I Tried to Be a Lesbian for a Week

A couple of months ago, my best ever best friend in the whole-wide-world – a girl whose sick I have sponged up, soggy tears I've wiped and bath I've pissed in – turned 18. Baby's all grown.

Naturally, her parents hired a male stripper for the party, because is there really any better way to initiate your daughter into the post-18 world of being constantly sexually harassed in every nightclub she goes to than hiring a man to wave his shrivelled, flaccid penis in her face? No, there isn't, but you won't find that kind of solid gold parenting advice on any gov.uk websites.

Seeking respite from the sad ballet of testicles inside, I shuffled out into the smoking area to find a fresh layer of hell: my ex-boyfriend, who I briefly went out with because I am a moron, with his mouth affixed to someone whom I'd prefer to blend my labia than attempt to engage me in conversation. It was the definitive Sophie's Choice moment, only more harrowing: either watch my best friend get irreversibly damaged by a guy who earns beer money getting his dick out for barely legals, or breathe the same cold night air as someone who went through that weird John Hinckley phase some guys have after break-ups and spent two weeks driving past my house every night.

However, instead of the debilitating nervous breakdown I expected, I had an epiphany: boys are awful. My dad was right all along (which says something very depressing about how self-aware he is of his gender's utter disgustingness, but I don't want to get into that). Now, I might be emotionally incontinent and nauseated at the thought of anything with an XY chromosome, but I'm not asexual and never could be. So I decided to turn my amorous attention to the fairer sex for a week, to see if cherry lips and wanton ringlets beat hairy backs and agricultural body odour.

This is me calling my dad, letting him know of my plans, because – considering he sees his divorce lawyer more than his offspring – I knew he couldn't take the moral high ground on matters of love. But then he just reminded me of the time I said I was going vegan and folded within three days. Obviously, this outraged me.

After giving him the mature, well-balanced response you'd expect from a 17-year-old girl being laughed at by her father, I decided to take action. To give myself a daily reminder of how less gross females are than their danglier counterparts – and because no one's had the business acumen to make life-size Iggy Azalea cut-outs yet – I put together this collage of hot bitches and stuck it next to my bed.  

It didn't quite have me in the paroxysms of lust I'd hoped for, but then the only people who really get turned on by posters are Nuts readers and graphic design nerds, so I wasn't too put out.

My 2D cut and paste masterpiece (inspired directly by the writings of Sappho) must have worked some kind of magic though, because by day three, I had my very own real-life girlfriend. Granted, I asked her to help me out with this because she's the only teen "lesbian" I know who doesn't snap back to hetero after three large gins, but that's still a completely legit relationship, right?   

Wrong. However much this may look like the picture of post-coital bliss, it’s really the bitter end of an evening of awkward, half-hearted courtship.

After mine and Frank's night of tepid passion, I decided it was time to try to read my way to lesbianism. As in, you know how reading Foucault's Pendulum in public instantly makes you 100 percent cooler and tricks people into thinking you're intelligent? Top tip: exactly the same deal for Virginia Woolf and going gay.

However, because I'm a) not that bright, b) not that sensitive and c) read it while one eye was trained on Come Dine with Me, any lesbian undercurrent in Mrs Dalloway totally passed me by. Sorry, girls in tea-dresses.

Sadly my newfound appreciation for salacious lesbian poets doesn’t change the fact that I live in the provinces, where – unless you count all the sexually-repressed closet cases (shout out to my neighbour, Julie!) – there isn't exactly a thriving gay scene (we don't even have a Mardi Gras some years). And practising my chat-up lines on a poster wasn't getting me anywhere, either. I mean there's only so much you can gain from telling a cut-out of Evan Rachel Wood that she has "nice tits". So imagine my excitement when – in this swamp of Midlands parochialism – I came across the only local gay night, "ZEST". 

Everything heated up another notch when I read the event invite for that night and saw that the dress code was fancy dress. You know what that means, don't you? Cats, baby. Sexy, sexy cats.  

The thing I soon realised about sexy cats, however, is that the requisite disco pants give me crippling camel-toe. And, as had already been established, I seemed to be about as attractive to members of my own sex as a slug trapped in an ashtray that's been left out in the rain. So sexiness was never really a viable option.

Still, power is supposedly an aphrodisiac, and which of history's powerful women has consistently topped lads-mags hottest female lists and deservedly won Rear of the Year two decades in a row? Margaret Thatcher, of course. So I went as her. Hey, lesbians – who’s your matriarch?

Where the fuck were all the sexy lesbian cats? Did I frump it up like some repressed teenage Tory for nothing?

Apparently so. Weirdly enough, lesbians don't like it when teen lurkers appropriating their sexuality for a blog post try to take photos of them – it's apparently "violation of personal space", or some other bullshit.

In fact, the only person willing to be photographed was this guy, who sauntered around like a pasty lothario, eagerly unbuttoning his shirt for any passing gent. I sensed a kindred spirit – someone else, also clearly underage, who was here purely to steal people’s partners and smoulder. I fell in love instantly, then realised that defeated the object of everything I was trying to do.

This guy's "thing" was licking girls' hands. He tongued the back of my palm, which was weird and made me feel very uncomfortable. Luckily, as the night went on and the watered-down Jäger kept flowing, the local gay community slowly invited me into the fold – away from creepy finger suckers and into a world where grown men readily slut drop to "Bills, Bills, Bills". 

All the salacious dance moves obviously had an effect on the ladies, because I soon found myself with a dance partner of my very own. This probably had more to do with the fact that everyone could see my bra than my sparkling wit, but whatever. Either way, there was a lesbian in my lap and she was lovely. We even shared a clandestine kiss at the end of the night, but I'm afraid there's no pictorial evidence because last time I checked about 98 percent of the internet is already faux lesbian love-ins. Sorry to disappoint.

Gay night was a lot of fun and a wonderful way to end my week, but it did make me realise that I was a bit of a shit lesbian. Not because I spend my days in some boy-mad, priapic frenzy, but because I lack the necessary qualities to charm girls. You know – charisma, charm, basic social skills, that kind of thing.

The fact that I'm straight probably didn't help much, either. But don't despair, ladies: give it 25 years, a couple of disastrous marriages, a few abortions and a tenacious genital wart problem and I'll be back hijacking your sexuality and wifeying the lot of you.    

Follow Eve on Twitter: @eve_willis

More gay stuff:

The VICE Guide to Being a Lesbian

The VICE Guide to Being Gay

Pretending to be Straight for a Month

An Etiquette Guide for Straight People in Gay Bars

I Posed As a Gay Man for a Year to Learn Empathy