Twelve years ago I signed up for a summer program in South America. I met a girl there from Iowa on the same program. We became friends. We were out one evening and we were assaulted and robbed. Unfortunately they not only took our belongings they took our sexual innocence as well. Maryanne took it very bad, and she came to my room and slept with me that night. We were one tight knot of arms and legs and I had to hug her very tight. I didn't know what to do, except to keep hugging her and kissing her and telling her she was going to be ok and that no matter what I loved her and I would take care of her. When I woke up she was sound asleep on my chest, she looked so beautiful and innocent, I think that is when I fell madly in love with her. I held her tight until she woke up.

After that night we slept together and spent all our time together. When the program was over and we came back, she moved in straight with me, she lost a semester moving. I think we may have only spent two nights apart when she went to her mother's, I just can't think of her not sleeping with me.

We have been together twelve years now, we are so tight, I have checked with a psychologist because we have a hard time being separated, before we had to come together neither one of us ever had anything to do with another girl, but since then we have never been even close with a man. I help her find nirvana with strong caresses and lip locks, but for me it is holding on to her and masturbating myself. We are always only naked with each other under the covers, we don't look at each other, sexually. We do see each other naked of course, but in the ordinary course of getting ready or showering, but not for sex.

My therapist says that I am definitely not homosexual, and neither is she. But we only have a homosexual relationship. That I need to protect her and I've become the dominant partner, but he insisted that we are not homosexual. That this happens with women in prison.

We are committed to each other, I love her, plain and simple. Whether or not I am clinically homosexual doesn't matter, it shouldn't matter, what matters is her. In any event, as far as our families are concerned and those people that we see every day we are in a homosexual relationship, and we have pretty defined roles between us. I don't consider myself the 'male' in any way, but I guess it comes across that way, because that is how my family describes us.

So one way or the other we are going to just say that we are homosexual, bonded by something neither one of us would have ever elected to be part of. We don't call ourselves lesbians, neither one of us likes that term, or any other popular term.

If that means we are out of the closet, then we are. We are two homosexual women who are glued to each other.