Not to be

A mix of fiction and non fiction. My last relationship I guess started in an unusual way. Is a non edited start :)

“It’s complicated”, where do you go to from there. When an experience or relationship falls into that category it feels nearly impossible to start the explanation. Trying to figure out the right point to start from, what details to include, the important things and the feelings that correspond with minuscule events. I still have no idea how to begin, how to explain how I got here and why I feel like I do. A beautiful voice once sung, ‘start at the very beginning, it’s a very good place to start’ so I shall attempt just that.  

 

There is no point starting a story without a character, in this case that is me. My name is Rebecca and I am a primary teacher who is 26year old and a lesbian from New Zealand. Average in height, a bit more than average in build, there is no way that I could be mistaken for anything other than Pakeha, of European. With my freckles and red hair and skin that seems to enjoy a good burning in the sun I am the epitome of an average middle class white woman. For the last 6 years I have solely been with women, I have no desire to have a man in my life, not that I have anything against them. There is just something so sensual and heart warming about women, even trying to think of words makes my heart flutter. I am considered in the femme category, not that I am one for designer clothes and heels wherever I go. I enjoy making myself pretty and wearing a dress to town on a Saturday night. Then lying on the couch and painting my nails with a cocktail on the Sunday. I have a desire to be taken care of, to feel safe, protected and precious by my partner. I want to make her dinner while she relaxes, and have her kiss me for another wonderful meal. Bake surprise cupcakes because they are her favourite, buy her a gift just because I love her. In exchange I want to feel loved. Don’t we all.

 

I met Trudy at work. She started mid term 2 at the school where I worked, and instantly ignited the gay-dar inside me. She was just my type, tall and well built, tomboy of soft butch if we are talking classification. Her hair was pulled back into a high ponytail and her shorts and t-shirt matched with sneakers and a tribal tattoo turned my flirt switch on almost instantly! Unsure of the age distance, I subtly talked to her when I could, trying to get something out of her, some sign something personal. We would be gay school friends! I had already decided this. Unfortunately due to my femme appearance it took a lot of work to drop the gay bomb. One day while we were talking I started dropping the hints like there was no tomorrow! I listed all the gay bars that I had been to lately and suddenly it clicked with her. I remember her looking into my eyes Are you….me too!” she exclaimed. I laughed a bit, some people don’t seem to know that they are raging homosexuals! “I know” I told her.

 

So after this she started visiting me, dropping by my classroom, sitting with me during lunch. It was all very nice and with my attraction to her growing than willing to accept her invitation to watch her perform in a choir during the weekend. The afternoon before it happened she came and gave me her number so that I could contact her if I got lost. My flat-mate and I attended her show that night and I couldn’t take my eyes off her, it felt like she was singing everything for me, to me. Moon river brought tears to my eyes as I gazed her on the stage. Of course after the show I waited around to see her, bringing my flat-mate/best-friend/wife-friend with me. I finally saw her talking to 2 other women and walked up to see her and introduce myself to the others. This is when she introduced me to her wife, Janet. Wow. Who just forgets to mention they have a wife? So I felt pretty silly but was pleased to have made a new friend. Straight to the friend category she goes! At this point even I think the story should end and that is why it is called complicated! Now the texting begins, and it isn’t me initiating it, friends start to warn me, saying that I shouldn’t be talking to her. But what’s wrong with being friends with a married woman, her wife seems lovely and I would like to be friends with here too. This is a married lesbian couple who have been in a relationship for many years and tied the knot so to speak, only 3 months earlier. To be honest I was stoked to know someone who had made it work. A beacon of hope for my future, I could have it all one day. I could have what she had, a wife a house, all that happiness that I had dreamed of. Why couldn’t we have just been friend, I understood, marriage is a no go! What a commitment to make, no one should get in the way of that. But it happened. She txt me one day, while she was away on holiday

 

“I really like you Rebecca”

 

“Thanks Trudy, I like you too, you’re a neat chick”

 

“You’re a smart lady, figure out”

 

S**t

 

This then goes on for weeks. I avoid the topic, she drops hints and I remind her she is married and that it is not appropriate. I want to stay her friend, I love her company and her conversation. I just cant stop myself. She brings it up every now and then, asks what my feelings are, and I tell her straight up that she is in a relationship and it is not something I think about. But the more she asks the more I think about it. As we are friends, I visit her at home a few times, my work isn’t going to well and she is an amazing shoulder to cry on. My doctor has put me on anti depressants as I am not coping with the work and the pressure at this school. I clearly remember seeing her after an intense meeting, having a vent and a cry and feeling so much better by the time I left. Then her words “I have an overwhelming desire to kiss you”.

I nearly cried on the spot, I was fighting so hard, why would she say that, do that, think that. In the house she shares with her wife. I hated myself for wanting her to, wishing things were different. But no, I could be strong and I left. I can hear it being said. That’s the sign to stop seeing her, to stop texting her. Trust me I tried, it wasn’t that easy. We talked a lot now about what shouldn’t happen, and I continued to tell her that things are as they are and if circumstances were different then we would be different. I guess even that started to tell her that I was interested. It happened again, I went to her after seeing my councilor, my career was about to go up in smoke, and I felt I had no one to turn to. So I went to her, and her wife. They both talked to me and hugged me and me feel so much better about life, again I left feeling full of love and hope. Trudy walked me to the car, and told me that all she wanted was to hug me and be that person for me and be the one to comfort me and kiss me. REALLY!? Perfect, there goes that feeling again and that burning guilty hate is back. Nothing happened and I left. As I had smoked all of the cigarettes at their house I stopped at the petrol station to buy some and started heading back to drop them off. I drove past Trudy who was driving away from home, I turned and we met at the petrol station. I don’t know how long we stood there, in the dark. Looking at each other, her telling me how much she wanted to kiss me. Me, repeating the word ‘wife’ in a variety of sentences. It was so hard to leave her, it felt like I had to tear myself away, we hugged goodbye, I had to turn my head to stop her kissing me. That night I drove home swearing. I was in this. Whatever this was and I was going to be a person I hated.

 

A special day occurred in this time. Trudy and Janet celebrated their anniversary. Janet sent a beautiful bouquet of flowers to school which raised questions that Trudy refused to answer. She took a photo and posted it on Facebook with a note about how much she loved her wife. I was nearly relived to be honest. Maybe this was a silly fling, a fleeting idea that she had talked herself out of. I thought wrong. I got an apology from Trudy for the flowers, for rubbing it in my face and posting it online for all to see, she hated that I had read and acknowledged the post. Which just stung to be honest, she knew how wrong this all was, and she now knew that I had seen the proof of how much her wife loved her. That night I gave her some advice. I told her to wait until 11.55pm and then kiss her wife and tell her how much she loved her, that it was still their anniversary and again thank her for the gift. There is something so nice about enjoying something till the very last moment, and Janet deserved her love. Her response was that she couldn’t and I was amazing for suggesting it. Not what I wanted as a response.

 

I guess it progressed from there, the texting remained constant and probably became more flirty, it had definitely crossed the line. We decided to go out to the driving range together one night, as a fun wee outing, after dinner of course. It was a date. Neither of us said it and I often thought of canceling it. But with all the feelings, so intense I felt that I needed it sorted once and for all.

 

It was an amazing night, I met her at her car outside my house, away from judging eyes and she bought me dinner at a local Japanese restaurant. We then drove to the airport where the 24hour driving range hides, and after she gave me a lesson in driving a manual car, and we hit a few balls it was time to face the giant elephant in the room. It was a beautiful night, clear with showers, and we drove to the airport lookout to watch the planes. Sitting beside each other in her small car, felt so intimate and so wrong. I asked if her wife knew where she was. To be honest I don’t even remember the response to that. She told me it was over, with her wife, that it had been for years and she didn’t know why they had married, maybe as an attempt to fix things. Trudy hadn’t let her wife touch her in years, so sex was not a part of their relationship. This particular fact always brought out the curiosity in me but I could never ask. Does that mean that Trudy still touched her?  Did they fall asleep in each others arms, cuddle in the morning, have a goodbye kiss before work? I still do not know the answers to these questions. My mind still reels in trying to remember that night. Some things are clearer than others, like when she offered me her hand. She reached her arm between us, palm up, inviting me to hold her. My heart went crazy, it was the final step, the affair, it was everything that I didn’t want to be. Her solution to my apprehensive response. “It’s only a hand”. That feeling when ours hands touched…it was as if something had lit up inside me, we sat there, touching hands for what seemed like an eternity. I ran my fingers along hers, touched her nails, her palm, traced the veins on her wrist. Such beautiful hands.

 

We kissed that night, and sat together, her arms around me watching the planes land. My mind would not be still. Hate. I hated myself for what I was doing, what I had let happen.  There was no excuse nothing to make it okay. It was an affair. I was the other woman, taking someone’s wife! The happiness that I felt having her near, it didn’t feel like a fair exchange for the pain that was to be bought upon an innocent party.

 

Here I can share words, a message she sent about that night…

 

Was just so nice to see the real you when you were singing that song. Happy. Cheeky. Confident. Beautiful. J

 

She had seen me. Really seen me, a person who I thought was lost and gone forever, that work and life had crushed. That Prozac had numbed. Trudy could still see her! That was when I realized how much I wanted her and was willing to be the secret woman of an affair. I had accepted it.

 

 

Author's Note

I have never even attempted something like this. not sure where to from here