Our Story- Part 1

Everyone has been writing the most lovely “How did we meet/get together/Our story” blog posts and I have been really enjoying them, so I thought I’d write our little story out, too.

When S and I met for the first time, I was a bit of a mess.  It was 2001, my freshmen year of college, her sophomore year of college.  To understand why our first meeting wasn’t a big hit, you have to know a bit about us before this moment.

I came out very young, I was only 15 years old.  I had been “out” to my friends before that, and I think because of all of the jokes that we made about how there could be lesbians anywhere, even in my very house, that my mom caught on.  So one day we were in the living room when I was 15 and she just flat out asked me if I was gay.  And I was so surprised that a yes just slipped on out.  And luckily for me, it wasn’t a big deal to my parents.  They didn’t freak out and didn’t really bring it up again until I was much older.  At the time I’m sure they thought it was just a “phase” and not worth fighting about, that I’d grow out of it.  But despite being so sure of my sexuality at such an early age, I didn’t know any other lesbians, even living in a fairly large city, which probably had more to do with me being 15 then anything else.  So as a teenager, all of my dating consisted of “straight” girls who were experimenting or gay girls having their first gay relationship.  I was always dating someone and didn’t spend hardly any time being single until my freshmen year of college.  I had broken up with one of my “on again off again” girlfriends and spent most of my time partying pretty hard.  Here is a picture of me in my dorm freshmen year.

Things for S were very different.  S didn’t realize she was gay until late into high school.  She dated boys, ran track, had a super Christian phase, did all of the normal good girl stuff.  After she realized she was gay, she didn’t come out until college, where she cut off all of her hair and tried to butch, she even started smoking because she thought it would help her pick up girls.  And it worked, she pretty much off the bat meet a nice girl and they shacked up in the dorms and later moved into an apartment together.

We met a party in the spring of 2001.  We had a mutual friend, a gay guy my best friend was dating, who was convinced that we would hit it off, even though I was a crazy mess and S was in a long term serious relationship with someone else.  Despite my insistence that I had no interest in meeting her unless she was single, he prevailed.  The party was a birthday party for a girl in the drama department.  S and the mutual friend were both theater majors and knew the girl.  I didn’t know her, but I did know that the party was going to have a margarita machine, so I was in.  We ran into S and her girlfriend in the kitchen of the house and I was already pretty drunk amongst other things, and I don’t think I even managed to say more than “Hi” before I wondered off.  Needless to say, she was unimpressed.  And I think she was further unimpressed when she went upstairs and found me making a “margarita angel” in the birthday girls bed (a margarita angel is just like a snow angel, it’s not an actual thing though, just something stupid I did) (I know, I was such a jerk and such a mess that it didn’t even occur to me that anyone would have a problem with this).  I’m pretty sure she left the party that night thinking, geez, I need to stay far away from Liz, she is trouble.  And she was right, she was totally right.

I think that S and I ran into each other a few times around campus after that, but I got back together with my high school girlfriend who was going to the same school and so I didn’t think much of it.  We were really serious, and it was my first real love, but it was a very hard relationship because she was a super closeted sorority girl (and is in fact married to a man now).  I was constantly being introduced as just a friend and literally hiding in closets if there was an unexpected knock at the door because she was that afraid of her parents finding out.  She did in the end come out to her parents (guess in the end she took that back?) and some friends, but we broke up several times in the process.

In the meantime, S and I started working together….. To be continued!