Upon Being Hit On By a Homely Lesbian

This goes back years and years, and is filed in the “Purple Foot” file of things I didn’t understand then, and don’t understand now.

Up front, allow me to make it perfectly clear that one’s sexual proclivities are really of no interest to me (except a certain prurient curiosity that makes me want to stare at a Gay Pride parade because the costumes are fabulous). As a woman, I do understand powerful connections with other women. Most of us have best-est friends that may date from school, spanning the years through dating and first jobs, marriages, children, deaths and divorces.

We talk about everything. What color to paint the kitchen, new landscaping, is it time to get new tires, someone else’s rotten behavior and/or the children’s, misbehaving spouses, good or bad medical news, movies, recipes, and holiday plans. (Of course, all of these topics could be covered in one chat, but my favorite friends and I have an ongoing conversation that really never stops – even if we don’t actually speak for months.)

Now, the lesbian thing doesn’t move my meter. Assuming it’s like any other friendship, except with sex, I don’t get it. The plumbing is wrong and the whole business strikes me as either amusing or embarrassing. So, that’s why I’m not a lesbian.

And now, time-travel back with me through the decades, and we land in the 70s when I was working as a reporter and anchor and taught broadcasting courses on the side because I wasn’t making enough money to keep a mouse alive (and was being paid probably 50% of my male co-anchor but that’s another topic).

One day I got a love letter from one of my (female) students. We weren’t friends – just the standard teacher/student relationship. She seemed bright enough, but was perhaps one of the homeliest women I ever knew, gay or straight.

Her letter was overwrought and passionate, ending with the disturbing sentence that every night she was coming to my apartment complex and kissing my car bumper good night.

Now what, may I ask, am I to do with this information? First, may I say, EEUWW. No one, of whatever orientation, should be kissing another’s bumper good night – especially without permission.

And, if you are, this is not information that should be shared unless some sort of romance has developed, and can be seen through the rosy lens of infatuation, because otherwise it’s creepy.

I eventually talked with her and told her I wasn’t interested, but it has always kind of bothered me that the only lesbian I’ve ever attracted was homely.

But, there you go. Sometimes you’re the windshield and sometimes you’re the bug. And sometimes someone is kissing your bumper good night.