Max Power: 1

I’ve been putting it off because where do I start... at the beginning I guess.

Max came to the Sapphic Slumber Party last Spring with a friend of a friend. She’s a masculine-of-centre lesbian, short hair, wicked smirk, she’s slender but muscular, covered in tattoos, intricate sleeves up both arms. She’s an electrician, and she’s quiet, and she’d never been to anything like this before. She was seated next to me as I fussed and fretted about the party starting late and tried to pull myself together. She was distracting. Her sideways grin as she took in the room full of femmes in lingerie made it hard to focus.

My hosting duties kept me busy, and she had plenty of attention. It was kind of funny, 34 femme babes in a room and we all tripped over ourselves to flirt with the one butch there. Typical.

At one point in the evening I was smoking a quick bong in the back room with E (another toppy babe) and loudly trading lactation fetish stories. Right as I was getting to the climax of mine, I turned around and saw Max was within ear shot. I don’t know about you, but I like a person to get to know me, and get sense of who I am before they hear about the time I jerked a lover off using breast milk as lube. Like, that’s a lot right?

Anyway. I made a terrible first impression. A few weeks later I invited her to join us for another coven outing and somehow the conversation ALL NIGHT kept circling back around to my werewolf and monster fucker fantasies. Again, I can own my kinks, but it would be nice if “why don’t you kink on vampires though, is it because they don’t have claws?” wasn’t one of the first things I shared with her. I was pretty sure I’d stuck myself in the weird girl category, but Max still said yes when I invited her to our Summertime Badness party at Ms.O’s place.

When we spread newspaper and silk flowers on the floor and sat down to make flower crowns I could see Max wasn’t sure what to do. As the femme among us dove in on the satin ribbon and floral decor Max thumbed a few pieces of greenery. My heart just kinda throbbed for her. “Can I make you a boutonnière?” I offered. She was gracious and obviously relieved. I sat next to her and crafted a black satin bow, tied around dark green sprigs and a burnt orange flower that matched her outfit. Max’s friend Eden offered me the safety pin she used on her dress to give her clevage some modesty (a sacred item) and I used it to pin the boutonnière onto Max’s shirt.

I could feel my cheeks getting hot as I fumbled with the pin, my hands started to tremble. I could hear my heartbeat in my ears, I couldn’t swallow, and I couldn’t fucking get this safety pin closed to save my life. It felt like a century passed, I could feel O’s smiley face watching me while my clumsy fingers found themselves useless, I could feel Max’s eyes on me. She’s so calm. She’s so fucking steady. “It’s okay,” she said, and it was.

The next day Ms.O and I were texting, and I admitted that I psyched myself out after the flowers. I started overthinking the situation; have I healed enough from my bad break ups, do I have the time and energy to give to someone new, am I ready to be intimate with someone again? I got so in my head I just kind of... ignored her for the rest of the evening. Ms.O was the consummate cheerleader. She reminded me that I hadn’t scared her off yet, and she gently chided me about maybe not waiting TWO WHOLE YEARS this time before letting a crush know I’m crushing. Touché.

Late that night I was in bed, sorting through photos from our party at O’s place when I saw this one. I’m using E’s bear claw toys on Ms.O’s lovely bum (her cute little feet slay me in this pic!) and there’s Max, close by, with her boutonnière. What you can’t see, because I’ve edited it out for her privacy, is the way she’s looking at me in this picture. My heart fluttered when I saw how her eyes were lit up, the way her smirk seemed to dance on her face. It was all I needed to send a brave text at 12:34am.

I hardly slept that night. But when I rolled over and checked my phone at 7am she had already replied, “I have a crush on you too, what are you doing Wednesday night? Let’s get a drink.”

Reader, I did not make an excuse, or agonize over it, I didn’t sabotage my own happiness, I said YES.

(This is Part 1 of 4 - read Part 2 here.)