I live my life like an impromptu dinner, the kind you throw together when all of a sudden you realize it’s 7pm, you haven’t gone shopping in days, and the last meal you ate was breakfast, a generous title to give what you ate: a stale heel of bread and a piece of cheese which, if you’re honest with yourself was probably not supposed to be that color. That’s when you fling open the refrigerator, rifle through the cabinets, and use what you find to nourish yourself as well as the circumstances allow. And like whatever dubious concoction you cobble together, the circumstances that shaped my current capabilities were not pre-planned. Therefore it is through providence rather than design that I’ve come to understand something. Being friends with lesbians is like running a marathon: you gotta train for it. Put away your Nikes, that is not the type of training I propose.

Now listen carefully, I am about to reveal to you what years of inadvertent experience have taught me. In order to liberate the phrase ‘Healthy Lesbian Friendship’ from its oxymoronic standing, what you need… is a breeder chick. Because contrary to what your drunken neighbor shouted at his stripper girlfriend last night, straight girls are good for more than just sucking dick. Put more delicately, forming friendships primarily with straight women is a low-pressure way to establish and abide by a solid system of boundaries. It’s like automatically transferring a lump sum from your checking account to your savings each time you get paid. You’re doing something practical and constructive, but you don’t have to steel yourself to do it. In fact, you barely even know it’s happening, because what kind of person really studies her paycheck? What is money after all but the opiate of the masses? Or maybe that’s religion. Or possibly opium. Marxist misquotes aside, I don’t feel superior about my financial ignorance. Similarly, I don’t believe my apathy toward heterosexual femininity as an accomplishment; it’s simply part of what makes me - me.

Now, let me be the first to point out that my methodology may not work for you. If all of your girlfriends identified as bi-curious before you fucked them, if the phrase “Sure I fantasize about women, but I’d never sleep with one,” makes you wet, if Barney’s Beanery in LA is your preferred place to score chicks (or whatever your local straight pickup joint is), you will need to look elsewhere for assistance. You see, the effectiveness of my Lesbian Indifference/Coping Key (or LICK as I like to refer to it) is predicated upon my innate apathy toward ALL Straight Pussy.

Okay, obviously there are exceptions; I’m not made of stone, although several exes have identified in that direction. A “stone” woman seems like a good deal until she turns around and accuses you of being selfish in bed. Sure, she said she wanted you to “just lie back and take it,” but she really meant you should “just lie back and take it” exactly 96% of the time, and that the arrival of the other 4% would be heralded by an obvious action on her part. For example, she would wiggle the littlest toe on her left foot. She would be wearing shoes at the time. Also she would be in Arizona.

Stone butches and Western States aside, of course I think Scarlett Johansson is a radiant example of burgeoning womanhood (Clearly so does Woody Allen. Dig the massage oil scene in Matchpoint -- pretty kinky if you’re trapped in 1973). Of course I ogle the dueling Jessica’s at every possible opportunity. They’re like Barbie dolls aren’t they? Biel is Beach Volleyball Barbie; Simpson is John Mayer Appendage Barbie. But my attraction is purely visual; it isn’t my grasping hands I want to run over their supple celebrity skin, it’s only my eager eyes. God forbid I ever found myself in the position of actually having to be physically intimate with say, Katie Holmes (Yes, I still find her visually appealing, even after Tom rode her like a couch until Suri burst from her belly). I can just picture her staring into my eyes, her lips moist with desire:

“I’ve never been with a woman before, Sarah,” she murmurs shyly. “I’m a little bit frightened.”

“I’ll take care of you baby,” is what most every other self-respecting lesbian would respond.

But me?

“Uh…how about we go shopping?” I suggest, trying not to trip over Katie’s handlers as I edge toward the door. “Don’t worry; you can bring your alien child with you.”

Clearly, Katie’s BFF Posh Spice has nothing on me, but my point is that although stunning female celebrities engage my eyes, they do not inflame my loins. And if arguably the most attractive representatives of heterosexual womanhood do nothing for me, you can imagine how unresponsive I am to your run-of-the-mill, everyday straight girl. Call it societal influence, call it my love for masculine energy, call it anything but Fred (it won’t answer to Fred, believe me, I’ve tried), but I’m more likely to be attracted to a man than I am to a straight woman.  And for years, I was friends exclusively with straight people. Here’s the thing, I grew up in a mild Midwestern suburb and came of age way before straight girls started making out at clubs and thirteen year-old boys allowed themselves to flame freely at football games. If there were homosexuals in my midst, they were invisible, and to the best of my knowledge I was not friends with them. Instead, all of my friends were straight. Even at college in Madison, Wisconsin, and for several years after, first in Milwaukee and then in Los Angeles, the only lesbian with whom I came in daily contact was whichever woman to whom I was co-dependently co-joined at the time.

Let me be clear, this state of affairs did not result from a personal distaste for lesbians. On the contrary, I find lesbians incredibly  tasty. As a result I enjoy cunnilingus and many other lesbian sexual pastimes. “Bring on the lesbian sexual pastimes!” You will often hear me shout, as if to prove this. You will then see me look around in bewilderment as I realize that I’m at Fiesta Italiana, and Pride Fest is actually the following weekend. However, when it comes to friendship, I just tend to have more in common with say a liberal, assertive straight girl than I do with your typical lesbians, with, for example, your abrasive, baseball-statistic-quoting lesbian, your intellectual, Jeanette Winterson-devouring lesbian, or your prudish, breast cancer awareness-raising lesbian. For years, therefore, I fucked whomever I was dating, and I made friends with straight girls. In the process I became conditioned to separate lust and friendship, a division, let me just say, with which more lesbians would be prudent to familiarize themselves.

While I was content with this situation, I admit to harboring what I assumed were far-fetched fantasies of a Lesbian Utopia, a region where lesbians roamed wild and free (Okay, let’s not go too far: where lesbians roamed in toxic, tethered pairs until each gathered the courage to break momentarily free before shackling herself to a new partner). Or barring that, at least one friend who didn’t have to hurdle a jagged cultural divide whenever I mentioned dildos. However, although I dreamed of such an L Word-inspired existence, I never believed I’d actually find it. Then I moved to Andersonville.

On my second day in the wealthy Chicago community, a Myspace friend whom I’d never met in person spotted me on the street. “Are you wearing a shirt that says “I support gay marriage if both chicks are hot?” she texted me. “Yes.” I texted back, fighting the urge to don my night vision goggles, drop to my knees and crawl commando-style across the sidewalk. “I thought that was you!” came the crowing reply. “Welcome to Andersonville!” There went anonymity.  

Within a week I had kissed a possible romantic prospect (Call her Fred. Who cares if she answers?), and on the following night innocently accompanied a friend to a bar. At the bar, I ran directly into Fred who automatically assumed my friend and I were Together. “We need to talk,” she pressed as I tried to concentrate on the crooning singer/songwriter my friend and I had come to see. There went a drama-free life.

These incidents marked the beginning of my growing certainty that the lesbian peer group of which I had barely dared to dream, but that I was slowly beginning to assemble would inevitably restructure my restrictions and test my limits. Luckily, I had years of boundary-building straight-girl friendship on which to fall back. However, as Fred popped her collar and skate-boarded angrily away into the night, I couldn’t help but worry that the amusing diversion provided by Katie and Tom’s madcap escapades, once a much needed antidote to the banality of daily life, would soon flake away like so much dry skin under the coarse loofah of Unadulterated Lesbian Culture I would daily endure. How could I maintain interest in wacky West Coast-based cults when the cult of Lesbian Dysfunction was alive and thriving in Chicago? I just hoped my ironclad boundaries would prove more resilient than your average epidermis.

Welcome to Andersonville, indeed.

Editor's Note: This article is the first installment of a new, monthly column for Dramanonymous. The column will use the humorous, raw and all too true experiences of living in an insular, lesbian neighborhood as a conduit to cast light on the particulars of the shared queer experience as well as endorse lesser known queer artists and culture makers.

Sarah Terez Rosenblum spent the last four years of her life in Los Angeles and plans to return even though she hated it.  She will be thirty in two years. Thank God she’ll have received her MFA in Creative Writing by then. That way, even though she’ll still be lacking any real idea of what she wants to do with her life, at least she’ll be massively in debt. You can contact her at or visit her at myspace.com/raininariver. You can also buy her a pony. She’s always wanted one.