Lesbian

I can remember him flinging the accusation at me across the great divide of our bed in the darkness of the night. I had rebuffed his advances once more.

I find it amazing, even now, after the numerous times that I had attempted to explain to him that I needed tactile affection in order to feel beautiful. And that I needed to consider myself desireable before I could succumb to his attentions.

But he never seemed to understand the reasoning behind my appeals. He rejected the excuse and discarded it, preferring to think it was something about me, rather than something that he could do to change things.

The first accusation was frigidity. Followed a year or so later by lesbian.

I never bothered to answer. Did not attempt to dispel the allegation. Let it lie there for him to believe if that was what he chose.

Some years later, I went through a phase of achieving quality time with my daughter through the medium of watching The L Word, a programme that we shoo-ed all males out of the room when we were watching.

It seemed quite amusing then when I clicked on ‘Recent Documents’ to erase any memory of photographs I had downloaded and perused, to discover that someone had been looking in my files and had selected three in particular from the thumbnails showing.

A particularly emotion-filled one of Alice and Dana, where they are clearly just about to kiss and then Alice, again, with Shane. No need to be concerned about that. He knows that I like The L Word.

Except that the third photograph was from my real world and depicted me at a party with a young female friend. Still, nothing terribly incriminating about that you might think, except that it is one from a set where we were hugging each other and messing around after a few drinks at a party. The overall effect is quite flirtatious. And in a set from another party, I am kissing her and laughing as I look into the camera. That one may well have been viewed on another occasion.

Again, not terribly risque but, of course, the seeds of doubt were planted long since and one can only assume that they are now sprouting forth and confirming his suspicions as to why I stopped accepting his bedroom advances before deciding to end our marriage.

His wife prefers Sapphic encounters with women.

After all, it couldn’t possibly be something that was his fault.

It would seem almost cruel to dispossess him of this comfortable assumption.

** Oops, I had a bit of a senior moment and managed to post two pieces on the same day, so Im moving this one along a few days x