The Loneliness of a Small Town Lesbian

I was never cut out for a small town existence, and like many other closet lesbians I made the move to a big city at the earliest opportunity.

For me, the thought of living in a satellite town miles from anything except the next satellite town was akin to a slow death by suffocation. I needed the anonymity and freedom a big city offers, to come to terms with my sexuality before breaking the news to my family.

Now I know there are tens or even hundreds of thousands of gay women, living their lives in small and medium towns across the country, and you just have to have a quick scan through the list of locations on Gaydar to find the evidence, but I wonder what it must be like to exist in places where more often than not there's not so much as a lesbian bar to call their own. And from a logistical point of view, how do you meet, socialise and fuck other women in a town entirely set up for heterosexuals?

Gay men are traditionally more proactive when it comes to creating a social and sexual network. Even in the town I spent my formative years, there was at least 1 gay pub and plenty of people willing to tell you where gay men might be found a loitering.

Women, it would appear, lack behind in the social butterfly stakes, blending into their surroundings until they become know as "the lesbian at number 42", spending their days tending to a very different kind of pussy.

In fact without the internet, how would a gay woman ever hope to meet a like minded soul?

Maybe the answer lies in subtle and almost covert network building, which surely women must be the masters of.

Men may be the kings of talking and acting big, but that may also mean they miss out on the tiny details and subtleties of networking.

Strip away the male bravado, and a woman will quietly pick up on the unspoken. It's the same gene that means your mum always knows when you are lying. (Probably) So a women sees, knows and understands enough to be able to add another to the network (It's no coincidence that your P.E teachers always hung out together at school!)

While the boys are letting it all hang out at the Blue Oyster bar, the girls are building relationships that will outlast any mad weekend.

Next time I find myself back in the Midlands town from which I came, I'll take a fresh look, and stop seeing it as a lesbian wasteland, and more of a hotbed (so to speak) of sapphic activity!