Swimming With Dolphins

Email us at queerloveprojectsub@gmail.com to take “The QLP Questionnaire.”
Plus, find out how to submit your original personal essay to The Queer Love Project.

Email Us

We pay our contributors, so your subscription and support is valuable! Thanks for reading.

“Do you have a costume for tonight?” my roommate Caitlin asked as she passed me the apple she had just bitten.

“I have no clue, maybe that dress that makes me look like a doll,” I replied without much enthusiasm.

A few months prior, Caitlin and I were strangers forced together by the college housing gods, and now we were sharing an apple, something I would never do with anyone else. Passing it back and forth, sucking on its juice, I became aware of my lack of disgust. As if we were sharing the forbidden fruit, I looked where she had bitten so I could take a bite right on top of it, my lips touching where hers had been.

That night, our costumes made no sense. I did Caitlin’s makeup on the heavier end. Perhaps she was pretending to be a pirate? The house party we attended was filled with nurses, Draculas, insects and cats, music pounding in our ears. Halloween has always felt like the night where anything and everything goes. Dressed as something, anything, blood dripping from lip, blonde wigs disguising black hair, you can be anything other than yourself.

In the kitchen pouring tequila on mini red Solo cups, we took a round of shots. I had learned during my first house parties that I was actually great at taking them. Forgetting about the shame of drinking while a woman, as if no one could recognize me from back home and tell on me. I felt free to do whatever I wanted.

Fast wrist motion, liquor caressing my throat, soothed by the salt and lime, a light igniting in me. With a couple of those, I would start to dance to any song that came on. In my yellow doll dress, I twirled the night away, arms raised in the air. Nothing else mattered. After a few songs, the heat of the crowd rose. Caitlin and I took a break and sat in one of the bedrooms we found unlocked.

“I have to tell you something,” Caitlin said. She leaned forward to rub her knees. But I knew what she wanted to say to me because I felt it, too. Placing my hand on her back, I consoled her.

“I know, I know,” I said confidently.

“I have to tell you something,”

“I know.”

“I love you.”

“I know.”

And we kissed. My memory fades after that. The next morning, I woke up to the agonizing feeling of what was going to happen to us. Terrified of losing her friendship, I lingered in bed as the morning sun urged me to face it. She kissed me; we couldn’t go back.

The sunbeams touched my legs, and I kicked out of bed. Both Caitlin and our other roommate had already left for class. In the corner, the bag of apples stared back at me, uneaten. I saw the yellow dress over my chair. I kissed her back. Walking to the bathroom, I passed Caitlin’s unmade bed. Her things looked different to me now. Almost personal.

“I can’t do this again,” I texted her in a panic before I got in the shower.

“I know, and I respect it.” A sadness.

The dryness in our words. Our past messages filled with exclamation points now were calculated, reread before sending, as if anything could be a mistake.

“Girls kiss all the time!” my friend Jen said, patting my back trying to make me feel better. “It’s not that serious.”

But why did this feel so serious to me?

***

Up until then, at 20, I had been straight, or so I thought. Growing up in Monterrey, Mexico, I felt two steps behind everyone when it came to boyfriends and sex. While others were kissing and making out, I was busy dancing ballet or writing short stories. It wasn’t until I turned 19 that I started to get impatient. I would sign off all my diary entries the same: “I want a boyfriend.”

I felt I was missing something crucial in my development, like learning how to kiss. I was concerned that the longer it took to learn, the more awkward I would become. The clock was ticking, yet I hadn’t found anyone who interested me. Among my wish list: The hope to find someone sophisticated enough who knew how to pair cheeses with wine like my dad did. No 21-year-old knew that, of course.

When I arrived in Newport, Rhode Island, for college, I felt like I could finally swim in the ocean and find the millions of fish everyone talks about when dating. I wasn’t wrong. At first, everyone sounded interesting to me. It took time for me to sift through between the newly arrived cross-cultural charm and the reality that many of the fish were actually rotten. I still flipped my hair and waved at all the new boys I met on campus hoping that I’d catch one.

But that changed when I met Caitlin. We were assigned to the same dorm room along with our third roommate, Kelly. I arrived a week earlier for international student orientation. Close friends of mine who’d just dropped me off advised me to arrange the dorm room to my advantage.

“Your bed here,” one friend said, as she dragged it closer to the window. “Let’s put your desk over here,” said another.

That meant I had two windows for myself and one of my roommates was going to have to sleep against a wall between the bathroom and the front door. When Kelly showed up next, an ROTC student with blond hair and big blue eyes, I admired her magnificent jaw line. Picking the last bed with a window, we got talking very quickly. She was spunky, witty, with a raspy voice, and she had a great laugh. We were going to get along great.

After our orientations, Kelly and I would meet at one of Newport’s attractions, the 3.5 mile long paved road along the water called the

“I hope we like our third roommate,” Kelly said.

“I know!” I answered. I hoped the magic we were living wouldn’t be destroyed.

And then, Caitlin arrived.

She had big brown eyes with the longest eyelashes I had ever seen, and her deep brown hair dangled from her pony tail. Kelly got up first to greet her, extending her hand. The handshaking thing was bizarre to me. We kiss on the cheek in Mexico, and we might even hug someone when we meet them for the first time. This wasn’t the case with Caitlin, who turned to me with her arm still extended, and asked, “Maria?” There was an authority in her voice and an assertiveness in the way she introduced herself, her hand firm and forward without any shyness. But it wasn’t shy either, so I took a step to meet her shake and reached my hand out. Looking around the room, she saw the available bed against the wall between the bathroom and the front door.

“Do you think you can switch your desk so I can put my bed there?” she asked, putting her backpack down.

“Well,” I said, approaching the desk, looking for the right words. “I’m a nursing student, so I might need to study very late and, with my desk here, I won’t disrupt anyone.” Brilliant argument, I thought.

“And I’m a philosophy student,” she said. “You know that the library is open until midnight, right?”

Her quick, stern reply made me lose my balance a little. Not missing a beat she added, “I need to head out and buy a couple more things. You can take your time.”

I hated that she had just given me the opportunity to think over my decision to leave her windowless rather than just moving on. Kelly and I gave each other looks when she left. We could feel that the energy had changed.

“You don’t have to move anything,” Kelly said. “Let’s go get ice cream.”

Yet, as we were getting ready to leave, it bothered me that I couldn’t decide what to do. What would Jesus do? I wondered, but he wasn’t answering, so I called home.

“Claro que no! Tu no te dejes,” my brother replied in Spanish, not even letting me finish my complaint. I shouldn’t let her push me around, he advised: I didn’t have to move anything.

“Quien sabe que tipo de muchachita sea con esas formas de hablar,” my dad said in agreement. He stopped his retort mid-argument to take a drag from his cigarette. God knows what type of girl she could be. In their eyes, I had just left home and they were advising me how to protect myself.

“¡No muevas nada!” they all said in unison, telling me not to move a thing. But as I hung up, none of their answers satisfied me, so I decided to get it over with and move the bed before joining Kelly for ice cream.

“I moved the bed,” I said, sighing to Kelly.

“What?” She was surprised. “Why!?”

“I think it’s the right thing to do.” I replied. I sighed loudly and under my breath. “I don’t want any problems,” then added: “I wish we had gotten a different roommate.”

When we got back, Caitlin was loudly talking to a group of girls in the hallway. They had all just come back from the bar where they’d tried out their fake IDs. Earlier, I’d heard someone scream from a passing car; it was Caitlin. She seemed unhinged. I hadn’t been around drunk

I never drank. In high school, our teacher told us a story about a pair of siblings who got so drunk, and they had sex with each other. “Imagine the pain they felt when they found out,” she said, looking around at our horrified faces.

Waiting for Caitlin to finish telling her story to the group of girls, I tapped her on the shoulder. “I moved your bed,” I whispered, waiting for her to turn and thank me gratefully. But she didn’t even look at me. I wasn’t sure if she hadn’t heard me or just decided to ignore me.

“I think she’s a lesbian,” Kelly said as we sat outside across the street from our dorm. We could hear the crashing waves behind us.

“Really?” My heart was pounding. Not the L word!

“I overheard her say she isn’t shaving her legs,” Kelly said, “to challenge gender norms.” She shook her head in disbelief.

“What does that even mean?” This was not what I had envisioned for the type of people I would surround myself with. What happened to the Lily Pulitzer dresses and the matching Vera Bradley bags we were meant to share?

“She mentioned an ex-boyfriend, Mel,” Kelly said. “But I think she might be using it to cover a woman.”

It wasn’t even our first day together, and we had already started on the wrong foot. “I can’t move you to another room,” my RA said, leaning against her door frame. “You need at least a week together before we can even have this conversation.”

I was worried that by being around someone like her—rowdy, drunk, intimidating and a potential lesbian—it could have a negative impact on my college experience. Perhaps she would keep me up in the middle of the night with her late-night adventures, bringing the wrong crowd to our dorm. What if she sold drugs or stole things from me? Later on in life, I would learn what a “narc” was. Although I didn’t know it then, I was absolutely a narc. In thinking she might try to get back at me, I put all my valuables inside my luggage and locked it with a tiny plastic lock. That would keep her away.

Days went by, and I didn’t really see much of her, since she left early and got home late. Our time together felt uneventful. Nothing else caused friction between us, as if the first day had been the culmination of our conflict. I had noticed she didn’t have a pillow on her bed. As a way to make peace, I put one of my extra pillows on her bed while she was away.

When I heard the door open that night, Kelly and I were already asleep. Tiptoeing, Caitlin went to the bathroom, changed her clothes and went to bed. That’s when I heard a gasp. “Oh, a pillow!” she exclaimed. There was a warmth in her voice that made me feel tenderness for her.

In the days that followed, we started to talk. I left behind what happened and felt a bit embarrassed about my first reaction. I ditched the plastic lock.

“Who wants coffee?” Caitlin asked. I noticed her head poke from the kitchen’s door with a big smile in the morning.

“Me!” Both Kelly and I would yell back, sounding like children.

The three of us came from very different backgrounds: Kelly from a conservative military family; Caitlin, a liberal from Massachusetts committed to studying philosophy and feminism; and I was the Mexican immigrant of the immaculate conception. As the weeks went by, Caitlin, Kelly and I would take turns making dinner for one other. We hid the empty bottles of wine so we wouldn’t be caught by our RA. We became a small family. Even with our differences, we could always break bread.

One day after class, I got a text from Caitlin: “Don’t go into the room, Kelly’s boyfriend is in town. I’ll be in the common area.” This was the cordial gesture we adopted to allow each other privacy. To not interrupt, we would spend the rest of the afternoon finishing our homework in the dorm’s living room. Sitting across a coffee table, books everywhere, Caitlin and I got to know each other better.

“You know when you like a teacher and you obsess over them?” she asked, holding her knees.

I knew exactly what she meant; I had been there too many times. “And you watch them watch the video they play in class rather than paying attention like the rest of the class?” I added.

“Yes! Exactly that!” she said.

“Or how about waiting a couple of minutes outside of class so they will notice you when they come out!” I exclaimed.

“Yes!” She said, slapping her knee. “Have you ever experienced this with someone your age?”

“No, they have always been teachers,” I answered almost in relief.

“You?” I asked, but Caitlin shook her head. She had only had boyfriends.

Throughout my life, there have been moments when I’d wake up and be thankful that I wasn’t gay. Having listened to stories of youth kicked out of their homes, pushed away from social circles, I wanted to avoid the pain of having to be “different.” Living in sin. I was grateful that I would never have to deal with that. Had I been obsessed with Kate Winslet in third grade after watching Titanic? Yes, I had. Did I sometimes ask myself if I wanted to kiss my best friend? Yes, I did, but these thoughts felt trivial, not life changing. Or worse, life endangering.

In the mornings, as we got ready, I used to stare at the way Caitlin put on mascara as she stood close enough that I could hear her breathe. She’d smile at me and the thought of pressing my lips against hers would pass me by. She is just pretty; you don’t really want to kiss her, I told myself.

On weekends, when Kelly went home, Caitlin and I would go shopping at the local stores, stopping for pizza before heading back to our dorm. Our chatter was so loud, as we lay on the floor together, that the RA used to constantly knock on our door: “Guys, please!” she’d beg, “I can hear you all the way from the hallaway!” It was hard to imagine that I had asked her months earlier to switch me to a different room.

With our backs against the hardwood, I loved listening to Caitlin talk about the small town she grew up in of fisherman and the Whale Watch she used to play in. I had never seen a whale in my life. I savored her memories as I imagined her travels to Egypt and Oxford, the libraries and pubs, and eating eish-baladi from local restaurants near the Nile.

“I’ll take you to my favorite pub that’s more than a hundred years old!” she’d exclaim. This was way better than knowing how to pair cheeses with wine. As we jammed to Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” in her car, I snuck peeks at her through my wild hair, the temptation to touch her leg coming to a halt at every stop sign.

“We should go to Ocean Drive Saturday,” Caitlin said over dinner one night. “

“I am not a fan of bikes,” Kelly said. “You two go ahead without me.”

The next Saturday morning, Caitlin and I rode our way to Ocean Drive. Taking breaths between the hills to see the water, we spotted beautiful homes as we raced each other up the streets. The waves crashed as we ate our snacks, and I felt such joy, a kind that was almost new. The ocean, a stranger to me for so long, embraced me with its force, showing off its vastness. And she was next to me. We closed our eyes to feel the sunshine in our face. I’d open mine and turn toward her—to find her looking at me, too.

By the time we got back, it was already dark, the cold caressing our ankles. Tired after the day’s activities, we got ready for bed.

“Can I have a hug?” I asked before wishing each other goodnight.

“Yes!”

She opened her arms, and we stood there, embracing each other. I never wanted it to end.

“You truly have become one of my best friends,” she said after letting me go.

I wished for nothing more than being special to her. Before Caitlin, I only wished to become this with those female teachers, to be their favorite. Although I succeeded multiple times, the rush left me hanging, keeping a fire burning that was bound to extinguish because of our differences: in ages, in power, in time.

Now I wondered where this fire would lead me as I tried to understand where to place her in my life. Perhaps, I thought, we can become neighbors where we have husbands, and we could catch each other walking our dogs on the same street. Then: Halloween, the kiss, and nothing was the same.

***

The weeks that followed the party were my most painful; the worms already out of the can, squirming through everything I did and thought. I’d unlocked something I couldn’t close back up, and I knew that we couldn’t go back to where we were before that night. But I wasn’t ready to take a step forward.

“Entonces qué? Eres lesbiana?” Ally, the other international student from Mexico, asked me at the library after I told her what happened.

To hear someone call me a lesbian was a punishment, but to call me lesbiana, felt visceral, about to make me throw up. This was not me. My case was different. This feeling is only with Caitlin, I told myself. For the rest of the parties I attended, I pictured myself kissing random girls, trying to find an answer about myself in a matter of weeks.

Everything felt tense back at the dorm. Long silences, doors closing behind me as I pretended to type a paper I didn’t want to write. Jealousy washed over me, knowing she was leaving to go somewhere without me. If Caitlin were a boy, I would think, I’d be thrilled calling my best friend, my mother.

“I found the man I will marry,” I would say, squealing in excitement. But what would I do with this? Who would I tell back home? And what would they say?

I squeezed my eyes shut as I pictured my mother’s silence. Her hanging up the phone after sharing the news. She wouldn’t forgive me. What about my Dad, who wanted to walk me down the aisle to give me away to a man? What about me calling someone a husband? In my mind I was dismantling all the photos of my future that would hang from my shiny, tidy fridge. The ones of the life I thought I would have; the life that had been curated for me by the generations before me.

“What are we going to do?” she finally asked. The shadows covered her face, letting me only see the contour of her lips, the ones I couldn’t wait to kiss again.

“We are not going to tell anyone,” I answered, pushing the anxiety down my throat, swallowing it down.

As we drove back to our dorm, the waves grew smaller and smaller, the sound of their crashing dissipated, giving us its blessings. We pressed our bodies together in the dark in the small twin bed. Breathless, we turned and twisted like dolphins in open water, far from shore, trying to find ourselves.

On the wall, our shadows grew. I lifted my hand to see which one was mine, and I recognized my limbs within the entanglement. Extending my fingers, freedom ran through them, and the fears I’d been holding drained from me. Reaching back to touch her body, I disappeared from my own view on the wall, returning to the dance our bodies created. When I looked again, we were one.

Next, it was a cold November morning, and the sun filled the room. We pressed our naked bodies together, wrapped in crisp white sheets protected from the world outside. I had never been this close to anyone before.

“Your skin is like a dolphin’s,” I remember saying to her the night before.

She laughed and asked if I had ever swum with one. I hadn’t, but I could still see their resemblance; soft, tight and shiny. As my nose brushed her back, I traced beauty marks that could have formed a constellation. Awake, I waited for the anxiety to hit my body. I had slept with a woman. I held my breath, letting the thought materialize, expecting my heartbeat to rise. But I was calm.

Pressing my nose harder against her skin, I inhaled what lingered of her perfume with the hope that I would never forget that moment. Almost 17 years later, and still sharing the same bed (thankfully, queen-sized now), I don’t have to worry about forgetting. As I drift to sleep most nights, I squeeze her tighter, thankful that we are still here, together. Not letting each other go.