Out and Proud

by Lisa Young

  “Fuck!” she mumbled feeling an edge of panic caused by her sudden lack of control of the implement which remained clamped to her privates.

  In an attempt to free herself, she tugged frantically at the hosing, which she could barely reach. Adrenalin coursed through her as she realised with increasing panic that she could no longer control the speed button which was pressing painfully against her inner wrist.

  “Oh fuck!” she gasped, more loudly this time, as she realised that Odie had made a successful leap onto the bed and was playfully pouncing on the purple bulb. This increased the pressure against her clitoris to a near unbearable level.

  “It’s not a bloody ball, Odie!” she squealed as he pounced again and again, oblivious to anything but the tempting prospect of popping the mysterious ball. Odie was obsessed with the squeak he knew was contained within any ball shaped object. Lottie had watched him on numerous other occasions engage in just such a frenzied chase until he obtained his prize. As she predicted, Odie mercilessly followed the ball as it moved into the crease of the duvet, and in hot pursuit was Lottie’s free hand as she desperately attempted to recapture it.

  Suddenly, Lottie heard a door slam downstairs. “Hey babe, I’m back! Something smells amazing, and not burned!”

  Lottie froze. Alice? Oh, dear God above. Alice is home!

  Her face flamed with embarrassment. Galvanised into action, she attempted to slither to the edge of the bed. The ball moved in sync, and Odie followed hot in pursuit, until Lottie lost her balance and they all tumbled from the bed and onto the laminated floor with a loud thud.

  “Ah, baby you’re upstairs. Coming up,” Alice shouted.

  Lottie managed to get to her feet, while frantically shaking her wrist in a lame attempt to free the controller.

  Alice appeared at the top of the stairs and peered around the bedroom door, a large grin appearing from ear to ear upon seeing Lottie.

  When Alice entered the room, a dishevelled and embarrassed Lottie greeted her, painfully aware of the destruction of her girlfriend’s bedroom. Lottie was literally frozen to the spot, mortified by unfolding events. Her work pants were around her ankles and the sex toy, dangling from between her legs, was still tethered to her wrist. She gave a feeble smile of apology.

  Despite the return of his mistress, Odie was oblivious and remained fixated on capturing the plastic ball. Sensing his time was limited, he made one final and determined leap towards the dangling bulb, untying the hosing and pulling the entire toy loose. As Odie achieved contact with his intended target, the unsuspecting Lottie was also driven downward towards the floor by the weight of the focused sausage dog, and she landed in an ungainly fashion at the feet of the bemused Alice.

  Some moments later, after wiping tears of laughter from her face, Alice took the mortified Lottie into her arms to a warm embrace.

  “Baby, what a homecoming!” she chuckled. “The pasta bake smells amazing but the sight of you performing a weird sex act with the assistance of my dog will be something that I’m pretty sure I should report to someone.”

  Lottie slithered farther into Alice’s arms, hiding her face in the soft folds of Alice’s beautifully laundered cashmere top. Not able to hide her smile at the sheer ludicrousness of the situation, she chuckled. “That’s not the half of it, I haven’t told you about last night yet!”

  Realising that her pants remained around her ankles, she hurriedly pulled them up before putting the toy up high out of Odie’s reach. She led Alice through into the living room and served up the pasta bake, charred of course, but edible. After three welcome glasses of prosecco, Lottie had mustered the courage to recount the events of the group meeting and her near assassination of the group’s formidable leader.

  “Lottie, I’m trying to keep up,” Alice mused. “But what I’m really struggling to know is why you felt the need to turn to some internet wacko for advice about our sex life?” She leaned forward and kissed Lottie full on the mouth, leaving her a little breathless. “Bloody hell, woman, you’re full of surprises! Tell me who exactly is this group leader? She sounds like an unpleasant character.”

  Lottie explained to Alice how she had discovered the Dear Pru advice site some time ago while searching for support groups, following a particularly difficult early encounter with a stammering vegan psychologist.

  “Oh God, Lots, baby. I really do understand you were having a difficult time but I know that Prudence of old. She’s a wily old badger with only one interest in life, that’s herself!”

  Lottie raised her eyebrows quizzically. “How on earth would you know her?”

  With a sigh, Alice repositioned herself and circled her arms protectively around Lottie. “You really are green sometimes, Lottie. There’s a whole world of lesbianage out there, you know.”

  “Lesbianage? What the hell does that mean?” asked Lottie. Alice sighed and got comfortable for a long explanation.

  “So, the first thing you need to know, Lottie, is that lesbianage is rife. Everyone knows everything about everybody. Make no mistake, lesbianage, my lovely girl, is how you would describe the more unpleasant and insidious underbelly and goings-on of the lesbian community. At the heart of that community, for a long time now, has been Pru and her hangers-on. Pru is well known for being a meddling and self-serving egomaniac with a desperate need for the admiration of others and a burning desire for power. She’s set herself up as a type of self-help guru and claims to have mysterious powers, or some such nonsense. Lesbianage is my way of saying she likes to meddle in the relationships of those who are happier than she is, and she’s the absolute master of this. It helps her feel needed but it’s rarely helpful to those on the receiving end. This is such a small community, Lots, and everyone knows everyone. People are interlinked, usually because at one time or another they’ve slept together. Pru is a master of exploiting this for her own ends. She loves to manipulate the relationships of others and she’ll often be found as a third wheel in these relationships, sneakily targeting the weakest partner and making sure the stronger partner of the two is aware of her partner’s flaws. I used to think she did this because she fancied one of the parties. I quickly realised the reason she actually does this is that she’s alone, and she can’t bear the thought that other people are happily monogamous, so she sabotages happy relationships at any opportunity she gets. Simply put, Lottie, she is a dangerous person with no good intentions.”

  Lottie absorbed this information with some curiosity, and a healthy degree of scepticism. She hadn’t had many dealings with Pru and her crew yet, but she didn’t seem exactly dangerous. Misguided, yes, Egotistical, yes, but dangerous? She just wasn’t sure that she could class Pru in the same category as Ian Brady or Rose West. Nevertheless, she was glad that Alice had taken the time to explain the concept of lesbianage.

  Alice, obviously seeing that Lottie was unconvinced, decided to shelve the discussion about Pru for a more a general introduction about lesbianage. Several glasses of prosecco, and a couple of hours later, Lottie felt she had a greater understanding of the sometimes-incestuous world of lesbian dating.

  Lottie had always been an avid viewer of The L Word and thought she knew all about the supposed links between every dyke and their exes. However, Alice’s florid account of the local community liaisons had brought this vividly to life. In the Scottish villages there was a limited choice of potential new partners, and recycling was very much the fashion. Most of these people, had at one time or another, ventured onto the internet in search of a date, or to expand their circle of gay friends.

  Alice had explained that during one such phase she had encountered the one-and-only Prudence, who had been posing on a dating website as a deeply spiritual woman with healing powers, who also had a keen interest in animals and nature. Alice, keen to meet a fellow animal lover, had arranged to meet Pru in a local coffee shop. Lottie knew Alice to be a polite and kind person, so was not surprised to discover that she had stayed much longer that she wanted t
o, despite knowing instantly that there was zero attraction. Lottie chuckled to herself as Alice recounted that Pru had been a master of superficial charm and charisma. Shrewdly, Alice had quickly deduced that her companion had no integrity and was a determined social climber with a ruthless streak of ambition where her career was concerned.

  “So how did you end the date?” asked Lottie, fully aware that Pru was not someone who would be easily dismissed. Alice said she had eventually established that Pru’s sole aim had been to capitalise on her vet client base, in order to try and expand her services to include pet healing and a cross-over service for pet owners struggling to cope with the grief after the loss of a pet loved one. Alice giggled with near hysteria, as she described how Pru had inhaled three slices of carrot cake, gluten free, nut free, organic, and extortionately priced, and two extra-large chai teas. By this point, she recalled feeling professionally violated, as she had shared far too much information about her client base under skilful interrogation by Pru.

  She had finally managed to make her excuses—early cow birthing, she recalled—before beating a not-hasty-enough retreat. Reflecting on her dating experience, Alice felt she’d had a lucky escape from a ruthless psychopath and had immediately cancelled her membership to the website. But not before sending a tactfully worded e-mail to the website organiser to suggest she may wish to carefully vet the profiles of the users.

  Alice had later heard through her social network, that Pru had started her own website, which she had been somewhat worried about, but ultimately decided to let sleeping psychopaths lie. Literally lie, as it turned out, when she had a quick look and discovered that Pru’s claim to be a qualified counsellor with numerous academic accolades was questionable to say the least.

  After listening to Alice’s story, Lottie settled down to watch a film with Odie, newly forgiven, on her lap and Alice wrapped snugly behind her, dozing lightly.

  Lesbianage, she mused, was not as new a concept to her as she’d thought, although the term was unfamiliar. Thinking back, she revisited her earlier grim internet dating days before she’d met the fabulously alluring Alice. On several occasions, when she had been chatting with women on the websites she’d felt like she was an extra in an episode of The L Word. She wasn’t sure which part she had been playing, probably some gay version of the hapless Bridget Jones, but she had quickly established that in the pool of thirty women in her local area, most had dated one another.

  Some were less discreet than others, which meant that she had been subjected to confessions of unrequited love, bordering on stalking, depending on how you chose to view it, or more frequently it seemed, warnings from those who were keen to describe their horrific experiences with women with issues.

  Lottie had taken this view with a pinch of salt at first, after all, all women had issues in her limited experience, look at Linda Lovely. However, after a sobering encounter with a roadside eatery worker by the name of Alison, she saw why she should have heeded the warnings of some of the other women on the site. Alison, it seemed, had been rather too captivated by Lottie’s Scottish accent during three long phone calls, while Lottie, indecisive at the best of times, struggled to formulate a plan to explain that there wasn’t any chemistry.

  “It’s you, not me, or rather it’s definitely you, not me!” Lottie felt she wanted to scream down the phone.

  After enduring three two-hour phone calls, Lottie was galvanised into action as she acknowledged that she was probably in serious danger of encouraging an actual real-life stalker. She came to this conclusion after Alison revealed that she had searched the web for Lottie. Bugger the internet, bugger the fact that she hadn’t been bothered to create a username that wasn’t her actual name. Lottie was startled to discover that Alison had uncovered her home and work addresses as well as her Facebook profile, including her mobile number, to which she began sending hourly text messages. Most concerning of all, was the fact that Alison had discovered from Lottie’s Facebook profile that she was the owner of an angry cat, and had taken the liberty of creating a blogging site on behalf of her grumpy pet, to ask for advice from the internet community about possible cures/pet therapy sessions.

  A result of this experience, was that Lottie found herself along a similarly undignified path of warning all the people she was in contact with about the crazy table-clearer. Initially, she had remained on the site and tried to ignore the ever more persistent, and passive aggressive, messages she was receiving from Alison. However, after a homemade compilation CD—three of them actually—over the period of a week, all titled Love, Relaxation, and Soulmates arrived in the post at her workplace, much to the amusement of Virginia, who had warned her against internet dating in such a small community, she withdrew her profile and temporarily disabled her Facebook account.

  She later discovered from another woman with whom she’d kept in touch, that herself, and four others were in various stages of the application process for non-molestation orders in connection with Alison, the egg-flipping lunatic. Lottie had taken a back seat from internet dating after that, but had met and embarked upon a short fling with a stuttering psychologist called Imogen, from Birmingham, with whom she shared rather better communication in the e-mail realm than she had accomplished in the face-to-face meetings they’d had at a local gastro pub.

  Lottie smiled as she recalled her ultimate desperation to try to make a connection with Imogen in person, who struggled significantly with communication in real life. Imogen had explained in her e-mails that it was important for her to finish her own sentences otherwise it added to her psychological barriers when talking. Lottie had struggled to be inventive enough with her facial expressions to continue to convey, one, an interest in whatever the mystery end to the sentence might be, two, support for Imogen’s right to complete her own sentences, and three, hiding the pain she was experiencing through her usually frozen facial muscles as she nodded and smiled with what she hoped was not a desperate, slightly insane grin as she waited for Imogen to speak.

  The brief affair came to a brisk end when Lottie forgot the sentence rule and committed the ultimate faux pas of finishing Imogen’s sentence. Forgetting she wasn’t playing charades, and guessing the name of the film that Imogen was attempting to say she had seen, was not going to get her a prize. With a sudden surprising fluidity of speech, Imogen conveyed how upsetting she had found this and red-faced and shamed, Lottie had beaten a hasty exit.

  Many months later, after returning to the dating site, Lottie understood that Imogen had met and entered into a civil partnership with a stand-up comedian whose finishing-off of her sentences also contained a humorous edge and this, apparently, would circumvent the rule of no sentence finishing.

  Swigging the dregs of her prosecco, Lottie rolled to face Alice, whose sleepy eyes opened to meet hers as they moulded into a kiss that would finish at some time in the early hours of the morning.

  The Gay Curriculum

  “MUM!” ARCHIE SHOOK Lottie from her duvet cocoon. She awoke with a start, panicking that the alarm hadn’t sounded and that they were late for school.

  This transpired to be the truth, and after simultaneously tackling the latest offering from Boots, an expertly butchered rabbit, or what was left of it, a fluffy rear end and an eyeball, and cremating two waffles which Archie subtly binned, they hurriedly left for the twenty-minute drive to Archie’s school.

  On the way, Lottie noticed that Archie was not his usual chatty self.

  “Anything up, sweetheart?” she asked as she slowed down to let a harassed yummy mummy out of the village side road.

  Archie shot her a worried look and quickly shook his head in the negative, although his face told a different story. Noticing the abandoned waffles, she had registered his lack of breakfast and so, ignoring the time, she decided to detour through a fast-food drive-thru and make time for a mum chat.

  While they consumed a calorific egg muffin apiece, Archie recounted his tale of woe. “Mum, it’s just not nic
e, people always say things are sooo gay! It’s just mean to gay people like you.”

  Lottie nodded absent-mindedly, as she made a mental list of all the things she urgently needed to do if she ever got to work this morning.

  Archie repeated more slowly. “So gay, Mum, means they’re using the word gay to describe things that are bad or not nice.”

  Lottie swallowed the final bits of her muffin while she considered his dilemma. “Archie, sweetie, they’re just kids and they don’t mean anything by it. They aren’t meaning anything horrible about me, it’s just something that people say. I really wouldn’t worry about it.”

  Archie leaned forward and spoke earnestly. “Mum, I don’t think you can just say that, because they shouldn’t do it and it’s not right, and anyway, people will think bad things, and it upsets me.”

  Hearing that Archie was telling her he was upset, Lottie’s parenting radar spun as she considered how she could show Archie that his feelings mattered, even though she did consider them somewhat misguided.

  Archie looked at her expectantly, and Lottie felt the pressure to provide an answer to his dilemma.

  However, glancing at her watch she realised she was now horribly late for work. “Can’t win them all, kiddo!” she weakly offered, patting him on the head.

  When she was rewarded by a frustrated sigh from Archie, Lottie lamely attempted to change the subject, while she facilitated a speedy departure from the restaurant.

  They soon arrived at Archie’s school. Guiltily, she double-parked in the housing estate near to the school, silently willing the owner of the driveway she had blocked not to notice her transgression. Holding onto one another, they carefully shuffled through the slippery layer of autumn leaves and slid down the predictably un-cleared pathway, which led them to the school. Mentally she counted at least two broken bones of children attending the school the past year and yet still no bloody caretaker out before school. Joined by a few other stragglers, Lottie slip-walked determinedly towards the open gate.