Regrets Pt. 2

I had never considered a relationship with another woman; I had never questioned my sexuality before I met her.  I found her world exciting and inviting.  There were the occasional stares and disapproving looks at first, but I quickly found myself embraced by Bette’s circle of friends and the community in general.  West Hollywood was a bubble that we lived within and I found security and acceptance there.  The truth is that I left my previous life behind me when I met her.  My parents never fully understood or accepted our relationship.  They love and support me and always will, but they have always treated my relationship with Bette as a “phase”.  Aren’t most relationships a “phase”?  My other romantic relationships had been phases, the only difference being that this time I was falling in love with a woman.  In the beginning I didn’t consider myself gay, but accepted that I was living my life in a lesbian relationship.  I didn’t want to enter into the debate of what it meant to be gay or bi.  I didn’t feel the need to be “out and proud”.  I just knew that I loved her and was happy with that declaration.  I would later identify myself as a lesbian because I didn’t want to give the impression that I might be ashamed or embarrassed of my life with her.  Bette was so proud of who she was and I respected her too much. 

I have since lost touch with many of my childhood friends in Texas.  They just didn’t understand my liberal, LA lifestyle and shook their heads in disapproval that I didn’t marry and have children as soon as I finished college.  I sacrificed a lot for Bette, the approval of my parents, the approval of society.  I would later sacrifice my identity as a studio executive and provider.  But, I made a vow to her and to our life together.  Life would not always be easy for us as a same sex couple, but I also knew that the sacrifice was justified.  I knew and I know that I will never find a love like that again. 

Sex with Bette was unlike anything that I have ever experienced.  I had lovers in college and when I first moved to LA, but they were men.  Were all women this good or was it just Bette?  I had never come while fucking a man.  It wasn’t that I didn’t find them attractive or that I didn’t enjoy penetration.  I just never came.  It was so much different with her. I was so in tune with Bette.  She knew exactly where to touch me and never had a problem finding a timing or rhythm.  I asked her if it was true that our incredible lovemaking was due to the fact that we had the same “plumbing”.  She laughed at the myth….“no, Tina.  It is because I am in love with you”.  However, there were the obvious differences.  I found kissing her to be so much more sensual, as if her lips were an extension of another part of her body that she saved just for me.  She would provide for me a preview of what would come when she pressed her lips against me, her tongue tasting mine. Then there was the obvious difference in making love to a woman; the fact her orgasm did not mean that we were finished.  We could fuck for hours and often would.  I loved this eternal dance that we engaged in; the feeling afterwards that we had nothing left to give, the feeling of complete surrender and satisfaction.  How ridiculous that we actually sought out the help of a sex therapist?  The problems we had were never between the sheets, they were between our ears.  The sex was wonderful for the first several years, but it gradually fell victim, along with communication and trust, to our inability to sustain the relationship. 

I’m afraid that I will never forget what it feels like to be with Bette.  She haunts my thoughts and the memories of fucking her are imprinted everywhere in my psyche.  I have been with others since, but it wasn’t the same.  Sex with Helena was a sweet release, but thoughts of Bette would blur my mind as I climaxed.  And then, him.  Another regret.  I fucked him in our room as I tried to exorcise her from my thoughts and heart.  This was really the ultimate betrayal; to fuck him in our bed.  The bed that she made clear I vacate while she was away.  The bed where she would cry my name, sometimes in pleasure, and sometimes in despair.   I know that we will never be together again.  I have made sure of that by doing everything in my power to push her away.  I was searching for my autonomy, but instead found myself engaging in a pattern of destructive behavior.  I wanted to make Bette suffer for the affair, to suffer for the inability to provide Angelica and me with the support that I had expected when I became pregnant.  I know now that I was wrong.  There is no “eye for an eye”.  She had lost her father and her job.  I went ahead and took away everything else.    I regret the way I handled the ridiculous phone call from Washington, DC and her attempt to reach out to me.  I regret our arguments about money and her job search.  I regret pulling away from her at night before we would fall asleep.  I wish that I would have rolled over and reclaimed her the morning that she woke up with her arm around me.  Instead she asked me to leave our bed.  It would have been so easy to fall back into a life with her; especially with the arrival of our daughter.  It would have been so easy to call her my own, to again surrender my heart and soul to her.  Perhaps my true redemption will be to find a way to release her and to allow her a new start with somebody else.  To allow her to share in the responsibilities of raising our daughter but free of the guilt and ridicule that I so selfishly inflicted upon her after asking her permission to come back to our home, and our bed.  I regret that I did everything in my power to insure that Bette Porter would never again find a way into my heart, the heart that only she will ever truly own.