In her column DYKE DRAMA, GT’s own ‘sapphic Carrie Bradshaw’ explores a new, very online era of lesbian visibility. 

WORDS ANYA SCHULMAN

IMAGE ‘A REFLECTION’ BY ALBERY HENTRY COLLINGS (1919)

Lesbian Visibility Week may have been and gone, but everyone’s favorite lesbians seem to be…married? Kristen Stewart and Dylan Meyer, Gabby Windey and Robby Hoffman, and Tanner Fletcher’s  Bridal Fashion Week show this month had no shortage of real queer couples. 

After all, the easiest way to be visibly gay is with a partner. As a femme-presenting lesbian, as soon as I came out I wished I could have a hot girlfriend to save me from having to explain myself. Saying “my girlfriend” casually in conversation at work rolls off the tongue a lot easier than “I’m gay,” Ellen’s Time cover-style (we still don’t claim her). I once went home with a girl whose name I don’t remember just to prove to the guys hitting on us that we were really on a date (I was 23). 

[Redacted] years later, less assumptions are being made on the daily, partially thanks to better lesbian representation in media (Lorde’s recent outfits count, I guess). But straight actresses are still being cast in gay roles, and most people are still surprised when I tell them I’m a lesbian. 

 

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There’s plenty of intelligent discourse out there about why we need to cast queer people in queer roles. So I’m going to talk about a different kind of lesbian visibility: we were never meant to know this much about each other and our exes. They are far too visible online and (depending on where you live) IRL. That person you talked to once in 2020 but never met? They’re on your FYP looking for a wedding venue with their fianceé abroad. Your college one-night-stand has a baby now, it’s in the alumni newsletter. Someone who hit on you at a party once is this week’s Vogue Weddings Instagram post. The person you sent your sex playlist to (it was very well received) but never actually met just celebrated one year with their girlfriend via the requisite carousel post on grid.

Lesbian visibility on a macro level is necessary, urgent now more than ever. But on a personal level, it feels like the first time we’re forced to confront how the romantic and professional choices we’ve made manifest into visible consequences. Being part of the first generation of dykes online from the time we came out to settling down with serious partners means watching each other’s lives unfold in real time. We’re in a golden age of lesbian visibility, but is our one year anniversary Instagram carousel grid post the new Christmas card? 

And even if someone ripped your heart out and left it to be trampled on the patio at June PAT, there’s something to be said about a fellow dyke finding love and proudly displaying it on the internet. Over time, a post that feels like a gut punch can morph into a “good for them,” maybe even outfit inspiration. There’s a definitive shift in lesbians of a certain age nearing the end of their Saturn Returns. What used to feel like a great, percolating, chaotic mass of potential pairings in certain scenes is quieting and turning into couples or polycules before our very eyes. Being a lesbian has long meant a thorough and constant knowledge of your cohort’s doing. But only recently has it become so very visible via those who choose to share it online. 

 

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This isn’t a phenomena unique to the sapphic set. Before the internet, curiosity sometimes turned into yearning. It still does. Nobody yearns better than us. But instead of seeing people move on via marriage announcements in the paper, word of mouth, chance encounters, or maybe even a stray voicemail, we’re sharing everything in real time. And I’d be lying if I said it didn’t feel incredible to start posting about being happy with a hot girlfriend on TikTok instead of sobbing over finding out I’d been dumped via an Instagram Story of my situationship kissing someone else. It feels good to switch from individual lesbian visibility on the internet to coupled lesbian visibility. The switch from thirst traps to lover girl content has been so apparent on my end but who cares, Christmas came early! It is a gift to not care who sees or likes or responds to your story. Being visible for fun and not in an extremely specific way designed to capture a couple people’s attention (c’mon, we’ve all done it) is…peaceful.

Any lesbian who’s been out for more than a month knows one of the most universal lesbian experiences is emotional turmoil and social proximity, so maybe some multi-part TikTok series can be held in equal esteem with blue chip art in our cultural canon. It’s what made The L Word so entertaining and real even though so much of the show was pure fiction. It’s the common ground you can find with just about any other dyke (the breakup of course). And it’s what makes finally finding someone worth celebrating online however much you want to. Seeing Gabby and Robby’s courthouse wedding on Instagram almost healed the years-old wound Shane abandoning Carmen at the altar created.

It kind of feels like a cop out to rely on a partner to prevent everyone who sees you from jumping to straight conclusions or lend greater meaning to sharing your life online. But the outfit wasn’t gay enough so I needed an accessory (usually, a more masculine-presenting partner) trend by predominantly femme lesbians on TikTok shows this feeling is still very common for lesbians who “look straight.” For a while, my own lesbian visibility meant challenging people’s perceptions of what a lesbian looks like. And the ever-growing lesbian internet has helped so many people figure out what presentation feels most authentic to them, learn about sex, and feel seen even without someone’s hand to hold. 

 

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So it might be self-indulgent to make edits of me watching my girlfriend play hockey at Chelsea Piers as if we’re in a movie or romance on ice book (it is an established genre) for a couple of seconds. But sharing snippets of actual, possible, joyful lesbian life is arguably more meaningful to our community than watching Margaret Qualley play gay for the second time in a new movie. And this being shared along with exes and friends and everyone in-between sharing their visibly lesbian lives in parallel is praxis. Maybe we don’t always need more highly produced lesbian visibility (don’t get me wrong, ‘Be With’ from the Bottoms soundtrack is on the sex playlist), but more everyday examples. It’s so exciting to see other queer people in the wild or online. Especially if you don’t already know them. The gay nod is held in such high esteem for a reason. And it’s absolutely a privilege to be able to subvert assumptions and the effort flagging can take by just holding someone’s hand or kissing them.

By sharing our lives on the internet, we are creating one of the greatest living examples of lesbian visibility in front of other queer people. TikTok lesbians have their faults, but they single handedly helped so many people discover their sexuality during the pandemic. When ‘representation matters’ became a queer colloquialism and shortly thereafter a punchline, I don’t think we envisioned 15 second clips of people touching the tops of door frames necessarily being the lesbian visibility that rivaled Kate Moennig’s casting on The L Word in impact. But the sudden ability to see each other with an immediacy and scale we’d never experienced before was a revelation. So maybe coming across your situationship’s new girlfriend on your FYP due to the strength of the algorithm was worth the sting for the greater good. 

Being gay on the internet, whether you’re single, partnered,or poly, is important. I promise, if you’re a lesbian online, the visibility will follow. We’ve always known how to find each other. And if you’re more of an observer, that’s hot and necessary, too. Some of us like being watched. 

Honorable Mentions 

In the spirit of nostalgia for party coverage columns, some new and notable sapphic happenings: 

• Jennifer Beals’ book signing at the Union Square Barnes and Noble last week for her new book, The L Word: A Photographic Journal, with Ilene Chaiken and Rachel Shelley (Peyton Dix tried to get her to sign the book “To my lover Cindi” but it wasn’t allowed).
• Cat Burns joining the Celebrity Traitors UK cast.
• Lorde’s chain.
• Juliana Ramirez’s new Substack, Search Terms, with occasional input from her girlfriend, Jane, has impeccable taste and recommendations re: queer style and design.
• The Lesbian Herstory Archives in Brooklyn is free to visit for anyone who books a time slot on their website.
• Pride and Prejudice being re-released to theaters to celebrate its 20th anniversary is a really great opportunity to wear a suit to the movies.
• Fun Home author Alison Bechdel’s new book, Spent, is out.
• And if you need a new gay haircut for spring, go to Tommy @axebodypray.

Catch up on previous instalments of Dyke Drama below:

Is being an (actually) hopeless romantic the best way to find love this Valentine’s Day?

Even as a lesbian, is it ever safe to show your full, ‘crazy’ self in a relationship?

Should lesbians get a guilt-free ghosting pass?

The post Lesbian Visibility Week may be over, but a generation of sapphics is more visible than ever appeared first on GAY TIMES.

In her column DYKE DRAMA, GT’s own ‘sapphic Carrie Bradshaw’ explores what it really takes to find love when you least expect it. 

WORDS ANYA SCHULMAN

When I started writing this column a year ago, I’d never told anyone I loved them. Which was fine for editorial purposes, because this is a sex and dating column. I wanted love from people who kept me at arm’s length. I thought if love was hard won, it would last. That if love was universally acknowledged as rare because it was coming from someone who didn’t offer it readily, that it would be less likely to fade or disappear. 

Rare love as some sort of karmic reward was something I held out hope for and slowly gave up on. I was disappointed and blindsided over and over again. Friends, acquaintances, and coworkers were surprised to hear I’d never officially been in a relationship (yes, I am in therapy). You know that time tried, certifiably annoying line of “it happening when you least expect it?”

That is easier said than done. A crush or situationship would fail, and I’d try to least expect it as quickly as the usual grieving process allows, so I could finally be completely and utterly taken by surprise with actual love, only offered to unsuspecting recipients. 

You see, when you are thinking about least expecting it, even if you are throwing yourself into hobbies and work and healing and are not on dating apps anymore… expectation is still with you. Because doing things to distract or better yourself is rooted in the original hurt. It’s hard to forget. Doesn’t matter if the expectations are wholly your own or society’s or a powerful suggestion from people who make their relationships public online. 

Expectation is a sticky shadow. I thought I could will it away, but the only way I ended up least expecting love was being absolutely hopeless. This state of genuine “given up” followed a couple years of trying to heal individually (impatiently, with expectations). I made progress, but I was still sad. I still am. Love doesn’t make your trauma go away. But it certainly makes the experience of living with it less lonely.

I’m not saying this is a universal truth. Point being, when someone tells you love happens when you least expect it, they may be omitting the fact that the easiest way to least expect it is to kind of be in the pits of despair. 

I always pictured when-you-least-expect-it as a time closely resembling the ‘girl who is going to be okay sequence.’ She finds herself in some new passion. Volunteering, running, or ceramics are classic. She throws out her ex’s t-shirt. She locks in at work. She initiates plans with friends or family again. And this is partially true. These things help. But it’s hard to let go of expectation of any kind when it’s connected to the self-improvement we’re told should immediately follow romantic disappointment. 

I’m not endorsing depression or stress or overwhelm as a way to detach yourself so much from when-you-least-expect-it, that you least expect it because your mind is consumed by sadness and leaves no room for anything else. But let’s introduce some nuance to rom-coms, books, magazines, strangers in club bathrooms and on TikTok telling us the moment lonely people find love is when they have given up because they found their own individual happiness. 

There is no great moment of enlightenment followed by the reward of romance. I had done enough work to be in decent enough shape to give it a try. But I didn’t think I had because I was still sad. 

I met the person I’m in love with during one of the worst weeks I have ever had mentally. It still doesn’t feel real. I followed the script first: I deleted the apps except one, pretty much stopped going out, and spent the past year throwing myself into (very queer) line dancing and adult ballet classes.

Nobody is more surprised than me that it worked. I ended up meeting the first person I’ve ever loved through the hobby I took up to try and literally move through trauma, get some endorphins, and decenter going out as my main source of community: at Angela Trimbur’s Dirty Dance Camp. 

Part of me hates that the cliché was right. Mostly, I’m relieved I just had to be patient. Still giddy that patience was rewarded with a love story that sounds made up. When I deleted Hinge, it was because the story of meeting someone on there felt mechanical, anti-climatic, and sad. I never wanted to permanently lose hope. 

My girlfriend and I actually crossed paths three times before I really took notice. But the day the best relationship of my life began, I almost didn’t get on the bus that took me there. I was so overwhelmed with work I hadn’t slept all week, I’d cried in public almost every day, and spent the entire bus ride on calls in the back, even though I was a bus captain (gay). 

My memories of the girl who noticed that I was not wearing a bra with my white tank top due to both queerness and the chaos of the week are fuzzy. I was buried in my laptop for most of the weekend. My friend Caileigh had to tell me to just get myself on the bus when I admitted I wasn’t sure if I could do anything other than collapse on my floor at the end of my week from hell. 

And that was how the universe caught a skeptical air sign by surprise with zero expectations. I had truly given up, I felt hopeless. And you need a little bit of hope to have an expectation you’ll eventually find love. 

I do not think hopelessness is the best way to relieve yourself from the pressure of a world that places partnership in equal (often higher) esteem with individual accomplishment. But I want to be honest about the fact that “giving up on love and dating” ultimately felt really fucking lonely. It took months of disappointment to reach a point of feeling so hurt I didn’t care anymore, I didn’t want partnership. I just wanted to feel better. 

And that was what finally made me lose hope in ideas of people. It made me lose hope in the same crowds magically being different and crushed dreams of people showing up at airports and my doorstep to apologize. Wanting to be the exception and expectation are cousins. 

I had to lose hope in the things that had been letting me down all along to create space for something that wouldn’t.

People tell you this all the time. What seems to be left out of this adage is that when-you-least-expect it might be ugly and messy and tearstained. I guess 27 Dresses really got it right when Katherine Heigl got a happy ending in part by crashing out and subverting her own expectations in the process.

It happening when I least expected it wasn’t immediate. It was thrilling, but unclear at first if anything more than the best meet cute of my life was unfolding. I was still lonely for a while after we met.

I went on a vacation with my dear friend Alexandra (aka @dykeanotherday) immediately after I met the person I now love, and I felt like I was really supposed to be having certain experiences Alexandra and I shared with a partner. I’d felt this before. That it was impossible to completely enjoy an adult vacation without a girlfriend or romance. I didn’t think or even dare to hope things would work out. She wasn’t my usual type. The part of my brain that really loves Murphy’s Law screamed that was exactly why things worked out. Expectation had left the building.  

Isn’t it weird that you can be on a vacation with one of your best friends but still consider yourself alone because you’re both single? I did have an amazing one night stand, but that’s another story. 

One year ago, I endorsed your situationship being your Valentine––to hell with the risk!––and overnighted a handcrafted sapphic collage (I host a yearly Naughty Valentine’s crafting party)  to a girl in London who never asked me to be her Valentine or sent me a card and made me sob on the floor of my room a couple months later. I stand by this recommendation, but caution tender hearted readers that it’s hard to give a Valentine without a shadow of expectation. 

London girl recently apologized, when I truly least expected it. We’re friends now. My girlfriend is cool with it. She hosted my Valentine’s party with me this year. How much happier I am now than I was a year ago is shocking. I didn’t think it was possible. And that’s exactly the circumstance love seems to be drawn to.  

So, here’s my advice this Valentine’s Day: be chaotic if you feel like it. Show up at your lover’s apartment wearing nothing but a dramatic coat and lingerie. Send a voice note sext if you’re so bold. Buy a stud flowers if they like them––this doesn’t happen enough! Femmes aren’t the only ones who enjoy flowers! 

But the most loving thing you can do on February 14th is be honest with yourself. 

Are you holding onto hope that old patterns or people giving you an inch more than the bare minimum will turn into your when-you’re-least-expecting-it? They’re not going to. 

Maybe I’ll say I’m wrong next year (I hope not, I’m so in love), but the only way you can least expect it and not feel dusty candy heart disappointment is by doing the opposite of what has left you lonely in the first place. When-you-least-expect-it isn’t finding a final boss avoidant who chooses you and really is different this time, catching you by surprise. When-you-least-expect-it isn’t the party with the same forty people suddenly being different, subverting your expectations. 

When-you-least-expect-it is giving the person you never usually would a chance, and––finally––having no expectations because they are different. Give it a try. You might just fall in love with someone who hasn’t posted on Instagram in four years after a full year of Dyke Drama.

Catch up on previous instalments of Dyke Drama below:

Even as a lesbian, is it ever safe to show your full, ‘crazy’ self in a relationship?

Post-election anxiety is making me want to u-haul – and I’m not the only one

Should lesbians get a guilt-free ghosting pass?

Why do lesbians love long-distance relationships?

The post Is being an (actually) hopeless romantic the best way to find love this Valentine’s Day? appeared first on GAY TIMES.

 In her column DYKE DRAMA, GT’s own ‘sapphic Carrie Bradshaw’ explores the pros and cons of presenting a more ~palatable~ version of yourself to a prospective partner.

WORDS ANYA SCHULMAN
IMAGE MEDUSA BY CARAVAGGIO, 1595 – 1598

It’s a New Year, the world grows scarier for queer people by the day, and grapes are only just now coming back into stock at my local bodega.

Usually we try to enter January serene, healthy, and hopeful. But 2025 is not a year to “protect your peace” by being quiet. I’d argue that protecting our peace now actually means being quite loud about what we take issue with, especially at a global scale. And actually doing something about it. Who cares if you come across as too passionate, so long as you look back on the year and know you stood for what you believe is right? 

We’re often told it’s important to wait to show your full self to a potential partner, lest you scare them away. But over the past few years, I’ve realised that litmus testing someone this way can actually be helpful. Do you really want to be with someone you give the ick by speaking your mind once in a while, or with someone who’d go down swinging right besides you? What got me thinking about this was an ~ interaction ~ I had on Fire Island over the summer.

This past Labor Day, I went to Fire Island to help produce Doll Invasion, a celebration designed to bring trans women to Fire Island. As it happens, Fire Island Pines isn’t a particularly welcoming place for anyone other than a cis gay man. **With notable exceptions, like the team behind the gorgeous Visitor’s Center store – their dairy-free soft serve is a godsend for any lactose intolerant lesbians in the vicinity. People always think I’m vegan but I’m just deeply lactose intolerant and gay.** 

 

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Anyways, a group of ~5 cis gay men were rude to my dear friend and I back my girls, so our two interactions resulted in them hurling all sorts of speedo-clad vitriol my way. As the words ‘f*cking bitch’ and ‘c*nt!’ (not in the fun way) reverberated off of the Pines’ wooden sidewalks, I shouted back; ‘Thank you, I’m a dyke so that happens to be one of my favourite things in the world!’

Verbal sparring with entitled circuit party regulars aside, the exchange got me thinking about how my (hypothetical, very much on my mind given how lonely I felt in this environment) partner might respond if she were standing there too. Ideally she’d get it when I yelled back that they weren’t being very intersectional in their queerness, and not judge me for responding, rather than disengaging, Meredith Marks-style. 

So I’m wondering whether it’s worth showing your whole personality to someone you’re talking to, seeing, or matching with etc from the jump. Not everyone wants to be with someone who yells back. 

As Anna Marie Tendler says, Men [may] Have Called Her Crazy but have lesbians? Because we have a pretty high threshold for the dramatic. Barring any true interpersonal harm (we are collectively looking at you, unnamed perennial student athlete), I’m going to let you in on a little secret typically reserved for sorority test banks: demure may have been Dictionary.com’s 2024 word of the year, but your true colors are going to come out sooner or later, so why not weed out the people who can’t hang from the jump? 

I have this theory that a lot of people end up with Diet Coke girls. I can’t take credit for this term, my former roommate Olivia coined it. She is very happily married to a hot man now, so we can take her word as gospel even though she’s straight. The Diet Coke girl is universally beloved. Who is she? Palatable. She somehow is happy in her career. She’s just bubbly enough. She is neurotypical and good with money. She tastes special but in a way that everyone enjoys. She sometimes has bangs but always does pottery or graphic design or cooking or baking. She loves to run or maybe even did yoga teacher training. She doesn’t get her feelings hurt easily, or cry in public, or run late. 

She’s probably a projection of the external qualities of everyone who’s dated an ex after me and doesn’t reflect the obstacles they’ve overcome and struggles they’ve faced. But I might also be a little right. 

Let me be clear––I’m not belittling or judging the Diet Coke girl. Sometimes I envy her ability to sit comfortably in high waisted pants and tendency towards serial monogamy. Being a Diet Coke girl seems peaceful. I can so easily imagine her biting her lip and saying, ‘Welllll…sometimes I do get a little crazy…promise you won’t judge me? I fall asleep to true crime podcasts!’ And off she dozes to a blissful, dreamless sleep. She’s a morning person, of course. 

Don’t get me wrong, even Diet Coke girls end up on their crush’s cousin’s brother-in-law’s LinkedIn page. That’s just womanhood.

The Diet Coke girl is not to be confused with the Diet Pepsi girl, who might have run away from college for a day or two with a girl she barely knew and made out with her in the glow of an abandoned bowling alley sign after taking her non-threesome virginity (virginity is a construct). It was all within state lines – Ohio is a hell of a place. 

 

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I’m going to be very candid with you, reader: I’m pretty sure most people I’ve really liked have ended things with me once they got to know me because of my personality. I’m a Gemini, I always have something to say, I have an extremely high tolerance for conflict (read: eerily calm in a crisis and captain of my high school Model United Nations team), and I’m probably a little too honest and direct (Virgo Mars). The funny thing is, a lot of these girls said they were intimidated before they really got to know me (Capricorn Moon/stellium). 

This isn’t an experience unique to queerness by any means, but small circles have a way of highlighting every little thing that may or may not be interpreted as ‘unusual.’ 

Do I regret showing my cards and deep love of horses two weeks or two months in, instead of two years? No. Someone rejecting your true self after falling in love with just a piece of her becomes more painful the further along you are. Your straight, cis, male cousin who works in finance might call this by its other name, the sunk-cost fallacy. And changing yourself to be more palatable, like the most popular diet refreshment of all time, only means the person who yells back or bites who you’re hiding underneath a fuck me sweater will rear her (very pretty I’m sure) head sooner or later. 

This is a call for anyone who’s (probably) been called crazy to not dilute themselves at the beginning.

Little mistakes I’ve made over years of dating in my early twenties will probably haunt me to my grave. But the hard, honest truth is: someone who really likes you will find your ‘crazy’ endearing. And your crazy is probably just you expressing your emotions or justified frustration or having some unusually specific interests (also could be that you’re an ex competitive equestrian like myself, but we’re just brave and quite intuitive). 

Some real-world examples: One time I made someone a Pinterest board with clothes I thought she’d like on it and I’m pretty sure she hated it and maybe interpreted it as too much. Five years later, I did the same thing for someone else and it received rave reviews. Didn’t work out with her either but I’m pretty sure she did buy some of the things I pinned on there.

I painstakingly made a (very long) playlist for someone who never listened to it all the way through. The girl I dated after her beamed while I danced around her apartment in one of her t-shirts to pop music, Chinese carry out in hand, even though she exclusively seemed to listen to Cher and sixties bossa nova. She objectively had better taste than me, but I’m pretty sure we had just…you know, which probably made me seem more charming.

If someone likes you in a way that has staying power, they will embrace your weirdness and probably find it hot, because it’s an extension of you. A friend of mine recently made plans to attend a natural disaster preparedness expo because her girlfriend is very interested in it (this isn’t crazy, this is actually very smart). Endless queer American couples go to Renaissance fairs.  

At its core, crazy is a blanket statement for words or behaviour we don’t understand or agree with. And the right person (speaking from weeks of experience here) will have the wherewithal to validate you or comfort you or try to understand you better or meet you where you’re at. This year, thanks to Tinashe, we’ve been calling this someone matching our freak.

For me, this looks like someone who understands yelling back…and someone who agrees cultural literacy is being familiar with Chris Lilley and Sarah Schulman’s work. Someone who doesn’t mind making friends wherever you go. Someone who shares a love of horses, or could learn to love them. Someone who will watch as you yell back once in a while and understand anger on behalf of the people you love is, in fact, a way to “protect peace.” 

…And other things I can’t mention because my (very supportive and cool) parents read this column. But you can use your imagination there, you little freak. 

P.S. Call me crazy, but I’ve never tried Diet Coke. I don’t like carbonated beverages. 

Catch up on previous instalments of Dyke Drama below:

Post-election anxiety is making me want to u-haul – and I’m not the only one

Should lesbians get a guilt-free ghosting pass?

The post Even as a lesbian, is it ever safe to show your full, ‘crazy’ self in a relationship? appeared first on GAY TIMES.

“Sometimes you just need to intertwine yourself in silence with a (very hot) warm body and ignore the world burning around you for a few hours while your cells regenerate.”

WORDS ANYA SCHULMAN
COVER IMAGE ‘VENUS AND CUPID’ (1626) BY ARTEMISIA GENTILESCHI

This may come as a shock to some of you (I’m pretty sure it is glaringly obvious), but I am American. On 5 November I worked at my local polling place from five in the morning to half ten at night, and started refreshing my phone at seven in the evening to see a worst case scenario unfold. I immediately left to do tequila shots with my new friend, co-election inspector general Angela, as a familiar feeling of dread sunk in. 

Angela told me not to look at my phone, and tried to distract me with a story of an encounter in the aughts with the actor who played Smith Jerrod on Sex and The City as I waited for the person I’ve recently been seeing to show up. Mercifully, she was nearby, and is much taller than me, so is a good person to sink into when everything feels wrong. We walked back to mine, holding hands, and tried to hang onto the shrinking feeling that maybe, just maybe, the next four years would be better, safer, for queer people and the world at large. 

It wasn’t looking good but we still went to bed hopeful. At six in the morning, we somehow woke up without an alarm, and the girl I’ve been seeing for a month just said, “I’m so sorry.” That was how I found out my broken, broken country had elected a convicted felon to lead it.

We hid under the covers for a few hours. ‘If Kamala had won, we definitely would have had sex this morning,” I said. “I thought the same thing,” she said. I instantly thought of the episode of Broad City where Ilana can’t have an orgasm because of the outcome of the 2016 presidential election. “Will we ever feel horny again?” I asked her. “I don’t think so,” she said.

 

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It felt selfish to have these thoughts in the grand scheme of disaster repeating itself a second time. But, as someone with sexual trauma, having a man who seems hell-bent on stripping all queer people, non-binary people, trans people, women and migrants of their basic human rights “whether they like it or not” and who has been accused of sexual misconduct by 27 women elected as president is, to say the least, triggering. Don’t get me started on the fact that the president-elect’s first pick for attorney general, Matt Gaetz, has been accused of sleeping with a seventeen year old girl. 

On a deeply personal, micro level, I have experienced debilitating anxiety since 5 November and have disassociated every time I’ve tried to have sex since. Pretty much every friend I’ve spoken to about this has said the same. It’s hard to be present with your partner when every other thought is the question: “how much longer are we going to be safe to exist as ourselves?” “will there even be an habitable earth for us to birth children into via reciprocal IVF if we so choose in ten years?” “will reciprocal IVF be legal?” “why am I thinking this about someone I’ve been seeing for a month?” (answer: breakdown of democracy, climate apocalypse, and lesbian time being equivalent to dog years) and “why is that seventy six million people we share a country with basically don’t consider us worthy of human rights?”. It feels like just about every US citizen will suffer for the next four years at the hands of a wannabe autocrat. 

It’s impossible to feel excited about your situationship or even wrap your head around more casual dating when you’re seriously considering what it is going to take to survive the next four years as a queer person. The girl I’m seeing caring as much as I do about things going to hell in a handbasket (Tesla) was a good litmus test for initial compatibility. Sometimes you just need to intertwine yourself in silence with a (very hot) warm body and ignore the world burning around you for a few hours while your cells regenerate.

On a macro level, the United States is no longer a safe place for queer people, trans people, and sexual assault survivors, to name just a few groups disproportionately impacted by the outcome. We have always had room to be so, so, much better than we are, but the past four years certainly marked some progress for us (and some enormous losses at the hands of a deeply unbalanced Supreme Court). But now we face the fight of our lives. 

It seemed like a lot of other people on the internet had the same thought. Within twenty-four hours, I was sending the person who broke me the news – let’s call her the ballerina, we met in the incomparable Angela Trimbur’s dance class – a TikTok from @wannabehayleywilliams of them telling their partner: “babe, us having sex would be an act of protest,” with the onscreen caption “queer couple election day vibes,” to which the ballerina responded “good protesting last night.” Having sex the night after the election kind of felt like having sex in a horror movie right before getting murdered. Against all odds, in the proverbial haunted cabin that is the United States, with a disgusting, orange, villain in the wings, queer people are still having sex where everyone c*ms. We’ve always been the final girls. 

That’s certainly more than most Republican leadership can say. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr thinks poppers cause AIDS, and that chemicals in the water turn kids trans, for crying out loud. 

 

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So I wasn’t surprised when the TikToks in between clips of The Handmaid’s Tale in my daily doom scroll turned into people posting about how they “were content being single but now it’s cold out, gets dark at 4pm and the political climate is absolutely terrifying, so all of a sudden you need to be held like a baby at least 3X/week” (@haleygcoaching shared this) and I refrained from screen recording it to share with the ballerina – she’s not on TikTok – because it was…too accurate.

The ballerina slept in my bed for two nights after the election and when I left that Friday morning for my best friend’s Jackie’s first solo show (go see 5th Quarter at Giovanni’s Room in LA, Jackie is bisexual), I missed her. We FaceTimed on the beach as Jackie looked on and I found words I hadn’t uttered in earnest since 2020 coming out of my mouth: “I miss you. It was weird sleeping without you last night.” “I know, it was so weird,” the ballerina said. “I didn’t like it.” 

Normally I’d be hard on myself for UHauling with someone so early on, but I think we get a pass when it feels like the world is (proverbially) ending. This was better and more mature than any pandemic-era relationship I’d had. For starters, we do still currently live in the same city. That is, in fact progress, compared to how my love life shook out in 2020. I used to maladaptive daydream about my college crush and I having to flee our Ohio campus in the aftermath of Trump’s first election win in 2016, forcing us to spend an enormous amount of time in my car where we would then fall in love, so how was this any different? The sheer hope behind those thoughts propelled me with purpose past the anti-gay protesters that would show up on campus from the neighbouring Jesuit college. Besides, our schedules meant the ballerina and I wouldn’t see each other for ten days, so we had to get our serotonin fix where we could. 

I’m still talking to other people, but I think we deserve creature comforts anywhere we can get them as things get scarier. The ballerina and I were both grateful we had each other the morning of 6 November. Even if things don’t work out between us, I’d far rather confront the dark dawn of what feels like a dictatorship with someone’s arms to (temporarily) hide in than alone, like I did eight years ago. 

 

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I’d joked over the summer and in October that I was “girlfriend scouting” when I visited London on holiday in case things went sideways with the election, and it only took a day or two for texts to trickle in with half-joking, half-real offers to cross the pond for good. I’m considering it – honestly, I’m torn. I feel I owe it to my community to stay and fight. But I’m not sure how useful we can be to each other under an administration that promises to essentially destroy the health, finances, and self-determination of anyone other than its leaders. Is self-preservation via individualism the long game here? I don’t want it to be. But ten days of doom scrolling and grotesque cabinet appointments in, I’m starting to think it is.

So maybe my getaway car of choice at what feels like what might be the end of a failed American experiment is a UHaul. Some people have been coping with alcohol, drugs, and visceral screams, so why not cope with someone who responds to your “I don’t want to be stranded in a fascist govt and mad at myself for not doing more” text with “we will figure it out?”

This could be the start of a love story against the bleakest of backgrounds, the absolute worst of timelines. Or it could just be two people showing up for each other in a moment that demands it, like queer people always have and always will. One thing’s for certain: it’s going to take a hell of a lot more than an expired sleeve of Velveeta cheese disguised as a person to get rid of us.

Catch up on previous instalments of Dyke Drama below:

Should lesbians get a guilt-free ghosting pass?

The post Post-election anxiety is making me want to u-haul – and I’m not the only one appeared first on GAY TIMES.

In her column DYKE DRAMA, GT’s own “sapphic Carrie Bradshaw” rings in spooky season by exploring ghosting in the sapphic community.

WORDS ANYA SCHULMAN
COVER IMAGE ‘DIE VISION DER KATHARINA VON ARAGON’ (1781) BY HENRY FUSELI

The witching season is upon us, and even though my period is no longer perfectly synced with the full moon, something spooky is afoot. I’m not talking about the ever-growing trend of people using Esty witches to deliver comeuppance to their exes or get someone to text them back. I’m not even talking about the fact that I think a witchy girl I may or may not have done dirty four years ago (not in a fun way, and truly one of the only times I’ve really behaved like a f*ckboy in a gay way) has placed a strong and enduring curse on my love life. 

I’m talking about ghosts. 

You see, if you subscribe to the official cuffing season calendar (which is bullsh*t and our generation’s digital version of the commercialisation of Valentine’s Day), scouting was over the summer, drafting top candidates happens in September, and tryouts are now, with pre-season happening in November, and, at long last, cuffing season taking place in the December holidays, culminating in Valentine’s Day as the championship game. 

I think I’ve been doing this all wrong, because I tend to have whirlwind romances in January (maybe because of my Capricorn stellium idk) that fall apart in the weeks after I craft them a thoughtful, homemade Valentine. But I’ve also had someone to text the last few Novembers. And as an American, the next best thing to bringing home your partner for Thanksgiving (which we are considering a family meal that appropriately and accurately acknowledges the unfair treatment of Indigenous Americans by settlers through present day), is having someone to send updates to throughout the whole ritual. Why is exchanging pictures of each other’s cousins and plates of mashed potatoes…weirdly hot? Column re: holiday loneliness and modern indications of lifestyle compatibility to follow. 

There seems to be a disproportionate amount of people who drop off once sweaters start to be layered over our white tanks. Is it because Halloweekend is second only to Pride in the opportunities it offers for gay chaos and people want to keep their options open? Or maybe because summer was so fruitful for some they’ve skipped tryouts all together and the way you’ll find out you didn’t make the cut is their hard launch via couple’s costume? It could even be because the colder weather makes it easier to avoid people and the diminished risk of public run-ins causes a lapse in responsible communication. Point being, it’s ghosting season. 

 

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People have strong opinions about ghosting, Alexa Chung’s recent ‘Subway Take’ was that ghosting is fine. And I kind of agree with her. 

Here are the circumstances in which ghosting is appropriate: a bad first date, a first date in which someone asks you “how have I failed you on this date” because they can tell it is going so terribly (being 22 was rough), if someone hurts you in any way, if they embarrass you, if they express a belief that is a drastic departure from your values, if they stand you up and then try to apologise, if they stand you up in general, if they aren’t upfront about being partnered and poly, if they show up wearing a Patagonia vest (and not in a gorpcore way), if you find them annoying, if they are rude to a service worker, if you learn something illuminating about them via a mutual. This all applies to the first two dates and/or people you have not slept with.

If you’ve hung out with someone three times, I have the (maybe old-fashioned) opinion that it is simply better form to send a direct and kind text to tell someone you aren’t interested. I know it’s rare, but I don’t really ghost people. I leave people who are no longer welcome in my life on read, but that’s different. You can’t be a ghost if it’s clear you’re ignoring someone, rather than disappearing. Proving a point is different from vanishing with no rhyme or reason. 

I kind of have a formula for not ghosting lackluster dates from stints in my early twenties when I dated with the velocity and hopeful abandon that can only be attributed to an under-developed prefrontal cortex. 

I stay for one drink, maybe two, say I have to get up early, avoid sharing any sort of transportation with them home, wait until I get home, and then send the following message if I have no care to ever see them again (feel free to steal it): 

“It was so nice meeting you today! I think I’m looking for something different right now, but truly wish you the best with [insert something they mentioned they are working on or interested in], and thanks again for [if they bought you a drink or coffee or dinner mention it here to be polite].” 

Voila! You can sleep at night with a clean conscience and forget they ever existed. 

If you could see yourself actually being friends with someone: 

“Hey! So good to meet you tonight. I’m feeling more of a friend vibe between us, and truly would love to be friends if you’re down. Also thank you for [if they bought you a drink or coffee or dinner mention it here to be polite].” 

Sorry for using the word “vibe” here unironically readers, sometimes it really is the best word for a sticky text message. 

I’m also a huge proponent of being honest and direct if you bump into someone who ghosted you. This happened to me at a Pride party over the summer. I had texted this person at length, we’d matched on dating apps, we’d had multiple plans that they canceled and made excuses for, until they just stopped responding. And we have some mutual friends. So when I finally met them and confirmed they were, in fact, still with us on this earthly plane, I obviously said:

 “Hey, [name redacted], I don’t think we’ve ever actually met in person, right?” She was kind of too stunned to speak, then said “I met someone, so…” To which I responded: “Congratulations! Hope it worked out!” And she said: “We just broke up.” I expressed my condolences and learned we approach conflict differently.

I tried to patch things up by replying to her IG story and she responded and it was all too clear that I’m probably too much for her. A Sagittarius would have probably taken me calling them out on their bullshit and turned that into us fucking in the bathroom. But she’s not a fire sign and is doing completely fine for herself. She is extremely hot and wifed up again. Not being afraid of confrontation makes for great stories and the consistent feedback from everyone I sleep with that they’re intimidated by me. 

But it’s rare that I act like this. My therapist said it was all fine, and I started to wonder if this guilt around communication was a byproduct of being socialized as a cis femme woman. We’re supposed to carry ourselves like a Disney princess, fuck like a porn star, and have the composure and good intentions of an absolute angel. But in our lord’s year 2024, I’m finally giving myself permission to be a complex female character (and dressing up as Isabella Rosselini in Death Becomes Her for Halloween). Being palatable and squeaky clean for everyone is exhausting. I could be so wrong about this, but I feel like people within our community who embody and present as more masculine get a lot more leeway for messing up and then growing up, their occasional bad behavior being kind of hot, and all too often their feelings aren’t taken as seriously as someone who presents as more “girly”. Can we let femmes be messy once in a while and still love them? 

I need to be honest with you all that I recently didn’t follow my own advice. I slept with someone over the summer and it was fun and good but also Pride weekend and I knew we weren’t a long term match and I had a clean communicative ending with them and it was feeling very evolved and true to form…and then a couple weeks later the most intense ovulation cycle in recent memory hit me. I’m being so honest dear, dykey readers; I could not focus, I could not eat, I couldn’t think about anything other than…sometimes you just need a Saturday alone in your room with your white noise machine working overtime. This happens roughly once a quarter for me, but as we’ve established I’m perennially single and maybe things would taper out if I had a consistent partner, and the jury’s out on what that would be like. Anyways, I did what you should never do after you maturely and thoughtfully stop something before it’s really started: I re-initiated. 

 

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You see, I had warned this person that I was dark and twisty in the words of Meredith Grey, a paradigm of hot, ambitious, slightly mentally ill and horny American women of a certain age everywhere. But just because I warned them, doesn’t mean what I did was kind or okay. Is it unforgivable? I don’t think so. 

I texted like a fuckboy. I felt nothing. I changed my mind about what I wanted by the minute. And when nothing ended up happening, I did it again. And when they weren’t available to meet my exact whim, I got overwhelmed and overthought it and changed my mind again and ghosted them. And then I kind of forgot about it. 

Until I went to my local lesbian bar last weekend, after the NY Liberty won the WNBA finals. I walked in, holding someone else’s hand. And I ran into my mutual friend with the person I had slept with on a day that felt like nothing counted. And they told me the person I had ghosted was there. But they didn’t care, because they are an angel. And there I was, dripping in ectoplasm and the consequences of my own actions. I didn’t end up seeing them that night. I sat on someone else’s lap and made out with them for hours and felt like a winner.

But I texted them an apology today. Even though it felt shitty, I did it. It was the right thing to do. Turns out choosing not to be a ghost this Halloween is way scarier than letting yourself disappear into the ether. Do yourself a favour: be brave and have a seance and communicate with anyone you’ve left in digital purgatory.

Stay horny, not haunted. 

Loved finding out about where lesbians stand on ghosting? Catch up on previous instalments of Dyke Drama below:

Why do lesbians love long-distance relationships?

When’s too soon to say “I love you” if you’re also a lesbian?

The post Should lesbians get a guilt-free ghosting pass? appeared first on GAY TIMES.

In her column DYKE DRAMA, GT’s own “sapphic Carrie Bradshaw” explores the delicious allure of dating someone abroad (and with no IG mutuals).

WORDS ANYA SCHULMAN
COVER IMAGE ‘THE LADY OF SHALLOT’ (1888) BY JOHN WILLIAM WATERHOUSE

Did you miss me? Because I missed us. 

We had a summer hiatus and now I’m coming to you after the last weekend in August, a little sunburnt with bruised knees from a semi topless drag rendition of Hinder’s ‘Lips of an Angel’ performed after a couple of tequila shots on Fire Island (I was there to help out with Doll Invasion). Of course, that’s a small fraction of what I got up to, but more later. 

We are gathered here to take what we learned from a bratty, retrograde-rife summer and apply it. We’re going back to school, and if you have a praise kink just know you’re very, very good for doing your reading this week. 

Today’s reflection on three months of sun, salt, and more salt (from tears)? That our own dating pools are so bleak a lot of people are outsourcing their love lives not just to different boroughs, states, or coasts, but to different continents. I know I’ve shared my penchant for doing this in the past, but this summer it seemed like everyone and their polycule sought brighter shores to find a summer fling. Myself included. Old habits die hard. 

Lesbians are not one to be intimidated by a distance (or ocean) between them and a potential love interest, but since when was this the norm at a global scale? I blame TikTok and an unnamed dating app I am extremely loyal to. 

 

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Since we’ve been apart for so long, I’ve decided to break the fourth wall for you a little as a treat and name a few names…of my friends. 

My friend, the actress Djouliet, routinely stumbles across romantic dalliances on the prairies of Winnipeg when she returns home. My friend Andrea, otherwise known as the film programmer @sadnessvarda, found love in Australia. Andrea went down under, literally and figuratively, and returned in love. She even posted gorgeous carousels of her new beau on main (dedicated column to follow). I don’t blame her, they have a shaggy, aughts pixie cut and tattoos and interesting-looking friends – that is to say, they are hot. 

International relations are nothing new to digital-first dykes, but what are we really looking for when we set our sights beyond familiar friend groups (this is what adults call cliques) and state lines? 

I have a couple theories. 

The first is that it’s so easy for our own webs and charts (IYKYK) to feel small, even if we are in big cities. Nothing makes a major metropolis feel cosier than the threat of running into an ex around every corner. It’s easy to tire of a scene after a couple years or crave a fresh start. But beware, intrepid traveller – the second you dabble in the LA or London or New York or Berlin or Paris or TikTok scene begins the countdown to that world feeling too close for comfort. And it happens faster than you’d think. But nothing’s sexier than someone mysterious and new.

It’s so easy for our own webs and charts (IYKYK) to feel small, even if we are in big cities.

The idea of being with someone unattached and drama-free (at least in the sense of overlaps) is soothing, but is the price we really have to pay for the peace that relative anonymity brings worth it? 

Have we reached a point of interconnectivity and local dread where we have no choice but to pack our bags and fly thousands of miles simply to go on a cute date with someone who isn’t off-limits for one of the cardinal reasons (ex, dated a friend, non-ironically posts thirst traps on social media)? An old one-night-stand I happened to share a flight to Sweden with (they’re happily partnered now, we’re neighbours) certainly highlighted the inescapability of queer geography. And the New York scene seems to shrink by the day, but I famously have an incredibly consistent and specific type (If you’re a dyke that vaguely resembles Kurt Cobain, my DMs are open). 

Nothing’s sexier than someone mysterious and new.

But just like booking a vacation usually doesn’t solve your problems (try telling that to my Jupiter in Sagittarius), can a romance abroad really satisfy the same way someone you share an area code with can? It depends on what you’re looking for. A Parisian food stylist I flirted with tonight let me know that one-night-stands are no longer interesting to her, which is fair. I’ve outgrown them for the most part, too. But is flirting in earnest with someone you may never actually meet a way to dodge people we have a chance at building real relationships with? 

Is dating beyond your time zone actually a form of avoidance? Do we keep ourselves from getting too close in every sense of the word by choosing paramours we can only see if we book a plane ticket or tend to digitally like a tamagotchi with rizz? 

It’s certainly one way to compartmentalise.

Andrea would say no, and my hopeless romantic self agrees. Overcoming impossible obstacles for love is inherently sapphic, so distance doesn’t intimidate us. We really should all get stipends for dating-related travel. Maybe Ellen could finance that as reparations for, you know, everything. But someone not living in your city inherently keeps them at arm’s length, and in the honeymoon stage if you aren’t in deep enough to really miss them. 

Overcoming impossible obstacles for love is inherently sapphic, so distance doesn’t intimidate us.

If you’re a good student, you’ll recall that a crush is a lack of information. Amend that to a delicious lack of information. But a deficit nonetheless. And it’s impossible to really get to know someone unless you’re together in person. FaceTime conversations at the beginning even sound and feel sweeter than real life. If you’re together only when you’re on vacation, the whole thing’s a trip. So abroad broads enjoy a longer residence in the crush category than someone who’s a subway or tube ride away. It’s easy to not get annoyed at someone not texting you back for a week at a time when there’s no chance you’d see them anyways. 

 

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But maybe we want that, and that’s what we’re being sold by gorgeous short videos of sapphically-inclined global citizens and paying a premium for dating apps that let us move our location to anywhere in the world. 

I’d like to offer a third option, maybe a middle ground (like Brooklyn, if you find yourself in an LA-meets-London dalliance). The unknown is sexy. The new girl phenomenon is hot. Throwing someone you have zero mutuals with on your Instagram Story, live from Broadway Market, with palpable sexual tension offers a similar rush to poppers, with less brain damage. 

We could just be having fun and participating in my favourite form of tourism, which is through hot people who live in places you are visiting. One time, a date even drove me to go shopping in CDMX because I realised I really needed a more dramatic earring for the outfit I was going to wear that evening. And this summer, I made out with a girl on several East London corners without a single thought about who we might see (I only have two exes who live there which is a statistical improvement overall). 

But buyer beware, catching feelings for someone so far away comes with risks. When you reach the point where you’re bickering about the best time for FaceTime sex, you’re too far gone. 

Being saved as Miss America in someone’s phone on the other hand? Pure diplomacy. 

Loved finding out why lesbians aren’t intimidated by LDRs? Catch up on previous instalments of Dyke Drama below:

When’s too soon to say “I love you” if you’re also a lesbian?

In a world of lesbian drama, can my situationship be my Valentine?

The post Why do lesbians love long-distance relationships? appeared first on GAY TIMES.

In her column DYKE DRAMA, GT’s own “sapphic Carrie Bradshaw” unpacks the validity of fleeting relationships.

words by ANYA SCHULMAN
art by Margaritis Georgios (before 1842)

I just watched 15 minutes of The Bachelor’s recent season to see if Maria really is that hot (she is) and then listened to “Kissing In Swimming Pools” by Holly Humberstone, which of course made me think about the aforementioned London Girl. The song came on when I was helping her pack up her life to move 3,459 miles away, two weeks into us knowing each other, and I did cry when she left. (She said, “It’s the song.”) 

bell hooks taught us that love is a verb, but when is it too soon to call something “love” if lesbian relationships are notorious for growing faster than Renesmee? 

The jury is out on London Girl (the jury being: people I’ve kissed who are now my friends). But from my experience, here is an incomplete list of things that are easy to mistake for “love” as a lesbian: 

• Helping assemble furniture
• Helping move apartments
• Buying you a Meredith Marks branded caviar spoon
• That floating feeling where everything is brighter and somehow minor inconveniences don’t matter because you feel a sense of hope about the world in spite of It All
• The way they smell 
• Crying so much in public you get a free smoothie from the Juice Press by your DBT group
• A single, sustained look exchanged where you know exactly what the other is thinking 
• Grabbing your wrist with a sense of purpose

Even though most of these things are verbs, I’m pretty sure now that they are not love. I always joke that lesbian time is like dog years. One moment can stretch to eternal when you’re savoring every second of them. Or, at least, the thought of them.

Last June, I was seeing another girl, a Summer Girl, whose bed I was laying in at 3 am, very drunk, holding her hand, again crying (I’m a Pisces rising, okay?), because I’d just seen my ex with a new girlfriend who kind of looked like me at the Dyke March, an ex who told me a few months prior she “needed to be alone for a while.” Summer Girl was trying to make me feel better by saying I’d loved Winter Girl. I said No, it was impossible to love someone I’d only dated for a short amount of time. But Summer Girl insisted. If you’re still following this, you’re gay. 

Where it felt melodramatic to assign the word “love” to this person, it also felt fair to attribute plain heartache to love lost. I didn’t love Winter Girl. But after Summer Girl left, I looked at a picture of us on my phone and realized it might be the happiest I’ve ever looked. Being that happy makes you look substantially hotter in an untraceable way. Next time I’m taking a solo shot.

I always joke that lesbian time is like dog years. One moment can stretch to eternal when you’re savoring every second of them. Or, at least, the thought of them.

To start at the end, lesbian relationships tend to break up by one of the three classic curses: avoidance, distance, and someone changes their mind at the two month mark but has a whole girlfriend the next time you run into them. 

A misplaced and generally premature mention of “love” is arguably the fourth lesbian curse. But straight people say it after roughly two months on The Bachelor all the time, with the whole roster staying under one roof. Sure, the contestants face their fair share of skepticism, but everyone generally believes them. So why not extend the same empathy to ourselves that society does to ABC’s glossiest funemployed singles? 

Summer Girl ended things with me via text a few days after a trip upstate that was her idea. In the weeks leading up to the end, I wondered if she made a fair point: “Does love have to be sustained in order to be real?” 

It’s in queer people’s nature to experience brief and intense relationships with what some might call “alarming frequency.” To me, the feelings we experience within these entanglements aren’t any less valid than what your married or deeply committed friends have shared, especially if those feelings are what currently qualify the entirety of your lived, romantic experience. Forget the therapists on TikTok telling you it’s harder to get over something that lasted a short amount of time because you’re “grieving the possibility” and left with unanswered questions. This is true. But as we indulge ourselves in a little ABC emotion today, I’ll venture to say that just because something burns fast doesn’t mean it can’t be meaningful or formative. 

Now feels like a good time to tell you I’ve never told anyone “I love you.” The thing is, feeling a jolt of love is entirely different than saying “love” to someone. The second you say it, you apparently have to keep love alive until it dies, or you do. Maybe that’s why saying it is so terrifying. Feeling it comes with fresh material for maladaptive daydreams. But saying it comes with responsibility. 

Telling someone you love them after less than a week is either going to result in complete disaster or one of the best days of your life. I have some couple friends who said it the sixth day they were dating and they’re still together. I’ve also heard you should give people three months to uncover your potential partner’s lasting behavior. But if we’re applying gay math within the physics of queer velocity, then maybe six weeks isn’t too soon to say you’re in love. Fast-burn queer love, even if doomed, is more authentic to me than most attachments you can find in a Love is Blind pod or in a Bachelor mansion, at the very least. 

Context matters, too. Someone said “I love you” to me once in a crowded bathroom at a club that used to host a party called “Clam Jam.” I knew better than to take it to heart. We were… otherwise occupied so everything said then and there had to be taken with a generous crystal of Maldon Salt. But I laughed and said, “you said it first.” 

Which means, if you were using your deductive reasoning skills, we were both thinking it. And we kind of knew we both were thinking it. The beginning feeling is so intoxicating (as is the sex vortex that follows), which makes it hard to imagine how time-tested love could feel much better, closing us off to the danger of passing time.

I’ll stipulate that we, dykes, cannot fear time. When things work out, whatever “working out” means, time is an essential ingredient to the most profound relationships of our lifetime, romantic or otherwise. Time brings us beyond the agonizing superstition of “maybe.”

Now feels like a good time to tell you I’ve never told anyone “I love you.” The thing is, feeling a jolt of love is entirely different than saying “love” to someone. The second you say it, you apparently have to keep love alive until it dies, or you do.

But maybe we, the dykes who survive ex after ex, are entitled to the privilege of calling it whatever we want, what it felt like, no matter how long it lasted. And for those few golden weeks or months we were the center of someone’s life, their conversations with their friends, their phone, their thoughts.  

If you find yourself returning to those moments where anything felt possible, where you remembered what a January without seasonal depression felt like, even though the finer points of those memories fade quick and fast, I don’t know what to call that other than some kind of love. Even if it was just a possibility, that in and of itself is so rare it should count. 

And if you’re brave enough to say it, well, maybe wait until week seven, which is basically a year in Gay Time.

The post When’s too soon to say “I love you” if you’re also a lesbian? appeared first on GAY TIMES.

In her new satirical column Dyke Drama, the GAY TIMES’ “lesbian Carrie Bradshaw” unpacks the tribulation and triumph of unestablished relationships.

Words by Anya Schulman
Header by Antonio Triva (1626–1699)

Valentine’s Day is not for the faint of heart, even though it was kind of created with them in mind. 

She (Valentine’s Day) comes to us in the wake of December 11th, the unofficial “National Breakup Day” at the peak of holiday stress and seasonal gloom. If your ethical, non-ethical, anchored, unmoored, undefined, parasocial, or mostly daydreamt relationship somehow made it through to the new year, congratulations! But if there’s one thing consistent about single lesbians and dyke-identifying individuals, it’s that we carry no shortage of evolving attachments — unless we’re U-Hauling, in which case, godspeed, and don’t spend more than $200 on them (adjusted for inflation). 

I am here to tell you, dear dykey readers: If you’re single, it is okay for your situationship to be your Valentine. In fact, they should be your Valentine. They can all be your Valentines! Time to heal the inner child who passed out the local pharmacy’s finest cards to every crush in class. You could fall in love… or you could just be in an early stage of dating with a pessimistic nickname because it’s 2024. Stranger things have happened. 

What is a situationship, you ask?

Situationships are messy and fun, even if difficult to define. They know more about your life than a date and you’ve probably seen where they live, but they don’t know your middle name. You’ve been hooking up for an amount of time you haven’t kept track of, and in that time you haven’t put a label on it. They may live in a different neighborhood, borough, country, astral plane, but that doesn’t stop you from calling them anything but your partner. And instead of adding adjectives or modifiers before and in between “person” and “dating” we have synthesized this universally experienced mess into “the situationship.”  

I am here to tell you, dear dykey readers: If you’re single, it is okay for your situationship to be your Valentine. In fact, they should be your Valentine. They can all be your Valentines!

You may end up accidentally meeting someone’s dad in an apartment lobby. You may substantiate a long distance situationship younger than your frozen compost. You might fly from New York to London for Valentine’s Day with a girl who just moved there (which would be in fact the second time you crossed the Atlantic on February 13 for a relative stranger). You could develop feelings for your ex’s ex’s ex. You will probably find a pair of their underwear in your laundry long after they stop being the person you think about when you self-service. 

All this, hypothetically speaking of course, makes Valentine’s Day the perfect day to celebrate the ephemeral, the sexual, the situational. Get yourself something lacy you can ceremonially burn when they break your heart. Give your hot barista a handmade card. Go wild and make a plan with your crush over a week in advance. 

You will not curse your situationship by asking them to be your Valentine. If your situationship does not embrace the camp that is Valentine’s Day, then they might have trauma around it, which is always valid. More likely, they’ll be avoidant and use their sense of humor to mask true feelings. If your sweet gesture sends them running to the woods (metaphorically and literally), then you probably want different things. But this isn’t a reason to shy away from celebrating people who could be cherished guest stars in the story of your life.

They may live in a different neighborhood, borough, country, astral plane, but that doesn’t stop you from calling them anything but your partner. And instead of adding adjectives or modifiers before and in between “person” and “dating” we have synthesized this universally experienced mess into “the situationship.”  

On the nuances and unique plights of dyke relationships…

All too often, single people — and by single, I mean unmarried and/or unestablished in a polycule — don’t celebrate their entanglements because we’re told things aren’t worth celebrating until they’re official. We are indoctrinated with the belief that relationships are rare. That someone wanting to fuck you more than once is a precious thing. (It isn’t. If you’re reading this, you’re hot.) With any scarcity mindset comes superstition, along with etiquette for soft launching, hard launching, and digitally phasing someone out of your life to leave doors open and mutuals unscathed. I think this is stupid. Let yourself feel excited about something for once. 

Now feels like a good time to acknowledge the unique devastation of lesbian breakups. We all have walls because of them. That thing that lasted no longer than two months and ended four years ago still hurts. To this I say, take Valentine’s Day back. Let it have the same chaos gay Halloween does. You deserve a day where you giggle and kick your feet and listen to ‘Sure Thing’ by Miguel without a hint of irony. Use it to flood yourself with dopamine and the thing you so desperately seek from new love without the commitment of new love: the eroticism of surprise and delight. (Thank you, Esther Perel.) 

How single dykes can reclaim Valentine’s for themselves

Two years ago, I went to Applebee’s on Valentine’s Day for a second date with a comedian. I won the Applebee’s gift card at the aforementioned comedian’s show, where we went on our first date in front of a live audience. It was the hotly contested prize for best date. The comedian and I left Applebees feeling so ill from our $6 Smoocho Mucho Sips Bowls that I had to contact my GI the following day to see if I was dying, or if I had just been stupid. I’m still on the medication she prescribed me as a result. This is a metaphor, I think.

Anyway, it turned out the comedian low key had a girlfriend for months, so there was no third date. But I had a fantastic time because we didn’t take it too seriously and forged an emotional bond through TUMs. It’s up there as one of my best Valentine’s Days. 

Take Valentine’s Day back. Let it have the same chaos gay Halloween does. You deserve a day where you giggle and kick your feet and listen to ‘Sure Thing’ by Miguel without a hint of irony. Use it to flood yourself with dopamine and the thing you so desperately seek from new love without the commitment of new love: the eroticism of surprise and delight.

Of course, it helps to be playful with people who aren’t assholes, or substantially more into you than you are into them. The best flings need to be in on the joke. If you’re long term relationship-oriented, chances are you’ll spend more Valentine’s Days with someone you know instead of someone new. But TikTok taught some of us that a crush could be considered a lack of information, and that’s the beauty of a situationship — they can still surprise you. 

You don’t know their habits, or the spots they take a date to impress them, and they haven’t seen all of your good underwear yet. It’s new to them, and they’re new to you, even if the likelihood that you both share a hairdresser is high. All the more reason to celebrate connection within what feels like an impossibly small dating pool, for however long it lasts.

And please, don’t text your ex. Have some dignity and at least wait until their birthday.

The post In a world of lesbian drama, can my situationship be my Valentine? appeared first on GAY TIMES.