Latinas Love Hard - Arantza

500 Days of Lesbian Winter

Winter does not make you very pretty. It was my first winter ever and I was learning this lesson pretty harshly. While the trees become dried-up, scraggly brushes, you also die a little bit. Your skin puckers up all dry, your nose constantly drips salty goo onto your cracked lips and you become a shadowy gray cloud clawing to be indoors.

But winter also brought unexpected romance for me. Even in a time when winter was wearing me down. Even in a time when all the flora around me was dying, something bright, lush was blooming from the icy cracks. Here are some observations I’ve made about romance in the wintertime.

One.

The summertime creates a third space of the entire city. As in–the benches, the parks, that random patch of grass in front of your apartment–it all becomes public domain, you can run hand and hand, roll around in the warmth, jump into fountains, and make out. But the wintertime freezes these benches, makes that patch an icy beige scab on the sidewalk and you’re pushed inside towards any other forms of public space in NY that won’t make you pay.

I learned that the library, miscellaneous food halls, and even the subway trains all become public domain to display PDA and intimacy, especially when you’re room is too dirty to invite the person you’re seeing over. But of course, the intimacy is harder–the thought of kissing on the subway is gross, especially in front of the French couple in front of you that will most likely ogle at the two brown masses in front of them becoming conjoined with spit.

You can’t banter in the library and when you want to make a move once you leave the heat of the jazz club, the cold wind keeps pushing you home.

When you finally do clean your mess, your intimacy is regaled to the confines of a small twin bed, because both of you can’t actually afford apartments that could fit a full bed. 

And while it’s fun and warm, you’re always on the verge of falling off the cliff of your bed or bumping your head into the wall. Sex is as logistical as it is emotional. Spatial language conjoined with the erotic language of two brown masses coming together.

Second

In the wintertime, the body is reduced to puff! Everyone is an incongruous blob! New Yorkers dress in dark outerwear, so its sidewalks are filled with black voids darting around. My friend asked if the person I’m seeing has big thighs. I had no idea how to answer honestly, because I hadn’t seen their thighs in the first few weeks. Every time we saw each other, we were Russian

dolls of various winter layers, scarves, and jackets. Even when we peeled everything off, you were never sure if you reached the core of their body or if the image in front of you is the result of Uniqlo Heattech piled on top of one another.

And so you kind of guess, make approximations of their body. Even in your sexual fantasies, you make adjustments, it’s all estimations, because you’re not sure if you’re right. In those dreams, the bodies fluctuate, shifting from what memory you can make out of their body. 

Third.

Winter means darting around. We’re jumping and flying from our hometown to the holiday function. I’m going to work holiday parties, you are going to New Year’s at the Bush. I’m going south, you’re going west. So we see each other in small gaps and miss each other by a few days. Scheduling becomes key to seeing each other. But we see a glimpse of how we both are at home, detached from New York City’s pressures to dress well or do shit on a Friday night. I become a potato that sleeps insistently and pushes my elderly dying dog on my stroller, you become the civilian journalist to your cat’s trials and tribulations, her parkour trips, and her emotional inconsisitencies.

But being detached from the city means there’s free time for voice messages and answering messages as soon I send my reply. It means that the reunion in the city will feel much sweeter.

We can rush to fill in those times missed.