Tell Me How You Decorate
Tell Me How You Decorate Your Lips and I’ll Tell You Who You Are
tatiana de la tierra
some lesbians are hard.
they are the ones who wear the pants and never take them off. they are the dangerous ones. the butches. the ones who get on top. the ones who fuck. who bite. who penetrate. who dominate. the ones who everyone knows are dykes.
they are the most exciting. they know how to tune in to a woman’s desire. they know how to speak to the breasts, how to persuade the nipples. they know the significance of each sound. they know how to caress and grab and eat. they know how to coax screams and calm anxieties. they know how to harden a clitoris and they know what to do with it once it’s hard.
some lesbians are dolls.
they are the ones with matching plum lips and nails. they are the ones who are painted and perfumed. the feminine ones. the ones who like being on the bottom. who open themselves to be fucked. who long to be bitten, penetrated, dominated. the ones that not everyone knows are dykes.
they are the most excitable. they know how to submit to desire. they know how to speak with their tits, how to offer their nipples. how to calibrate each sound. how to let themselves be caressed, grabbed, eaten. they know how to scream and cry. they know how to let their clitoris harden and they know what to do with it once it’s hard.
some lesbians are clay.
they are the ones who wear the pants and permit others to take them off. they are the sporty ones, the androgynous, the new generation. they are the ones who get on top and on the bottom too. the ones who fuck and get fucked. the ones who bite, penetrate, and dominate and give themselves over for the same. the ones who everyone suspects without being certain of what they are.
they are the most excited. they sing and dance desire. they speak tit to tit, buzz themselves nipple to nipple. they make sounds and caress and grab and eat each other simultaneously. they know how to scream and cry. they know how to let their clitoris harden and how to harden another one’s clitoris, and they know what to do with them once they’re hard.
Originally published:
de la tierra, tatiana. For the Hard Ones: A Lesbian Phenomenology / Para las duras: Una fenomenología lesbiana. Buffalo: Chibcha Press, San Diego: Calaca Press, 2002.