Being a lesbian is great. I think the reason I'm a writer is because I'm a lesbian, because I was left alone inside my head for so long. I got to know myself really well.

I had this super intense internal monologue with myself, which may have catalyzed my self awareness. Maybe not. I do know, however, that the first like thirty times I got to kiss a girl, I felt like an astronaut who'd taken off in a rocket-ship and landed on Saturn. I was so sure, for so many years, that I'd never get to kiss a girl. So when I did kiss one, it was so amazing it's hard to even think about.

But of course, there are struggles to being a lesbian in New York City. Sometimes we fall in love super intensely and breakups feel like death, sometimes gay bars are expensive, sometimes we feel alienated over our sexuality, something in which we had no choice. At least we're not alone. So here they are: 14 harsh lessons every lesbian learns in NYC.

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1. Straight girls sometimes don't like it when you hit on them

Finding the boundary here is pretty hard. If you've been blessed with an accurate gaydar, you should count your lucky stars.

It's all about the vibes and the eye contact. Eye contact is huge. Going up to a straight girl and telling her she's pretty, though, is a bad move. I know this from some unfortunate experience. She'll probably raise her eyebrows and walk away. She'll probably whisper to her friends while stealing glances in your direction.

An encounter like this can ruin the rest of your night. Stop buzzing around her, stop thinking about it, don't purchase any alcohol for her. It's tempting to fall into despair about how much easier it'd be to pick up girls if you were a guy, (and it probably would be) but you should stop hitting on straight girls anyway. Hitting on straight girls is bad for your soul.

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2. Sometimes straight girls will make out with you at bars...

But they probably won't fall in love with you. They might even date you, but ultimately they'll break your heart. I'm sure a girl who once thought she was straight has married a lesbian, but I think that would require her forfeiting her status as straight girl, so... yeah. What I do know is that lots of girls in NYC are looking to experiment with girls.

A really pretty girl in NYC might make out with you and go on dates with you and even sleep in your bed with you, only to ultimately tell you she's super sorry but she's just ... straight. She'll promise it has nothing to do with you, but that doesn't make the fact that she's dumping you hurt any less.

You might feel depressed and despondent for several months. I promise that everything will be okay, though, and you'll get over her. And, you should probably stop dating straight girls. I say this to myself all the time too, and I've continued to date straight girls, so... easier said than done?

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3. Girls with mohawks aren't always lesbians?

I know, I think it's weird too. It's my personal opinion that every girl with a mohawk should be a lesbian.

Some people will probably hurry to call me closed-minded and limiting to straight girls who want to sport this particular hairstyle as an expression of their personality, but a straight girl with a mohawk is a perplexing phenomenon. Us lesbians have enough trouble figuring out who it's okay to hit on, and when a straight girl has a mohawk, it just sends everything spiraling out of whack.

I'm harping so much on this particular example because I knew a straight girl with a mohawk, and she was one of the straight girls who got super offended that I hit on her, and it blew my mind.

Sometimes, people don't match up to their haircuts, and we just have to deal with it. There's lots of girls with lots of crazy haircuts in NYC. Using' hair to determine her sexuality is not an exact science in this city, much to my surprise.

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4. Your friends only want to go to “straight” bars

Unless you're one of those lesbians who rolls with a crew of other lesbians, which is a fun way to live your life, we usually wind up in a social circle in which we're the minority.

If this is your situation, and you're deeply imbedded in a social circle of straight people, you'll have to deal with the fact that your friends usually don't want to go to gay bars with you on weekends. They want to go places where they'll get hit on by guys, where guys will buy their drinks, and where the possibility they'll go home with a hot guy exists.

It makes sense that your friends don't want to go to gay bars, and is not inconsiderate or homophobic, but when it comes to making time to go to the gay bar, you'll have to extricate yourself from your social circle and find a gay friend to go with you. Because everyone knows showing up to a bar alone is a bad look. And having another friend that's gay is great for situations like this, and others that will inevitably arise.

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5. That girl you went on a few dates with isn't going to become your wife

I'm sure breaking up is really hard for everyone, and not just lesbians, but I think it's especially hard for lesbians. Hear me out.

If you're a lesbian who spent a lot of closeted years thinking she'd never find love, if you lived for years in repression nursing a secret self loathing, if you basically convinced yourself you'd never fall in love, it's hard not to weep at the feet of every girl who wants to date you. It's hard not to be astounded every time you get to kiss a girl, purely because you spent so many years desperately yearning to. Because you spent so many years thinking it was about as likely that you'd get to kiss a girl as it was that you'd grow wings and fly.

So, break ups are tough, because we usually get hurled back into all our depressing fears that we'll be alone forever. It's up to us to orient our minds back to the positive, and to focus on the empowerment that comes with loving ourselves. I promise, you're gorgeous and perfect. That little fear in the back of your head whispering that you'll never fall in love again is wrong. Someday, you'll know this too.

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6. Natalie Portman isn't actually gay

If you get lucky, you might spot Natalie Portman on the streets of our metropolis. One of my friends rang her up at Lululemon one time. She was buying yoga straps.

I personally find it appealing to indulge in reveries about run-ins with Natalie in which we meet, hang out, then fall in love. I know she has the best sex scene in the world with Mila Kunis in Black Swan, and if you're actually a lesbian you probably know about this too.

But Natalie's not gay.

She has a husband and a son, and isn't going to marry me no matter how desperately I imagine it, how sure I am that my life with Natalie Portman would be completely perfect.

Number six is a particularly hard truth for me to face as a lesbian in NYC. Oh also, Gia, a movie that involves Angelina Jolie dating a gorgeous girl and the two of them being naked a lot, doesn't mean that Angelina Jolie is going to become my wife either. But imagining that Angelina and/or Natalie is my wife is a classic method I use to fall asleep at night, so I'm not giving up these fantasies anytime soon.

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7. Tinder still matches you up with guys even if you say you only want girls

Damn it Tinder! No matter how many times I check in my settings that I would like Tinder to please match me up with “Just Girls,” Tinder relentlessly sends me pictures of guys, which I need to consistently reject.

And sometimes I'm too busy swiping right and a guy slips through the cracks, and then I get guys messaging me saying, “So you're into girls, huh?”

Literally, almost every guy who inboxed me on Tinder said that, and I bet they all thought they were being so clever. Sometimes I feel like Tinder is my grandmother in its utter and comprehensive ability to accept the fact that I'm not interested in dating guys. Get it together Tinder. I'm gay and plan to stay that way.

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8. Gay bars can be hella expensive

Sometimes they even have cover charges, and I've sworn lifelong antagonism against cover charges. Actually, the only gay bar where I've encountered a cover charge is Henrietta Hudson's, one of the only surviving lesbian bar in New York City.

I'll cut them some slack because I've had some super fun nights in that bar, and one time the bartender gave me free drinks, which made me feel special. I'd also like them to make enough money to continue to exist.

But Cubbyhole, a bar that only accepts cash to begin with, is an expensive bar, even though the scene is completely top-notch. So, it's sort of like a seesaw manufactured by the devil; everyone who lives in NYC is balancing on this seesaw. Everything is absurdly expensive, but also absurdly fun.

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9. Guys think you're rejecting them when you say you're gay

This harkens back to number four, which explains why you're even chugging Bud Lights at a “straight” bar to begin with.

And then when a guy hits on you, you play along, trying to have a conversation, and then he leans in to kiss you.

And you have to say, “I'm gay,” and he walks away blinking like he's a puppy you just kicked. He rejoins his friends with his head down and all, taking your sexuality super personally. Which it's completely not.

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10. Lesbian gossip is unreal

Do you remember, in number four, when we talked about the group of lesbian friends who roll up to the party squad-deep? They also all tell each other everything about their sex lives, so if you sleep with one of them, it'll only be a nanosecond before all the rest of them know.

And they won't just know that you slept with her, they'll get a detailed, detailed play-by-play. They'll know what you were wearing, who kissed who first, and precisely what went on between you.

So, if your ex is a member of this crew of lesbian friends, you should probably not sleep with another member of the crew. You should also not choose a girl in this crew as a confidant, because, like I said before, she'll tell them all what you said. Especially if you're confiding in her about one of her friends. That girl will know what you said four seconds later, and she probably won't be happy with you.

This never ends. The amount lesbian dating circles are up in each other's shit is astounding.

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11. You can't have a baby with the person you love

I'm not over this harsh truth yet. I think it's one of the saddest things. Yeah, it's awesome now, before we're really considering having a child-- we get to avoid the perpetual anxiety about getting pregnant after sex because, well, we can't.

Some of my straight friends act like a toddler on Christmas morning when they get their period, because they were petrified they'd get a baby instead of, well, four days of bleeding.

Of course, there are ways for lesbians to have children - we can get artificially inseminated, we can adopt, we can do it the old-fashioned way with a man after our girlfriend or wife said it was cool. But there's something gorgeous about having sex with someone you love, combining your DNA, and producing new life. It's like making gold from air. And lesbians don't get to do that, which pretty much sucks.

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12. When your ex-girlfriends want to be your best friend

In lesbian world, the “friend-zone” is a much fuzzier concept than the straight world, where it holds negative connotations. In the straight world, if you find yourself relegated to the friend-zone, it's usually because you've been rejected with no hope of reprieve.

In lesbian world, we completely redefined the term. The friend-zone is more like foreplay than rejection when you're a lesbian. So when your girlfriend breaks up with you, and then she wants to hang out all the time and cuddle, it's really difficult to figure out whether she's trying to get it on or whether she wants to be emotionally intimate cuddle friends.

It's really hard to figure out what she wants, and, warning! She might not even know herself.

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13. “Coming Out” doesn't magically solve all your problems

And you have to keep coming out, again and again and again. Just because you told a cousin on your mom's side doesn't mean your dad's mother knows. Which means you have to keep continuously having the same conversation with different people.

This conversation does get easier every time, but it does get tricky with meeting new people. I've actually gotten pretty good at just letting the fact that I'm gay come up organically, but it's certainly something to think about. It shouldn't be, but it is. Right before you come out for the first time ever, you're usually pretty scared. I think the expression “it's always darkest before dawn,” applies here.

Usually, a girl is coming out because she's been pushed to the brink, she can't stand to deny her desires for a moment longer, she think's she's reached the darkest point of the night. If you're a girl who got to come out of the closet by holding up the hand of another girl and saying “we're in love,” you got lucky, because a lot of us lived under the skewed impression that we'd find love immediately after coming out and most of us, well, didn't. But after coming out, we are so much closer than we were before. So, so, so much closer.

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14. There are still bigoted assholes

Ellen Degeneres was recently criticized for “celebrating her lesbianism.” A pastor accused her of “promoting a gay agenda,” which blows my effing mind. Would this pastor rather six million American children commit suicide a year because they're too afraid to be who they are? Because that's what's happening now.

Ellen Degeneres is a hero, as is every single other lesbian who stands in the limelight and proudly proclaims her gay identity.

I know from my own experience I never would have had the courage to “come out” if there weren't older girls I'd gone to camp with and looked up to, who had the tenacity to do it first. Every person who can stand match a closeted gay person's fear and self loathing with pride and self-love is a hero. Why should anyone ever feel bad about his or herself for being gay? Why wouldn't everyone deserve to fully experience love? Really, why? I can't think of a single reason.

If you enjoyed this article, check out 13 Obnoxious Things Lesbians in NYC Are Sick of Hearing!

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