It is 1987, the last Sunday in August, and my arm is around Brenda. She is my new bull lesbian girlfriend and my first openly gay relationship. But my life is complicated. I am standing there by the apartment block’s front door, watching, and waving as David and Sarah get into their car and, with a wave of their own, drive away.
Internally, I was experiencing two dominant emotions, one new and the other very familiar, yet powerful. With the first one, my heart is telling me that I should be in the car with them. After all, David was not only Sarah’s boyfriend… He was now my boyfriend, too.
I was still trying to understand our relationship, this new emotion, and how a three-way relationship could possibly work!
It was weird as I am a competitive person, but I liked Sarah, and I wanted her to be part of David’s and my life, too.
Tomorrow evening, I knew I would be seeing David again. But after that, it will be two long weeks apart. That was almost half as long as we had been together, and I knew I would miss him; actually, I was going to miss them both.
The idea of sharing my boyfriend with another girl was new to me, but one that, perhaps perversely, I found exciting. It was not because I liked sharing; it was more down to who I was sharing him with. Sarah may not be into girls as much as me, but she is one of the most beautiful-looking women I have ever seen. She is also kind, and I am still struggling to understand why she doesn’t seem to resent my arrival. We have seemed to have clicked, and I am extremely happy to have her as my friend.
But our three-way relationship, or perhaps more accurately, our boyfriend sharing, was so new. David, Sarah, and I, Clare, have only just gotten together. Our first threesome, where we all had sex together, happened only last night. It cemented a three-way bond that currently had many more questions than answers. But the other two were now leaving me and going somewhere foreign and exotic, to Crete.
Brenda’s arm may be pulling me close, but my immediate emotion is one of rejection.
However, the sting of loneliness was not the only emotion that I was currently experiencing. The other one was very familiar to me… I was horny.
I glanced at Brenda. She is also new in my life and, as I have already mentioned, a bull lesbian, though she calls herself something slightly different. I smiled.
It is no secret that I am very sexually attracted to her. She is interesting and so different from any other woman whom I ever met before, but before I talk about her… a little about me.
*****
I am Clare, and you can think of me as being beautiful or plain, graceful or gangly, sensual or slutty. David, my boyfriend, would always use the first word, and me, the second. But that sort of sums me up. I have always been a bit of a mixture, caught between two stools.
In my eighteen years, nineteen in November, I have experienced a wide range of emotions, desires, and regrets. My home life has not always been great, and quite often the opposite. As for my sexuality, it seemed to be constantly evolving, or maybe it was just like me, a muddle.
As my mother used to say to me, “You're trying to grow up too quickly.” It is only now that I am a little older, that I am beginning to realise my mum, Ruth, may have had a good point. Though, of course, I would never admit that to her.
When I look back on my earlier years, there are two things that I feel dominated them. These were my looks and the constant uprooting of my life.
Today, people say that I am beautiful and that I could be a model, but it has certainly not always been that way. Sometimes I have to look into the mirror just to check and reassure myself that my body and my appearance have not reverted to the one I had at school.
After all, I only needed to refer to my childhood photos and look at that gangly girl who looked more like a boy. They are images that still haunt me and ones that I couldn’t believe my mother chose to show to David on his first visit to my home. I was so embarrassed, and yet, by the end, equally reassured as, surprisingly, it had not put him off me!
But I come to that, as it only happened a month ago, and like most stories, it is better if I start at the beginning.
I was born into an army family, my dad, John, being a soldier, and we spent the first fourteen years of my life travelling around. There was one army camp after another, different schools, and ever-changing friends. It felt like every year my life was a repeat of the year before or, if you like, a copy, then cut and paste into another garrison town. For me, one town became another, and my friends were just revolving people.
It was the main reason I struggled and rebelled against the system.
I was trying to find my place in the world, but changing my whole life every year affected me, especially as I became a teenager. I was the gangly tomboy, the only girl in the army gang of kids. Being inquisitive, I lost my virginity and did things that I knew I shouldn’t have done. Luckily, my parents were mostly oblivious of my mischief though the army authorities made sure they knew some of it.
Much to my parent’s despair, I went through a phase of not caring about anything. But there was an exception to my destructive downhill spiral; I continued to do well at school.
But my life was about to change, and the first one was the big one; my father bought himself out of the army when I was fourteen. We were going to have a permanent home. It was with that knowledge that in July 1983; I found myself on a family holiday and visiting a popular south coast sandy beach.
I was standing there, contemplating my future, when I saw a stranger, a young good-looking man. He was just sitting there and seemed to be doing the same thing as me. I couldn’t help glancing at him, my mind and eyes now more interested in watching him. It was obvious he was in deep thought, maybe even pondering about his future. That young man was David, my current boyfriend, but it would be another four years before we got together.
David doesn’t know this, so I whisper it, but the chat we had that day was the first real grown-up conversation I ever had outside my family. It made me realise I was not alone; others had troubles, too, and it got me thinking as to what I was going to do with my life.
I went away from our chat, knowing that I would always remember him. It was not just the glint in David’s eyes, that he was good-looking, and those dimples. There was something else, a strange new feeling that he had treated me like a grown-up. Though then, I thought I would never see him again, especially as we lived miles away.
How wrong was I?
The very next day, my mum and dad told the whole family that we were going to live with my grandparents, as a family, in the nearest big city to that south coast beach. It was a joyful surprise as then we lived in an army garrison town in Yorkshire, hundreds of miles north of where my grandparents lived.
But of course, it was too late to tell David; he thought I was returning to Yorkshire.
So that is what happened. We lived with my grandparents; my dad got a job in sales, and my mum found a part-time position in an office at a large builder’s yard. After six months, we moved into a semi-detached house on the edge of the city. It is where I still live today with my family. It is not the biggest, but it is home.
So with roots, I became a good girl and studied hard, though I have to say, most things came easily to me, especially maths and the sciences. It was in these subjects that I became what was called then, a straight ‘A’ student. Yes, with no bragging (or ego, David) I was always top of the class.
I was happy now I had foundations in my life and I had amassed a large circle of friends. I was the bright, athletic girl with an exotic background, having lived in all these interesting places: Germany, Yorkshire, Northern Ireland, Wiltshire, and Aldershot.
It was during these good girl years I discovered my love for ballroom dancing and horse riding. David doesn’t yet know this, but they were both things I was naturally good at. In fact, with dancing, I excelled and won several junior dance competitions.
I was happy, but I guess there was a little, or maybe a lot, of the bad girl still within me as I increasingly became restless, and there was something else. At the time, it was unrecognised by me, but I was starting to turn from that gangly girl into the more refined woman that I am today.
After I turned sixteen, I found things in my life starting to change; a few for the better, but certainly not all.
Jasmine, or Jaz as I call her, was, and still is, my best friend. We went to school together, her being a tall, blue-eyed blonde who lived with her divorced mum, just two minutes around the corner from me. With Jaz not having any brothers or sisters, we did a lot of things together; one of them being ballroom dancing. It was our thing.
It was one evening, just past my sixteenth birthday, that Jaz and I found ourselves communally showering at the dance hall. This was not what we normally did, as we usually went home to change and shower, but that night, we were going ice skating at the rink next door to the dance hall.
As we showered, just the two of us, we could not help looking at each other’s naked bodies, even though we must have showered together before. But that night, it was different, as we could not help giggling and staring. It was Jaz’s blonde pubic hair that sort of drew me in; they were so different from my dark ones. I don’t know why, but it made me think of my mum and sister, who are both blondes, though I had never seen either fully naked.
In my family, my mum, my seventeen-year-old sister Ella, and my two much younger brothers, Paul and Colin, have blonde hair. It is only me and my dad, John, who are different. His hair is a dark brown, now with a fleck of grey, while you could say I am a bit of a mixture; the unusual one, the mongrel.
I have always felt like I was the odd one in my family.
As for my hair colour, it is more of a cocktail, red and brown with a few random blonde streaks thrown in. I call myself a reddish brunette; though David calls my hair colour unique. There is also another bonus: now that I chose to wear my hair longer, almost bra-strap length, it seems to have developed a natural wave.
Enough about hair, and back to my story…
That shower with Jaz made me curious about sex with another girl. Then, it wasn’t something I had thought about, but the idea grabbed me, and it turned out that it grabbed Jaz too. After the ice skating, I ended up at Jaz’s house; her mum working, and it was just the two of us. I stayed until late that evening, and it gave us a chance to talk, then kiss and explore each other’s bodies.
While neither of us was new to sex, it was the first time for both of us with another girl. That evening, I remember well as it shaped my mind; it felt so natural and completely right. It wasn’t long before Jaz and I became regular, but secret lovers.
One person did eventually know, and that was Jaz’s boyfriend, Rob. However, that was more than a year later, just after he joined the army. By that time, Jaz and I were in a noncommittal sexual relationship, one which we only paused a few weeks ago.
So, I knew from the age of sixteen that I was bisexual, and my newfound sexuality had come with a sudden urge to experiment with Jaz. Until then, and maybe strangely, sex with another girl had never been something I had considered. It had always been boys. But now I had a taste, I was hooked, and I realised I had to be careful not to give the game away about my newfound sexuality.
I do need to emphasise that I feel my relationship with Jaz was one of the good things that happened to me during that difficult time.
Another was my body. At sixteen, it started to change. I got curves, sexy curves. Today, everyone seems to think that I am beautiful, well, everyone except maybe myself.
I had always been leggy and gangly, with small breasts, and no shape to my bottom, but I guess my hormones must have kicked in late, or I got very lucky. You could call me a late bloomer, but from the time I turned sixteen, till I was eighteen, I went from that gangly schoolgirl to what I am today.
My whole body shape changed, and with new curves, men started to notice me, and some even asked me out. I liked all this new attention, though it took time to find my body confidence. Remember, I was still that good girl, a straight-A student, even if I was in a secret lesbian relationship and had an even more secret, darker, past.
But as I have hinted, other not-so-nice things happened. These days, I try to put it down to being part of growing up as my life today is far happier than it was two years ago.
At sixteen, still, with my gangly looks, I got asked out by a popular boy called William, or Bill, to all his friends. I had just left school; it was that summer when things changed. You seem to have to go from a schoolgirl to a young woman overnight. It felt new, but I was somewhat unsure about my life, though I knew I was going to experience a new adventure as I was committed to going to college.
I also got a part-time job working in a clothes shop. It gave me some pocket money and allowed me to go out at an age when your friends become even more important to you. I felt ready to have my first genuine relationship outside the ongoing secret one with Jaz.
Bill took me out; it pleased my parents as they thought it would be good for me. Get me out of the house and make me less moody.
However, my parents still thought of me as their little girl, a virgin, with no sexual experience with the opposite sex and certainly no experience with other girls. Of course, both things were not true. They didn’t know about my sordid past and my ongoing sexual history. That I kept well hidden.
But embarrassingly, my mum took me and my sister to the doctor to make sure I was on the contraceptive pill. She told me that now I was with Bill, I would become sexually active, and she didn’t want me to end up pregnant as she did at my age. It was when my mum had me. As it seemed the way, Mum’s parental talk with me and my sister turned more into a lecture, and that is perhaps another reason I didn’t actually take them. I always wanted to rebel.
So, instead, I flushed the pills down the toilet, as I was more worried about the state of my libido than about getting pregnant. Yes, I now admit it was dumb, and David is right about contraception, but he is only right on that one point; and to be clear, today, I am more grown up and on the pill.
Bill and I became an item, me his virginal girlfriend. I was the good girl that he used to go to school with, and no one suspected was bisexual and had a naughty past. It took us three months to have sex. I took his virginity, and he took my virtual one. We were both happy; I was in a budding relationship, my first real one. I even thought I could fall in love with Bill, especially when he used to take me out and feed me free fish and chips from the chippy his father owned.
So life was bliss for me?
Well, not really, as life at home was going downhill.
My mother and I were often arguing over my college homework, about me having more freedom, and having to babysit my two younger brothers. I also argued with my sister about her need to keep her part of the bedroom we shared messy, and there was also the lack of privacy. I have to say, older teenage sisters sharing a bedroom simply doesn’t work.
My sister and I hardly ever talked civilly. We lived in a house built for four, but there were six of us living there and only one bathroom. It felt cramped, and I wanted to spend more time with Bill and my friends.
While those arguments ebbed and flowed, there was one that was ongoing, even today, and that was the money I had to pay my mum to live at home.
She calls it, “Keep money.”
I call it, “A bed tax.”
It was during this time that it felt especially true, as I was hardly ever at home, and when I was, I did all the unpaid babysitting!