The Sapphic Musings of V

Dear Diary:

As you well know, I've been a soccer fan since I was three years old. Watch it, play it, devour it. Color me cringe, but I live, laugh and love soccer. As I already said, though, you, diary, know all of this, so let's get down to business.

My name is V (for Vera), and I am a nineteen-year-old slut. More to the point: I'm a nineteen-year-old soccer slut. Even more to the point: I'm a nineteen-year-old, five-foot nothin', 95 pounds soaking wet, long haired, fiery, red-headed lesbian soccer slut. Who enjoys a lot of sex and a little coke. Not the bad coke that eats your teeth. I'm talking the good kind. The white kind. The kind that Jesus frowns upon. I only mention my love of coke because it'll come into play a few chapters from now. Just you wait! (Side note: don't do drugs, kids)

Before I go farther, I must say that being a lesbian in Santa Fe, New Mexico is easy. Well, it's not easy, but it's much easier than where I grew up, which was southeast Texas, in a small town called Comanche, which is in Comanche county.

I moved to Santa Fe before I was finished with high school (I got my GED a year to the day after I left Texas). I was sixteen. I ran away from home, but I don't think you can really call it "running away" when the people that you are supposed to be running away from are glad that you left. Instead, I call it mutual separation. Regardless, I left my ultra conservative parents in the dust. The final straw was when my dad found out I was a lesbian and immediately asked—with all the innocence of a pre-pubescent choir boy—if he was the cause of my "subterranean activities." don't know exactly what he meant by that, but I laughed at him anyway.

"Don't flatter yourself," I said as I picked up the book on my bed—the one he'd just found while "cleaning my room", right before I walked in on him as I came home from school—flaunting the cover in his face. "Sapphic Erotica and the Teenage Girl." I'm surprised he knew what sapphic meant. Makes me wonder what he's got buried in that laptop of his.

"Was it because I spanked you as a child?" That was my dad: always blaming my behavior on the spankings.

And thus began the fight that would be the last straw. I was on an Amtrak train to Sante Fe two days later.

I tell you all of this because I need you to understand that I had nothing when I moved to Santa Fe. I didn't know a single person. All I knew about Santa Fe is that it had mountains and it was supposed to be friendly to artists. And it wasn't Texas.

I stayed at a women's shelter for a month before I was able to find a place. I had no money, but I am resourceful. I joined a female soccer league one week after I arrived in the capital city of New Mexico. I was on my way.

The girls took me in immediately. That's the thing about soccer girls: they know who they are. I was rooming with Carlita and Margaret in no time. Both were as gay as a wildfire. Carlita had a round face, big beautiful brown eyes, long brown hair, and was short like me. Although not as petite. She had some meat on her, which I liked. Margaret was her opposite: a leggy blonde with green eyes and a smile that made men and women alike choke on their breath. I was attracted to both equally.

I got a job working at this quaint art gallery called FEM Petite Gallery. It was a match made in heaven. I worked admin for them initially, before becoming an "emergent artist" and putting a few of my own paintings on the wall. The curator of the gallery, a self-proclaimed "Gold Star Lesbian"—I still don't know what that is, and never bothered to ask)—named Jennette, who was a real hardass, took a liking to me. Was it my voice, my body, my hair or my art? Who cares. I was officially an artist.

My true love, the thing that got me up in the morning and kept me going at night, was the coke. I mean the soccer! The soccer kept me going! Not the coke. It was not the coke.

Carlita was our goalie. Margaret, a forward. Nothing got past Carlita and Margaret could run like the wind. I was a midfielder because I could run all day, every day. I set Margaret up for her goals and prevented the opposite team from breaking through our last line of defense. We were the baddest bitches the Santa Fe All-Women's Soccer Team ever saw. Bar none. Well, that's not quite true. The Kicks were better. Way better

Our league was small, but passionate. We only had enough players for five-woman soccer, but every one of us was worth our weight in gold. There was Ceci, the other midfielder: an indigenous twenty-two-year-old woman with long black hair and the darkest eyes you've ever seen. I felt ugly next to her. And everyone liked her. She could charm the pants off a catholic priest.

Selina was our other forward. She wasn't as fast as Margaret, but she could kick a soccer ball so hard that the other teams' goalies simply got out of the way. She was five foot nine and ran track in high school. She had short, sandy hair, a light spatter of freckles on her face, and looked straight out of southern California. I guess that's because she grew up in southern California. She was my surfer girl, forever and ever.

Back to the coke. Like I said, this will be important later, so just ride with it for now. I'd tried coke before joining the Gay Thunder soccer team—we might not be the most creative bunch—but only once, and that was at my sixteenth birthday party. I was hanging out with this guy named Jerry—he drove a loud truck, which he was always getting stuck in the mud—and a couple of other friends. I didn't know what to expect. Was I going to start running franticly around my room, bouncing off the walls, screaming into insanity? Would I have a heart attack and die? On my birthday??? Turns out, nothing quite so dramatic. I snorted a tiny line with a rolled-up dollar bill. I could taste it in the back of my throat. It was just like when you try and swallow aspirin, but it gets stuck and then you cough it up. You know that taste? Just like that. I would learn later that Jerry cut it with aspirin. The only thing that happened was that I kept moving my jaw around like some sort of circus freak. The entire experience was underwhelming.

That's until Ceci brought some of the white stuff to one of our soccer games, and which would also make an appearance at the after party the other team were hosting. I remember it like it was yesterday. We were playing the Santa Fe Kicks, a team of late twenty and early thirty-year-old lesbians. They'd give you an elbow to the face and smile while doing it. We didn't stand a chance against these assholes. Ceci had the idea that, if we took a bump before the game, none of the Santa Fe Kicks' antics would work.

Two things happened: One, the elbows to the face still hurt. And two, we never ran so fast in our lives. We won the game 3-2. Carlita was blocking shots like she was on the Olympic team. It was our best win of the season and the only time we ever beat the Kicks.

Afterward, the Kicks invited us to a party at their place. They had a hang out on the west side of town, close to the big-time art galleries. It was a three-bedroom house owned by their two forwards, Ksenia and Markéta. They were married—one of the perks to living in New Mexico—and ran a fancy boutique that catered to tourists looking for "authentic" southwestern attire. Ksenia was thirty-one-years old who looked like she'd stepped out of a Russian modeling magazine. Her parents migrated to the states when she was ten years old. She still retained a smidgen of accent. She had straight, long blonde hair, a thin, angular face, and a sharp nose. She was half a foot taller than me— I asked her why she wasn't modeling in New York, and she told me it was because she was too short, which I found odd because, to me, she's tall—with magnetic blue eyes. She was slender but fit and with the longest legs I'd ever seen. And, as I would find out later, she also had near perfect breasts for her frame. I consider myself a hot item, a petite sex pot, but Ksenia is in a league of her own.

Markéta, thirty-years-old, came over to the U.S. from Russia when she was in high school. That's where she met Ksenia. Markéta is a brunette. Her hair is long, cut just above her shoulders, and she has slightly round cheeks with high cheekbones, and coffee-colored eyes. She was also short—I'd guess five three—and of slender build. She ran fast and fucked faster (again, something I'd learn later).

The other three girls on the team were all born and raised in the U.S. of A: Monica, a 28-year-old Latina from San Antonio. We instantly bonded over our shared hatred for Texas, although she went back home a couple of times a year, whereas I had no desire to ever go back again. Monica reminded me of a younger Eva Longoria. Bright eyes, bright smile, wicked sharp. She was a researcher for UNM who worked with pre-historic rock drawings found in the New Mexico area. She explained more to me once, but my memory is sometimes shit. That's why I write everything down in this diary.

Camila, only a month older than me, was our other half-back. She was a goddess. Straight black hair, high arching eyebrows, a sharp jaw, and a body sculpted by Michelangelo himself. Walking into a restaurant with Camila was a profound experience in relativity. Even Ksenia felt it. Every eye...and I mean every single eyeball...turned their attention to Camila. And she beamed a confident smile right back at you. White teeth, bronzed skin. Dark nipples.

Last, but certainly not least, is Sophie. Sophie was also a redhead, but her hair was straight. She had green eyes too. Sophie is twenty-three. She grew up in Colorado, but her heritage came from Europe like mind did. She was the best goalie in the league. She was quick on the field, and quick off it. She was tall, about like Ksenia, with white skin, and often looked to be brooding. This intimidated me at first, but once I came to know her, I realized that she was just shy. She's actually the sweetest person I've ever met. She is fiercely loyal, and if you fucked with one of her friends, she'd make you pay. Her hands were coarse from playing soccer, but her fingers were long and graceful, and her tummy was flat. She smelled of lavender.

After the game with the Santa Fe Kicks, we all went home to get cleaned up before heading out to their pad. Ceci brought her entire stash of coke, which was more than enough for everyone, and I brought some weed I'd picked up from the shop just the day before. We brought a couple of sixers for our hosts, and after we changed, we were out the door.

Markéta cooked chicken and beef fajitas for dinner on their outside grill. There was a sparkling clean pool and enough sun loungers for all of us. The summer sky was bright with the hot sun, the winds were mild, and the promise of fall had not yet whispered into our ears. The beer flowed freely and before we even ate, we were all kicking a nice buzz.

"Time for a little white magic, yeah?" Ceci said. She didn't speak much, but when she did, charisma flowed out of like sexy lava. I don't know what sexy lava looks like, but if it was a person, it'd be Ceci. She had this funny, albeit weird, habit of talking in what I think was supposed to be a cockney accent. "Time for a little white magic, yeah?" Sounds different now, dunnit? She couldn't be more opposite from a Londoner than if she was an alien. But everyone loved her for it.

"I've got enough for the lot of ya," Ceci, Londoner, broke out the bag and started cutting lines onto the glass coffee table that we were gathering around, most of us in swimsuits. There's a myth out there that college athletic people don't do coke; that it's a "club drug." At least, I think it's a myth. Whether it is or not, I can tell you with confidence that many of us do. Only two people in our little party didn't partake: Monica, the girl from San Antonio, and Carlita, our goalie. They have no problem with it; they'd been around it enough, but it wasn't for them. They stuck to a little weed and cerveza.

I was first in line, for a line, and put the crisp, rolled up dollar bill up to my nose. Ceci knows I like them small, and it wasn't much more than a bump. But it's good coke, and that's all I needed. I felt that distinct chemical taste—there's really nothing else like it—and before everyone finished their lines, I was feeling it. I'm prone to anxiety and the occasional panic attack, so I am very cautious about my coke. This coke hit just right. I was with my friends, the conversation was good, we were laughing and talking over one another, and, as usual for me when I take a bump, my sexual energy was rising.

"How you feeling, V?" It was Camila, who came over to sit next to me, her high-arching eyebrows mesmerizing. Her eyes were a deep brown, with flecks of dark green, and in that moment, I wanted nothing more than to kiss her, to taste the sweet vodka cranberry she was drinking on her lips. I held back, though, because I'd never kissed her before and wasn't sure if she liked me like that. "Here, take a sip of this. It's the ultimate refresher." She handed me her vodka cranberry drink, like she read my mind.

"You always have the greatest taste," I stammered, and felt my face immediately flush. Jesus, V, what is wrong with you? I took another drink to quiet my mind. I handed the dollar bill to Camila and watched as she bent her head toward the table. Instinctively, I gently touched her head, stroking her hair. It's so long and soft, I just had to touch it.

"Easy, V, or you might not make it much longer," Margaret, the leggy blonde, said. She was standing near the grill with Selina, my surfer girl, and Markéta, one of the Russian models, and wife of Ksenia. Ksenia was sitting across from me and next to the other redhead, Sophie. Margaret was beaming at me in that way that only she could, like I was the only person on earth that mattered.

"Let's eat, everyone!" Margaret, Selina and Markéta began piling them up on the table next to the grill. There was shredded cheese, Pico de gallo, red and green chili, warm corn and flour tortillas, guacamole, and tones of fruit. Nobody did cookouts like Ksenia and Markéta.

The sun dipped low over the horizon, causing the western face of the mountains to our east to momentarily brighten with deep reds and purples. Out here in the high desert, the sun, as it begins to disappear below the horizon line, glows with fiery reds, shooting golden rays in all directions. There's nothing like the high desert in the summertime. The desert cools off as the sun sets; gone is the light blinding you as it bounces off white rock, and a breeze will often blow, and the rocks will cool, and the reds and yellows will spread across the sky, and you feel alive like never before.

.....

We spent the rest of the evening in a food coma, lounging around the pool. The night was cool and dry, and the water was chilly. Close to midnight, everyone began to retire inside. Ksenia and Markétas house was a quaint three-bedroom Spanish Pueblo style abode. The outside walls were flat and painted ochre. The inside was lively and full of color: tapestries hung on the walls, two mutts called the place home, and there were guitars and a drum set in the living room. If they'd asked me to move in, I would have done so immediately.

Throughout the evening and into the night, we got to know each other on a more intimate basis. I learned that Markéta spoke five languages and Ksenia was adopted when she was six months old. Sophie, the quiet redhead, wanted to go cave diving. She watched YouTube videos of the hobby all the time. At first glance, you might think Sophie to be timid, but nothing could be farther from the truth. She was an adrenaline junky.

Most of the conversation was light, fun, and full of banter. Camila is the funniest person I've ever met. Nothing fazes her, but her eyebrows dance when she's excited over a subject, which is often. She holds a room like nobody else.

Eventually, Margaret and Selina, the two blonde forwards for our team, found me sitting on a couch, listening and watching the banter between Ceci, Monika, and Camila. They were arguing over who had the better soccer jerseys. Ceci, of our Gay Thunder team, thought our rainbow shirts were the best in the league; Monika, the twenty-eight-year-old from San Antonio, and Camila, both Kicks, thought our colors were too obvious, too lazy. Camila's eyebrows rose up and down as they made their case for the solid light blue jerseys their team wore. I've got to admit they do look good. We look kind of ridiculous in ours, but that's the point. You can't have a name like Gay Thunder and then wear beige.

Margaret and Selina sat on either side of me, drinking water now instead of alcohol. The weed was gone, and nobody in the group really does that much coke. Ceci and I will partake more than the others, but even we try and limit our usage to the weekends. Ceci had most of her bag left, which wasn't large to begin with.

I felt a hand gently touch the back of my head, playing with my hair. It was Selina, who giving me a big smile. Her eyes shown with both the buzz of the night and a hint of mischief. Selina is so easy to talk to, and even easier to look at. Her hair is thin but not stringy, sandy in color, and the freckles on her nose and cheeks darken in the summer sun. She was my closest friend.

"How are you tonight, love?" Selina asked. She always called me "love". When she did, she'd brush my hair out of my face and give me that smile of hers, red lips moist and blue eyes twinkling. Before I could answer, she said, "Ksenia said we could stay the night if we wanted. She's got plenty of space. Two extra bedrooms, comfy couch. What do you think?" Her slender fingers twirled their way through my red curls.

"She's going to stay. We all are." That was Margaret, who then put her arms around me and leaned in close. Margaret's legs were a sight to behold. She never wore pants, and her thighs were sculpted and bronze. Her feet had a high arch to them, and they were slender and strong. The body of an D1 athlete.

I put my head on Margaret's shoulder.

"Don't twist my arm," I said playfully, hugging Margaret back. With Selina's fingers running through my hair, and Margaret's legs brushing against mine, I could feel my face flush. My lips parted and I was thirsty. I didn't want to move, though, as the three of us were finding our groove on the couch.

Monica and Camila disappeared, but nobody recalled them leaving. I asked the group if anyone had seen them leave.

"Camila led her by the hand into one of the bedrooms. I don't think we'll see them again," Ksenia said. She was sitting on the arm of the loveseat next to Ceci, and both were now drinking a small glass of red wine.

As we talked, Ksenia slid down off the arm of the loveseat and into Ceci's lap. Ceci was the smaller of the two, and with Ksenia on her lap, leaning back, Ceci's legs between hers. Ceci's black, braided hair was long enough to lay over Ksenia's left shoulder. Ksenia stroked her hair as Ceci held her around the waist. Ksenia wore cut-off blue-jean shorts, shredded near the bottom, and a white t-shirt. She could make a burlap sack look good.

"We should join them soon," came Ceci's voice from behind Ksenia. We were all thinking the same thing. Monica and Camila have dated on and off for the past six months, but for the rest of us, we haven't dated one another. I'd fooled around with both Margaret and Selina a handful of times. I'm pretty sure I'm in love with Selina, but I don't know if she feels the same way. Monica spent the night with Carlita on occasion.

These arrangements work for us. Besides Ksenia and Markéta, none of us had any interest in marriage. Certainly not right now. The old ways of our parents, our grandparents, seem to us archaic symbols of an America we've never known, their customs as foreign to us as ours are to them. Ksenia and Markéta were in an open marriage, an arrangement that would have horrified my parents.