Passion

For a long time, I assumed I wasn't really interested in women, not REALLY, and only sort of turned on by them. This required a great deal of repression on my part, due to a very poor past with the fairer sex. Only lately am I coming to terms with the fact that thought I do like men, enjoy sex with them and enjoy them as friends, and I have married one, the love I have felt for women has been on a whole different level, scarily intense and strange, changing my behavior and making me a bit crazy at times.

The first was the hardest and strangest, and the worst part is, I can't even remember her name (I'm dreadful with names, so to myself this isn't so bad, but I'm sure for everyone who wrote their first love's name all over their binder at school, this must seem bizzare!)

But I do remember every bit of the night I first fell madly in love with another person. We were at Girl Guide camp, for the level above girl guides. Both 15. And as older campers (only a year below the age where they'd start looking to train some of us to WORK at summer camps) at a weekend camp in a huge, lovely old lodge, we got a lot of freedom. We could be up all hours provided we got up for what we had to do, and didn't bother others. She was my bunkmate, and knew her two roomates from her own troop. I was by myself, as I got separated from my group in a room shuffle.

One evening we were both stuck awake, by ourselves, talking in the common room. She was telling me about her life, her interests. I was talking, too, but part of me was strangely detached. I adored her. She was so beautiful. I saw myself as the more sophisticated of the two of us. I began imagining, as she was talking, late that night, as we sat on the opposite sides of the couch, romancing her. That we would make a great pair. We exchanged numbers at the end of the camp.

I can't remember all of what happened, but I do remember two things: I had found out she was, or considered herself to be, bisexual, and also I remember at some point calling her, confessing my feelings and quite frankly harassing her into meeting with me at train station to talk about this. She said she would. I arrived. She, understandably, never did. I didn't try calling her again.

But it was impossible to avoid her. There aren't that many 15 year olds interested in Girl Guides. We ran into each other at a dinner banquet, and I was stiffly polite, and probably stared one too many times at her. Her friends were nice enough, and sort of remembered me. She'd obviously never told them about what happened. I went to another camp weekend hoping to see her. It did not occur, the event was too big and though I know she was there, we didn't brush into each other. There was a thing about sex at the thing, since we were 16 now and older girls, and I remember part of my brain going "But what about with girls?"

The beginning of the end, and the climax of my strange obsession with this beautiful girl happened in the last Guide event I went to. I was going to summer camp to train to be a swim instructor. They ran these for a couple of weeks at a time, and I discovered that the group that did the first week of training was ajacent to our camp as we did our first week and they did their second. And She was there. I tried talking to her, but with little success. I bumped up my attention to genuinely creepy levels, though nothing she ever knew about. At one point, I followed , in the dark, her going from tent to tent, singing a lullaby to the campers she was now charged in caring for. It was The Last Unicorn song. My favorite movie. I nearly died. And I sat there, crying in the dark, wondering if I could, or should, just go talk to her. And finally, the following day, she took me aside into a cabin. She put me down, hard. She had a girlfriend. She was interested in women. Just not me. And never would be. No one like me. And to please, just leave her alone.

And I think my brain broke. My heart certainly did. I was a crazy, obsessed stalker, but luckily I got the sort of talking to that managed to stop me getting any worse with her. I agreed not to bother her, and went back to camp crying.

And that should have been it. Would have been it. Except two days later, I was taken aside into the head counselor's cabin. I was being sent home. I was "not appropriate" for this training, and they felt I shouldn't continue. I recognized the code words, the careful language, immediately. I was gay. I should not be around children. And She had told on me. I've rarely felt more hurt and betrayed. It never occurred to me to tell on her too. I'd never have considered that for a second, and it's only now, almost 15 years later, looking back as I type this, that I realize she might have outed me before I could out her. My parents were already called. I was sent home in disgrace, the only trainee not to make the cut. And I couldn't dare tell them why.

But I still remember the insane intensity of feelings towards Her, even if I don't remember her name anymore. I had echos of them, some bigger, some smaller, with the other girls I fell for over my teenaged years. And each overture met with rejection, hard, cold, thorough. I lost friends.

Somewhere, inside, the hurt was too much. By 20, I had convinced myself that though I was 'bi', I was mostly hetero. Guys were easier. Guys didn't hurt me. I knew how to handle them. I rarely got rejected, and once I got skilled, never from the ones I went after, because I chose well. Though I fell in love with my husband as a female character on a old BBS, though I trapsed around on a gay BDSM board as a switch/domme, looking for lesbians (and found one, but that's a story for another day), though one of the few online relationships I took to real life was with a MtF transexual... somehow, the pain of all the early years made me shove my feelings towards women deep inside. They were too strong, too raw, too uncontrollable.

I like men. But all my loves, the soul searing, knee trembling, desperate yearnings have been for woman. They don't compare. Nothing makes me crazy, mad, hurts me, drives me, like a woman.