New Beginnings 35

Hi, I'm Mikki. I am twenty-four and I am a lesbian.

I think.

I say "I think" because there might be a couple of discrepancies in that opening statement. Firstly, I'm really Mikela, but absolutely nobody ever calls me that. The twenty-four claim is accurate enough. I've got my birth certificate at home, if you don't believe me. The second discrepancy . . . the biggie . . . is the lesbian assertion. Am I or aren't I? I honestly don't know.

Maybe I am. Maybe I'm not. And how to know?

Here's a bit of background before I properly begin. I'm a Yorkshire lass, born in York itself but brought up in the Aire Valley. My family is typical two-point-four and home life wasn't in the least dysfunctional. My parents both work and, although money was sometimes tight, we always had two weeks away in summer, usually in Cornwall, often in Penwith or, as they say in those parts, "the far west".

Physically I'm tallish for a girl (five foot eight), with long auburn hair and tits that are slightly too large for my slender body. Looks-wise, I suppose my face passes. Don't get me wrong, I'm no classic beauty. Those A-list film stars won't be losing sleep over me. No, I'm quite comfortably on the pretty side of plain, but by no means beautiful.

Davina is the beautiful one. Well, she is when you look at her the way I look at her now. The way I look at her every time I get eyes-on. Goodness me, she is so, so beautiful.

Back to me and then on with the story.

I left school with umpteen GCSEs, four A-levels and my virginity. Keeping my virginity was, in my case, a lifestyle choice. I did have boyfriends at school but (pardon the pun) none of them ever had me. While others fell right and left around me, I limited myself to kisses and . . . only the once . . . a hand job.

University was great. I was a conscientious student if not a high-achieving one. On the social side I was asked out many times, occasionally by girls (those propositions from girls were as interesting as they were exciting, but I always graciously declined). And, over the three years, I had a two short-lived boyfriends.

Then I graduated.

In a perfect world I would have gone travelling. Sadly, student loans intervened. Relieved of my virginity and armed with a decent degree, I found barmaid work in, of all places, Cornwall.

Cornwall!

At this point I'll briefly digress with a warning: DO NOT TRY THIS ON IMPULSE! It might be the most beautiful place on earth, but jobs are rare in the duchy. Very, very rare. You nearly always need to know someone to get one . . . or know someone who knows someone. Even better, you could be related. Please don't think I'm being in anyway derogative, because I'm not. Work is scarce in Cornwall and they look after it as best they can. Consequently positions are seldom advertised and people from east of the Tamar ("they people") are seldom taken on.

I was lucky. After initially hopping from one delightful location to another, my family have been staying at the same pub/restaurant/B&B for the last seven years. I'd stayed there with them the first five times myself. I knew someone, see? I wasn't one of they people.

Anyway, I went down there with a job guaranteed, intending to see out the end of the season, and ended up staying two and a half years. And I worked through the two winters in-between seasons (jobs in winter, when the bulk of the tourists are gone, are even trickier to come by). I could have stayed longer but, although I loved the leisurely pace of life, the banter and mild flirting with colleagues and customers, I needed a career. With a huge lump in my throat, I said my goodbyes and came home.

Jobs in West Yorkshire aren't exactly plentiful, but at least they are advertised, more often than not. I applied for just about everything and, shrugging off the lack of replies and tons of rejection letters, finally got me an interview. And I got the position. Success first time! One out of one!! I was, my interviewer told me, just the sort people person he was looking for: calm, confident and capable of talking to anyone. Yippee! All that barroom interaction had paid off in spades.

Even though I didn't really know what a "credit controller" actually did, I was taught well and soon worked out the do's and don'ts. My new employers make various gizmos for use in the construction sector, selling them on through a nationwide network of outlets. Basically, I make sure we get paid for our gizmos and keep our valued customers' accounts in order. Because of the terms of sale, my working life follows a monthly cycle (sorry about that, my fellow girls, it just does), but no two days are ever alike. There are literally thousands of customers and, between them, they do their best to ensure unexpected problems regularly arise.

I started being a credit controller last December. Just about everything has gone smoothly ever since, and my telephonic skillset has grown and grown, as has my knowledge of regional accents. Like massively. I came here quite proficient in West Yorkshire, East Lancashire and Kernowek (that's "Cornish" in Cornish); now I can have a fair crack at all sorts.

Proper job, as they say, St Austell way.

A fortnight ago, one fine Tuesday morning, my PC wouldn't start. There were lights on the tower and keyboard, the screen lit up showing my saver but, other than that, it didn't want to know. I turned it off and, scrambling under my desk, unplugged the power. Plugging it back in, banging my head in the process, I scrambled upright and tried again.

Nothing.

When I told Joyce, my line-manager, she asked me if I'd tried switching it off and restarting. I said I had so she told me to ring "IT Helpdesk". She gave me the number and I called it right away. A guy with an Irish accent listened to my explanation and asked me if I'd tried switching it off and on again. Biting my tongue, I said that I had. He said he'd send somebody up to have a look.

I spent the next half hour putting my paperwork into alphabetic order. That didn't particularly help in the scheme of things, but I couldn't do anything else without my computer; shuffling paper was better than sitting there, twiddling my thumbs.

At last I saw Joyce had company. It was a bloke and he just had to be a techie. IT was on the floor below ours. I'd been there just once . . . as part of my induction tour . . . and the people I'd seen were all out of the same mould. All male, all deserving of having "nerd" tattooed on their foreheads. Well, perhaps that wasn't true. IT had at least one woman. When I was there she was on the phone, obviously sorting something out. She looked to be cool and efficient.

The nerd with Joyce was, I decided, better looking than most of his colleagues. He was about as tall as me with very short, light brown hair. Although his clothes were shapeless I guessed his body would be lean. As for his glasses . . . nerd convention or what! They were supersized with thick black frames that dominated his face.

'This is Dave,' Joyce said in introduction. 'Dave, this is Mikki. And that's her PC.'

'Have you tried restarting,' he asked in a surprisingly soft voice.

'Yes,' I said sharply, sick of being continually asked the same question. 'Of course I have.'

Dave sat in my chair and switched off the tower. He waited perhaps twenty seconds then switched it back on . . .

And the fucking, bastarding thing started first time.

Sorry about the bad language, but it was very annoying. Why do embarrassing things like that always happen to me?

Anyway, I begrudgingly said thanks and Dave left, grinning.

*****

Just so you know, I have vowed to myself that I'll tell the truth in this account, warts and all. Let's move on with that in mind.

It was Tuesday night, Wednesday morning. I'd gone to bed early, planning to sleep through to my alarm, as per usual. But I didn't. I came awake abruptly, sometime in the small hours, bare seconds from the end of a wet dream.

A wet dream!

My first in years!!

And it was about Dave!!

I'll excuse myself by saying I was still half-asleep. That might even be true. One thing was for sure, though: whatever else I was, I was desperately in need of a cum. Dave was probably at home in his own bed, quite possibly in Star Trek pajamas, dreaming about repelling invading fleets of Klingons. But not in my imagination. In those murky depths he was about to become only the second man who'd ever been able to make me orgasm.

With a little help from my trusty left hand, that was.

Afterwards I stayed on my back in the dark, wondering what was going on. I've always been awkward around men. I like them, I think . . . or used to think . . . but not in the crushy, gushy way some of my school chums like them. Or used to claim they liked them. Perhaps I'd been a victim of peer pressure. Perhaps I used to think I should like guys and was kidding myself when I "noticed" someone hunky.

Back in warts-and-all mode, I'll fill in some history. It won't take long. Remember I mentioned a hand job? I was in the upper sixth, at Carole's eighteenth. Tommy Smith, the captain of the school rugby team and much admired, cornered me at the bar. Now believe me, Tommy was highly sought after. I let him pick me up because nobody but nobody turned him down. If I'd turned him down I would have instantly lost my street cred. No, I would have become a social outcast. Overnight. A pariah. Maybe even a leper.

Not that Tommy got the shag he expected. I just wasn't up for it, so I told him it was my wrong time of the month (little white lie) and offered him "something else" as an alternative.

Tommy took it well. Indeed he took it so well it was sexually empowering. Best of all, he didn't gossip afterwards. Not that others didn't ask. He "no commented" so much I was taken to be a raving nympho.

Me, an eighteen-year-old nympho! Fifteen minutes of fame for silencing the school stud. Trust me, I almost fell in love with my own public image.

Giles finally took my virginity at uni, in my second year. 'Who on earth loses her cherry to a "Giles"?' I hear you ask. Me, that's who. Giles is a chemist. He's a nice person but, try as he might, he never could make me cum.

Joe was more successful. He made me cum on his very first attempt. Twice! I think I agreed to go steady with him out of sheer gratitude. And it was steady; we kept seeing each other for quite a while. Then he fell off the wagon (I later discovered he was a recovering alcoholic at the age of just twenty) and started clubbing and whoring. So I sent him down the road, hot on the heels of Giles.

And that's about it. There was a guy in Cornwall. I honestly forget his name. He was a tourist down from Birmingham. His last night coincided with my night off and I let him take me out. He got the time-of-the-month white lie too. And that's all he did get. Poor sod went home hand job-free.

So there I was, back in the present, lying in the dark and thinking about Dave. I'd immediately liked the look of him . . . which was unusual in itself . . . but letting him into my dreams? How had that happened? Was it subliminal? Had he attracted me by stealth?

I know the answers now, but didn't know them then. In the end I concluded I'd simply gone too long without a man. Joe was my last actual lover, three years or so earlier. Maybe Dave was in the right place at the right time. Maybe I'd been attracted because he was small and not in the least bit hunky. And maybe he was as inexperienced as me.

Maybe we'd be good together.

Next morning I was early into the office. I held my breath as I booted up but no need; I was into the system straightaway. No need to do make-work or thumb-twiddle. Yippee!

My logon procedure is always the same . . . at least it is when I can get in. First I access the sales ledger so I'm ready as and when the phone rings. Then I check my email. There were only a few so far that day, one of them from an address I didn't recognize.

"How is your PC this morning?" it said. "Let me know. X Davina."

I assumed Davina was the cool, efficient female. She'd looked like a mother hen type, the sort of person needed to co-ordinate her dithery male colleagues. I reckoned she was checking to make sure my problem really had been fixed, not just ticked off a list, so I emailed her saying everything was fine.

Ten seconds later a response bounced back. "What time do you take lunch?" That seemed to be a strange question for an IT co-ordinator to ask, but I guessed she intended to send some techie up to double-check my machine while I wasn't using it. "Twelve", I emailed back.

I got caught on the phone so it was more like five past when I headed for the canteen. Dave was outside the office when I left.

'Hi Mikki,' he said in his soft, sexy voice. 'Are you heading for the canteen?'

That was my day for assumptions. I instinctively thought Dave fancied me and had recruited Davina as a sort of matchmaker. Okay, I decided. He's good-looking and I did dream about him. In a way he made me cum, so I can't be rude.

'I am,' I told him. 'Care to accompany me?'

I'm sure you've worked out what should have been obvious. It took me perhaps twenty more minutes to get there. By then we'd walked down to the canteen together, bought and eaten our meals together and fallen into easy conversation. Dave was a good conversationalist. He started telling a tale about one of the IT programmers. This guy, Ted, had gone to see a big rugby league match in St Helens. He'd come out of the ground to find his car had been not only clamped but also boxed-in, presumably by an irate local resident . . .

I was listening but thinking too. Multitasking like a good 'un. That close to Dave . . . less than a tabletop away . . . I could see how smooth his skin was. Smooth and bristle-free. He looked as if he'd never shaved in his life. His eyes were hazel with lots of green and brown. They were very nice eyes indeed. He had lovely long lashes, like . . .

Shit! He had lovely long lashes like a girl's.

In fact he was a girl!

Dave smiled at me, obviously noting my shocked expression, but kept on telling her tale. In it the clampers turned up, wanting to tow the programmer's car away. Humourlessly, they'd told him that the clamp could be removed for a hundred quid. He'd said all right, fair enough, but he was boxed in. Couldn't they just tow the other vehicle away instead? Wasn't that parking much more out of line than his? They could tow it, they agreed, but if he wanted the clamp removing as well, it would cost him an extra fifty . . .

Omigod, I thought, I brought myself off thinking about a girl!

For some reason that made me laugh out loud. Fortunately my hilarity coincided with the end of Dave's tale. She laughed with me then said, murmured almost, 'You've twigged, haven't you? Finally. Hurrah!'

My face felt like a furnace. It does again even now, thinking back on it. And I couldn't think of anything to say. Not a single word. Me, known as I am as the barmaid with an answer for everything!

'It happens all the time,' Dave said. 'And thanks.'

'What for?' I managed.

'For not running out on me. That happens a lot as well.'

I was in a bit of a cleft stick and I knew it. I was also aware that, rather than wanting to run off, I liked being in Dave's company. She was even more attractive as a girl than she was as a man. I mean that. Okay, so I'd not been able to accurately identify her sex until now, but she did look good. In fact the more I looked, the better she got. If she grew her hair and wore even slightly flattering clothes, she would be beautiful. And her voice was terrific. It was a voice I wouldn't mind whispering sweet nothings into my ear . . .

I shook myself at that. What was I thinking of?

'I like dressing this way,' she said, apparently reading my mind. 'It helps me fit in with the guys I work with. The "Trekkies", I call them. Given half a chance, they'd prefer me to dress up as Lieutenant Uhura, but I don't have the tits for that.'

Not being much of a Trekkie myself, I frowned. 'Is Uhura the stunningly beautiful black actress?'

'Yeah. She's the reason I watch all the reruns. Those short skirts . . .'

I couldn't help looking at Dave's chest. It was hard to be sure with her baggy sweatshirt, but she seemed to be as flat as a pancake.

'It's the voice that usually gives me away,' Dave went on.

'Your voice is lovely,' I assured her, surprising myself with my sincerity.

'Thank you,' she said. 'You've been to university, haven't you?'

'Yes.'

'LGBT?'

'No,' I replied, doing another furnace impression. 'I'm straight.'

'That's a pity.' Dave laughed lightly. 'You're certainly attractive to girls. Well, attractive to me, anyway. But I suppose you've already guessed that.'

*****

Another warts-and-all confession. Make that confessions. I masturbated that night, and not just once. I did it in the shower. Then I did it naked on my bed for at least half an hour before going back in the shower and doing it again. And then again later, before falling asleep.

I thought of Dave all four times. Dave the girl, that is. Dave the boy has never featured in my naughty thoughts again. Never will.

Oh yes: masturbation. Why not get everything out of the closet? I've been self-abusing myself for ages. Ages and ages and ages. Having had plenty of practice, I like to think I've become quite good at it. I'm certainly better at making me cum than either of the two men in my past. And I am very well-practiced. I may have gone three years without a hard cock, but I must have sorted myself out at least once a day in the meantime.

Blush, blush and humiliation. But aren't we all equally guilty? Hand on heart . . .

Well, whatever fibs you might tell me, I am guilty. And often, at that. Sometimes I do it with my one and only toy. Usually I do it with well-practiced fingers. The toy is a green phallic-shaped dildo that does the job perfectly. Fingers are best for me, though. Always will be.

And I know what you're thinking: I'm a sad and lonely, horny cow. Ask me if I'm bothered.

Moving ever onwards: Thursday morning started with confusion. Waking an hour before my alarm I mused on the meaning of life, the universe and everything. For me the answer isn't forty-two. I was, I knew, attractive to women. I didn't just have Dave's word for that, I had those propositions from uni to back her up. And I'd had girlie propositions in Cornwall, too. All right, most of them were from drunks, but I could have scored with girls if I'd wanted to.

Hell, the number of my girlie propositions wasn't so far off the number of my men's. And men proposition because they are expected to. More out of duty than hope . . .

So what was I? I wondered. Like everyone else these days, I watch porn on the Internet. And, I suspect, like everyone else, I shop around. There's only so many times you can watch guys and gals having straight sex, isn't there? So over time I've watched plenty of . . . well, "girlie variations". Was that it? Had watching girl-on-girl action turned me into a lesbian? No, I didn't believe it had. In my opinion, watching girls had broadened my horizons but it hadn't changed me. No, not one iota.

I arrived at work early that day, as usual. Again my PC let me straight in. Letting the sales ledger go hang I went straight for my email. To my delight there was one for me from Davina. I opened it with trembling fingers.

'Hi," it began. "Fancy lunching with me? X Davina."

I emailed back at once, not giving myself chance to think about it. "Certainly do. Meet me at twelve again? And which do you prefer, Dave or Davina?"

The response soon arrived. "I'm Dave at work, although the network controller insists I use my given name. In bed, however . . ."

My heart stopped at that. Dead in its tracks. I knew I was getting in too deep . . . who wouldn't know? . . . but could I back out?