Lesbians for a Day

A couple of months ago, I was browsing through a mall with Lisa, an attractive woman with perfect manners, an Ivy League education and a successful business. I, of course, was trying to get her into bed. My seduction strategy was to heighten all her senses by shocking her with stories of my more memorable sexual exploits, none of which impressed her.

Instead, she rolled her eyes in amusement and pointed to a chunky saleswoman in the shoe store in front of us. "See that woman selling shoes? We had sex a couple of times last year." In the battle for bragging rights, she had just trounced me.

I know Lisa isn't a lesbian. She is enthusiastically heterosexual. To think of her in the throes of ecstasy with a woman nestled between her legs forced me to look at her in a new light. I had to squint a little, but I was impressed. Now I really wanted to get her into bed.

A buddy of mine was amused at my surprise. "Myles, I don't think I've dated a woman in the past three years who hasn't done it with another woman." After assuring me that all these women were completely heterosexual except for their few lesbian experiences, he smiled and hit my arm. "Hey, you'd be surprised who has tried it. The woman I was with last night suggested we go have sushi and hit a lesbian bar. Now that was a great date." I smiled as I rubbed my sore arm.

Heterosexual women having sex with other women. I was beginning to suspect that there was more going on out there than I realized, and I set out to get some answers. I talked with female friends, friends of friends and complete strangers. (In every case, I've changed the names to protect the sexually innocent.) They were lawyers, teachers, home-makers, businesswomen and actresses, single and married. What stunned me was the large number of women from even this not-so-random sample who admitted having sex with other women. And if someone I asked had not taken part in a lesbian tryst, she usually knew a woman who had.

Roxanne is a 25-year-old who has had one lesbian experience. For her, having sex with a woman not only "seemed like the hip thing to do, it also was a coming-of-age thing. My lesbian friends say a lot more heterosexual women are going to them for one-nighters just to try sex with a woman. But it's really only to try it."

Roxanne had her "coming-of-age thing" a few years ago, when she was at college. She became friends with Kelly, who was a classmate. When Kelly disclosed that she was a lesbian, Roxanne took the news calmly.

"She asked if it bothered me, and I said that it didn't. Then we started hanging out together, mostly at bars or parties with a lot of other people around. After a couple of weeks, we got to be really good buddies. One day she just said, 'Are you ever curious about getting together with a woman?' I was very curious, but I didn't tell her that. I asked her what it was like and she told me how she and this woman had made love for seven hours, kissing and fondling each other. I was like, Wow! I mean, imagine, all night long. It definitely got me thinking.

"A couple of weeks after we had that talk, Kelly and I were studying for finals. Out of the blue she said, 'Come on, let's go to bed.' We hadn't been talking about it at all when she said that. She could have been saying, 'Come on, let's go get a pizza.'

"I just ran into her bedroom and started jumping on the bed, yelling, 'I can't believe it! I can't believe it!' Nothing had even happened yet. Then she ripped off my clothes, and she kissed me on the face and neck, then farther down. It was like a whirlwind. And then, of course, she took the dive and went down on me. For the first ten seconds I was laughing and screaming and she was telling me to relax. Eventually I did, and I enjoyed it.

"I had just broken up with my boyfriend before Kelly and I had sex, but I called him and said, 'Let's have sex one more time.' I wanted to try out what I had learned. I was on a mission. I told him what to do, and I told him if he was doing something I didn't like. He was freaking, but he did exactly what I said. And he was getting into it. I made him stimulate me manually until I had an orgasm. It was probably the best sex I ever had with him and it was probably the first time he actually pleased a woman. But talk about leaving your audience wanting more. I didn't even let him stay the night.

"Kelly and I stayed friends. She knew I wasn't a lesbian. Yes, sex with her was great. There was excitement because I was fulfilling a fantasy. But since then I've had the same excitement with a man. I learned what I like, and I learned that sex with a man can be great if I tell him what to do. Kelly taught me that I want more than just intercourse from a man, and that I want him to touch and kiss and feel my entire body. I learned a lot from Kelly, but I didn't have to go back after that. All I needed was that one experience to totally change me sexually."

I also interviewed Karen, an architect who's a neighbor of mine. "I like sex, and I'm good at it," she has bragged to me.

"The first time I had sex with a woman was during spring break my freshman year in college. A bunch of us were in Florida, and one night we decided to party at this guy's house. He had a girlfriend who was beautiful. Her face was exceptional, and her body wasn't bad, either. Basically we all fell into having an orgy.

"The next time I had sex with a woman was several years later on Fire Island. It was a foursome--two guys and two girls. I was kissing this girl named Suzanne. She was real exotic-looking, with short black hair. She kissed my entire body. I liked it, it was really sexy and I felt connected to her. We quickly ignored the guys, and they just sat back and watched.

"Suzanne called me a couple of times after that, but I got scared of being alone with a woman, so I never called her back. I've always had a guy there when I've had sex with another woman. It's safer that way because I know there's no lesbian thing going on. A lot of younger women are really into lesbian sex these days, but it's not something that I want to do anymore."

I asked Karen if she would classify heterosexual women having lesbian sex as a trend. She nodded. "Women having sex with other women is really trendy. It's been popular since Basic Instinct made it look so erotic and fun."

To get professional opinions about this lesbian sex wave, I turned to a couple of experts. Janet Lever is an associate professor of sociology at Cal State-Los Angeles and co-author of a monthly column on health and sexuality in Glamour. Lever told me that in many of the letters she receives for her advice column, heterosexual women ask questions about their fantasies of having sex with other women. She observes that female-female sex "has gained visibility in the past four to five years. Society definitely gives women more latitude than men to be affectionate to one another. There are several movies being developed or filmed by the major studios concerning homosexuality and bisexuality. Many more movies on video feature one or two scenes of lesbian sex just for titillation."

I had lunch with another sex expert, Deborah Cooper. She has offered advice on Geraldo and Sally Jessy Raphaël, and has a Ph.D. in clinical psychology and a thriving practice as a counselor. Cooper believes that many heterosexual women who have sex with other women are just going through a phase. She maintains that experimentation with lesbianism will subside. "The sexual revolution passed, and the bisexual revolution will pass, too. It's not that people won't be bi or women won't want to experiment, it's just that they won't need to try it. The glory will be gone."

After talking with more than 50 women, I found that there are several reasons why women have sex with other women. Some had always fantasized about it. Some encounters were induced by drugs or alcohol. Some women had been encouraged by their boyfriends to try a ménage à trois. And some were attracted to women for the same reasons that men are--they're beautiful, they're soft and they clean up after themselves.

Lever confirmed that "there are a host of reasons why women have lesbian sex. For men who have sex with other men, it's usually the first step of the coming-out process. For women, it doesn't have to mean that at all. It could happen when a woman is lonely, or when she is looking for a sexual thrill. It could happen when she is going through a divorce, or when there just aren't any men around."

The next story is from Rachel, who was going through a divorce and who didn't have a man around.

"My husband and I had been together, either dating or married, since I was 17. Everything about our relationship was bad. He was very insecure and made me feel bad about myself. We rarely had sex, about once a month, and when we did there was no loving expression or tenderness, it was just about him being satisfied.

"We finally separated, and I moved out of the house. It was scary. I had no support system. But I was teaching, and this woman, Lynn, started working at my school midyear.

"She liked to do the things I like to do--hiking, skating, going to record stores. So we became friends. It didn't occur to me that she might be gay.

"One night we went out to dinner and then went back to her house. We opened a bottle of wine, then she said that she had to tell me something. So she said, 'I'm gay, or I think I'm gay.' I freaked and I started yelling, 'Oh my God, I can't believe this is happening.' She put her arms around me and said, 'It's OK.' And then we kissed.

"The next day, I felt that I had done something strange, but at the same time I was concerned that she wouldn't (continued on page 168)Lesbians(continued from page 94) like me anymore. So at work I asked her if she was OK, and she said she was happy.

"We kept spending time together, and then we started having sleep-overs. We'd get into bed and start kissing and whatever. Sleeping with her actually made me feel better about myself. I needed to know that it was OK to be sexual because my husband always made me feel bad about it. I think I was afraid of men, and that had to do with why I was accessible to Lynn. But as I got used to my new life, my interest in men perked up. I started looking at them, and they started approaching me. That caused a problem for Lynn. Finally I said, 'I'm not a lesbian and I think men are cute, and I want to get married and have a baby.'

"So the sexual part ended between us, and I won't have sex with another woman again. I tried to stay friends with her, but she has entered a whole different life. I was her first experience, and she was still having doubts about herself. But now she knows she's a lesbian, and she's making lots of friends and going on dates."

Cooper feels that there are two main reasons why a heterosexual woman will try lesbian sex. "She does so either to turn on a man or to seek nurturing." Neither, however, explains Amy, who is 26 and an assistant director of a day-care center. She has been married for nine years and has two children:

"One night, my husband was out of town and my kids were asleep. A friend, who is a lesbian, was visiting me. I don't remember why I gave in that particular night, but we started kissing and touching each other. It was really different kissing her--softer, more tender, more sensual. There was a lot of clitoral stimulation, and both of us came.

"It was definitely a memorable night. I was scared but excited. Kissing a woman was odd, and I felt bad that I was cheating on my husband. Within a day or two, I told him. He wasn't thrilled.

"Not long after that, my husband went out of town again. That time my friend and I had oral sex. If somebody had told me six months before that I would be performing oral sex on a woman, I would have died. It was strange, but it was so good. Even though the stimulation part may not be so different with a guy, with a woman the entire act is much more passionate and sensual. Women spend more time on the rest of the body.

"My husband found out, and we are in the process of separating. He blames it on this, but I think we've always had problems. Maybe I'm in denial.

"I was with my friend for another six months, then she found another woman. I was hurt and confused. I'm in therapy. I don't know how I feel about sex with men or women anymore. I could be a lesbian. If a guy came along I was attracted to, I could end up with him. But I don't think my attraction to women will just go away."

Cooper told me that it probably won't just go away. "Amy is probably a lesbian and is in the process of discovering that." Amy was the only woman I talked with who tried lesbian sex and stayed with it. But why did the rest of the women I interviewed who had crossed that line go back to having sex with men? If they had such great sex with women, why didn't they continue to do so? I used to go out with a girl I absolutely hated. But our sex life was great so I dated her for more than a year. Why weren't most of the women I interviewed similarly tempted to keep having great sex?

Emily is heterosexual. She is a mother, happily married and in her early 40s. She doesn't look like the type who would jump into bed with another woman, but she has, several times:

"I've always fantasized about being with women. When I was 12, I had a fantasy of walking into the woods next to our house and finding a cottage. A woman, an artist, lived there, and she would seduce me. I always loved boys, but this fantasy was definitely there.

"When I was in my mid-30s I knew a woman who was a lesbian. One day I was at her house working on a project. She knew I was straight, but at one point she suggested that she give me a massage because we had been working hard. As she was leaning over me, I saw her breasts, and I said, 'Excuse me, I have to do something,' and I ripped open her blouse. I think she thought it would take a lot more to seduce me. It didn't. I flipped her onto the bed, pulled down her panties and dove right in.

"I didn't leave that entire weekend. It was just nonstop sex. The focus wasn't what I felt between my legs, though. It was what I felt through my hands, my lips, my tongue. I remember feeling that I was making love to all womankind. It was very spiritual."

Emily had gone on a quest for lesbian sex. She had fantasized about it and really wanted to try. How, then, did she end up married? Why didn't she keep having sex with women? When I asked her, she answered, "After that weekend, we saw each other on and off for a few months. But my interest in her eventually waned. It was like, I did it, I had it and I loved it, and that was it.

"It has never been as good as that first time. I haven't done it with a woman in a while. I don't know why this particular drive isn't strong anymore. It's as if I used it all up."

For most of the women I talked with, lesbian sex was great, but it was a sexual thrill they wanted to experience only a few times. The bottom line for most of these women, as my neighbor Karen put it, is that they "like a nice, hard cock."

Cooper has a clinical explanation. "A woman can provide an orgasm just like a man can, but a heterosexual woman can't fall in love with another woman. If you can have sex and fall in love, it's fabulous. If it's sex for the sake of sex, it's not so fabulous. Needing the penis is not a physical thing, it's emotional."

I feel that I've learned a lot in the course of listening to women's sexual adventures. I phoned Lisa, the person who made me aware of this trend of heterosexual women having lesbian sex. Our conversation got around to this article, which I had started since the last time I had seen her. I reminded her about the shoe saleswoman she had sex with, and there was a silence on the other end of the line. "I was just kidding about that," Lisa said. "We never had sex. I don't even know her."

I couldn't believe that I had just spent several months researching an article that was inspired by a lie. "But," she said sheepishly, "if it's any consolation, I've thought about it a lot." That was probably no lie. Maybe Lisa and I will have to hit that mall after dinner.

"If somebody had told me six months before that I would be performing oral sex on a woman, I would have died."