In Which Our Sporting Heroines Come to Our Rescue

Discussing her days at boarding school, Cumquat recently posted on here that at her school the main stronghold of lesbianism was the school’s ballet class. My own school, St Sappho’s Academy for Young Ladies, did not offer ballet dancing as part of the curriculum, but our equivalent seemed to be the school’s gymnastics squad. There is obviously something about the sight of her friends in tight-fitting leotards that is capable of bringing out any girl’s inner lesbian. (This observation is backed up by my mother-in-law, herself a former dancer, who recalls that in her days as a showgirl the fact that she and her colleagues were the objects of much well-earned male admiration did not prevent them from developing crushes on one another).

I, of course, was an ardent gymnast, as were most of the other players in my early story, including my darling sister Amanda, my beloved BFF and room-mate Melissa, Amanda’s beloved BFF and room-mate Caroline and my two other great friends Jill and Mei-Ling. My initial love of the sport was kindled by the belief that I was destined to become Britain’s answer to my childhood heroine Nadia Comaneci, but it survived even after it became clear that I was far too tall ever to aspire to elite status. (This was the eighties when the average top gymnast seemed to stand around four foot six; even in my early teens I was taller than that). Part of the attraction was the fact that the sport offered a refuge in the warmth of the gym from the horrors of hockey and, worse still, lacrosse. (Even in the warmth of September or on a crisp October afternoon these sports seemed like excuses for wanton violence; in the cold of December or January they were more like an attempt to recreate some particularly bloody battle in authentic battlefield conditions). And then I came to woman’s estate, sex reared its beautiful head and, suddenly, I was in love with any girl in a leo. And gym girls were lovelier far than even the prettiest hockey girl. (Lacrosse girls were all, almost by definition, unattractive).      

My last story dealt with how Amanda seduced me while we were on holiday together; my next will deal with the start of my relationship with Melissa, which began at school. This one deals with how Amanda and I managed to cope with our sexual feelings during our time at home. After returning from holiday, we did not try to continue our physical relationship, except on the rare occasions when our parents left us home alone together. The risk of discovery was too high; had my father discovered that both his daughters were bisexual his rage would have surpassed all measure. Nor could we always rely upon borrowing a copy of his girlie mags to wank over as we had occasionally done in the past. 

We both felt the need for some sort of pin-ups to serve as a focus for our desires. We had tried putting up pictures of good-looking young male actors and popstars, but our father made us take them down on the grounds that as teenagers we were too young for such things. (I was tempted to resort that our mother was only just out of her teens when he got her knocked up with Amanda, bhut thought better of it). It was the resourceful Amanda who found the solution. She decorated her room with pictures of her favourite gymnasts, such as Nadia Comaneci, Nelli Kim, Natasha Shaposhnikova and Natalya Yurchenko. I followed suit, and the gymnasts were soon followed by other sportswomen- skaters like Katarina Witt, swimmers like Sharron Davies, athletes like Tessa Sanderson, Sally Gunnell or Florence Griffiths and tennis players like Chris Evert, Gabriela Sabatini and Steffi Graf. Our father couldn’t object because he had always encouraged our interest in sport, thinking it a healthy pastime for girls. What he never realised was that our interest in these sporting ladies went beyond their athletic talents and also extended to their good looks and skimpy costumes. He would not have been pleased had he realised that his two daughters were regularly frigging themselves off to some very randy lesbian fantasies about Nadia, Sharron, Florence and Gabriela!