The Write Thing

T and I started this game after our first meeting in Buenos Aires last month, which failed to produce an expected one night stand that we will never know how it would have been (ah, the cruelty of third conditionals! They can only keep us thinking). It turned out to be that, despite the fact that one of us got rebuffed in her propositioning the only night we met, we kept on talking, especially as I was supposed to be in America for quite a while. She gave me her cell phone number, and I gave her mine in the US. However, we continued a nice email exchange in the meantime. We would talk on the phone once a week or so, and would have fun with our conversations (I know I should not be saying this, but I am really charming…Woolfian rules! . One day she was about to ask me something a little too intimate, and she did not dare. I encouraged her, to no avail. Therefore, I thought she could ask her questions by email and provide a multiple choice set of answers to choose from. She laughed at this, but was enticed by the idea.

I was particularly intrigued by the fact that she has an identical twin who is also gay. Therefore, I shot first in the realm of questions. The following is a sample of the first multiple choice between us:

Would you ask your sister to “validate” someone you are dating in some physical way, just to be totally convinced that your girlfriend is right for you?

a) No, because my sister and I have different taste in women
b) Yes, because it’s always important to have a second opinion, and my sister’s taste is better than mine.
c) No, she will always ask me to validate her women, but I kiss too well and then her girlfriends want to keep on dating me.
d) None of the above, and you are a twisted person, W!

Oh yes, I am a twisted person, but just think of the possibilities that having an identical twin could provide! And, by the way, you call me twisted but…aren’t you dying to know what she answered?

Back in Houston for the ride, again. It’s been a hard week, with lots of work and more things to do moving forward. It is going to be an interesting journey this time, especially if immigration authorities let me in once I get back from Colombia. It excites me to think that I’ll be adding another tick to the list of capitals I have visited so far. I still have several more to go…until I make it to a dreamed-of Stockholm one day.

Now I am in Houston. Despite the bashing this city has had from many of my American friends, there’s something to be said. They do have funny ads. The Houston Press (the city’s Thursday newspaper announcing events and shows for the whole week) runs this one in today’s edition:

If I don’t die of exhaustion tomorrow, I’ll be out in town to check on the Chances bar again. Typical Houston butches and dykes of all colors. Me, the Princess Leia in the middle of chaos, probably listening in attentively to the generously-shaped, short-haired bar girl spasmodically pouring Diet Coke into my ice-filled glass before I finish my second sip, as she explains to me why the Houston basketball team will win the play-offs. Meanwhile, I’ll be checking the screen and doubting her word, given that the score already shows a 40-point differential that, even if my knowledge of basketball amounts to nil, would lead me to think that a good outcome for the locals is far from happening.

Anyway, I may or may not be walking nude in my hotel room tonight. After all, I don’t have to share it…yet. Tomorrow, who knows?

So off we went, my friend L and I, to Palermo park (we both agreed that translating “Bosques de Palermo” into English was an impossible task using equivalent words in the language of Shakespeare) on a Sunday morning that was sunny and only slightly chilly, a mild prelude to winter. Our bikes were perfectly in shape, and so were we. She, a gorgeous Valkyrie in her Teutonic splendor. Me, the cute chick I am, with beauty and class — as my friend Norm (a self-declared lesbian man) once put it. And we rode, and rode, until we decided lunchtime was around the corner. We stopped at the corner of Libertador and Bulnes, and had our lunch there. The sun was already playing hide and seek with the sky, and we were engaged in the most interesting conversation. L was saying that she did give her own lesbian inclinations some thought a few years ago, and wondered if she might not just go for the heterosexual life, given that she can also be with men. Assenting, I simply rephrased her words into something like:

Well, yes, because you like men.

To which she replies:

I like having sex with men

It was then that I burst into laughter, and was literally on the verge of crying out tears of amusement. She looked at me in dismay, and a few seconds later followed this with a good-hearted laugh. In her correction of my words, she had said everything. Sex can indeed be great with men.

She: You know what? You tell a man to leave, and he leaves….
Me: Whereas a woman tells you not to call her, and if you don’t, then she’ll ask why you didn’t…

Probably that is why we lesbians love women…because we’ll never understand them, and we won’t be able to help feeling what we feel towards them.