Looking at the ceiling I debate my options; I could stay up the entire night on my phone, which would be impractical, I could go for a walk, which could get me in trouble with some assholes, or I could- My hand twitches and my brows furrow in frustration. My mind just wanders for a bit in an attempt to soothe myself into slumber. It's been four years since Alaina was raped and she still has no plans to pursue formal charges against her rapist. She says, unflinchingly, that she has moved on in other ways: She's chosen to change her name, and has moved to a new city where she has pursued a successful freelance writing career, often writing about sexual assault within the LGBTQ community. For the last stretch of our afternoon, we were dropped on a secluded beach at Nevis, where a few of us ferried beers and our new favorite drink, the very college-esque Panty Ripper (coconut rum and pineapple juice), from shore to the rest of the women waiting in the water. One woman stuffed a bunch of beers into her bathing suit and we cheered whenever anybody pulled one out. A couple women had GoPro cameras, with which we took a lot of increasingly drunken group shots while we swam. One of them was attached to a floating handle that looked very much like a big yellow dildo, which, once somebody pointed it out, kept sending us into hysterics.

And then, for women who might not be "out," shame about their sexual orientation or a fear of being outted significantly hinders their ability to report. If you're closeted—or even semi-closeted—formally coming forward with sexual assault allegations could mean compromising your professional or familial relationships by revealing your orientation. (The guarantee of keeping your job as an LGBTQ American currently varies per state.) The downward economic spiral of losing one's job to report a same-sex rape that won't even be deemed legitimate is simply not worth it—literally.Cancers associated with human papillomavirus (HPV). Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. https://www.cdc.gov/cancer/hpv/basic_info/cancers.htm. Accessed Dec. 13, 2022. I’d never considered before that being a femme with a butch partner needn’t be some inequitable hetero horror show, but instead could be something imbued with incredible queer comfort and power. It could be fun. It could be hot.

I would move into a house with some friends in Brooklyn, where a room had just magically opened up. There’d be a dog, and a yard. It would feel like a sign. (I’d start getting really into signs.) My fingers actually struggle a little as they push down my undergarments exposing my glistening shame hidden behind a carpet of dark hair. My panties are ruined. Lynette is 53 years old, though she looks at least 10 years younger. She was born and raised in London to Jamaican parents. She’d recently separated from her wife, whom she’d been with for 21 years. This cruise was the gift Lynette gave herself in the aftermath. She was starting over.Alaina explained to the officer who answered that she had been sexually assaulted by a current student—that she'd been drugged, choked, and penetrated by her assailant's fingers as she faded in and out of consciousness one night five months ago. It sounds shallow to imply that, in the beginning, I fell for her simply because of her style, her stuff. But what attracted me was the care and attention to detail she demonstrated via a lifetime’s accumulation and curation of these things. Together they made up the way she wanted to be seen in the public eye, the way she wanted to move through the world. She was not a boy but a full-grown butch who, at 53, was confident in who she was and what she wanted. We both like Justin Bieber, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, babies, spicy foods, and romantic comedies, as well as traveling, swimming, dressing up, having sex, being tall, biking (“cycling,” she’d say), and making detailed plans well ahead of time. We also appear, at this admittedly early stage, to be each other’s scarily perfect sexual complement; lesbian sex can look like a million and one different things, and we like so many of the same ones that it is, honestly, a miracle we ever got out of bed and did anything normal, like eat dinner or generally interact with other people. (Turns out, there was nothing wrong with me during my sad stretch of a dry spell after all — I just hadn’t been having the sex I actually wanted to have.) When I kissed Lynette goodbye at our appropriately miserable reentry to the real world — Pennsylvania Station in Manhattan — I still wasn’t exactly sure what the hell I was supposed to do next.