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six Listening for Female Same-Sex Desire When I was coming home on the bus I wrote a poem, which was a rather humorous poem, not totally humorous. But I remember the last phrase said “Green hope converted into rose/pink,” because I [laughter] I felt very pleasant [laughter] without there being anything [. . .] So when she invited me for tea—I can tell you, I haven’t talked about this before because I haven’t spoken about my private life to anyone. So she invites me to tea and I was shaking like never before in my life, like a teenager, shaking, I couldn’t speak! Because that was when I was faced with a different look, I said to myself. . . . So that look, which drilled right through me, I didn’t even want to believe. That was how it was. And so I remember, I remember that I said to her “Look, I think there’s a mistake here.” She didn’t say anything [laughter], just the look, and I said,“I think there’s a mistake. I mean, our relationship is a friendship, it can’t be anything else.” So she replied,“You know that you and I can’t be friends.” That’s what she said to me, and well, sure enough, life showed that we couldn’t be friends. So there was more. (Katia, b. 1943) I was a very daring person, very in love. I started my relationships with three people at once. A bit promiscuous I’d say I am. I felt good, I divided my time, three different people. But what I didn’t find in one I found in the other. [. . .] I got married because I wanted to have a child, because my desire was really—I like women. From when I was tiny I wanted to have a sex change in Denmark, I didn’t like being called by a woman’s name, I liked being called by a man’s name, and that was destiny. (Yohanka, b. 1961) Do you have a memory of your awareness that there were people with different sexual orientations, not heterosexual? Well, I realized when I was twelve. I went to study in secondary school. That there were girls as well as boys who were not the same as the others. They had other ways of walking, of talking, of gesturing. There were girls who looked like boys, and boys who looked like girls. So those differences made me think that there were other things I didn’t know. And in that period I had my first homosexual experience in that same secondary school, at the rural school, which is where young people go to [study and work in] the countryside. I met a girl, and that’s where my relationship with the world of homosexuality began, without knowing how it even happened. And after that moment things changed for me, so I started to ask, to read books. Up until then I didn’t female same-sex desire 173 know anything. And so I started to look for books about sexuality in order to learn and find out what my place was. (Roxana, b. 1964) I’ve had two relationships that have been really important to me. Look, for me all relationships are important, absolutely all of them. Even the relationships with people who’ve had a really close friendship with me and haven’t actually been my partners. But all the interpersonal relationships I’ve established in my life I give lots of importance to. I’ve had two long-lasting relationships, and I don’t know if it’s a coincidence but the two people have been alcoholics. I’ve never discovered the reason for that. It didn’t work out well for me those two times because, well, everyone knows that alcoholism leaves a series of consequences. But I’ve had many other very important relationships in my life. I think that every time I’m in a romantic relationship I learn a lot. I feel like a little kid sitting at a desk learning, and I love that kind of relationship. I love them. Every kind of love relationship with women, even if it only lasts a second, I love it. I love them all. They have a special charm. I think women are the ones who have a special charm. (Marielis, b. 1964) Look. I’m twenty-seven in January. From the first moment I identified with my...

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