Something was brought to my attention recently. I took my mom to a party, hosted by an ex-girlfriend and her new girlfriend. I was greeted by a few of my ex-girlfriends from years past, and some of their new girlfriends. This was all standard procedure for attending a party thrown by a friend I used to date. My mother, however, was becoming increasingly more uncomfortable with each new introduction. “Did you date everyone in this room?” she whispered. And then her whispers became more like public service announcements, spoken by a trucker with a bullhorn, “Did everyone here have sex with everyone else here?!”
“Sorry, my mom is drunk,” I teased. She told me that she loved lesbians but didn’t understand how we could all hang out after our relationships ended. She also told me she could never be in the same room with every man she had ever dated and that she was quite certain that if these types of parties existed in the heterosexual world, someone would go to prison for manslaughter.
I thought about it for a second. There, in the back corner, was everyone I had slept with in 2007, and they were all chatting. I found myself standing within a circle of women, all sipping on Miller Lite and pretending we didn’t know what each other’s vaginas looked like. My mom was right. “This isn’t normal!” I tweeted. Are we a cult?!
So, why do we lesbians feel the need to stay close long after the flame has died and the relationship has run dry. Every woman has the same line, usually proclaimed within the first five minutes of a date: “I’m friends with my ex. It’s a non-negotiable.”
I recalled times where I had been on dates and felt as though I was being watched. Could it have been the ex of my date, screening me? Perhaps waiting to give approval? And quite often I’ve asked, “Are you sure you’re broken up — because you two look reaaaaally close?”
Lesbians tend to break up much differently than most others, I’ve discovered. I’ve actually heard that one break-up to the heterosexual world is equivalent to ten break-ups with the same person in our world. Think about it: When was the last time you broke up with someone, and it was over and done, right then and there? For me, never. It usually goes something like, “Oh, you’re done, eh? Well, I’ll see you tonight at Sara’s dinner party. Pick me up at 7, thanks.”
Perhaps when you’re straight, you have the entire city to avoid running into one another, but we gays tend to flock to the same places. So when a run-in inevitably happens, we give in and hang out. And we get protective of our old partners because, well, we’re chicks and we care. Right?
After digging a little deeper, this time into myself, I concluded that even though my mom may not be able to be in the same room as all of her exes, I didn’t really mind being in the same room as mine. I don’t feel that I had failed as a human being even if the relationship didn’t work out, because that person still chose to have me in her life. Maybe we pine for the one that got away or long for approval from the one we wanted to impress. Or perhaps we feel left in the dust by the one we truly loved but realized it too late, and she now serves as a life lesson instead of a partner for life. By keeping these connections, it feels as if all the efforts and growth weren’t in vain.
Or maybe I just like to be surrounded by hot women.
