The Only Dyke in the Village

Rather a lot of people ask me what it’s like being “the only gay in the village.”  Of course, I’m probably not – just the only out gay in it.  When my girlfriend visits, the queer population doubles and every walk on the beach feels like a pride march.  Anyway, I live in a little coastal village with a shop, a church and a library which opens twice a week to make sure that all the romances and cowboy stories get some oxygen.

    There’s this global thought process, I think, where queer people apparently need to be in urban areas so that they can find other queer people and go to their parties.  To a certain extent, I agree with that – I wouldn’t have missed living in Cape Town, London, Johannesburg, Edinburgh etc for the world.  Sometimes I miss being able to just relax with my tribe, although these days I prefer restaurants and bars to nightclubs.  Then again, I’m not on the pull any more.

The internet makes a big difference too; I hate phones and love the written word, so text-based communication is great and keeps me up to date with the scene in general and my close friends in particular.  I should mention here that I live in an area devoid of any form of broadband net access, but hey, us coastal types are slow anyway, right?

My own life seems a little unreal even to me sometimes.  I’ve seen whales from my stoep a lot over the past few months and dolphins when I walk the dogs on the beach.  Yesterday I went to work and got distracted photographing a warthog.  It’s a good sort of a lifestyle if you’re something of a hermit (and I am).

Occasionally I see one other lesbian – there used to be a pair in the next village, but I heard on the straightvine that they had a nasty breakup.  That makes a whole one incident of dyke drama in the year I’ve been here. 

My social calendar and pockets might be fairly empty down here, but my heart’s full and that’s not a bad trade.

If anyone needs me, I’ll be staring at the sea.