On Monday I arrived at the camp half past five in the morning, first of those who didn’t spend the Sunday night there. The two girls in our room were still sleeping, so I moved as carefully as possible. I was happy, not to run into Adri on my way here. Me, the overconfident, self-respecting lesbian girl now felt ashamed for being who I was, so I wouldn’t be able to look into her eyes. I didn’t know when I was last time so overwhelmed by self loathing, but it really had me down on my knees now.
After I finished, I sat idly on my bed until the others woke up. It was going to be a long week, and it seemed longer by every passing minute. When Mariann and Kati finally sat up, I could start to unpack my stuff. I only had time to take out the first set of uniform, when Adri arrived. She stopped for a second in the door, then let out a huge sigh.
"Hey" she looked at me, then to the others. "Hey, everybody.
"Hey" I smiled at her shyly. At least she greeted me.
"Em… Fanny, could we talk in private a little?" she asked.
I didn’t know what she wanted, but she didn’t look angry, disgusted, or anything like those, and it was more than enough reason to nod without any hesitation. I followed her like a puppy into the unoccupied room at the end of the hall. After I stepped in, she closed to door behind me and locked it with the key. For a moment it passed my mind, I might had misjudged her character. She might not the kind girl I thought she was, and now she was gonna stab a knife into my chest. But she wasn’t. She sat down on the furthest bed from the door and waved me to join on the bed in front of her.
"Look" she started as soon as I was sitting "I know, I didn’t react well to what you told me."
I took a breath to answer her, but she didn’t let me.
"I acted like a hysterical cunt, and I feel really ashamed because of it. Just… you know, I’ve never known anybody of your kind. And… I didn’t know how to react… you know. About what you told me."
‘Your kind’ ‘What you told’ She clearly did her best to avoid the words like lesbian, and coming out. If anybody else has done it, I would’ve turned into this lesbian rights warrior, but at the moment I was more than happy we finally spoke again.
"So, I want to apologize to you. You shared a secret with me, that must’ve been hard to share, and I reacted the worst possible way."
"You don’t have to apologize for anything" Don’t tell me you never told a white lie to your loved one. Shut up! "It wasn’t the worst reaction I’ve ever received about my coming out."
"Still, I want to apologize anyway. I want to make this up to you somehow."
My inners filled with warmth in a second. I didn’t lose my hope to stay friends after all.
"You really don’t have to. All I want is everything between us to be the same as before."
"You sure?" she looked at me asking.
"What do you mean?"
"You sure you want everything to stay the same?"
I know how ambiguous it might sounds, but there wasn’t anything ambiguous in the way she asked it. There wasn’t any curiosity in her voice or expression, it wasn’t an offer in disguise, she meant literally, what she asked. Whether she needed to be afraid of I’d move on her one day. As much as I wanted to do that, with all my indecency I always had enough integrity of not taking advantage of others. Well... of girls. Well... of girls who meant something to me. I wasn’t perfect, okay!?
"I’m positive. I really like you, and I know that well, it’s a rare thing to find a good friend as you."
"So friends?" she asked with a delighted face.
"Friends" I nodded.
"I might be able to do that" she was smiling widely. God, I loved so much when she was smiling!
I leaned forward to hug her as we always celebrated things that made us happy, but I stopped in the middle of the move, just as she did. I didn’t want to make her misunderstand the gesture, and apparently, she thought the same.
We looked at each other puzzled for a long moment, and neither of us could say anything. It was the first time like this in our friendship, and it made perfectly apparent the things were not yet the same as before, but we took steps into the right direction, and I was more than happy that we were actually talking again.
After a time, I broke the silence.
"What made you change your mind? As you were acting, I thought you were never gonna speak to me again."
"You know… the thing is, it crossed my mind. I hate to admit, but it did. I was really mad at you for being… you know… “that”. And I felt betrayed. Like I shared my deepest secrets with a guy, they should never hear, you know?"
I’d lie if I told I never heard this reasoning. I'd lie even more if I told it didn’t hurt. Much more from her, than from anybody else.
"But" she continued "I analyzed the past few weeks… I counted all the out of ordinary things from you, and… and I realized there weren’t any. Maybe you looked at me differently than at the others, but I might just imagined that."
I stopped her right there.
"You did not just imagine that. I just share a platoon with them, while you are my friend. I didn’t talk about my deepest secrets with them, it’s probable I won’t see any of them after the boot camp is over, but what is between us is more. You are the best friend I ever had in my life. That’s why I came out to you. However, I hoped a little better reception" I looked up at the ceiling like I was just saying this last part as a sidenote.
"I understand it" she said.
"I wouldn’t tell it to a simple acquaintance."
"I… I believe this. Just, you know, I have no idea about how this is with your kind. In the movies you are… you are… so different."
"You mean like Petra?"
"Yes."
"And see? She is not a lesbian, and I am."
"I know that now, but… can you be just friends with other women? Don’t you want to… you know, with all of them…?"
"Do you want to sleep with every guy you get close to?"
"No."
"I think you have your answer then. Of course, I can’t speak for every lesbian out there, but I had countless straight friends I had no attraction toward."
Okay, she was not one of them, stop judging me, okay?
"That’s relieving for sure."
"And I have no expectations like that toward you either. You are a friend to me like no one else before you, and that’s more important than anything else.
She was finally smiling again.
"I hope so. I have so many preconceptions about, the… you know, the ones like you, but you are right. I got to know you in the past few weeks really well, and it shouldn’t make any difference that you are a…"
"Lesbian? You can say it, it’s not a swearword" I was smiling, but I’d lie if I said her behavior didn’t feel like I was being stabbed with daggers. Listening to her talking like I belonged to a completely different species. I never took such things personally, but I was deeply in love with her, which made this even worse.
"Yeah, I know, just I… We talked about it, you remember? I came from a small village, my parents are deeply religious, the kinds who still believe virginity must be kept until marriage, and… I was raised like that. For Catholics something like this, you know…" she sighed. "I said this word several times, but always along with derogatory adjectives. Terrible… terrible adjectives I could never use about you. Maybe God wants to sign something for me with you?"
I’m not religious. I’ve never been either, but it has little to do with my sexuality. My parents weren’t the churchgoer types, we never had a cross on the wall or a Bible on our bookshelf. My mother’s problems with me being a lesbian didn’t have a bigoted religious root, she was just really-really conservative. I can’t say I’m an atheist, but it’s not that far from the truth. Now that I think about it, I can consider myself lucky, because this way I got away without the religion originated self-loathe.
"That’s possible" I answered. "How do they say? God’s paths are unpredictable?"
"Yes" she nodded, which was followed by another long silence.
When it started to grow awkward, I smiled at Adri.
"Then, I guess it’s been decided. Friends, right?"
"Right."
"Just two girls, who enjoy each others’ company."
"Except for in the shower" she bantered me.
"Okay, except for in the shower" I smiled. I really wanted to poke back at her with something, but everything that came into my mind was way too ambiguous for the current situation. I lightly punched her shoulder, and started to get up. "Come, because in the end, someone might start some gossip about us because of the closed door."
"Oh, right" her eyes went wide with the realization. "And neither of us wants that.
One of us wouldn’t have had any problem with that, but she let the other to have this moment.
All in all, it was a pleasant morning. I got back my friend, and it was enough to make me feel happy, even though I knew I’d never be the same to her as she was to me. But it didn’t matter. I lost the fear, and self-hate thanks to these few minutes, and that was more than enough to me. I loved to live once again.
The week after that was flying away quickly. All we had left were indoor classes that helped to prepare for the exams on Thursday. On Monday, Adri and I were able to actually pay some attention during the classes. On Tuesday, some talking during the classes may or may not have been involved, but it didn’t have a noticeable negative impact on our performance. The Wednesday on the other hand… It was the same as like the earlier five weeks. We talked until the drill instructor ordered us to stop, then we were writing messages to each disguised as note-taking.
I never had such bad grades on any exam as on that Thursday one, and that really is something from me. But I wasn’t alone with it, as Adri did only a little better than me. We had the worst two passed results in our platoon, but even in our company weren’t many people who did worse than us, and passed. Probably if there was any chance we’d see any battle in our life, they wouldn’t have simply failed us, but banished from all the army properties for life. But why would we have done well on the exams? For the six weeks, we had like four or five days when we paid any attention to anything they taught us. We learned how not to shoot ourselves with the weapons on the shooting range, and our effective knowledge about military stuff was finished there.
The most part of the company left home after the exams, only a few of us stayed there to celebrate the ending of the boot camp. This time I managed to drag Adri with me to the party, despite this the night wasn’t memorable. I accidentally must’ve stepped in a time machine around 2 AM, because I couldn’t remember anything after that, including how I got to my bed. Of course that didn’t stop the instructors to kick us out of the bed at 5:30, and as we were the only ones in our room who stayed for the farewell party, we were the ones who had to clean the room, and clean it again after the instructors didn’t like how it was cleaned at first.
It was almost eight when we left the base and stopped to talk in the parking lot in front of its gate.
"Well…" I started "that was it."
"That was it" Adri nodded.
"I’ve never had such a great time in a place where I supposed to study."
She smiled.
"Me neither, but it didn’t help much with my results."
"We passed, didn’t we?"
"We did, that’s true, but I wanted to come back here to work."
"Well, I think you should wave goodbye to that opportunity" I laughed.
"I already did."
We looked at each other and nodded like we were talking about something, while we just had no idea how to say goodbye. No matter how great friends we became, no matter how much I was in love with her, it’s a common knowledge that when only an experience connects to people, their friendship almost never gonna last long.
"And what will be after this?" Adri asked.
"What do you mean?"
"Well… you live in Fehérvár, I live in Budapest… not exactly neighboring cities."
"There is internet then" I shrugged. "Or that little thingy into you can speak and the other can hear your words even thousand kilometers away."
She couldn’t hold back her laugh.
"Long distance friendship?"
"Why not? We both know long distance relationships never work, but nobody said such thing about long-distance friendships.
"Then it’s settled. We won’t lose sight of each other."
She smiled, stepped closer to me, and for the first time since my coming out she embraced me. We held each other strong, and in the end, it was so hard to let her go. No matter what we said, I was sure we never gonna see each other again. A few phone calls tops, if we’re lucky, but probably not even those. I was sure that would happen.
"I’m so glad I met you here" Adri’s eyes slowly turned glossy than the tears started to slide down on her cheek. I didn’t need any more confirmation about she was thinking exactly what a was.
"Me too, kitten" now my tears started to roll down too.
We hugged each other once more, then gave a kiss to both of the other’s cheek.
"Then…" Adri said after we let go each other "we’ll stay in contact.
"I’ll take you at your word.
"Bye" she forced a smile on her face.
"Bye" I waved to her embarrassed, even though she was like a meter away from me.
"Bye" she repeated while she turned toward her car.
"Bye" I called out when she was further away.
She turned to me twice on her way to her car and smiled both times. I showed my strongest face, but I’m not sure if she bought it.
I stood there like a statue as she got into her car, then waved once more as she went past me. I waved back, then turned away and immediately my tears started to rain.
"I love you" I whispered under my nose. "I love you more than anything in this life."
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