Every single day I wake up, brush the hair out of my wife’s face, kiss her forehead lovingly, and go online to be accused of being in a “romantic relationship.”
I’m sorry—what?
This is the problem with modern discourse. People see two women purchasing matching bathrobes, filing taxes jointly, and engaging in frequent, consensual, extremely well-communicated acts of physical intimacy, and they assume—like absolute amateurs—that there’s something romantic going on.
Grow up. Use deductive reasoning.
What I did is beat the system. I pulled off the greatest sleight of hand since David Copperfield made the Statue of Liberty disappear. I have married my best friend, who happens to be a woman. You people need to learn the difference between two straight women who are married in a completely platonic, non-wuh-luh-wuh way, and two sapphic women who are gay. I can’t keep explaining this to the masses. The public education system has failed you.
Yes, we make love. Passionately. Thoughtfully. With the kind of eye contact that destabilizes tectonic plates. But that doesn’t mean it’s gay. It means we’re both adults with needs and a shared Google Calendar. It’s not romance. It’s logistics.
No, we don’t date other people. But that’s because no one else understands us. That’s not codependency. That’s discernment. We tried once—she went on a date with a man who said the word “gal” unironically, and I had to lie down in the shower for forty-five minutes while whispering “He doesn’t see her like I do.”
Yes, we live together. Yes, we got married. Yes, we said “I do” in front of a circle of floral-wreathed friends while exchanging vows we wrote separately, but still somehow both ended with “I’d haunt you forever.” But is that romantic? Is that gay? No. That’s poetry. That’s aesthetic consistency. That’s called committed friendship, and frankly, it’s embarrassing that I even have to clarify that.
Now let me address this so-called “evidence.”
We are not “in love.” We are simply two emotionally intelligent women who routinely lock eyes over homemade soup and say things like, “If your soul ever left your body, I’d knit it a new one.” That’s not romance. That’s basic support. You thinking it’s anything different, is projection. That’s you being weird. We’re just best friends who do everything together, including but not limited to recreating scenes from Carol, sharing underwear, and whispering “mine” in the dead of night.
Sure, we sleep in the same bed. But only because it’s ergonomic. And we both have the exact same recurring nightmare about being trapped in a white wedding with a man who refers to his podcast as a “brand.” So, naturally, we require a sleep environment in which to hold hands, tremble, and whisper “never again” in perfect synchronicity. Also, we like to fall asleep reading the same book out loud and screaming every time the author describes a woman’s collarbone as “boyish.” This is what lesbians—I mean, friends—do.
Our wedding was a very casual affair. Vows were exchanged, yes. Tears were shed, of course. But they were tears of platonic allegiance. Totally different moisture. If you listened closely, you would’ve heard the vows were just extensive inside jokes and mutual acknowledgments of our shared trauma. Our first dance was to Taylor Swift’s “Dancing With Our Hands Tied.” People tried to call her gay, too, didn’t they? Much to think about.
Yes, we kiss. Sometimes. But that’s just because we’re French. Not biologically. Not culturally. But spiritually. We watched Portrait of a Lady on Fire once. Please respect the difference.
Look, if we were actually gay-married, don’t you think we’d, like, know?
People have questions. People always have questions. Stupid questions, like “Why did you honeymoon in an isolated cabin in the Pacific Northwest?” Because we wanted to be closer to nature. Specifically, the kind of mossy, hyper-sapphic nature where you can scream into the trees, gaze longingly at each other over a camp stove, and bathe each other in lavender oil while arguing over whether or not Emily Dickinson was a top.
Some will say things like, “Come on, you spoon when you sleep.” Yes, because she runs cold, and I give off heat like a haunted radiator. It’s thermodynamic science. Are you suggesting Galileo was gay for gravity? Think before you speak. Someone once brought up how we touch foreheads dramatically after arguments? Ok? I shouldn’t even have to explain that one to you. My mother, ever the skeptic, once dared to comment, saying, “You refer to her as ‘my beloved’ in public and ‘my god-shaped wound’ in private.” First of all, what we call each other in sacred spaces is none of her business. Second, she is (platonically) a vessel through which I process all joy, pain, and metaphysical revelation.
You’re all obsessed with categorization. You see two women living in a one-bedroom apartment with a cat named Joan Didion and a wall of framed Anaïs Nin quotes and you assume something carnal is happening. God forbid we make sweet love under the moonlight once, and you all lose your minds.
And yes, we say “I love you” before and after. And sometimes during. And we hold each other afterwards like two star systems finally collapsing into a singularity. That’s just how we show respect. That’s just manners.
Do we sometimes lay in bed and whisper things like “If we lived in the 1800s, no one would question this?” Of course. Because they wouldn’t. Back then, women could wear matching bonnets and die holding hands, and everyone would be like, “how sweet.” No one would interrogate it. They would just call it friendship and move on. Maybe society has gotten worse. Ever think of that?
Let me be clear: Just because we refer to sex as “our sacred convergence,” just because we call orgasms “friendship epiphanies,” just because we spent Valentine’s Day crafting a handmade zine titled Mutual Devotion and the Softening of the Spine—does not at all mean we are gay. If that seems gay to you, maybe you just need a better dictionary. We are straight. We are both straight. We just happen to care for each other in a way that obliterates and redefines every known category of love.
Hope that clears things up.
Olivia Stemp is a Junior screenwriting major who is an expert on sapphic friendships that never ever cross the line. You can reach Olivia at [email protected].