. I’m not certain what the parameters are on her personal space, personally I walk with a wide girth but the situation seems to call for affection. After a moment’s hesitation, I wipe the tear off using my other sleeve and take her in my arms for a big hug. I rock her gently in my arms whilst offering her a number of rational arguments as to why she shouldn’t cry and then I realise that I am doing my English thing again. Where I ask somebody not to cry because I don’t want to see them upset but what they really need to do is cry. I keep silent for a while and just hold her … time seems to stand still and a lingering moment ticks away while I caress her hair and feel her begin to relax in my embrace.
Spontaneously she sits up and tells me that she was once very beautiful and there was another man who wanted to marry her. I tell her that she is still beautiful to the extent that I am in fact jealous of her beauty. She reaches for her whiskey, takes another sip and sighs. I use my thumbs to wipe away the mascara under her eyes. The moment feels awkward and suddenly we might be too close for comfort. We stare into each other’s eyes for quite some time before I decide to throw caution to the wind and lean in to kiss her. Opening myself for rejection is quite a big thing in my world and God forbid somebody should accuse me of taking advantage of their vulnerability, but I just felt that she needed to be wanted. Fortunately she returned my kiss and we remained in each other’s embrace. She stopped briefly to gasp and looked into my eyes once more. I took her back in my mouth as I traced the line of her cleavage with my hand. The invitation was clear; her chest was heaving and her nipples pert. I lifted her shirt up to get to them and then found a rather complicated brazier underneath, so I just pulled it down. She moaned with approval as I loved and sucked her nipples. Still amazed that I finally managed to cross the lesbian frontier in real life, I decided to not give her too much time to think. I may not know my way around a vagina but I certainly know my way around my own so I turned her to face the other way whilst spooning behind her. I stroked her breasts with my hands as I kissed her neck and slid my hand into her knickers.
Stroking her clitoris with my index finger, she had her first orgasm within minutes. It was clearly long overdue and I felt she may need more. In close succession and very enthusiastically, she came several times in my hand. Convinced that she was satisfied, I decided not to push any more boundaries and leaned in to kiss her face, she turned to face me. I gazed down at her dishevelled breasts that were still peering through her brazier. Her nipples were pink and distended. Fortunately for me she did not have a very hairy pussy and her clitoris was so engorged it lay outside of the folds. She seemed to want more so I slid my finger back in and stroked the underside of her clitoris. This time she moved to reciprocate and pulled my dress up, sliding her hand into my panties. Holding each other’s clitorises in our hands, we explored each other as we kissed. She used some kind of technique on me which I have never experienced before. I can only assume that since we are all self-taught that we all find something different that works for us. I could not see down as there were too many clothes and limbs in the way but she handled me with precision as juices gushed down onto my thighs. I felt her vein hardening again and brought her to several more subtle orgasms while she whimpered. She looked up into my eyes and asked if she could see me naked.
In the frenzy we had barely undressed and she lay much more exposed than I was. I stood up to take off my dress and she made some comment about my womanliness and curves. Normally I would question these comments but I have recently made improvements to my figure so her statement must have been in relation to her own shape which was petite and fine. We sat down on the floor, naked and facing each other whilst sipping on our whiskeys. I moved in closer and locked my legs around her whilst rubbing my whiskey glass against her tits. She grabbed my nipples between her fingers and asked me to touch myself. I brought myself to orgasm under her scrutiny whilst her eyes shifted between my eyes and my now soaking wet pussy. She commented encouragingly but in some other language and asked me if I always shave. I averted the question by answering “sometimes”. Suddenly it dawned on me that my whorishness might be becoming a bit obvious and I developed a shy attack. Completely satiated, all that I missed was her tongue. We kissed for a while longer and then we realised the afternoon was gone, she needed to leave.
Slightly embarrassed, we hunted around for lost articles of clothing and tried to make ourselves presentable. Pink in the cheeks she shook her hair out and cleared her throat. She thanked me for comforting her and for making her feel wanted. She paid me some compliments under her breath whilst searching for something in her handbag. I could not quite make out what she was saying. I tried to explain that she was more than just attractive but she was not accepting any compliments.
One more cup of coffee just to make sure that she was roadworthy and I sent her on her way. I received a text message later that evening and it has been several days since I have heard from her. I am not sure if I should expect to hear from her again but I certainly hope so.