KARIN
In this final chapter in the series I've brought Karin to Australia where she and Tess will get to know each other a little better. This has been an interesting experiment with two separate series bouncing off each other and I've learned a lot. When this is turned into a novel I think I'll merge the two stories together to enhance the ebb and flow of the different plots. Thank you to all the people who offered suggestions and left comments. And now it's onto the finale.
Shaima.
Mum has mentioned our holidays in Denmark but I was saving them for this last piece because I needed to put everything into context with Karin. We did go over when I was sixteen, during our summer holidays when we actually had Christmas with Hanne and Gustav, which was exciting because we got to see snow at Christmas time. It was also the first time I recall looking at Karin and her girlfriend Ingrid with something akin to genuine curiosity. You see by then I'd matured quite a bit and although I was going out with Nish at the time, he and I hadn't gone that far before, and this was despite being put on the pill by mum.
Seeing Karin and Ingrid kissing on the couch wasn't an alien sight by any stretch of the imagination but it was the first time I'd seen two women so close to my age kissing each other. I'd seen mum and Birgit kiss plenty of times and I was old enough to know what happened behind closed doors but polite enough to not ask too many questions. However that did raise some valid questions in my mind regarding Nish. Why didn't he and I kiss like that anywhere? Let alone the couch where we could get seriously entangled. I won't say for sure that seeing Karin and Ingrid led to my pulling away from Nish and moving towards women, but it did have an impact on me.
The second time I saw her was on that second visit. Mum had asked me what I wanted for my birthday and I'd jokingly said a trip to Denmark. She took it seriously and as a result, we flew out to Copenhagen for two weeks. Paul and Kelly weren't on that particular trip because she was about ready to drop their first baby and so it was truly a girls' trip. By then Karin had broken up with Ingrid and gone through several more girlfriends, but had just been dating a Dutch woman by the name of Helga. It wasn't a serious thing though and she made that very clear when she refused to see her while I was there.
I was going out with Caroline at the time and it was quite a serious thing, but nonetheless, I still felt a pull towards Karin that both excited and troubled me. She'd certainly changed remarkably since the previous visit and I'd been aware of it due to her constant social media updates. Karin is quite addicted to social media, even more than yours truly. She had a blog that was dedicated to fashion and if she bought something new or had an idea for a new look she took a selfie and wrote a brief blog that was linked to her Pinterest account.
To make matters more interesting, Caroline was going through her own existential crisis at the time and it was hard to focus on reassuring her that everything between us was fine when Karin was taking me out for coffee and dinner. Karin for her part never came onto me but I have it on good authority that she wasn't above a bit of slap and tickle if I'd made the first move. Perhaps that was why she felt so free and easy around me and we certainly had abundant opportunities to get naked if we'd wanted. Mum and Birgit were spending more time alone, leaving me with Karin and some of her friends.
So why didn't we just do it then? To answer that I guess I'd have to tell you more about Karin and her view on sex and sexuality. For Karin sex is as natural as breathing, there's no great mystique about it at all. Nudity was nothing to her, just an absence of clothes, whereas in Anglo cultures it has greater significance, we associate it with sex because of Christian influences. Thus when I walked into Karin's bedroom one afternoon to find her lying naked on the bed half asleep I kind of coughed and said, "sorry."
Her eyes fluttered open and she looked at me.
"I was sleeping, but now you are here I am awake," she sat up and looked around, "where do you want to go today?"
I was still looking at her breasts and as if noticing that she merely smiled slyly.
"Sorry, it's a Danish thing, if it embarrasses you I will not sleep naked while you are here."
"To each their own," I closed the door, "it just took me by surprise."
"I like what you are wearing," she smiled.
"You do?"
I looked down at myself. I was wearing an off white blouse under a V-neck jumper. I'd only just started making jeans and the white ones I had on that day were made of stretch denim. They had brown suede strips on the tops of the pockets and the flap of the fly, the back stitching on the pockets formed the shape of a flower, the stitching was brown as well.
"I love those jeans, where did you get them?"
"I made them," I turned around to show her my arse, "didn't you see my Instagram?"
"I must have missed that post," she picked up her panties, "you will have to measure me up for a pair of them."
She put the panties on and sliding off the bed, padded over to a cupboard, "I have a measuring tape in here somewhere."
Measuring Karin up for a pair of jeans was where it started I suppose, primarily because I was able to switch into dressmaker mode and take down her measurements, all of them. We then headed into town and spent the better part of the day in clothing stores along Strøget.
It's one of the longest pedestrianised streets in Europe and I've come to know that street like the back of my hand. Karin tried on dozens of clothes and had me take pictures as well, her reasoning was explained as we sat in a café.
"I want you to make me some of these clothes."
"Why not buy them instead?"
"I could but I want changes made to the original design."
"What kind of changes?"
"Sometimes it is the colour, other times the material but there are other changes too like pleats or the collar. I will pay you for them and put up pictures on my blog. It is free advertising for you and I get to write about your work."
What it also did was give me what I'd always wanted, a willing model who wasn't family. I became Karin's dressmaker. I made very few dresses for her but Karin had a thing for blouses and used to send me pictures of women she'd found on porn sites, she does like to look at those kinds of sites. In particular she liked the strip galleries, where women pose in various outfits and then strip down until they are either partially nude or completely naked. I'd then have to make that particular outfit for her, although she'd have her own suggested modifications. Sometimes it was as simple as a different colour. Other times it was a little more complicated but being her dressmaker also meant that if Caroline raised an eyebrow at our online exchanges I could always just say she was one of my customers.
Interestingly enough though, Karin has always maintained she didn't set out to seduce me away from Caroline or indeed Andie. That was because she was also unsure of how to take things forward at the time. Turning me into her personal dressmaker/tailor just seemed a logical step but looking back I can see that by some curious twist of fate, we were seducing each other whilst still involved with other women. I used to copy some of the designs I made for her to make similar items for myself simply because I knew she'd like them. Yet neither of us came onto the other in all that time, partly because we were quite busy with our own lives and partly due to the fact we were thousands of miles apart. Cyber sex has never been my thing, I'd much rather get up close and personal with someone.
Thus, hearing that Karin was coming to Australia helped make up my mind about Andie, especially when Birgit told me she was getting the spare bedroom next to my sewing room. I swear she was smiling at the time but that could just have been my imagination.
However what I couldn't write off as idle imaginings was the outfit she wore. Way back when I first started making clothes for her, I made her a blue, silk top with short puffy sleeves and a pair of patterned harem pants. She wore them on the flight to Australia and when I commented that they looked familiar she simply smiled.
"They are very comfortable for a long flight, I wore these pants when I went to China two years ago, you can wear them all day."
Nevertheless, she did feel the heat the moment we stepped out of the terminal building and into the scalding heat of an Australian summer. People in northern hemispheres, particularly Britain rave about it and conjure up images of lying on a beach in a bikini, but when you have to wear normal clothes and go to work it's an entirely different matter. She squinted at the blue sky and exhaled as she fanned herself.
"My God, I did not think it was so hot."
Thankfully mum's car has air conditioning and that's another matter visitors don't realise, not every Australian car or home has air conditioning! We had both, which was a relief to someone raised in Denmark. Birgit and Karin sat in the back seat while I sat up front with mum, they were talking in Danish for most of the drive back to Mt Evelyn although by the time we got to Warrandyte Karin was starting to wonder if we'd ever get there.
"It's not far now," Birgit reassured her.
Our pool was very inviting and she added a picture of it for her Instagram with the caption, the view from my bedroom window!
However as she slipped through the water while I sat under the shade of the pergola it seemed as if our relationship would just stay the same as it had been for the last couple of years. There's a lot to tell about what happening in the next few months but you want to read about how it all happened but first I have to meet Karin at Amagertorv, we're having dinner with friends.
***
It's easy to pinpoint one particular moment in time that changed everything for Karin and I, it was that kiss on the bed during a hail storm. What is harder to nail down is how we got to that kiss, it was not one particular event or moment. It was a series of things that drew us closer together until finally the only logical step was to get naked and try it on for size. And yet at any time over that six month period either one of us could have pulled away or deviated onto another woman. It was not as if we didn't have motive and opportunity. All my lesbian friends wanted to meet the hot Danish blonde staying at my joint, some of them were single and others were in relationships.
However, Karin was not in Australia to find a woman. She was working for a tour company and as befits her nature, she wanted to get to know the state she was now based in, and that involved going to the places mentioned on the website. During the week she was in the office in the city but every fortnight she planned a weekend trip to a part of the state she hadn't seen yet. The first two trips were to the west coast and Phillip Island, but because she was new in the country and didn't know her way around I automatically rearranged my life to suit her.
Those trips became something of an eye opener for me as well. There's a lot to see here and yet because I'd lived there all my life so much is just taken for granted. I think I saw more of my home state in those six months than I'd seen in the previous twenty or so. Karin has a knack for finding out of the way tourist spots that most of us would just ignore. She's naturally gregarious as well and we met some interesting people on our travels and yet despite the fact we were often alone together neither of us made the first move.
That couldn't last of course but I can single out those trips as being the start of a gradual coming together because up until then I'd seen her as the ideal woman, she had a mystique about her but having her sitting beside me in the car or lying in bed with me took part of that mystery away. I found out that my ideal woman had feet of clay and that wasn't a bad thing because I too had feet of clay. As she opened up about herself I naturally did the same thing, it was an automatic response and by March I found myself in a strange situation when a woman I'd been lusting after at college actually flirted with me.
Meghan was what I'd call a lesbian's wet dream. She was not just a virgin when it came to women, she was an actual virgin and it had nothing to do with religion, she just wasn't going to give herself to any man. She was a beautiful woman who could still be a model, I'd made some outfits for her over the last few months and she didn't seem fazed stripping down to her underclothes in front of me or indeed Karin. However, Meghan was no bimbo. She was very aware of what men saw when they looked at her and she was determined not be an accessory on some man's arm. Her mother had been a single mother for a good ten years and had imposed on her three children the importance of finding your own place in society.
The fact I arranged for a double date with Elvira and Meghan tells you a lot about the way I had come to view Karin. She'd become a part of me without me realising it but when I walked into Anna's joint to find Meghan and Elvira lying in each other's arms I was struck by how natural it all looked. It was as if these two women were made for each other, I went home an hour or so later and laid down in my bed and imagined lying in Karin's arms. I fell asleep and woke up an hour and a half later to find Karin sitting on the edge of the bed. She'd come to wake me up for dinner and I put my hand on her leg and kept it there while I stared at the ceiling. The temperature had dropped suddenly in the last couple of hours and the promised cool change had come in the form of a violent hailstorm.
"Are you okay?" Karin sounded concerned.
"Meghan and Elvira are together," I murmured.
