Commencement by J. Courtney Sullivan Page A

family rec room their junior year. Sex with Doug had always been exciting, dangerous. But there was little real pleasure in it. Neither of them knew what they were doing, and poor Doug came after a minute or two every time, yelling out “Sorry!” with his final thrust. This thing with Lara was another world completely. They continued for hours, with lips and fingers everywhere, and when they were done, they lay naked, exhausted, wound together in Lara’s bed until morning.
    At first, Bree could not bring herself to tell the girls. Not because she thought they would judge her, but because she knew that theywould want to talk about it constantly, to analyze it like they did all their other relationships. They would want the story of Bree and Lara to belong to the group, while Bree believed it should be hers alone.
    Lara didn’t buy it. She had always known she preferred women, and she’d come out to everyone in her life back in high school. “You’re afraid that if their perception of you changes, you’ll have to change your perception of you,” she said, not harshly, but with understanding. And of course it was true. During the first couple of months they were together, Bree would only allow Lara to sleep over if she snuck through the back door after everyone was asleep. Once, a fire alarm sounded in the middle of the night. Bree begged Lara to stay in the house, picturing the looks on her friends’ faces if they were to run outside together. It was only a drill, but she instantly regretted what she had done.
    The next day over lunch, Bree decided to come out to her friends. But it wasn’t a coming out, not really, she told them. She broke the news quickly—she and Lara were now a couple—and then, before taking a big bite of her turkey club, she said, “So. What’s doing with everyone else?”
    “What’s doing?” Celia said. “Umm hello, you’re a lesbian. That’s what’s doing.”
    “I am not a lesbian,” Bree said with a smile.
    “Did you have sex with a woman last night?” April said.
    “Yes. And this morning.”
    “Show-off,” April said.
    “Then you’re a lesbian,” Celia said.
    Bree laughed. “But how can I be a lesbian if I still really really want to marry Brad Pitt?”
    “Good question. I’ll have to get back to you,” Celia said.
    And that was more or less that.
    What followed was a blur of parties and concerts and dinners in the dining hall spent holding hands, unafraid. Bree knew they were one of those couples that were so touchy-feely that other people had to look away. She didn’t care. This feeling was what she had always dreamed of.
    They were together for the rest of their time at Smith andachieved all the milestones of a couple, while posing as friends to the world outside the college. They met each other’s families, they said
I love you
, they read aloud in bed, and made love for hours on end. They fought sometimes, but mostly they laughed. No one had ever made Bree laugh the way Lara did. They shared a Southern sensibility, inherited from their fathers, that was devoid of the political correctness that saturated most conversations at Smith. They laughed over how their grandparents would react to typical Smith terms like “heteronormative” and phrases like “Gender is fluid.” They agreed that women who started off any comment in class with the words “I feel” deserved to be dragged out and shot. “It’s not a therapy session, it’s History 203,” Lara would say.
    Bree had always told the girls that commencement would mark the end of her relationship with Lara. She had told Lara this, too, but Lara never seemed to believe her, or if she did, she didn’t want to think about it. Some women came to Smith and realized that they had been lesbians all along. Bree was not one of them. There was a name for girls like her: SLUG. It stood for Smith Lesbian Until Graduation. She wasn’t the only straight woman on campus in a full-fledged relationship with a gay