The Masterdoc

Kate pulled her long blonde hair into a messy bun on the top of her head and smoothed her denim vest down over her long white peasant skirt, regarding herself in the full length mirror in front of her. Her bright red cowboy boots poked out from under the long skirt, and the pop of color made Kate smile. She thrifted them last month and never wanted to take them off.

It was only her second semester at UCLA, and Kate already noticed the changes in her face, her body, how she moved through the world. Her childhood best friend, Maya, said she barely recognized her when she came home for winter break. 

In a good way, Maya reassured her. You look freer.

I mean, there was a reason Kate moved out of their small SoCal town in favor of the city of Los Angeles. She wanted more for herself. She needed more. More than that suffocating, homogenous, tiny town where it seemed like no one ever left.

When she toured UCLA last year, Kate knew she belonged there. She didn’t care that everyone at home thought she was chasing a Hollywood pipe dream – she knew she was. And she was going to achieve it.

Tonight was the first big party of the new semester, and everyone was going. Kate was already running late because of a new DIY project she was working on for her dorm room: a disco ball headboard for her Twin XL bed. As per usual when she hyper fixated on a project, Kate completely lost track of time and was scrambling to get ready.

After haphazardly slapping on glitter eyeshadow, a colorful liquid eyeliner Kate was shocked came out in a perfect sharp wing on the first try, and copious amounts of highlighter, she ran out the door and across campus.

After power walking for twenty minutes, Kate’s feet screamed in protest and she winced. LA was not a walking city like New York, and definitely did not have the public transport of DC that she was used to. Her trusty red boots did have the slightest heel, and Kate could feel the balls of her feet beginning to pinch.

Beauty is pain, is what she chanted to herself when shoes started hurting, or when one of her DIY projects made her nails break. Still, she tucked herself into the entryway’s alcove and peered inside to assess the situation.

The party was in full swing. Whoever rented this house had transformed it into a cowboy wonderland – there was a DJ playing remixes of Dolly Parton songs in one room where rows and rows of bodies were line dancing around on a sticky floor terribly out of sync. Another room housed a…was that a mechanical bull? Kate cursed herself for wearing a skirt for the party’s country theme instead of trying to thrift chaps like she originally wanted. She loved a mechanical bull.

Kate scanned the crowd for her roommates and friends from class last semester. They said they would be here, but didn’t recognize anyone. She steeled herself. This is what college was about right? Going out of your comfort zone, meeting new people. Kate knew she could charm the pants off anybody, but coming to a party alone meant she needed a teensy bit of liquid courage. She decided to make a beeline straight for the bar, head held high but not really looking where she was going…

“Oof!” Kate had nearly had the wind knocked out of her when she collided with a woman going the same direction as her.

“Woah, woah, watch where you’re stomping those boots.” The woman said while righting herself, placing a careful hand on Kate’s waist to steady her as well.

“Sorry, I–”

Kate’s mouth clamped shut when she saw who she ran into.

The woman standing in front of her made Kate feel even more breathless than she already was. Kate took in her tousled brunette waves, cut into a shaggy mullet. Her high cheekbones and dark red lips. Her freckles and bright green eyes. The hand she was still resting on Kate’s waist now felt like it was on fire, and Kate finally shied away from the touch. The woman’s face sank at the loss of contact for just a moment before perking back up.

“Don’t worry about it, love.” Kate detected the barest hint of an accent that she couldn’t place. “I wasn’t looking either, but I am now.” The woman walked backwards towards the bar with a wink and Kate was stuck where the woman left her. Gaping.

Who. Is. She.

Kate shook her whole body back awake, from the tips of her fingers to her feet. Get it together! Get a drink, find your roommates. Have fun tonight, don’t let this affect you.

Kate moved, slowly this time, towards the kitchen bar, eyes not leaving the mystery woman as she poured herself a glass of wine. 

Red . It matched her lips.

Kate made her way slowly towards the kitchen island and didn’t take her eyes off the woman as she poured herself a tequila soda – tequila was Kate’s go-to liquor. The hangover it gave her was bearable, it kept her happy and awake.

She was mixing in the squeeze of lime when she felt a tap on her shoulder. She turned around to see what she stereotypically assumed was a frat boy based on his outfit pairing of khakis and a sports jersey. Kate had to suppress her grimace. Why don’t men have taste?

“Can I make you a drink?” He asked with a lopsided smile and flick of his Bieber-esque mop of hair she was sure her friend Maya would find endearing, but Kate found deeply annoying.

“Sorry, no, I’m good.” Kate held up her red solo cup as evidence.

She turned back towards the woman she ran into, who had now made her way out of the kitchen. She leaned against the wall by herself, watching partygoers fall off the mechanical bull with glee. Her head tipped back with laughter, exposing the curve of her neck, and Kate’s stomach somersaulted. 

The man tapped her shoulder again and she turned towards him again with a raise of her eyebrows and jut of her chin.

“What’s your major?” Now he looked annoyed, like he was repeating himself.

“Huh?” Did he not get the hint?

“Are you even listening to me?”

Kate took a sip of her drink and shook her head with pity. “Sorry I’m just not interested, I’m waiting for my friend.”

“Fine.” He snapped. “ Bitch .” He muttered under his breath as he walked away.

Kate scoffed, letting the dig roll off her like water off a duck’s back. When she turned to look back towards the mystery woman, she was standing a foot away from her. Kate jumped.

“Are you going to talk to me or are you just going to stare at me all night?” The woman asked with a knowing smile.

“Shit, sorry. I um…” Kate scrambled for an excuse, and finally gestured towards the woman’s feet. “I just really like your outfit. Those boots are killer.”

The woman looked down at her metallic silver cowboy boots, which Kate did genuinely love, and grinned. “Thanks…um?”

“Kate! My name is Kate.” Kate jutted out her hand for a handshake, and the woman took it carefully, like Kate was a horse she might spook away.

“Leah. Nice to meet you, Kate.”

“Can I say something scary?” Kate blurted out.

Leah’s brows knit together. “Of course.”

“I really want to ask you out but I didn’t even realize I like liked girls until the moment I saw you and now I’m in crisis.” The words tumbled out of Kate’s mouth before she even knew what she was saying, and she could feel her face turn bright red. She expected Leah to turn around and walk away, but she just stood there looking amused.

“So like… five minutes ago?” Leah crossed her arms and propped her hip up against the kitchen island next to them. Kate cursed internally how effortlessly hot her movements were. “Gutsy, jumping right into the deep end aren’t we?” 

“What I lack in experience I promise to make up for in enthusiasm.” Kate promised, and Leah laughed. She felt like her heart might just explode. 

“Wait, did you just say like like ? God you’re cute.” Kate preened under Leah’s praise. “How could you not know? My gaydar went off the second you walked into the afterparty.”

Kate shrugged noncommittally. “I just always had crushes on boys.”

“Did you act on them?” Leah pressed.

“Well… no. I guess not. I mostly had crushes on boy band members.” Leah’s hand flew over her mouth to hold in a laugh and Kate whined in frustration. “Don’t laugh! It was slim pickings in the DMV suburbs!”

“Oh honey…” Leah shook her head, clearly trying to control a fit of oncoming giggles.

“WHAT?”

“It’s giving gay as a picnic basket.”

“But I’ve been in love with Mischief since forever.” Kate wasn’t sure why, but she had the urge to stomp her foot, to defend her attraction to men. “I shaved my entire body before one of their concerts when I was twelve. Leah, I still have posters of Charlie hung up in my childhood bedroom. Posters , as in multiple! One is on the ceiling, for crying out loud!”

Leah just kept shaking her head, her mouth curved up into a mischievous smile.

“Kate there’s literally an entire section about that in the lesbian masterdoc.”

Kate did a double take. “I’m sorry… in the WHAT ?”

Leah pulled out her phone and after a few seconds of typing, she turned the screen towards Kate. There it was, in big bold underlined letters, the question: Am I a Lesbian? Directly underneath was the lesbian flag that Kate recognized from the Pride parades she attended as an ally: orange fading into white and then transitioning to pink. Before Kate could read anything further, Leah whisked the phone away and began to read.

“Lesbians are allowed to like male celebrities and fictional characters. It’s usually a symptom of compulsory heterosexuality–male celebrities slash fictional characters are completely unobtainable crushes and thus allows the lesbian in question to distance themselves from men. Because it’s impossible to ever be with that person, they get to avoid the romance and intimacy, which is usually something that girls can recognize that they don’t want with men but can’t exactly place why or what it means. Even if the attraction to male celebrities slash fictional characters is not an effect of compulsory heterosexuality, and they note here in parentheses that this would be really hard to figure out, it’s not fair that straight women can have girl crushes” Leah made air quotes with her free hand, eyes not leaving the screen, “and straight men can have man crushes,” air quotes again, “without anyone telling them they can’t be slash aren’t straight anymore, so the reverse should not be applied to lesbians.”

Kate felt targeted. Like someone had read her diary and published her innermost thoughts on the internet for everyone to see. “That’s the masterdoc?”

“Well it’s like a paragraph of it. This thing is over 30 pages long.” Leah put her phone back into her jacket pocket and looked back down at Kate. Kate just noticed their height difference. When did they get so close together? She barely came up to Leah’s chin. “Before I came out my friends and I made it a drinking game in high school as a joke. I didn’t even think I was gay but boy was I drunk at the end of the night.”

Kate’s brow furrowed in curiosity. “Was anyone else drunk?”

“Nope.” Leah popped the p sound at the end of the word. “Just me. Made the whole realization a lot easier. I thought every girl felt the way I felt. I thought everyone fantasizes about girls, found them prettier than guys, felt like they were going to throw up every time a man so much as touched me for too long. I thought it was nerves. Nope. Just a lesbian.”

You know how they say that people’s lives flash before their eyes right before they die? What about when they finally discover a hidden part of themselves they never knew was even there to begin with?

Kate saw the VHS tape she broke because she kept rewinding the scene in Titanic where Kate Winslet gets painted like a French girl. She saw how she was teased for running away from boys on the middle school playground, her friends shouting that cooties weren’t real anymore. She saw all the moments she pulled away from relationships when things got just a little too serious for her liking. She saw that every time she dreamed of her wedding day, she never saw who was standing beside her at the altar.

“How did it take me so long?” Kate’s ears were ringing and she could barely hear herself talk, let alone think. “I feel like my brain is exploding.”

“We’re raised to be straight, Kate, don’t be so hard on yourself. We’re not given the language and resources we need to discover our desires and identities the way straight people are. Coming out is like going through a second puberty.”

Kate threw up her hands in frustration. “Great. Just great. I mean, how do I know this masterdoc is even right? I could just hate everyone! Just because I don’t like boys, doesn’t mean I–”

With gentle hands, Leah grabbed the sides of Kate’s face and pulled her close. When their lips met, all Kate could think about was how soft Leah felt. How sweet her strawberry lip gloss tasted. How when Kate’s hands instinctively wrapped around Leah’s waist, how perfectly their limbs slotted together.

And when Leah ran her tongue along the seam of Kate’s closed mouth, Kate’s lips parted for her happily and she melted into the deepening of their kiss.

Kate had never been kissed so thoroughly, so sensually. Every time boys kissed her in high school, even her first semester at college, Kate would be keeping track of how many minutes had passed in her head, waiting for the appropriate time to finally pull away. 

But in Leah’s arms, Kate felt limitless .

“Still wondering if you actually like girls?” Leah mumbled, smirking into their kiss. Kate shook her head.

“Not one bit.”