The Life of a Lesbian Butch

The alarm sounded at 7.30am in the morning, she stretches in her manly boxers and tank and slowly stirred from her slumber.  Her short hair messy from her sleep and she nonchalantly brushed it through with her slender but battered fingers.  She did her daily push ups, sit ups and skipping before she walked into her bathroom and took her shower.  She sighed at her large breasts upon looking at the mirror as she brushed up, water dripping down her chin from her now wet hair.  She wrapped a thinning towel around her waist and she stepped back into her bedroom.   

Her closet was filled with the usual manly shirt, pants and briefs.  She pulled a striped shirt and black pants and threw them on her bed grumbling gently at the state of her studio apartment and thinking to herself that she should call her part time helper to help clean up.  The part time helper will not be impressed with her dirty laundry lying around and scraps of food on the floor.   She shrugs off her sympathy for the helper and quickly gotten dressed in her clothes, couldn’t help herself and grumbled again as she saw how badly her shirt was ironed.   The time struck 8.30am as she carefully sprayed her short but thick hair, sprayed hugo boss pour homme cologne on her, grab her sun glasses and watches and ran out. 

Upon arriving work, she was greeted with the usual friendliness of colleagues who knew her well, while random strangers and couriers always threw her a second look.  She became so used to these second looks that she almost came to expect them.  Nonchalantly she walked through the giggling and whispering couriers and head up to her office.  She dropped her heavy pocketful of keys, phone, wallet onto her table and stretches her leg as she went through her messages.  A wry smile popped from her face when she saw a message from a girl she was sort of seeing.  “Can’t wait to see you, I miss you.” Said flashes on the whatsapp screen.  She quickly responded and continued with her work.

Now… I am not a butch, I am a femme and extremely proud to be one.  I had dated several butches in my life and one could even say that they would match my specific “type”.  I liked that butches are caring and manly.  As I grew older, I had shifted my types, I am no longer too fixated on how a person looks like on the exterior but more of that they feel like on the interior.  As I had been single for so long and only recently coming back out to explore the scene, the ‘new age’ butches are becoming softer, I even met one who shrieked (oh ya, I am so not kidding here!) upon seeing a toy.  I have also met butches who emoted heavily, cried on the littlest thing.  I also met butches who dress like a butch, walked like a butch and burps like a butch but told me she is actually andro femme (????).   I sometimes felt like I am the manly one with the new-age dynamics.  Seriously, I had only been single for close to 3 years, had things really changed that much?  

Anyways, I digressed (I know, I do that all the time), this is really a blog about butch or what I knew of these courageous women.   I chose this word courageous because I sincerely feel that about them.  I have a lot of very good butch / tom friends.  I had knew them for years on end and they are my life right now (well of course right, I have no gf, so friends gotta be my life, tragic).  The other night we went out, my butch / tom friends started to talk about life as butches, as I listened to them lamenting, I suddenly felt bad about the life they had to endure.

I am pretty out, I know I am bisexual and can’t really use the ‘out’ concept but I talked about women with my friends out in the public to the extent that I even make some of them turned red.  So… I gotta learn to refrain!  Anyways, while I am out vocally I looked very womanly (not the attractive type mind you, just womanly in general) whereas my tom / butch friends are clearly very obvious to the bystanders.  For my friends, they were constantly being called “sir” out in shops, pubs, cafes, really everywhere.  When the service person realized that they are actually girls, they will either suddenly apologized loudly and profusely  causing some form of commotion and discomfort for my friends and the people around them or continued calling them ‘sir’ also causing some level of discomfort for my friends and the people around them.   When butches go to public bathroom, of which they entered “ladies” there will always be thrown a couple of glances by other women who didn’t understand our lifestyle.  Or even when they were dealing with business, people would question why they dressed like men, or asked if they have girlfriend in a form of very lascivious manner. 

Being lesbian is still hard in today’s day of age.  Granted there are more ‘out’ people now but doesn’t reduce fanatics’ misunderstanding of our lifestyle.  But we must appreciate that being butch could well be harder.  Butches are someone who embraces who they really are, they dressed in a way that they are comfortable with and wear their hair short and they exude this ‘handsome’ exterior.   They usually have to make the first move, which in itself is already quite difficult, and might have to face rejections as femmes seem to be more interested in femmes nowadays.  They have to constantly be under the scrutiny of society and might be forced to dress in a way that was uncomfortable to them.  When they are dating someone, they would be expected to foot the bill (since it is the gentlemanly thing to do), open the door, drive the car, be the provider as a whole (p/s personally I don’t condone to that, but I know many femmes who does).

 I must say kudos to all of you out there who are braved enough to embrace the masculinity that you are comfortable with.  I wish that our society will one day change and embrace you as humanity should.  At least, for today, you know I have utmost respect for you.

Attraction between two person

2013-12-22 22:53

You saw her for the first time, her slender neck, her smooth skin, her graceful silhouette, you felt this sudden ‘pang’ of attraction towards her and wanted to approach her to make a conversation, to make some kind of connection, you sucked up all your courage and made the move.  She eyed you with this cold distant stares, you didn’t give up, still dared asked for her cell number, maybe have the chance to whatsapp or wechat her, she slipped you her business card nonchalantly and then moved on.

You waited a decent grace period of 3 days (ok, sue me, I am impatient) and txtd her, she is still cold, still unapproachable but you insisted on, she eventually relented and told you she is single (+hope), but only just newly singled (uh-oh), she likes “your type - be it butch or femme or something else” (+hope), but she is also bisexual (uh-oh), she likes Japanese food (similar interest +hope) but doesn’t do any form of carbs (uh-oh)… and the list  goes on.

Ok! That’s like my lame attempt of writing like a type of story setting (I can just so hear all of you yelling, STICK TO BLOGGING!) as a backdrop to my idea of “attraction”.  Attraction is a powerful word yet it is also something that comes in stages (as most of us know, right?). 

First Stage – First sight.  “You never get a second chance to make a first impression”

We all have types (yes, that means you too, don’t be snobbish).   Be it a specific outward appearance like dressed butch, andro or femme, or specific body parts (yep, sounds dodgy, but so many couldn’t escape the essential curves that is so specific to women’s body.. yum), be it shoulders (love them), neck (not so much), butts, arms, calves, legs, foot (?) and yes breasts or more appropriately, cleavage (although most lesbians I know are usually not that attracted to breasts, those amazing nurturing boobs are usually considered as bonus).  When such criterions are met, that was when first attraction happened.  Of course in today’s day of age, there are many of us who first knew each other via other portals like whatsapp, wechat, Fridae, Facebook etc.  But this blog is on actually meeting the person.

Second stage – First Communication.  “You are what you say, you exude yourself through communication”

When first sight didn’t give us the desired attraction, all is not loss, there is always a stage 2, which in lesbian world, might be considered a lot more important.  i.e Communication.  While communication doesn’t necessary entail talking with one another verbally (in which case, sharing a common language might help, and having a voice to kill would certainly be helpful), it could, again, be through social medias like whatsapp etc (I am just going to refer all non face-to-face communication as whatsapp etc hereinafter or else you will find me very naggy).  This is a powerful stage to attraction as this is really the stage where two people gotten to know one another.  Without the awkwardness of being judged based on look, we tend to let loose a lot more.  We talked about things more openly, sometimes a bit too openly, but it is via such openness that we can explore similarities or differences.  Sometimes the person could be a total bore, or you could realize you have utmost rapport with this person.  When that happened, first attraction seemed to have gone out the window as looks suddenly didn’t become as important when you felt like you are talking with a soulmate, someone you felt like you had known forever even before you even meet.

Third stage – First Thoughts – “Let her haunt my mind, I am willing”

When this stage happened, you will soon realize that you think of no one else but her.  You felt like you are missing her despite not actually having a relationship with her.  You felt like you enjoyed telling her about your day and more than enjoy listening to hers.  You wanted to know each other better, wanted to be part of her life in a way or another.  This attraction will make you more susceptible to falling for the person than you could even visualize.   When this happened you could either be really happy (should she reciprocate) or very screwed (when she sees you as nothing but friend). 

Fourth Stage – The rose tinted glasses First Sight – “So there is a second chance to make a first impression afterall”

When this stage happened, you felt like you are seeing this person in a completely different light.  You both shared common interest (rock climbing, anyone?), common belief (NO FUR!), common love (walk by the beach and just enjoy the sea breeze at 5am in the morning and await the sunrise), common hate (NO FUR!), etc.. when that mutual rapport is shared between two parties, you will soon realize that appearance became almost secondary but you suddenly see this person in a different setting, you see her as prettier than you initially thought and hotter than you could ever envisage.  You now reached another level of attraction.  You are falling..

Attraction is a powerful tool that stimulates our body chemical reaction, we fall without thinking and let our heart do the talking.  When I spoke to people nowadays, we are still so stagnated on “types”, without knowing that our soulmate, the one and only, the one that shall be there forever is actually the type that you never thought you will end up being with. 

Have a good evening everyone and Happy Winter Solstice.

Marriage for gays and lesbians

2013-12-16 21:40

I got inspired to write about marriage upon reading about Australian’s high court overturning the legalization of gay marriage.  Now I didn’t really pay much attention to it, as (selfishly) I am not an Australian and neither am I dating an Australian (not dating anyone at all) at the moment.   This particular decision, however, didn’t come as a big surprise for me.  The chances of a same-sex marriage being overturned over technicalities happened in several occasions and I am sure, hopefully, in time they will reword the constitution well enough so that straight people would no longer be threatened by the existence of us.

Anyways, that aside, this is actually not the reason why I blogged, I will leave the over discussion of politics and law to the more intelligent crowd, mediocre intelligent person like me is actually more interested in the idea of  ‘marriage’.  While our PLU brothers and sisters are fighting for the right to obtain a paper that stipulates equality and similarity to heterosexuals, I am left to ponder about why that paper is so important.  In many countries equality has already been achieved, (though sadly Asian countries have yet to come to their senses on this)  I do not dispute that idea of equality is so much important that having an institution that binds two person together.    But I digressed; I am here to talk about ‘marriage’ or the idea behind it.

I am old, ancient infact, to some of the younglings prowling in Fridae and Singapore’s club scene and coming from a typical Asian family my relatives (all 200 of them) will constantly asked if I have already found boyfriends, when will I get married etc.  I am sure many of you had to endure this.  Now don’t get me wrong, I am out to my immediate family, but with 200 relatives in this country, they are bound to give mom grief  had they knew about my affinity.  Hence I usually just kept quiet while uncles and aunties hovered over me and talking about marriage as though that should have been my life calling.  My parents are great people, extremely loving even to the day that my dad died.   I came from an unbroken home and by no means a dysfunctional family.   Marriage was never issue for me psychologically.   However, since I was at a young age of 17 (well ok, for the younglings out there, 17 was young ok???) I never believed in marriage or the paper that conveyed the ‘idea’ of love.   So the idea of a beautiful wedding dress and having tonnes of bridesmaid and friends yelling at each other and trying to get the groom (what do you call a lesbian groom.. lesroom.. hmmm? Thought to ponder) drunk.  That idea simply never appealed to me.

I could well blamed such cynicism on something atrocious that happened to me at that age, but now *cough* almost 20 years down the line, I have grown wiser (yeah yeah) and totally over that incident, but I still believed that when two people are truly in love with one another, they do not need an institution to qualify them.  They could well fight for equality (especially medical! We need medical because I am old and insipid), for churches to perform their commitment ceremony, rights to estates and even for the easiness to have children and have their children shared equal rights.  I simply do not understand why the importance is put on that piece of paper?  I don’t think we need the world’s approval (aka a piece of paper) or change our passport / IC to state that we are ‘married’ ?  Why is that even important?  Commitments are rare, the chances of two people being together forever are rare, the generic vow  of “till death do us part” is very rare, couples, straight or gay, break up all the time whether or not that are confined by a piece of paper and in some sadder cases even if they were confined by children.

 I, for one, would love to be in a relationship where I felt settled, where the two of us (despite obstacles from the law) would be committed to one another, to have estates in each other’s names, to have joint account, to have wills and insurance in each other’s names, to ensure the comfort of one another despite differences and tried to persevere through despite imperfections,  to have children despite the difficulty.  That… in its purest form… is love.  It is not marriage.

Love is....... imperfect

I recently spoke to (ok got rejected by) someone whom, to me, was one of the most beautiful individual I had even known.  Perfectly flawed in her own ways if you may.  Her way of rejecting me was kind but succinct, she pointed out all the flaws that she has and that she didn’t want to hurt me with them and told me to just ‘back off’.  I heard the rejection loud and clear and did back off and now mourning the pain that my heart is undergoing.  Now I backed off not because she was flawed, far from it, I just respected her enough to understand that she couldn’t return the affection that I wanted from her.  That chapter of mine is officially closed with some bittersweet agony that I shall not bore you with.  I had knew of her flaws even before she openly shot me with them (I am quite observant you see *snicker*) and had already accepted them even before she unceremoniously rejected me.

That said, we are all imperfect in our own ways, I know that because I am so flawed that I sometimes wondered why people were even interested in me at all.  I can clearly see my flaws and I embraced them, understand them and hope that one day I shall be able to change them (of course that won’t ever happen, but seem like the polite thing to say, no?).   I have been through (cough) quite a number of relationships, many of these individuals I was just being together with because saying no was actually rather difficult for me (when I was younger).   During this time of being with people that I do not really loved, I find it hard to stomach their flaws, what others might find endearing was a total annoyance to me.  I know I couldn’t change them, so I leave.   During the off-chance that I did fall in love, the person I was in love with was filled with so many defects that none of my friends could understand my devotion towards her.  But in love we are blinded.  I never regretted giving that level of commitment to my ex and while she might be flawed, she had filled my heart with so much love that I hope that I shall be able to love like that again.

I am now older and (cough) wiser and know that should I commit myself into my next relationship, I do hope that it shall be my last, my one and only and my forever.  I know that is somewhat romanticized but I am way too old to be fiddling with the maybes and not engage myself in something of more substance.  So back to my topic of imperfections.  I feel that we as human tend to like to look microscopically into the flaws.  As the old adage goes, we looked so hard at the scratch that we missed the diamond.  A lot of relationships break down because we are too focused on the bad and didn’t give enough attention to the good.  Once we understand that we are equally (if not more) imperfect that the person we chose to be with, perhaps, just perhaps, we might be able to build some level of tolerance.  If the characters were really mismatched (yes, mismatch, not imperfect) perhaps it is the more gallant thing to just walk away (as I did). 

I have a friend who complained ceaselessly about her girlfriend, how the girlfriend chewed so loudly, how she always put on shoes so slowly and how she liked to put on makeup before heading out.  When the girlfriend finally couldn’t handle the incessant complains and left, suddenly, the flaws became almost irrelevant, the “ex” suddenly became a person who was compassionate, who looked after her when she was unwell and made the best soup in the world.. things that were so clearly there even to outsiders like us was so minute during the relationship.

If you look for imperfections hard enough, you will always find them.  Now the question is, is it really worth it?

Coming out of the Closet

"Why don't you just come out to your parents?" GASP, OMG! WTF!

I find it impressive that most people are still in the closet especially with parents.  In this more modern society, many of us are already out to some friends (support systems) but most of us shyed away from the concept of outing to our families.

I mean, I don't blame "us" for staying in the closet, Asian family profile is just so complicated.  Once you are out to someone with a simple sentence like "Oh btw Auntie, I am gay" and the next thing you know, you will have the wife of the brother of the uncle who married the Auntie's niece calling you saying "Oh, I heard you are getting a sex change! Aiyo! Don't do that la!!".  Ok, I might have exaggerated a bit there (or did I?) but I sincerely believe that many of us stayed in the closet because of our complicated family.

I came out to my mother almost by accident, literally.  She found a letter of my ex (to me) in my room (what is with Asian mothers not understanding our space of privacy?) and she called me (I was in NZ, she was in Asia) and confronted me.  At that time since I had already broken up with my ex I told her it was just a phase.  I could still remember the sadness she transgressed within her tone saying how disappointed she was with me. 

Two months down the line, she visited me in NZ unannounced and actually I was already in another relationship with another woman.  She found out about that relationship and went ballistic (no, filthy minds, she didn't find us in bed or whatever, my ex delivered some rose to my apartment and my mom saw it, that's all!), she grabbed everything she could find and threw it at me.  I had never seen her being so angry at anything... but I suppose that emotion was mixed with disappointment, anger, hatred (of a lifestyle she didn't understand) and possibly guilt (she believed that she had made me this way).   It was an awful awful day and I do not wish it upon anyone. 

That said, 10 years down the line, my mother is slowly accepting that she couldn't change me, not with mean words, anger, threats, love.. anything.  I am who I am and I had paved my own pavement to future.

Being 'out' is not easy.  People looked at your different.  Men gives this insinuation that you just need a 'man' to straightened you up (yes, cliche, but it's true).  Women think that you are hitting on them even if you just did something nice like bring them coffee.  I am going to admit that I am not 100% out.  The people in my workplace do not know about me and I will never divulge such information to my aunties or uncles or their husbands and wives. 

If you think about statistics, it is impossible to say that there aren't any gay people in the.. say... 1940s, 50s 60s.  Most of the Aunties and Uncles I know are born in that era... and most of them are indeed married.  (The divorce rate in South East Asia isn't that high) and I find it hard to believe that these "blissful" couples are all straight.  How is that possible when 1 in every 40 person is gay? 

Anyways, I will leave that for you to ponder.  For now, I am going to have a drink (coffee!) with my best friend who also happened to be gay :).

Love you all

K

What I wanted to say

I am a talkative person, I talked a lot both in real life and on blog, so what you see is really what you get, nothing enigmatic about me, I find ‘mystery’ a bore and enjoy finding semblance of comfort in familiarity.  However, there are times where I find myself stumped with words too.  Recently, I found drama enveloped me and I mourned the loss of a few friendships (nothing happened to them or anything, we just dropped contact).     

The interesting thing about dropping contacts is that once it is dropped, it became excruciatingly difficult to pick it up again especially when such contacts were dropped almost unceremoniously.

So I shall, today, using the beauty of blogging to write down what I wanted to say, and perhaps, just perhaps, these ‘friends’ of mine will be able to read them and get some form of closures.

For those whom I assumed liked me (or have deep feelings for me)

I am sorry that I am not able to reciprocate whatever affections that you held for me.  I simply have no interest towards you or whatever you have to offer.  There is a strong character mismatch and your incessant interference into my life is disturbing my living and giving me nightmares.  I wish that you can move on and perhaps find the right person who is able to meet your requirements and return similar affections towards you.  I am a straightforward person, when I said no I meant no, not “maybe”.  I am not that great either; I have so many flaws that I am scared of myself.  Please don’t succumb to “stalking” antics of either me or my friends because you are starting to annoy them too.  It is really unhealthy and you really must stop.  There is a reason why we are no longer talking as I am sincerely tired of running away and fearing you.  Please do move on and take another path, there is no more road on my path.  It is the end of the journey for us.   I wish you well and hope that you find happiness in your future endeavors. 

For those that just… moved on

I am sorry that we didn’t keep in contact as much as we could.  I understand that we are both busy and that we eventually would need to move on with our lives.  I just want you to know that I shall always be there for you in your times of need.  I would even fly to you if you needed that presence of comfort.  I know you will do well and when things are settled, please do look me up. 

For the one whom I like

I am sorry that I had chosen to fall for you.  I sincerely miss you but I do not wish to make situations awkward for the both of us.  I appreciate your presence in my life and I do wish that one day we shall be able to continue that again.  I also wish you well and may you receive the love and desire that you so deserve.  At the end of the day, know that I do miss us. 

Bisexuality - part II

A while back, I talked about bisexuality as the alienated species and on 2nd read of my then blog, I decided to further justify my point about bisexuality.

I am a bisexual.  There I said it.  I hold an interesting life where I had dated  many different people (of both genders) in my life.  At the moment of writing I am single, but when I reminisce upon my past relationships I held absolutely no regret nor shame about any of them.



 
Now I believe that as a bisexual, I am and probably will always be alienated by the heterosexuals and homosexuals of the society.  I guess as the '3rd' or the middle type, it gave us no home.  Personally all my boyfriends are straight and all my girlfriends are gay.. as such I never dated another bisexual in my life.  I do, however, know quite a number of 'us' around.  Unlike the cliche punt attached to most bisexuals, I am not jumping from women to women until the 'right guy' came along and so that I can get married and have a blissful life.  At my age, I strongly believe that having a blissful life should be achieved by me and only me.  I should be the one making the money for myself, upholding my morality and integrity during the process of achieving bliss.

But I digressed.  Bisexuality is very much a misunderstood sexuality.  A lot of people thought of it as having the best of both worlds.  But for those of you out there who had been hurt by either men or women knew that in reality there is no 'best' in either world,  We made do, we struggled, we broke up, we survived.  It was a pretty ho-hum of society standards and nothing to do with sexuality.

I have friends who told me that they are bisexual but throughout their life had only dated one gender (usually similar to their own).  Now these are not right, in my opinion, because it felt as though they wanted to come across as being more 'neutral' and would like to keep their options open.  When you are bisexual, you genuinely enjoyed either gender, not just as friends but as sexual partners where you shared your innermost vulnerability.

I am very comfortable with being who I am.  I liked the fact that I can mutually enjoy companionship of both men and women (though I sincerely don't believe in threesome nor do I believe in dating two people (of whatever gender) at one time.  When you are with a man or woman and dated anyone else, it is considered cheating.  No middle way about it.  That said, I am one of those people who can see the best of both genders.  Men and their tough exterior and women with their soft core.  Both equally as appealing to me.  I am more attracted by personality and not the skin that wrapped and defined us.  At the end of the day, for us, when we turned off the lights, everyone is only human.

K