Oh dear, it seems I am caught in a flurry of labels and none seem to fit, quite.
Not so very long ago, and for a long time before that, my label was a very firm ‘housewife’. I am aware how archaic that sounds nowadays but that is what I was known as. I was a wife and I stayed largely in my husband’s home, ergo, housewife.
As I have mentioned before it was not an especially pleasant situation but it was all I knew for as long as I could remember so had I settled into, as people do, and stayed there until I was wrenched out of it, unceremoniously and swiftly, having been ‘traded-in on a newer model’ as the saying goes.
Within a short time I was no longer the settled housewife, albeit in a very deep rut, but a single woman rendered directionless by circumstance.
Life carried on and a situation came about in which I was to spend a great deal of my day naked about the house. And so I was suddenly a nudist or a naturist, a label to replace housewife.
Then I found that life had provided me with emotional and physical joy and comfort in the arms of a dear friend. Next I am wearing the additional label, lesbian.
From a housewife to a lesbian nudist almost overnight. How does such a thing happen?
Perhaps I am being a little over-dramatic about all this. After all, nobody has actually come out and called me that, I suppose I’m just over-aware of how labels are attached to people now.
If you were to ask me, ‘who are you?, I would answer I am a divorced woman of a certain age who is discovering a fresh life.
Am I being silly to be so wary of labels?
For me, going naked about the house is not a statement of any sort. It’s something I more or less fell into in the presence of one (Audrey) who did it. I find it comfortable and so I continue to do it.
Joining Audrey in my bed or hers to share intimate physical enjoyments does not preclude, in my mind at least, the possibility that I may one day meet a man with whom I could enjoy a relationship, physical or not.
Having said that I will not label myself as ‘bisexual’ either. So much has happened so quickly that frankly, I don’t know which way I favour. The physical relations I had with my ex-husband were never anything I enjoyed. I don’t believe it was because of a tendency in me toward women, more likely it was a lack of any sort of physical attraction or skill in either of us, he or me. Had I been with a man to whom I felt attracted it may well have been different and my foray into the sapphic may never have occurred.
The fact that my first ever orgasm was delivered by a woman (Audrey) does not necessarily prove that I have a proclivity toward the homosexual, though I suspect it may well be so. Should a man have delivered me to the heights of climax would I have never drifted? I can’t really say.
Oh dear, this has all gotten rather more complicated than I had set out for it to be.
I suppose to boil it all down, I was labeled as a housewife for many years and I am afraid, I suppose, of being labeled once more, this time as a nudist and a lesbian.
As a friend I care as deeply as one may for Audrey. As a lover I also care deeply. I wish to take nothing away from the relationship we have come to know in what is really only the last month, the physical aspect at least.
I have no desire to be an example to anyone. I am grasping in the dark to find my way as so many doubtless do. I do suspect however, that Audrey and the naked thing will persist and flourish. I so delight in it.
I imagined for a long time that I would be a housewife forever so all I can say is, we shall see.
Please forgive the rambling. I hope it hasn’t all sounded too dreadfully clinical. I’m trying to get at something elusive.
Until next we meet,
Kate
kateintheworld 