Lesbian Sleepover & Slumber Party Handbook: Games Girls Play

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Actually, now that I think about it, I have been asked to share a bed on business travel since then – and it was with a stranger, no less! In Peace Corps, I attended a conference (workshop) run by one of our host country partner organizations. I was the only PCV there. They said they were going to assign us rooms with other teachers from our community, but the two other teachers from my town were both dudes (I’m a woman), so clearly that wasn’t going to fly. So they put me with three other women, who all knew each other, and who did seem perfectly lovely. But sharing a bed? No thanks. I opted to stay at my friend’s house, even though it meant walking 30 minutes across town every morning and evening to get to and from the venue.

I would write in my journal, the night before leaving: “There’s something so deliriously pleasurable in the idea of trusting myself enough to know exactly what I want.” I would decide that it was over, and say so, and it would feel like a sort of death, but it would also, I knew, be the right thing to do — so much so that I’d feel it in my bones. The moment I met her in my 2nd year of college, I knew she was different from all the other girls because she was like me. for a variety of reasons – some do it because they feel they can be closer to protect their child, others admit it’s filling a void and easing the aftermath of a tough divorce. Some parents tell me When I first pitched this story to my editors, I thought I’d be reporting on a lesbian cultural artifact in its twilight years. The women who’ve faithfully gone on dozens of Olivia trips over the decades are getting older, and I didn’t have a lot of faith that younger queer people were going to step in and save companies like this from extinction. Other elements of lesbian culture have been steadily dying; why should Olivia be any different?At first, sitting alone on the catamaran heading out for my snorkeling excursion, I felt shy again, and wished I had Dana or Jamie and Matie at my side. One of the guys running the boat, a youngish dude with dreads, took pity on me and brought me a glass of water. He asked me if I was staff on the cruise, noting my friendlessness, and I told him I was a reporter. We kept short pencils at the circ desk to give to patrons, and the thre of us used the pencils to “draw straws” to decide which of us had to share a bed with the boss. I lost.

appeared overwhelmed. The kid ran the show, and he got what he wanted by throwing fits, stomping his feet and pouting. The mother doted on her son, and spoke to him in a syrupy baby talk that made my skin crawl. I expected this trip would follow the standard room sharing format, and that I would probably be the one who ended up sharing a room with my boss. However, there were some unexpected changes that ultimately resulted in three people sharing one room with two beds. Those last two points I did not realize until the moment we walked into the room. My stomach dropped when I saw the beds. As the more senior of the two, I quietly told my coworker to take the extra bed for themselves; through what remaining crumb of fortune there was, it ended up that I shared a bed with Coworker instead of Boss. woman had not slept alone. After a moment of silence, the mother shrugged apologetically and fessed up: her sleeping companion was her son. Given that I was a teenager and felt I was an expert on child psychology, the prize for our tree decorating contest is baby clothes, I accidentally recommended a smutty book to my boss, and moreI slept like a baby. I even remembered what my dream was about—that never happens! Despite what had occurred, there were no anxious thoughts trying to keep me awake and no signs of regret attempting to settle in. I’m no stranger to making terrible decisions when too much liquor starts flowing, but this wasn’t the case. I did start to feel a hangover trying to creep in, so I popped two ibuprofen and was out almost instantly.

We all formed one big circle, and the staffers got the ball rolling. First things first: How had we all heard about Olivia? Really bad weather in Dallas caused a flight to be cancelled once. I was traveling with a coworker and we could only find one hotel room nearby. It was one night and unexpected. What I didn’t expect was everything else that would happen to me — and is still happening to me — thanks to this one little week in my otherwise pleasantly uneventful life.

Bonding is built into an Olivia trip, which, I realized soon enough, is basically like grown-up lesbian camp. “It’s funny, because on a normal cruise, you’re trying to spend as much time as you can away from other people,” Jamie would later put it. “But we’re all here precisely because we want to be around everybody else.” Part of the reason why is no doubt what anti-trans lesbians (unreasonably) fear: More and more young people are realizing that they identify as a gender other than the one they were assigned at birth — and more and more young people are realizing they’re attracted to people of two or more genders. But even though there are plenty of trans and nonbinary lesbians, and plenty of cis lesbians (like me) who don’t think that “lesbian” should be defined exclusively as “cis woman who’s only attracted to cis women,” our identity still hasn’t been able to shake the sexist, classist, and anti-gay stereotypes of lesbians as uncosmopolitan boomer TERFs, sporting Tevas and cargo pants covered in cat hair.

Afterward, I had lunch with Dana and some of the other Olivia staffers and asked them about it — why not make the Public Posts more prominent, MichFest style? Especially since the younger people at the first Gen O event had explicitly asked for more sex content. Olivia had run sexuality and intimacy workshops before, and at the lunch, the staffers floated the definite possibility that they will again. I know for a fact that a lot of my queer friends would be way more likely to book a future Olivia cruise, uncool as cruises might be to cash-strapped millennials, if they knew how likely they’d be to get some action.

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Leaning against the front of her stand with my arm rested in front of me I smartly reply, "Aw, come on Gi Gi! You know I would never leave you hanging like that!" She raises an eyebrow in skepticism, "Not for long at least," I finish a little sheepishly. Per the rules of our loose nonmonogamous agreement, I FaceTimed with my partner about what was happening on the cruise, first telling them about the catamaran girl and then, in so many words, about Lynette. I suspected, even early on, that I was about to break our most important rule of all: Don’t fall in love with anybody else. Tequila was definitely involved. The night started off just like any other. It was the end to an unusually stressful work week and my best friend and I decided to ditch the wine and go for something a bit more potent. At about four shots and two mixed drinks in, things started to get interesting… With her right arm thrown over her eyes she mumbles out, "We REALLY need to shower- both of us smell like shit," but I notice she makes no move to get up and move to the bathroom.