Archive of Our Own

What’s the definition of confusion? Twenty blind lesbians in a fish market.

There are three kinds of straight girls.

She knows this the same way everyone who ever came out in high school knows this: she figures it out after just a few days of changing in the gym once it’s common knowledge that she’s Like That. It took her a while, at first, to pick up on the subtle cues that distinguish one sort of straight girl from another. But after that, it’s obvious.

There are the straight girls who hide their breasts from her, who suddenly start changing in the bathroom stalls. They perform their fear for each other, clustering with their backs to her like prey in some wildlife special. They are drawn into the logical fallacy: they are girls, she wants girls, ergo, she wants them. She doesn’t, of course, though she does like to look at the pretty ones.

There are the straight girls who carry on just as before. They smile, they talk to her, they put on their gym clothes or take their showers and pick her first for basketball, because she's good at it, and last for tennis, because she's terrible at it. If she looks at them, they don’t notice it; they’re not looking back at her.

And there are the straight girls who display themselves. They linger just a little too long, or drop their towels a little too quickly before they get into the showers. They arch and preen (subtly, thrusting their breasts out under the water, always with the pretext of merely washing) and flirt and smile, looking out from under their lashes. They make excuses to touch her on the arm, to ask her to pass the shampoo. If you asked them, they wouldn't know what their bodies are saying, but they are saying it nonetheless.

High school locker rooms are only the beginning, only the first manifestation of the typology. By now, years later, she is a connoisseur of straight girls in all contexts. They are, after all, the only girls she ever sleeps with anymore.

So perhaps they’re not entirely straight; at least, they can’t claim to be once she’s done with them. But there is certainly something of straightness about them, for all their curiosity.

Fucking them feels like fishing under the legal limit, the way she hooks them and reels them in. Like maybe there’s some unspoken Kinsey score minimum for a catch, a Kinsey two, or a three, something higher than “undecided” or "curious." She admires them and throws them back. Catch and release.

These girls will either learn to recognize the danger, steer clear of the hook, or someone else will catch them later, and keep them when they’ve grown a bit. But they’re not for her. She just enjoys them for a time, and lets them go. It’s all for sport.

Everyone knows everyone in the dyke scene, even in a town this size, but she’s comfortable staying on the fringes. It’s all internal politics and dirty looks if you get too involved, and she doesn’t have time for the drama. Other lesbians seem to have joint bank accounts and two-point-three cats within a few months of their first meeting. But she’s not like them, and they don’t like her much, either. She goes out with the boys, and her straight girl friends (type number two), and minds her own business.

She doesn’t want to keep anyone. Sometimes she thinks there’s something wrong with her, but it’s not really anything she wants to fix. She used to try, but after the first few times she broke someone's heart, it didn’t seem worth it. She doesn’t want to hurt them, after all. She just wants to play.

And they want to play with her. Maybe fishing is a poor analogy, because it’s not like she even has to try. They come to her. Maybe it’s something she gives off, a “safe for experimentation” sign she’s not even aware of. Maybe it’s that she doesn’t look like a “real lesbian,” what with the long hair and the occasional lipstick. Maybe they can tell she’s not looking to keep them.

They seek her out. It’s inexplicable how they find her, how they know. But there will be a party, or a dinner, or a pick-up game of soccer, and suddenly out of normal conversation will come confessions of curiosity. The tale of how this one kissed a girl at a party one time. Or how that one would totally have a crush on that professor, if she liked girls, that is. Then a light little laugh, and a sideways glance. A dare. An invitation.

They never say no. When she's got them pinned against the wall with one hand down their unzipped jeans and the other tangled in their hair, they don't say much at all, except, "oh," and "fuck," and the sweet incoherent noises that are the best of all. Mostly they are busy kissing her, desperate and wanting and oddly not tentative at all. They moan when she bites them and blush after they come.

She doesn't always say yes, though, either. She's not indiscriminate, and she likes the pretty ones best. She doesn't take home the ones she thinks will regret it in the morning. She doesn't take home the ones with boyfriends who want to watch. And she doesn't take home the ones who tell her, wistfully, that they’ve always been so much closer to women, and they wish they liked them “that way” because it would be so much easier than men. It’s a sad load of horseshit, but she doesn’t want to be the one who proves them wrong. Besides, they’re not looking for her. They need someone with a U-Haul far more than they need anything she has to give.

For the rest of them, it's a game.

The game is frequently, by choice, played drunk. She never gets them drunk on purpose, but most of them like to drink anyway. It absolves them and lends them courage, perhaps.

Never let it be said that she takes advantage, though. It's far too much fun to do it the other way.

"I can stop," she says, her breath hot against Kate's inner thigh, looking up with a wicked grin. "You want me to stop? You just say so."

Kate laughs, a high breathless sound that dissolves into a moan. She's flushed with drink, her lips are swollen pink with kissing, and she looks fucking incredible spread out on the couch like this, skirt up around her waist and her cotton underwear around one ankle.

Kate has just broken up with her boyfriend, a friend of a friend. This moment, this sticky-warm summer night that smells of the heavy salt-tang of sex and the sharp bite of hops, has been building for more than a week. There have been confessions of curiosity, flirtatious conversations during nights out drinking, innuendo-laden laughter, and finally, inevitably, this. Kate is tall and coltish and has a naughty smile, and right now she's exquisite - wet and breathless and on the edge of coming.

"Look at you," and Kate makes a needy little "don't stop" sound and pulls at her hair, but she keeps talking. "So goddamn wet. You want this, don't you? Your pussy lips are all swollen and you taste fucking fantastic." Kate twitches at the word "pussy" and gasps, and she laughs; she doesn't always talk dirty, but she'd had a feeling Kate would like it, and it looks like she's not wrong. She climbs up Kate's body, straddling her leg, and kisses her deep, pinching and rolling a nipple with sticky fingers, rocking one thigh against Kate's damp cunt. "You see? Taste so fucking good," she mutters against Kate's mouth.

It's true, Kate tastes wonderful. Or rather, pussy tastes wonderful, and Kate's nicely-trimmed curls are damp with it. She could bury her nose in the slick wiry tangle and breathe in and lick forever, except for how it makes her tongue ache after a while. She slides back down, pausing to bite at Kate's nipple, playing her fingers through wet curls and pushing up and in. "So tight, God," she mutters, and Kate moans a little, grinding down.

She licks across her own fingers, up to the clit while Kate gasps and lets out a breathy laugh above her. She licks harder, mouth watering with how good it is, fucking Kate with her fingers, reaching up and in, the taste of warm clean girl smearing over her lips and chin, filling her mouth. She's got her other hand pressed between her own legs, and she could get herself off just like this, with just that pressure and the taste and the sound of Kate's little noises, the way her breathing hitches and accelerates.

But: "Stop," Kate says, and so of course she does, sitting back on her heels and making a display of sucking her fingers clean, still rocking the heel of her hand against her own clit through her jeans. Frustration is a sweet and familiar ache, but right now is about the game, the push and the pull of what Kate wants and what she'll admit to wanting. And Kate loves to tease.

Kate's smiling and still breathing hard as she says, "We shouldn't be doing this." She doesn't make a move to pull her skirt down, or cover herself up.

"Mmmm. Probably right." She calls the bluff, moving back up on the couch with a last longing look at Kate's tits. "You're just so…God. Your tits are so perfect. I want to," and she leans over and breathes in along Kate's neck, breath tickling her ear, "bite them, Jesus, get dressed if you want me to stop."

Kate looks smug, but starts arranging herself. "Sorry."

"You'd tempt the devil."

Kate's good at this, all false innocence and sly, sultry tells. She's smirking a little as she says, "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Uh-huh." She raises a skeptical eyebrow. "Sure."

Kate laughs a little breathlessly and smoothes her skirt down, her hands lingering on her thighs, hips lifting slightly into the motion. "Didn't you promise me a drink when you invited me here?"

The drink is duly proffered. This is the waiting part, and there's a power in restraint, too. A drink, a little chat, and everyone will be well-behaved and polite when she knows they're wet clear through their panties and still hungry. She makes them ask for it, and it never fails; they always do. Tonight it takes about fifteen minutes of good behavior until Kate realizes that she really has stopped, and initiates it all over again, flirtation to touching to kisses and game on. She makes Kate say, "Please," this time before she'll close her lips around Kate's sweet pink nipple, and the tremor in her voice gives away that she likes saying it.

And now there will be no stopping. Back to kneeling, her tongue aching and the flat of it flicking too slowly across Kate's clit. She's got three fingers fucking in as deep as she can, and she's moaning into the damp curls, wild with the taste and sound and feel of Kate gasping and arching back on the couch, grinding down wet and sloppy and needy, so close she's almost sobbing with it.

If this weren't such a delicate balance, she'd call a halt herself, go fish the heavy black strap-on out of the tangle of dusty harness straps under the bed. Kate would look lovely filled with that, writhing and moaning and coming slippery-wet over the silicon base. Maybe she'll tell her about it later, murmur it in her ear and watch her blush and squirm.

But now's not the time. Kate's pinching her own nipples and getting louder, her soft moans escalating to a constant, "Uh, uh." Now it's all she can do to concentrate on keeping pressure and friction in the right places as Kate thrashes and wails and finally freezes for a long, perfect moment before crashing over into the long, wet pulses of orgasm.

God, that taste. Salt and tart and warm, like some rare and hidden fruit that grows only in equatorial tidepools. Like nothing else. She licks Kate through the aftershocks, softly, until Kate pushes her away, and then she licks her fingers clean. She ignores the insistent ache of her own cunt and makes a joke, something stupid and forgettable which breaks the fragile oddity of the moment and gets them both giggling again.

She knows how to make them feel comfortable, how to make them feel wanted, how to make them feel breathless and shameless and replete. It's the ultimate high. She'll take care of herself later; that's not the point here. Kate fumbles with her buttons and drops a shoe, clumsy with sex, and she smiles to herself.

There's another groping and making-out session in the hallway, complete with teasing and Kate's convictionless panting, "We should stop," and, "I really should go," before she shoves Kate out the door ("Go home, tease!" she says with affection) and closes it behind her.

They'll do that again, she can already tell. And likely again. It won't last, but it's good while it's there.

And there are always more fish in the sea.