What’s Weird Wednesday March 9, 2011

Having a girlfriend is weird.

Picture this. You spend your late adolescence pining over desire and what that means for you. You fill diary after journal with melodramatic rants questioning the very existence of life and love and oh, does it even matter? You write stanza after stanza of terrible poetry exploring the possibility of living a life completely void of romantic relationships because you have ZERO crushes on ZERO boys. Then, Boom! You watch But I’m a Cheerleader one (read: much more than one) time and you understand EVERYTHING! You’re not a hopeless romantic. You’re just gay! You can’t imagine having a boyfriend because you want a girlfriend! The clouds part, the stars align and the next chapter of your life begins. Yes, the next beautifully written chapter lined with overtly sexual lesbian under and overtones has opened. And so you walk out the door, birds chirp, forest animals appear at your feet to greet you as you embark on your most important quest to date, mainly because you have never embarked on a quest before, the quest to find a girlfriend.

[Disclaimer: Today’s WWW purposely excludes first girlfriends. That is a whole different Wednesday]

Fast forward to a few solid months into a relationship with a girl you just adore. You’re slightly past the honeymoon phase segueing into a new routine. This is different from your routine as a single woman in that you now have some level of responsibility to consider your girlfriend throughout your day to day. You also have a whole world of additional resources! You have another person’s house to hang out in, another bike to ride, another car to drive and best of all, someone else’s boobs. Maybe you’re left alone for the first time in your girlfriend’s apartment, armed with a copy of her house key and a DVD collection other than your own. Maybe you’re driving your girlfriend’s Jetta to work so she can use your car to pick up ply wood. That’s when it hits you. You have a girlfriend, a built-in roll dog, a partner in crime. You’re no longer single. Isn’t it weird?

What’s Weird Wednesday February 9, 2011

It is something so ubiquitous in lesbian culture that it has become a cliché, a built in joke, the stuff of (lesbian web series) sitcoms. It has the potential to affect relationships, sleep and eating patterns and the general functioning of brain rationale. A lot of straight people couldn’t imagine it and most lesbians can’t get away from it. Any ideas yet? I’ll tell you. Its code name is EXGFBFF. Yes, that’s right. Our Weird Wed. feature is one that was bound to come up sooner or later. It is the Ex-Girlfriend Best Friend Forever syndrome.

What? Can't a woman scissor cuddle with another woman in friendship?

I know you know what I’m saying here. Here’s how it starts. There are two girls. They have been seeing one another around town, admiring the color combination of each other’s bikes. They meet at a party and wind up spending the night in a bedroom discussing their eerily intersecting thought patterns and dream sequences. From there they meet up for brunch then a few more lunches then multiple dinners until they are cooking dinner on a nightly basis and picking out names for a joint custody adopted kitten. They find themselves so cute even they can’t stand it. They have a whole bunch of great sex, cook a whole bunch of great vegan meals and take a whole lot of kitten pictures until a whole lot of fighting starts. They begin to find themselves speaking in an arguing tone during totally normal conversations. “I REALLY ENJOYED THAT EPISODE OF GLEE.” “OH YEAH? WELL, DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT!” “ ….” They’ve forgotten what it’s like not to yell. So, this progresses steadily before they enter into the month long break up process. They break up 5 or 6 times before the last straw is broken and it’s really over.

Prepared to fight for full custody of Dana Fairbanks the cat.

Here’s where it gets weird. They continue to talk regularly, deciding they are definitely better friends then they were lover and thank god for that because HELLO the cat still needs both its moms to be around. They wind up spending a similar amount of time together apart as they did when dating and about half the amount of sex. One or both eventually gets a new girlfriend, both respective girlfriends are either weirded out or have been in the dating game long enough to recognize EXGFBFF as par for the course and handle it as best they can. Ok, I know there are worse things in life then to stay friends with your ex. I’m just a firm believer in a little time apart to make time and room to grow and move on. I suppose we could count our blessings. I have straight friends who have made us walk blocks out of our way to avoid potential run-ins with exes from the very distant past.

What do you think? Tragic or Not so bad?