Chapter 5

Bette and Tina barely caught the early flight back to LA before it took off. They then spent most of the 5 hour trip talking and learning more about each other. They each spoke about things they had never revealed to anyone else before. There just didn’t seem to be an end to the topics they had in common.

Bette looked into Tina’s eyes while she listened, occassionally reaching over to brush a lock of blonde hair tenderly out of Tina’s eyes while she spoke. Tina wanted to know when Bette first realized she was attracted to other girls and not to boys since Bette revealed that she was a Lesbian and not bi-sexual. "When I was really little, I balked at anything feminine. I played comfortably with the boys on the block and was most at home in a pair of blue jeans and a T-shirt. I actually became very protective of the little girls around me because they all seemed so frail. I just found I socialized more easily with the boys then the girls. When I was around 8 or 9 I was still trying to play with the boys while the girls were playing skipping games or with dolls but the guys started to resent the fact that I could play with them on their level. Most of them hadn’t had a growth spurt yet and I was tall for my age, all arms and legs but co-ordinated. I was stronger and faster then the boys and I could throw a ball as far or farther then most of them which I think they found embarassing so they started to push me out of their circle. It only took a couple to resent me and suddenly the entire group was against me. Simply put, I was a girl and they had learned that you didn’t play with girls so it was a hard couple of years.

 The girls were giggling idiots as far as I was concerned. They started to flirt with the boys and steal kisses behind the trees in the school yard but I just wasn’t interested in that at all. After the boys shunned me completely, I tried to learn the skipping games and pretend I was interested in a couple of boys, just to fit in but I certainly had no desire to kiss any of them. I remember one time I was playing this stupid game where everyone sings a rhyme and you were supposed to input the intials of the boy you liked into it. I was under pressure from the group of girls to participate so out of desperation I picked a boy that I admired that was quiet and polite and nobody else had picked. I didn’t want to be his girl friend I just wanted to fit in so I used his initials. He heard about it soon after and two days later he beat me up on my way home."