I used to make out with Ariel from The Little Mermaid.

It was a doll.

She was a doll, and I was four.

And the little four-year-old girl that I was just wanted a little smooching before she pretended to swim in the bathtub and played with her plastic toy Flounder.

 

When I was a pre-teen my cousin would ask, “Do you have a boyfriend?”

I’d say, “No.”

“Do you have a girlfriend?”

“No,” I’d say, and she would smile. Now, I think that was a joke, but twelve-year-old me just thought it was normal.

And it is normal, it is normal, I tell myself.

 

Now, I bring a girlfriend to hang out with my friends.

We’re thirty minutes late because I want them to have had at least one drink in them.

We walk up to the table and take our seats.

I let a breath out as two little shot glasses are placed in front of us, and I smile while introductions are made.

“Alcoholic,” my girlfriend teases.

“Just a lesbian,” I say.

 

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JAMIE SAPORSANTOS is an emerging writer born and raised in Calgary, Alberta. She is a recent graduate of Mount Royal University’s English B.A. program where she discovered a passion for the craft of creative writing.