I grew up in a small, religious town where most of my ideas about gay people were colored by old Match Game episodes with Charles Nelson Reilly. Until college I hadn’t really encountered anyone who was “out” or however you say it. But last year, I had an experience that changed my life for good.
I was leaving Eastern Mountain Sports after buying a present for my outdoorsy boyfriend when I heard someone howling in pain somewhere in the parking lot. I searched around, ready to put my old lifeguard first-aid skills to good use. Then I noticed a scrap of Vassar sweatshirt caught in a bramble. Sure enough, a few feet away there was a butch lesbian cowering in pain, holding her paw. A real, live lesbian, right there in front of me. I couldn’t believe it! She had short hair (above her shoulders!!!), denim jeans, and no purse. Wow, I thought, just like in the movies. Except it was real.
I was frightened at first. I didn’t think a tiny, mousey straight girl like me would be able to help a great, powerful lesbian like her. Her howls had scared off any other small creature that might have tried to help her. But, then I noticed the drops of blood on her Dickie’s work pants and I knew she was more scared than me. Something in my heart told me I couldn’t sit on the sidelines and watch this woman with an obvious same-sex attraction be wounded in the street. I got a first-aid kit out of my car and hoped that she would allow me to extract the thorn. I felt huge in spirit as I approached the red-faced lesbian.
The last thing I expected was that this shockingly butch woman bellowing before me would one day become my best friend in the world. And yet that’s exactly what happened.
Overcoming my fears about whether or not she would try to eat me, I humbly bent down, tweezed the thorn out of her right paw, and tended to the wound.
We laugh now remembering how tiny the sliver truly was, a tiny cut that caused a “fucking huge pain” in her words. After the dressings were set we quickly exchanged phone numbers—I wanted to check in and make sure my “patient” was doing well. Soon, the check-ins turned into long text exchanges, sharing family photos, and just chatting about what made us both tick.
Over the last few months, whenever I need a friend to see the latest movie with or check out a new brunch place, or just someone cute to pat on the head while I sip tea, I think of Tara the lesbian and her bloody paw. To her credit, Tara has accepted me and some of my ignorance about gay people. She is nothing like I had expected a “typical lesbian” to be. She wasn’t afraid of water or the moon. She cannot turn lead into gold. While spending time with her I do feel an increased desire to gamble, but my doctor assures me it’s an unrelated side effect.
I have learned so much from this fable-like experience.
For the first time in my life I have a best friend who I don’t feel like I am in competition with. When men approach us at bars, it’s usually just to ask about her tattoos, and I’m great with that. Tara doesn’t judge me if I want to just move in with somebody after dating them a week, and she’s always there, letting me cry on her couch after it doesn’t work out. Tara does sometimes ask me not to refer to her hands as “paws”, but aside from that, we get along famously.
Removing a thorn from a lesbian’s mighty paw changed my whole life and my perceptions. Now, when my mom boycotts the Oscars when Ellen DeGeneres hosts, I let her know she’s being ignorant. Or, when I turn on the news and I hear about ISIS throwing gay men out of buildings to their deaths, I think, “Hey ISIS, not cool, that could be my friend Tara who’s already hurt her paw once.”
After college I didn’t know if I could make lifelong friends. Meeting Tara and unleashing her from the pain of a thorn taught me that new friends could mean just as much as old ones.
Thank you, gay Tara, for being a lesbian, and for actually saving me.
