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Welcome to another weekly edition of Inside Our Sugar Walls, the blog spot where you get the most dyke for your dollar.  As you might have guessed, this week the resident lesbians of BCP discuss with us their favorite lesbian film moments (no, no porn this week - naughty!) after the jump: JUMP IN, THE WATER'S FINE!

Thanks mom for putting me in that classic print dress of picnic tablecloth with sunflowers.  My mom picked out my clothes until I was 13.  After that, the fights got pretty ugly and she allowed me to dress like the dyke that I was.  Wore the same navy blue t-shirt everyday with ugly jeans and Sheryl Swoope Nikes.  Baller.

This is so epic.  I have to become famous, just so this page will be lost forever and more important stuff will take over.  It is my life's purpose.

I was/still am in love with bugs.  Roaches don't qualify.  I always feel so bad when someone kills them, and I seriously tried to save one the other day.  Sue left the door open for too long while she was smoking, and one of the humongous tree goblins got inside and I walked into the bathroom and there was this huge stain on the tile above the shower head.  I was like wtf is that then screamed because I realized it was a child of satan and knocked it down with a washcloth and then screamed some more.  It landed on its back and I watched it suffer for like two minutes and then my conscience kicked in.  I ran downstairs and got a glass that we would never miss if I threw it in the trash and tried to turn it onto its stomach and trap it all at the same time.  Well it didn't work.  The moment its legs moved I was shaking and crying/convulsing.  I really wanted to save it, but I trapped it with the glass until Sue got home and then made her flush it down the toilet.  I left the room because I didn't want to watch it die then I made myself feel better by thinking about Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and how it probably survived in the sewer and was having a slice of pizza. 

Because it's been 7 tries, and because we're very sure that last month the inseminations started 2 days too soon (a $1,200 mistake - but since it's our $1,200 I suppose it doesn't matter), we made another appointment with the doctor to review our options.  Specifically, we want to try hCG so that the timing of insemination could be closer to ovulation.  Some articles online suggest that timing of insemination should be within 6 hours on either side of ovulation. 

I was surprised to see that our doctor didn't understand how we thought hCG could help.  She wanted us to tell her when we'd want to take it (eg if the follicle is 1.8 cm and LH is still in the early teens).  Isn't that her job?

She said that she used hCG in her fellowship, but in conjunction with fertility drugs.   LifeQuest doesn't use hCG but instead uses double inseminations 24 hours apart with the goal of having one before and one after ovulation.  And that's cool -- but it hasn't been working. 

S doesn't want to take fertility drugs right now, because she doesn't want to be faced with triplets or quads and having to decide whether to cull the herd.  And that's fair.  From my layman's perspective, I'd just as soon she switch to IVF if taking fertility drugs - get as many embryos as possible and keep trying that way.  But the doctor would rather see us try a few cycles with fertility drugs, and then perhaps test for endometrial function and, if indicated, have surgical procedures to try and remedy any problem. If there is no endometrial problem, then we could try moving to IVF.

Frankly, if S's womb is sufficiently inhospitable as to require surgery, I'd suggest we take a look at mine before doing anything that invasive.  With IVF, there's no reason why we couldn't just switch wombs.  But it's her body that would have to suffer either the invasiveness of IVF or the invasiveness of surgery, so it's her choice.

The doctor relented and we'll try Ovadril and a single insemination this month.  The confusing part for me is that two other women in our DPT group use hCG, as well as a colleague of mine.  So it isn't unheard of.  Rather the opposite. ( These people use the Hannam clinic and the First Steps clinic). 

As we left, we realized the doctor forgot to give us the protocol for this month, and also for got to give us the prescription (which we went back and got). Between that and the disparity between what other clinics seem to do with respect to HcG, we're not bouyed with confidence in our clinic.

If anyone is considering LifeQuest, also consider that this month S went for her full bladder Day 3 ultrasound and had to wait for an hour and 40 minutes.  If it was my bladder they were talking about, I wouldn't have been able to hold it that long, considering you pretty much arrive with a full bladder.  Why don't they put the full bladder ultrasounds to the top of the list, just to be humane, considering the wait is unimaginably long?  You might want to find out how long the wait is at other clinics.  But also find out how much the other clinics charge in admin fees, or if they add a surcharge onto the price of frozen sperm (we hear a couple of clinics do this.  LifeQuest doesn't).  Each clinic is different, apparently for the better or for the worse.  Buyer beware.

Henry Van Dyke

I measure everything by the distance from the last time we fucked until now,

The last time we fucked was after some party,

I was there alone, or at least not with you.

The room was full of feminists listening to Holly Near and talking earnestly about Reagan,

So I got drunk on vodka and missed you.

You would never have been invited,

And if you somehow were at that party,

You would have told them that they were fucking classist bitches,

Just like that.

Then you would have swept me out of there,

Getting us both banned for a while,

Or at least until they wanted to score some ‘ludes or some “strange”,

Which is what the straight boys called it and that is what you were.

I drank until I had to beg them to take me to your apartment,

Me all blurred and needy and crying for you,

You were crashing at some vet’s in a cheap duplex in the South end,

You let me in and we stumbled onto the blue polyester sleeping bag.

It was on the living room floor spread out in front of the big television,

Picture on and sound off.

I promised to take you away to New York city,

Where we could be free,

And I left you in the morning.

Five years later you overdosed on the bathroom floor of a fast food restaurant,

And I wailed walking in circles, in circles for the loss of you,

You lying on the cool, greasy tile floor dying,

And me sober living in a farmhouse.

Fuck this, fuck it all.

I want to redo our last fuck and make it magic,

Spread out the sleeping bag in the starry night and lay like clouds or colts,

In the moonlight all blue and sweet.

We were magic sometimes, we were.

Nothing is bad,
The feel of your thoughts,
The feel of your body,
Stays with me all night,
After you leave.

Sheets tangled,

Listening to Nico whisper “Sunday Morning”,

This is all I ever wanted.

It is a cool San Francisco night,

Filled with fog and promise,

Your small palm is pressed flat on my belly,

Curved around me in love,

I like it so much as your hand holds me.

My leg is thrown over your thigh,

The out edge of my leg rests against your cunt,

Your clit is hard and damp spreads like rays of moonlight,

Your taste travels through my blood vessels from my leg to my tongue,

And my lips part in need to hold your clit in my mouth,

My mouth is a cave for your cunt to live in.

Oh, it is that quiet night moment of us,

I want to lay sweaty and filled with you forever.

For some people, like me, I guess not being open about their sexuality is stifling. I still wish it wasn't such a huge deal.

Country: Australia
Name/nickname: Hellonhairylegs (HHL)
Age: 17
What did you come out as (gay, bi, transgendered, use any terms you like here)? Lesbian
What other words would you use to describe yourself? Radical feminist
How old were you when you first realized your identity? I thought I *could* be bisexual at 14, accepted that I was a lesbian at 16
How old were you when you first told someone? 16
Did you plan it? If so, how? Yes, I planned to tell my friends and siblings after I was sure I was a lesbian. I rehearsed scenarios in my head and told them the first time I was alone.
What made you choose that person to tell? I trusted them and thought that once they knew an actual lesbian they would stop being casually homophobic.
Can you remember exactly what you said? No, but there was a lot of awkward silences, umms and ahhs.
How did you feel? Sad and liberated.
What was the person’s reaction? Not shock.
What did they say? My friends didn't really say anything. My sisters reaction was "you should tell Mom and Dad"
What was your relationship with the person like afterwards? Those friends drew away from me after that. We hardly talk now. My sisters and I aren't as close as we once were. They keep on trying to set me up with dudes which isn't doing wonders for our relationship.
If you’ve experienced homophobia etc, please give an example. Once I had a bunch of guys drive past me, call me an "Ugly Dyke" and throw something at me. Other than that just the common use of "that's so gay" and having GLBTQI people as the butt of jokes or violent fantasies.
Since coming out, how “out” are you in the following areas of your life:
Educational institution: Semi- I've told everyone who I care about. Whether the school gossip vine has caught on or not I don't know or care.
Family: Out
Friends: Out
What does being out mean to you? Not having to hear about some mythical boyfriend or husband and kids. Freedom.
What does the concept of the closet mean to you? Pretty metaphor. For some people, like me, I guess not being open about their sexuality is stifling. I still wish it wasn't such a huge deal.
If you could do it all again, would you do it any differently? If so, how? I wouldn't have outed myself to my parents until I finish college.

Read HHL's blog entry about coming out.

i sit looking at this empty white space i'll fill with cold typed words.

sitting wasting time because i'm here and she's far and dune's blaring away on retro vhs and the wind's howling outside and coldplay's vida la vida through one earphone and who gives a fuck about punctuation anyway.  i'm uploading mother's art to mother's website, while she clicks annoyingly at patience on her laptop.  i've just taken a pill so that the sound won't kill me.  that might seem demented, when there's so much peripheral noise anyway, but that clicking makes me want to rage.

would my life seem odd to you if i said that some days i work for a racist but kind tomato farmer?  that i have no money, but watch dolphins often?  no, no, i'm not saying you should give a shit - i try not to.

once upon a time in 2003 or so, i created a blog on a host that is now defunct.  i started off just posting poetry, jagged lines of rhymes.  i made a friend there, late one night and i still miss him.  he's a poet too - younger than me, straight, male.  i am an old dyke.  last night i looked at his old blog on the wayback machine and missed him some more.

once i built a website for a nudist resort, it wasn't fun.

i'm so used to melancholy that sometimes i enjoy it, i'm not emo anymore though.  i don't take many pills, i'm mostly content.

[enjoy failure - it's the best advice i know]

Sam Ronson and Lindsay Lohan dyke it up at the Happiest Place on Earth, Disneyland.

The Ray-Bans...well, I miss the 80s too, girls...

(Thanks Lori, hope to see your story here soon)

Speaking of fire on the road. Yesterday evening we were cruising along Clark St., just south of Andersonville--ya know, "the lesbian neighborhood." Yeah lesbian, my lesbian asshole. Clark St. is a narrow, two-lane with parking on both sides and a shared bike lane that is FREQUENTLY used by cyclists. In fact, it is one of the only good routes North-South for bikes. Well, this asshole in his "new" used Cadillac comes ROARING around us in the parking lane/bike lane. It's dusk...a bicycle would be hard to spot at those speeds, in that light. So I'm pissed...to say the least. I pull up next to his temporary plated Caddy and begin "WHAT THE FUCK?? EVER HEARD OF A BICYCLE LANE??" Then the bleach blonde whore in the passenger seat with the fake tan and chrome plated sunglasses turns to me and says "there were no bicycles" as she blows smoke out the window at me, and the lady bicyclist at the light (who seemed pleased that I was ranting on about protecting the bike lane). I don't miss a beat--an argument like that would rarely keep me down. So I retort with "what if there were?? It's still FUCKING ILLEGAL and you could'a killed somebody!" He rolls her window up...probably so that his greasy hair wouldn't dry too quickly. But the sunroof was open so that she could vent her cigarette pollutants into the air. I quipped--"you're just an ASSHOLE!" He rolled her window down and said "And you're a dyke bitch!" I smiled one of my big award winning smiles without missing a beat and said "YOU FUCKING BET I AM--I GET MORE PUSSY THAN YOU!"...as he tries to speed off...knowing that both he and the fake tanned huzzy know it's true.

Did he think that I didn't know? Is he really that MIDWESTERN that he wouldn't assume that I was an out lesbian that is perfectly comfortable with my "dyke" ways? I hate the midwest. I don't know why I ever came back here, but I hope to find out soon so that I can leave. Hate crime slurs in the lesbo neighborhood--yeah, Chicago's cool alright. Cool in January.

Ha, what a joke.  I wish that California was a place for poor artists like us...but along that vein, we are officially opening the CALIFORNIA FUND for this family.  We're saving money...to jet outta this crap.

I personally don't have a power-tool fetish (and that includes sex toys), I have a designer-dyke style addiction to modern minimalist stuff. I'm typing this on my Macbook, my iPod isn't far and cameras abound. I have numerous flash drives, a small robot dog that emotes to music – and the list goes on. I know lot of geek-dykes who are fully into the hi-tech thing too.

Networking's a beautiful thing, because I know so many dykes, 9 times out of 10 I know someone who can help me fix or programme something if I can't do it myself.

Dykes tend to be first-level adopters of new technology, perhaps because they don't have the constraint of having to wait for hubby to let them know what to buy.

Apologies to any passing straight women who don't fit this crass generalisation. There's also the DINK factor i.e. double income no kids, meaning more disposable income and the potential for rampant consumerism. We don't usually have to fight children for the Nintendo Wii either.

Right now I'm sitting in a room with satellite TV running silently on widescreen, iPod playing through the hi-fi, Wii waiting, powerball, lava lamp and PSP in the corner and three of us on computers. Between us, we could programme your mainframe, fix your car, design your website, wire your house, sort out your graphics, layout and so on – and a multitude of other sins. We are a handy species and we love toys.

I shall not draw any conclusions about control issues. We also find the phrase control alt delete much sexier than lather rinse repeat.

If anyone needs me, I'm at the toyshop.

I got a lot of messages, e-mails and whatever else regarding the cease and desist I sent to C., who consequently is named Colin and I am just sick of typing a letter so I guess we'll get over the humanization of him on my blog. Anyways, I forget what I typed here on the blog, but the bottom line is that he wanted me to be ok with him going on a trip with his ex, and for the life of me I couldn't. Not because I even thought anything would happen, but because he swore it wouldn't. I'm not exactly simple, but probably, if I went on a trip with an ex that had the same sort of emotional hold over me as this woman apparently had over Colin, I would probably fuck them. Maybe because I am a bad person, but probably because it is nice to fuck someone that is familiar. Especially, when you haven't in a while. Especially, when you get to go home to someone else and pretend like it never happened. Yes, I am a bad person. Anyways, I totally broke up with him over IM, but then I had to go and pick up something at his house and we ended up talking. Actually, I never even had to go inside his home, but my sister gave me this big talk about being a grownup and having conversations with people when you breakup with them instead of just disappearing forever.

I think what I'm getting at is that Colin and I got back together. Not immediately, but the man gave me the space and time I needed to decide I did not want to destroy all parts of his life. Consequently, he also cancelled his trip with his ex and got to experience what a fucking insane livewire I truly am if I am upset. So I guess you can all stop feeling sorry for me and those of you that were truly excited, I'm sorry I've disappointed you. I'm sure I'll do something terrible in the next few weeks and completely redeem myself.

While all that was going on, I was busy mentally dealing with the death of summer. Every year at this time I am just completely torn apart by the fact that the seemingly endless days are slowly hacked away and devoured by the nighttime. Really, my biggest problem with this is that I am a total night person and now I might miss the daytime altogether. It's sad and true. Also, I will miss the heat of the sunshine, but now I am being dramatic because I live in Los Angeles and even our shitty cold days are so much fucking better than the weather some of you idiots choose to endure. Seriously, what the fuck are you thinking?

Oh, I cut my hair even shorter. By the time I get around to uploading photos it will probably be just as long as it was before I let my hairdresser get scissorhappy. I like it though. When it's short I look sort of dykie, but serious. I think my short-short haircut makes me look super serious. Too bad that being this short also means it is so fucking easy to make straight that I don't even care that I have to do it anymore. I guess I will dye it really dark soon. It's that time of year. Last night, I dreamt that I dyed it all black and ended up looking like some sort of Goth high school reject with my pale skin and sad cow eyes. I have never really been a fan of black, so who knows.

If you're still reading this, probably you should get a life. In up and coming news, Erin is coming to visit me in three weeks. Three weeks is like an eternity for me. She might as well be coming in the year 2012 as the apocalypse arrives or something. Erin, this in no way indicates that I consider your visit to be an apocalypse, but the last time you came to LA I almost had to go to the hospital for alcohol poisoning. Sorry I ruined your trip by being a rummy. I guess this time around I will act sort of like an adult and instead of getting insanely drunk I'll just get medium drunk and then we can piss on cars again. If that was a secret from the internet, whoops. I am really terrible with secrets.

Tomorrow, I leave for Monterey. I'll be there till Saturday. It's like all I ever do is go on a series of vacations. I guess now that there is a mega-recession I won't be doing this quite so much, but let's face it, whenever anyone asks me if I want to go along on their boring trip and spice it up, I am obligated to go. Because of this bylaw I am totally going to accidentally go on a ton of trips anyways and pretend like it's not because of some silly whim I have because I am totally afraid of permanence and commitment.

I love the word "boi", but you can't hear the difference in spelling and besides, I'm getting a little long in the tooth to claim boyish charm. I'm used to the word "lesbian" by now, but it still sounds like a nationality or qualification. "Gay woman" takes too long to say, I despise the slang term "lettie" and "Sapphic" sounds like a cleaning agent if you pronounce it correctly. It's a subjective choice, like all of them, but I have chosen to label myself dyke very cheerfully. To me dykes are strong, female and not particularly hung up on gender. There's also pleasure in that cliched old process of reclaiming insults from homophobes.

I tend to learn the meanings of new words by context anyway, I'm sure most of us do. So everyone's perception of any word is coloured/formed by their experience of it. I probably didn't hear the word dyke as a kid, perhaps I didn't really think about it until I bought that t-shirt at my very first pride march. I always thought there was androgyny to the word, and freedom. To me dykes are gorgeous and handsome and pretty and strong and fragile. They're women, not women who wish they were men - there are other labels for that and one may as well attempt some accuracy of language.

It doesn't matter whether you choose labels for yourself or resist them all, as long as you feel good. I have some geek tendencies, so I wrote myself a file path once years ago, it went like this:

human://woman.dyke/me

If anyone needs me, I'll be in The Netherlands.