This week Rosie discovers the challenges of maintaining her femme mystique.
When I first had sex with my girlfriend Pearl, I wore matching teal coloured underwear and was thrilled to see that she returned the favour with matching black lace. I had never slept with anybody who treated me to matching underwear before and was beginning to wonder if I was perhaps the only lesbian in the world who appreciated its importance.
As wild as this revelation drove me, I also felt a note of slight panic. Was a standard being set here? If I’m lucky enough to continue sleeping with Pearl, I wondered, is she going to expect beautiful lingerie every time? I had a drawer full of nice underwear, sure, but not enough to maintain this level of sexiness at every intimate encounter.
For a long time, I managed to preserve the illusion that I went about my day to day life in a matching bra and knickers. Every time we had sex, I matched and so did she. Initially I wore sets that I already owned but they soon ran out and I found myself in a tangled web of buying more underwear every week. I didn’t want to crack before Pearl and was amazed (and somewhat horrified) that I was dating someone who had a seemingly endless supply of beautiful lingerie.
Our relationship began semi long-distance, so initially we only saw each other once a week. However, nothing prepared me for the small crisis I would have when we booked our first holiday – a trip to New York for five nights. This back-to-back time together was unknown territory and I did what any logical, level headed lesbian would do: bought four lingerie sets, a body and a suspender belt.
I nearly bankrupted myself by doing so, and came to the conclusion (that I’m sure you did, a paragraph ago) that this was highly unsustainable. My panic buying slowed down and I began to repeat sets that I had bought in the early days of the relationship. This was partly because things were going long-term and I adopted the “if she loves me, she’ll love me regardless of what I wear in bed” attitude, and partly because I now had an overflowing underwear drawer but couldn’t afford to buy myself lunch.
A few months later during some meandering pillow talk, I for some reason thought it would be a good idea to come clean. I told Pearl that when we first got together I was so desperate to keep up with her that I ended up buying more underwear every week to maintain my sex goddess image. I positioned it as a whimsical “aren’t I cute?” anecdote, but when Pearl stared at me, her big blue eyes wide with surprise, I instantly regretted my admission.
“I’ve been doing exactly the same thing!” was her response, much to my amazement. “I thought you had a never-ending supply of matching underwear. I bought a new set every week for months!”
Pearl and I now live together and keep our impressive collection of fancy underthings in a large box in the bedroom. It’s been a few months since I bought any more. This is, in part, because I am now aware that maintaining a good relationship has little to do with matching underwear. However, mostly it’s because it has just taken me over an hour to hand-wash a week’s worth of our knickers, and who has the time for that?
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