Welcome to “The Q”.

The Q is the brainchild of a 20-something, self-identified lesbian living and sometimes loving in that perilous and glorious city of London. The Q may be my thing but it’s not about me; it’s about all of us. It’s not my story, it’s all of ours and that’s kind of the whole point.

Nowadays you can find online hubs for everything. No matter your sexuality, gender identity, religion, race or creed. No matter your interests or your pet peeves (or even if you just like to look at cats on YouTube), there will be a page for you. But I’ll be damned if I can see a page for us. All of us. Cosmo was the first major magazine that really started talking about sex and it’s making big strides in its LGBT stories but it’s still a publication for girls. Diva is great and a much needed support group for lesbians and Men’s Health seems (I mean I’ve never bought it, for obvious reasons) like a good shout for the guys out there. But where’s the one for everyone?
Well, that’s what I’m aiming for with “The Q”. To share stories and thoughts about our own individual experiences, learn about people from different walks of life and explore the vast history of our relationships and communications. I want to learn about the history of our kin and how it came to be that we are where we are right now. Maybe, in looking out at everyone else, in learning about adventures past and the leaps towards our future, we might learn something about ourselves today. Maybe, as a straight, cisgender male you might realise you have more in common with that Cuban male-to-female transwoman in her 50’s than you thought. And maybe that’s just bloody great!

As an umbrella term “The Q” is an exploration of human sexuality, interaction and identity. It’s a question that asks who we are and what we represent. It aims to explore and educate: to give everyone a platform to share and connect and with that, to learn what makes us so different, so vast and so expansive a race, may well be what connects us all in the end.

At its heart though, “The Q” is about love.

That physical love. The arch of a back – that bead of sweat dripping down your spine that only works in that one context. The moment of blindness and loss of control the French call “the little death” but some just call a great fuck. The elation the first time you hear those three words “I love you” spoken back to you and the rush of endorphins that seems to always come next.
It’s that moment you lie next to someone and just know you are exactly where you need to be in that moment in time; with exactly the person you’re meant to be with. It’s planning for the future and staying in the moment. Slipping that wedding ring on their finger and knowing it’s forever or smiling to yourself as you do the walk of shame at 10am on a Saturday morning and wondering what this new, exciting adventure could entail.
It’s also heartbreak. It’s that cocktail of numbness and despair as you look into the eyes of someone you know, you just know is perfect for you and you could be perfect for them if only they’d let you. It’s listening to that KT Tunstall song and understanding perfectly the notion that, either literally, or figuratively, the person you want so badly is just too far away. It’s knowing that something can’t happen but feeling your entire heart and body literally screaming to make it so! And it’s learning that as time ticks on and the world turns, sometimes love on its own just isn’t enough.
But it could be, if only they would just let it in.

I’ve been called a lot of things over the last couple of years. In the awakening of my journey towards discovering my sexuality and thus my sexual identity, I’ve gone from the coy, semi-asexual girl who never really ‘got’ what sex was about, to that lesbian who never shuts up about it. I’ve lived, I’ve loved, I’ve fought and I’ve fucked and sometimes I’ve been hurt so badly I literally didn’t see how I would get through the next few days.
I’ve been called a player, a Casanova and (a little unfairly I think, ladies) a Shane. What I am though, most of all is a romantic.
Through various experiences of mine over the last few years I’ve felt myself harden. The world does that to you, doesn’t it? You live and you learn to protect yourself, for better or for worse. Sometimes I wonder if all that ‘protecting’ is the source of half our problems anyway. But when it comes down to it in the end, no matter what…I always fight, with all my heart, for the possibility of love, and the prospect of making it so. Maybe that makes me an idiot, but that is who I am.

I’m an idiot who is a jaded romantic, a heartfelt cynic, and a girl who likes to fuck!

I don’t think it’s only men who get horny and women who want to settle down. I don’t believe that most fetishes are as marginalised in the population as we like to think. I don’t believe being gay is evil, I don’t believe that sex is a sin. I don’t believe that transgender issues should be pushed to the side and I don’t believe that women with a y have any greater say in feminism than the rest of us girls.

And so, I welcome you to “The Q”. A mishmash of articles about lust and love and everything in between. I hope that as this grows and expands everyone will find something to take from this site and this blog and I hope that eventually it will grow beyond me and my musings and other people will feel able to contribute and add to the discussion.

Happy May everyone.

Be safe x