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13 Gifts for Lesbian Writers Under $20

Need a little something for the stocking for the Mrs. or a New Year’s gift for that special, little lesbian you hope to get under the mistletoe? Below are my favorite small, and cheap, (in dollars, not sentiment) gifts for the holidays, or anytime really, for that gender-fluid honey in your life. Show her you know her by giving little gifts that acknowledge her womanly love of the word.

Be Bold or Italic: Never Normal

Zipper Pouch – $5.99

I found these cute little zipper bags at my local bookstore and snagged several for myself and my writer friends last year. They make great pencil bags, or make-up bags. They also double as clutch purses for the geeky, nerdy writer girl who needs a catch-all wallet that isn’t too-too femme.

Novel Tattoos – $5

Too chicken to get inked for eternity? For $5 Lithographs will send you a two-pack of stick-on temporary tattoos which feature literary quotes. These little treasures are sure to impress fellow literary ladies at book clubs, conferences and readings. My fave is “Resist Much; Obey Little,” from Walt Whitman. What can I say: I am a rebel child of the 70’s. “The Wizard of Oz” tattoo is sure to please any Dorothy.

It Had to Be You, Christmas Romance Novella – FREE

Take a reading break while holiday shopping online. (You know you want to.) Clare Lydon is a very popular writer of lesbian romance stories in the UK. Her popularity is well-deserved (IMHO). Her writing is bubbly, light and engaging. This holiday season she is giving away her novella, “It had to Be You.” I downloaded the freebie and gobbled up the entire book in two hours without stopping for a restroom break. “It Had to Be You,” is a great, old-fashioned romance which starts with a May-December theme and then delights with a plot twist that leads to a second chance for two 54-year-old women who missed their chance at true love back in their college days. This novella is witty, sassy and wickedly funny. Five star fun for free. Thanks Clare!

Lesbian Pill Box – $7.50

Could this gift be any more lesbian? Cute, and handy to stash drugs, chew, paper clips or ink pen nibs.

Writer’s Socks – If You Can Read This Bring Me a Glass of Wine – $10 from the Etsy shop

If you’re married to a writer you likely see the bottoms of her stocking feet quite a bit. These practical, warm socks are prefect for typing fireside, and can be bought with the alternative message “Bring me a beer,” for earthy women who prefer to sip suds as they create.

Coffee Mug – $10 – I Write: What’s Your Superpower?

The pen is mightier than the sword, and in my experience women lust after women who know how to use the English language as an aphrodisiac. Writing letters is, after all, how I met the babe of my dreams 20+ years ago. As she said to me decades ago, “You had me at the correct use of the semi-colon.”

Writer’s Handmade Author Bookmarks – $5

Could there be a better way to spend a fiver in honor of your writer? Virginia Woolf, Toni Morrison and Margaret Atwood are such bad-ass writer babes, eh? “A word after a word after a word is power.” Right on Madge!

The Big Sugarbush, Lesbian Romantic Comedy

Got LGBTQ friends who love to party? Got sober friends who did rehab? Give them the gift of laughter. The Big Sugarbush (yep – I wrote it, shameless self-promoting hussie that I am) follows the intertwined love lives of ten high-achieving lesbians as they check into a Vermont rehab center and try to kick their addiction to drugs, alcohol and late night booty calls. Getting sober has never been so much fun. Available in ebook or print.

Go Away: I’m Writing Sign – $11.67

What every writer’s doormat ought to read. Okay, it costs a bit more than ten bucks, but it’s close enough, and too cute not to stuff into her gift bag. I’m sure she’ll love you for it. Just be prepared to see this sign nailed to her office door and aimed at you!

Writer’s Vintage Typewriter LOVE Magnets – $13.96

Cool, simple and inexpensive. Plus she can use these magnets to leave sappy love notes to you on your refrigerator door.

Vintage Typewriter Stash Box – $23.99

Writer gal can keep her ear rings or her cigars in this cute as a button vintage trinket box. Butch, femme or gender-fluid: this is a one size fits all gift for just a squeaker above twenty bucks.

Women Who Write Are Dangerous Necklace – $14.50

Most writers are quiet creatures, lurking in dark corners plotting against the world (and sometimes their loved ones). And writers are wicked smart. In fact, IQ test–makers list writers as the smartest among all professionals, easily outstripping their better renumerated professional peers in medicine, law and technology. Date a woman writer: let the dangerous adventure story begin.

Matching Lesbian Couples Necklace – $20

When you love your writer girl, but you aren’t quite ready to put a ring on it. Take that first lovey-dovey step toward going steady. Give her a matching initial necklace. If she wears it, consider yourself a contender. If not, cancel that U-Haul rental, OK?

Ana B Good is a lesbian writer, living in Vermont. Her debut rom-com novel, The Big Sugarbush, is available online in ebook formats and in print in bookstores and online.

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Panties I Have Known: On Lesbians and Underwear

Note: This essay on lesbian panties first appeared in 1991 in “On Our Backs,” a publication for adventurous women.

Whenever I see another lesbian looking at me, and feel the rise of my responsive blush, I am immediately hurled backward in time, stopping only when I reach third grade, Bufford, Indiana, 1967.

More precisely, I feel as alive and as daring, and as outside the law, as I did when I was eight years old and would stay after school in the dead of winter with no one’s permission, to swing by my knees upside down on the cold, metal monkey bars, my green suede coat and plaid skirt inverted so that my belly-riding white nylon panties shone in the twilight like the mischievous smile of a Cheshire cat.

I am girl—see me swing! That’s how proud, happy and self-assured I felt there by myself on the monkey bars. I felt like a crazy blonde bat, doing and being the forbidden, right there on the grounds of an institution which was (or so I felt) hell-bent on getting me to acquiesce to some Betty Crocker version of a nice girl.

And Betty Crocker would never swing upside down after hours, letting all of Bufford catch of glimpse of her underalls; of that much I was sure.

Swinging by my knees in the dead of winter, not caring what God, boys or the principal might see (because the point was that this was fun and felt natural) became for me an early form of lesbian protest.

This knee-swinging, panty-showing, after hours act of mine, was, I now realize, the daring act of a 1960’s girl-dyke, who develop slowly throughout the decade, like the world’s most patient Polaroid.

I spent a great deal of time on those monkey bars, always after hours, because during the day, and with the blessing of our third grade teacher, Mrs. Windhorst, those chilly metal bars were the province of boys only, who were encouraged to swing, climb, grunt, and sweat their way their way to manhood, with their private parts (or Johnnies as we called them with a giggle), safely tucked inside their warm, tailored pants.

We girls got jump ropes, chalk for hop-scotch, a walk-in size doll house that was subject to constant redecoration, and a pink plastic sink with an assortment of half-cracked dishes.

Girls were not allowed to swing, grunt or sweat on the monkey bars because, according to Mrs. Windhorst, ladies did not swing, grunt or sweat; but more importantly, girls could not play on the monkey bars because such knee-swinging antics would undoubtedly lead to the mortal sin of panty flaunting.

And panty-flaunting (according to Mrs. Windhorst, who spoke for all womankind) was an immoral sin, maybe even a 13th commandment which Moses and the big boys had somehow omitted.

We didn’t even dare say the word “panties” aloud, taking our cues from Mrs. Windhorst who always said “bloomers,” when speaking of women’s underthings. “Bloomers,” as if what we girls wore beneath our mandatory skirts was something as silly as my grandmother’s Easter time crocus.

All of this sidestepping secrecy and hush-hush covering up of girl’s dainties all through grade school is probably where this lesbian got the erotic idea that panties are very, very powerful, and therefore, much to be panted after pieces of apparel.

Consequently the word “panties,” and the sight of the same, like any forbidden entity, has come to have a highly charged erotic aura for me, and many of the lesbians I have known and/or pleasured.

“Take your panties off, baby,” is enough to get me bot and hothered. This gentle, yet firm, feminine command makes me lubricious all the way down to my unmentionables, so that when a woman—any woman—whispers the word “panties” in my presence, I, a rationally inclined and PC potent urban dyke, am reduced to a drop-my-drawers sort of Hollywood swoon.

Only girls can wear panties, so I know when a woman starts talking panties we have entered one of those secret domains of Dykedom.

Panties make me so dizzy with desire that I cannot trust myself to go lingerie shopping alone. Contemporary urban saleswomen—who obviously did not grow up in Bufford, Indiana, home of 600 people, 13 churches, and a ton of sexual guilt—seem genuinely fond of both saying and showing panties.

In fact, they are so eager to please and proud of all their panties that I have been known to run screaming from the Macy’s lingerie department leaving behind some bow-shouldered, overly helpful, elderly saleswoman whose only act has been nothing less innocent yet more provocative than taking a pair of white, nylon Gloria Vanderbilt’s and stretching them tautly across her spotty fingers in an effort to highlight the durability of double crotch reinforcement.

Maybe straight women can hack this kind of sales approach but as a true-blue lesbian from the rural Midwest I have found that having a pair of panties publicly animated by the fingers of a strange woman does something very unsettling to my psyche and erotic urges.

“Take my panties off.” That’s the first thought that leaps from my mind to my mouth when a woman catches my eye regardless of where I am when the eye-catching occurs.

“Oh Gawd and Artemis, please take my panties off.”

That thought has occurred to me during job interviews, on the 38 Geary bus, and when shopping at the Clement Street Safeway.

I have said it to my lovers, and I have had it said to me. And as simple as it sounds, I have always found this one little plea to be the most irresistible.

Somehow it’s like saying, “Make me a lesbian. Now.”

Perhaps this is because panties, unlike other attire, are pan-lesbian apparel. Only we girls have them, and they are hidden, by their nature glimpsed by only a chosen few.They’re worm snug to our hips when we’re alone doing our daily chores, then down around our knees or ankles when we’re with our chosen women busily making ourselves into self-respecting dykes.

“Make me take my panties off,” a woman once whispered to me; I stayed with her for seven years.

Even butches wear these little dainties. And while it is true that some butches wear boxer shorts some of the time, it is also true that the girls who are busy making these butches are often busy thinking: How am I going to get this girl to take her panties off?

Boxer shorts, to many a lesbian mind, are nothing more than generously cut panties with sexy fly-fashioned fronts. Boxers are the panties of choice for the rough and ready girls who like to project that tough yet tender persona which so many of us love when we’re flat on our backs and upright in our desires.

Today panties are a glitzy-ritzy affair. They come in every imaginable color or style. The white and beige belly-riding nylon of my Hoosier girlhood have been replaced by fabrics and cuts which look, feel, and let’s face it, smell better.

I’ve heard it said more than once that lesbians need to pay more attention to their panties; that there exists within the community such a reluctance to claim ourselves as lusty lasses that more lesbians than necessary cling to the belly-riding nylon of yesteryear in a secret pledge to be evermore PC.

I have to say I have encountered this problem more than once among otherwise dateable dykes; and I have to say that while white nylon may wilt the passions of most of us, I know at least one lesbian who prefers the old-belly-riding nylon of bygone days because they correspond to her secret fantasy of at last being able to get it on with her high school English teacher.

Of course some lesbians do not wear panties; and that in itself can be pleasingly provocative. “What happened to this girl’s panties? That’s the first thing I want to know when my fingers discover this absence.

We all understand that a girl without panties is bound to be B-A-D in oh so many nice ways. A girl without panties is oh so irresistible, for we all know that whatever happened to her panties is exactly what we hope will happen to ours.

Update: IN 2013, General Mills baked gay wedding cakes in Minneapolis as they announced that Betty Crocker was in favor of gay marriage and that the company, GM, supported loving families of all types. Thank you Betty (50 years after I needed you. but better late than never.)

Ana B Good is the author of the award-winning lesbian romantic comedy, The Big Sugarbush, which can be ordered in print or ebook formats. CLICK TO ORDER BOOK NOW.

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Big Sugarbush Free Book Sample – Chapter 1: The Real Sugarbush

Nan Goldberg lit a Dunhill cigarette and inhaled until her lungs ached. She rubbed the foggy window of the limo with the tail of her Hermes scarf, hoping to see something other than the snotty sleet that had pelted the car since they’d left the airport in Burlington, Vermont, an hour ago.

No luck.

Nan Goldberg did not want to be fish-tailing in a limo around bumfuck, Vermont, in the middle of a snowstorm. She wanted to be in Manhattan, inside her cozy townhouse, at Sixty-Seventh and Lexington, wrapped in soft, warm layers of angora. She missed her tiny, manicured Bonsai trees. She longed for her toasty-warm, cedar sauna.

Plus, she could guzzle top drawer gin in peace in her townhouse. A shot of Nolet’s Reserve for breakfast ─ maybe five or six shots, as she’d enjoyed that very morning ─ who’d be the wiser?

Nan shot a glance across the limo’s back seat. Her gaze fixed on the matronly woman in a tightly tailored, blue tweed suit who’d forced her into another limo that very morning.

Who’d be the wiser if she kept sucking on a gin bottle like the town drunk? Birge Hathaway, that’s who.

Birge, Nan’s partner of nearly thirty years, tapped Nan’s platinum cigarette case, which lay on the tufted red leather seat between them. “Can’t take those with you, dear.”

Nan clawed for the case. “Ohhh no! Not on your life, baby! I agreed to give up drinking, not smoking. Drinking, not anything else.” Nan fumed. She’d always had a short fuse, but this past year, with the stock market as flat as West Texas, and the bond market in the toilet too, she’d dialed up to dynamite.

Ten years ago Nan Goldberg had been at the top of her game, the cover girl two times running for Fortune. Ten years ago The Motley Fool had sung her praises. Now the SEC had frozen her assets–not all, she still had over five million in Cayman cash accounts and her priceless Bar Harbor, Maine, estate, but she’d bet and lost a billion in bad bond calls. Her name was poison on Wall Street. Even Donald Trump, who had his own problems, was declining her calls.

Birge thought drying out might help Nan.

Nan thought the answer lay in switching drinks. The jewels of the juniper at seven hundred dollars a bottle were no longer sufficient. Maybe she should switch to Scotch with Prozac, an increasingly popular bear-market mix in the marble gutters of Wall Street.

Recognizing the desperation in her partner’s eyes Birge launched into a reminder of the purpose of the trip. “This place is a rehab center, dear. They frown on all addictions. Smoking is an addiction.” Birge pried Nan’s manicured fingers from the platinum case and pocketed it in the outer zipper compartment of her briefcase. “No more Dunhills from here on in.”

Nan locked her arms across her pink cashmere sweater and stared out the snow-pelted limo window. Sleet. Snow. Ice. No cocktail hour. And now no cigarettes? This rehab thing felt stale already. “Anything else you neglected to tell me about this little Vermont vacation?”

“Love you, dear,” said Birge.

Nan popped open the limo bar and busied herself mixing what might be her last cocktail in perhaps forever. She didn’t look at Birge. She didn’t have to look. She could feel her disapproving glare across the cold canyon stretch of the back seat.

Nan sipped a puddle of golden gin and tried to remember why she had ever fallen in love with Birge. They’d met three decades ago in business school, at Cornell, in the after-hours smoking lounge of the library. Birge had cool moss-green eyes, the color of the granite seabed in Bar Harbor, Maine, where Nan’s family had kept a summer home for three generations.

It wasn’t Birge’s eyes that Nan had fallen in love with though. It was her attitude. Her walk more precisely, clipped, like a military cadet’s. It drove Nan crazy with lust, the way Birge, eldest daughter of a steel worker walked: with a confident swagger that typically only men of their generation enjoyed.

Once Nan had Birge’s strident movement going wild deep inside her, she wanted more, much more. It had been a wonderfully wild thirty years. Hell, if Birge Hathaway, financial wizard of Wall Street, wanted her sober for thirty days she supposed she could humor her. One day for each year they’d been together. Why the hell not. Humor her.

“We’ll get through this,” Birge murmured as she slipped a glossy lavender flier from her briefcase. She tapped the folder on the seat between them. “Sugarbush, Vermont. Run by a sassy old Yankee gal named Lily Rockworthy, who, for the record, has cured worse cases than you.”

Nan snorted as she mixed a second triple Nolet from the limo bar. “Sugarbush? You’re kidding, right?” Nan had been on the Manhattan pro-lesbian circuit long enough to know that sugarbush was Seven Sister’s lingo for an elderly trust fund dyke.

In her line of work, as a Wall Street bond broker, Nan had serviced many a sugarbush.

“Not what you’re thinking, dear,” chastised Birge. “Get your mind out of the Wall Street gutter. This is Vermont. Up here, a sugarbush is a stand of maple trees.”

Nan nursed her drink. “A stand of maple trees? Really?”

“Yes, really. Like those.” Birge slid her fingers along the sleet smeared window tracing a thick dark, smoothly barked line of trees as they whizzed by on the mountain road.

“Those,” murmured Nan as she squinted through the storm, “are not maples. Those are oaks.”

Birge adjusted her trifocals. “Oak? How in God’s name can you tell?”

“I was a Girl Scout.”

“A Girl Scout?” Birge grunted. “I don’t think so. You hate camping. I’ve known you three decades and you hate camping.”

“Who said anything about camping?”

“You said you were a Girl Scout.”

“I was.”

“I don’t understand. No camping? How’d you become a Girl Scout?”

“The way we all did in the ‘70’s, dear. I ate my fair share of Brownies.”

Birge bellowed as the limo skidded to an uncertain stop.

Both women rubbed at the windows trying to see if they’d arrived at their destination.

Nan saw it first. A simple, white farmhouse materialized through swirling curtains of snow. The two-storey structure was nestled in a snow bank, the wrap-around porch drifted in white. Two Adirondack rocking chairs sat quietly on the porch like a pair of snow-covered turtles. Buttery light leaked from the windows. A faded wooden sign that read “Sugarbush” creaked in the winter wind.

Nan grasped the limo door handle and sprang it open, not waiting for the uniformed driver to tromp back through the snow drifts to assist. She had to flee before Birge said something sentimental, something that would surely make them both cry.

She was way too old to cry, or to throw a temper tantrum, though at the moment she desperately wanted to do both.

Thirty days without alcohol? No problem. Hell, she was a middle-aged lesbian. She’d survived an East Coast Jewish upbringing. The Reagan administration. The Bee Gees. Big hair. A year in electrolysis. And three decades of blue-collar Christmas parties with Birge’s cross-clutching, Catholic mother, Nona Francis Marie.

Nan Goldberg didn’t need gin to survive; what she needed was for Birge Hathaway, the love of her life, to believe in her once again.

Read More of The Big Sugarbush FREE > Chapter 2: The Big Pink Pussy

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Big Sugarbush Free Book Sample – Chapter 2 – The Big Pink Pussy

Art Today had not wanted to cover Dylan Redford’s new sculpture installation, The Big Pink Pussy, but the damn thing was built with tax money, a National Humanities Grant. It was all the rage. No way to ignore it.

Dylan judged the opening was going famously until Ginger Fitzgerald of Art Today stepped inside the museum installation room in her red stilettos.

Ginger had reviewed Dylan’s installations twice before, neither time favorably. Tonight she was in a mad hurry. Her copy was due at the office at eight a.m. and she’d already toured three unbearably bad installations.

Dylan gnashed her teeth as Ginger clicked up the raised platform in her Prada heels to tour the Big Pink Pussy. Dylan had read, indeed memorized, Ginger’s previous mud slinging reviews of her artwork.

Ginger squinted as she strolled inside the crinkly pink cervix. On the advice of her audio tour master she plucked a taste tab off the slick pink walls. (Th Latex walls were covered in detachable peppermint taste tabs for those bold enough to take a lick, which Dylan always encouraged.)

Unimpressed by the installation, Ginger brushed past Dylan, tossing a comment over her shoulder as she clicked out of the museum. “Disappointed dear,” she sneered, “Tres derivative of Judy Chicago”

Dylan puffed up. “That bitch did suburban dinnerware. This is my vagina.”

Ginger sniffed the air recalling the odor inside the installation. Peppermint and warm latex were not a pleasant mix. “And it smells like it too.”

It took three rent-a-cops to pry Dylan Redford off Ginger Fitzgerald.

Not one to take physical assault lightly, Ginger pressed charges.

“Art bitch,” grumbled Dylan in the courtroom the next week.

“What did you call me?” asked the San Francisco Judge, who happened to be a lesbian, but also a Republican. Without waiting for an answer, she sentenced Dylan to six months in women’s prison–this was her third felony assault charge–or one month in rehab with a year of pissing in Dixie cups thereafter.

Dylan arrived in Vermont at Sugarbush rehab two weeks after sentencing on felony assault against the art critic who’d maligned her work. She dragged her duffle bag through the snow. It was loaded with sculpting and welding tools.

She was so high on coke she thought she was checking in at a queer art resort in Switzerland.

She wondered for a moment when she saw the owner, Lily Rockworthy, manning the check-in. She’d never seen a 76 year-old counter girl, dripping in diamonds, but heh, she dug older chicks, especially ones that were stacked, a term which clearly applied to Lily.

Only later, when Dylan awoke to find herself neatly tucked into a twin bed, wearing striped pink cotton pajamas, did she realize how dire her life had become.

“Oh fuck,” Dylan moaned, “not another psych ward.”

Nan Goldberg, the Manhattan bond broker who was booked in the bed across from Dylan, poked her head from under the covers where she’d been enjoying a Lisa Scottoline novel (Dirty Blonde), and a smuggled pack of Dunhill cigarettes. She fanned away a halo of smoke before speaking. “Actually, dear, it’s a lesbo spa, with a teeny bit of rehab tossed in.”

Rehab? Shit, thought Dylan, this was worse than she’d thought. At least in the nut house they gave you drugs.

Read More of The Big Sugarbush FREE > Chapter 3: Poppy and the Pop Tarts

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Big Sugarbush Free Book Sample: Chapter 3 – Poppy and Pop Tarts

They told Poppy Zigfield, lead singer for the British, all-girl band, Poppy and the Pop Tarts, that she was scheduled to perform at Disneyland, alongside Taylor Swift.

She was understandably pissed when the private helicopter her mum had commandeered dropped her down at Sugarbush rehab, a veritable snow cone in the middle of an unimpressive pile of rocks called Vermont.

No Taylor Swift.

And not a Mickey Mouse in sight either, just a monstrous brown-eyed creature, pawing the snow in search of an edible patch of grass. The moose stared sad-eyed, icy smoke curling from his nostrils, as Poppy leapt from the whirling helicopter that had shanghaied her from New York’s Madison Square Garden, her last American gig.

The helicopter pilot tossed a tiny pink leather overnight bag out onto the snow at Poppy’s feet and yelled “Good luck, Mate,” as she swirled away, back up into the clouds.

Poppy swallowed hard when she saw the moose ambling toward her. She’d never faced such a large, hairy, unruly creature, unless one counted her ex-girlfriend, Tubby McGuire, after three days on Ecstasy.

Fuck that moose. She had to get inside quickly or she was headed for a bad case of chapped quim.

Ambling to one side, clutching her leather micro mini in an effort to warm her stick-thin thighs, and grabbing her bag, Poppy slid across the ice field toward the front door of the farmhouse.

Poppy and the Pop Tarts were a monstrous girl band. The global press had tagged them the hottest act ever to tread the boards in London. Their global record sales made the Spice Girls and old broads like Lady Gaga look like warm-up stunts at Brighten Beach.

But one split second of bad judgment had done poor Poppy in.

One wanking mistake.

Poppy had gotten in a fight with her fuck-buddy B-Bo, Britain’s star girl soccer player, and accidentally torched the super athlete’s East Hampton mansion.

Big deal.

Like B-Bo would miss a ten million dollar beach shack. B-Bo made more than that standing around in a g-string looking good for European underwear ads.

But apparently arson was a big deal to the Americans, who seemed to have no empathy when it came to drug-induced crimes of passion that destroyed prime USA real estate. The Hampton’s District Attorney’s Office charged Poppy with felony arson.

Her mum had booked her at Sugarbush hoping to force her to abandon recreational drug use before she did a total Wineheart and popped off the planet for good.

Dear old wanky Mum, in Poppy’s estimation, was overreacting. Menopause – mental pause – or something like that, as near as Poppy could tell.

She, Poppy Zigfield, lead Love Tart, did not have a problem with drugs. The only problem she had was with Dame Diane, her dear old Victorian mum.

A multi-millionaire by her twenty-first birthday, Poppy was managing just fine, thank you. Sure, she weighed less than her pet pug, King James, but thin was in. Her dark eyes popped from her head like a love-starved puppy. Her big red lips, plump with collagen, played kissy-face with the world.

On a good day her generous use of mascara made her look like a refuge from the Twilight Trilogy. Poppy Zigfield thought of her blood-starved look as her trademark, like Dolly Parton’s huge breasts and hay pile of hair.

Lily Rockworthy, owner of Sugarbush, eyed Poppy as she shivered toward the registration desk. Lily had been running Sugarbush for so long she could diagnosis a girl’s favorite addiction with one glance. She held out a zip bag with Poppy’s name stenciled across the front. “Laxatives,” she demanded as she peered over the bridge of her turquoise half-glasses.

“What’s that, love?” Poppy twisted her long black hair around her pinkie finger as she spoke. On stage she belted out her songs. In real life she spoke more softly, like the prep school princess her mother had hoped she’d become.

“Everything you’re holding goes into the bag. Can’t bring stash with you. If you still want that stuff at the end of your thirty days we’ll give it back.”

Poppy puffed her cheeks. “Piss off, queenie. I don’t belong here. I’m supposed to be performing with Swift at Disneyland. Call me a car service, a freakin’ dog sled, whatever.”

“No taxis up here. Next ride out not ‘til next week.”

Poppy rolled her eyes as she took in the shabby lobby. “What is this place, love? Hell on a budget?”

“Your mom arranged a winter vacation for you.”

“Well it smells like old lady farts to me.” Poppy fished through her micro-mesh bag and yanked out a finger-length cigarette flecked in gold dust which she stuffed into a carved ivory holder.

Lily reached over and plucked the cigarette from her lips.

“No smoking in the house, love. That’ll be in the rule book come morning. Might as well warm up.”

Pouting, Poppy plucked an ebony Mont Blanc pen from her purse and attacked the register with her trademark “P.” She slapped down the signature as large as she could in an act of defiance.

Sod it. She’d stay seven days. Get her mum off her back. What difference could a bloody week make anyway?

She emptied her bag onto the registration desk, allowing Lily to brown bag several bubble packs of laxatives, a vaporizer, an Altoid tin of Ecstasy and a rainbow assortment of pills even she didn’t recognize.

Must have been a party pack B-Bo slipped on her when the cops came.

Lily handed Poppy a nicely folded set of striped pink flannel pajamas. “You’ll be toasty in these.”

“You joking doll? Who made these? The Queen Mum? I can’t wear something freak-girl like these. What if my fans see me? Do you know who I am? Do you?”

“Yes.”

Poppy’s eyes brightened.

“You’re a dyke. A fucked up English one from the sound of you.”

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Lesbian Love Letters: How Writing Lured Me Into Love 20 Years Ago

Note: The original version of this lesbian love story appeared in “Out Magazine,” 1996, under the title “Love Mail: Ana B. Good shares a tale of soft hearts and hard drives.”

It’s a true romantic tale with a happy ending, a relationship that has flowered into a twenty-four year lesbian romance. Words can lead to love. It’s one great reason why I write.

Nothing is sexier than a letter. Letters contain sealed confessions: words and desires meant for the recipient’s eyes only.

A year ago I fell in love with a woman I had never seen. Letter writing (via email) had everything to do with this.

I was leading a quiet writer’s life, happily holed up in my apartment. I was far enough out of my last lesbian relationship to accept that I’d never be mated again, and rather happy about the whole thing. I had sworn off dating for good this time. I’d be a career woman. Married to a hot pot of Peet’s coffee and my own silent words.

Besides, I was up to my neck in work. How would I ever meet up with Romance unless she came to my doorstep as a a phone repair woman for Pacific Bell? (Don’t think I didn’t fantasize about it. The toolbelt thing, you know.)

Then I began using an on-line computer service for my work. I found myself compulsively browsing a bulletin board late at night where lesbians from across the nation left wordy little come-ons.

“Uh-oh,” proclaimed the inveterate letter writer in me. “Meet a woman through words?” That appealed to me.

I posted a short note, an innocent tease looking for a a woman in the San Francisco Bay Area, where I then lived, to come quaff coffee and terrorize bookstores with me.

In response I received some decidedly hot epistles, along with a passel of safely flirtatious invitations. One message spoke to me. Titled “Is Coffee All You Really Want?, it was sent by Ms. New York.

I wrote back immediately: “Yes–there are things I might want from you besides coffee. Can you imagine what those things might be?”

“You want me to imagine it?” quipped Ms. New York in her next electronic note. “Well far be it from me to hold out on you, my dear …”

We exchanged letters daily, each epistle growing in length and exploratory tactics. We chatted a great deal, throwing out comments designed to elicit the answers to ever more serious questions, like, Hey are you the kind of woman I could trust with our checkbook?

After two weeks we were meeting online in “private” chat rooms where we could converse outside the reach of prying eyes.

We quickly abandoned the use of capital letters and proper punctuation which requires 10 fingers on the keyboard at all times.

“Are you using both hands?” I asked her at last.

“Not to type,” she retorted.

A month later I was in a horrible state. This woman was making love to my mind from 2,500 miles away, and my body desperately wanted in on it.

I knew she was on the same insane edge of desire when her emails were whooshed to me at 3 a.m. And this woman had a respectable day job, mind you.

I’d always been fond of my Macintosh, but now we had a Pavlovian connection. I wanted to turn my computer upside down and shake her out of the hard drive.

When I confessed this to Ms. New York, she said that if she did come tumbling out I should let her know immediately because she would not mind landing in my lap.

She punctuated this with an e-wink ;>.

Oh groan.

In the second month we advanced to telephone conversations. We exchanged equally bad photos of each other and complemented email with handwritten cards and gifts. I was delighted to have her handwriting. There was something wickedly promising about the way she looped her Y’s.

I was a goner.

Old friends (and my therapist) began speaking to me in softer tones. My need for “distance” in romantic relationships was notoriously well known, but wasn’t 2,500 miles a bit past the neurotic marker?

I wondered sometimes myself.

In the third month Ms. New York and I agreed that we had to meet in our physical forms — either that or slide right off insanity’s edge together.

“Wouldn’t it be nice to get our bodies involved in this?” I asked.

“Oh yes,” she panted.

She: “I’ll come to San Francisco Christmas break.”

“I’ll lay in provisions,” I emailed back.

We had 10 days together and would have welcomed an infinite extension. Naked to each other, our respective hardware stripped away, the electricity still surged between us. We were amazingly compatible.

It’s been more than a year since our first real kiss. We still send furtive emails across the continent. Every two months we abandon our computer stations in favor of each others’ arms.

Love letters are wonderful, but my favorite love letters nowadays are those I can deliver to her with a personal touch.

Ana B Good is the author of The Big Sugarbush, a lesbian romantic comedy. Order BOOK NOW in print OR Ebook format.

Note: Flash forward from 1993 to 2016. We’ve still together, dears. We rented a U-Haul, merged, and moved to Vermont after road-tripping the USA in search of a safe and friendly nest. How’s that for the power of romantic love letters? These days we send love texts: shorter, sweeter, but I confess it’s still exciting to hear the phone ding out her love for me. And yes, we are wearing dog house slippers. We’re those kinds of dykes.

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