But Is She Right?

An increase in bi-curious women sleeping with each other behind their boyfriends’ backs has blurred the fidelity lines. But who is it really hurting? Olivia Edwardes investigates

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Rubbing my mascara-smudged eyes, I wake up to a mass of dark curls snaking across an unfamiliar back. I notice a tiny red heart tattoo behind the person’s left ear; it is delicate, pretty. And most definitely not my boyfriend’s. And then I remember…

I am in a res room. Someone else’s res room. On the floor lies a heap of skinny black jeans, several makeup palettes and a lacy white bra. The room smells of perfume. Perfume and sex. Suddenly the sleeping girl beside me sighs, then drapes her arm across my stomach. I squeeze my eyes shut and try to figure out how I can rebuild the barely-there friendship I had with this girl in the first place, the one that has crossed the line. And what exactly I am going to say to my boyfriend when I meet him for breakfast…

I had seen Lola* a handful of times, out dancing with her friends on the University of Oklahoma campus where I was studying. She was a year older and gave off a sharp, country-club-bred confidence. She was a handsome woman, with the sort of expensive-looking skin and strong bone structure that ‘good breeding’ often bestows. Over the months, our curiosity about one another had become increasingly affectionate whenever our paths crossed: dancing with each other, holding hands en route to the toilet and eventually, after one particular night out, a sleepover.

It was 2017 and this was my thing. Even when I was in serious, happy relationships with men, I flirted, pursued and slept with girls – half to prove to myself that I could, and half to scratch a desire that would eventually go on to become my preference. Was it cheating? Hell, no. It was the sort of rite-of-passage ‘experimentation’ that all women should be allowed to do, I reasoned.