The fact that my friend went down on me and we actually survived the experience with our friendship intact doesn’t mean I recommend you try the same thing. Here’s why. I got mine when I was 8 or 9 and told my mum who then slapped me across the face. Apparently it’s tradition.’ For now, though, Olivia’s brand remains quite wholesome. On the first night there, I witnessed a marriage proposal (“Do you think they just met?” joked a woman at my table; “That’d be a record”). Tisha, the cruise director and VP, met her wife on an Olivia cruise. And she emphasized to me that it’s a place where many women go to fall in love — which certainly does happen. I'd been my husband George's caregiver as he'd succumbed to cancer. Sex hadn't been a part of my life for a long time. I was too worried about him to think of much else. I felt like I had no sexuality. To know that I could finally come clean to my worrisome friends felt liberating beyond belief. I didn’t care about sacrificing my youth to move to outer London with a swarm of forty-somethings. All I wanted was to be with her full-time, and for it to be out in the open that we were together.

Fortunately, before I could raise the stakes higher, Jae, a tall, solidly built friend from B Dorm, materialized at my side. Her normally smiling face was stern. She looked at Big Mouth, not saying a word. And just like that, Big Mouth turned and slunk away.I’m determined to do something showstopping, but our offerings are comically limited. No Sheryl Crow, no Michelle Branch. Not even “Total Eclipse of the Heart.” From that night forth, breasts were no longer these foreign bodies I saw every day but had no familiarity with.

I felt crazy. I felt like a teenager. I felt guilty and confused, like I had no idea what I was doing. But I also knew that I might not ever do anything quite like this in my life ever again. So I might as well let myself live through this bizarro universe and see where it would take me.I come from a queer universe where traditional butch/femme identities seem old-school and retrograde, second-wavey, practically heteropatriarchal. There’s a lot wrong with that perspective — for one thing, a lot of the modern queers who shit on butch/femme dynamics aren’t from the working class, where those identities were born — but it’s one I still sympathize with, especially as someone who’d previously been hesitant to claim femme identity as my own.

It was year 8 and I went to a friend’s party. We were all in the pool and we decided to get with each other. Some of the girls were topless. I really just don’t know.’Tequila was definitely involved. The night started off just like any other. It was the end to an unusually stressful work week and my best friend and I decided to ditch the wine and go for something a bit more potent. At about four shots and two mixed drinks in, things started to get interesting…