Mascara Lesbian: Nipple Confidence

It's rampant in LA.

The past several days, I’ve been thinking endlessly about nipple confidence.

I hadn’t thought about nipple confidence since I was a teenager watching Showtime’s The L Word.

In the series pilot, there’s a scene in which the main characters sip lattes and collectively wonder why it is that Shane, the lesbian fuckboy of the group, scores every woman under the sun.

After a pithy debate, they conclude it’s because Shane has “nipple confidence.”

The episode unfolds and we get to get to know Shane; a sexy waif cruising around LA, breaking hearts whilst braless in a flimsy tank top cut low past the ribs, side tit exposed, hard nipples poking holes through thin cotton fabric. (Dykes like that *always* have hard nipples, it’s a lesbian phenomenon).

At seventeen, I was so overwhelmed by the hormonal angst that flooded my system whenever I watched the show; there was no space to analyze the nuance of nipple confidence.

All I knew was that I liked nipple confidence.

And wanted it.

For myself.

And maybe the girls, I’d hopefully, one day, sleep with.

Oh, the exhausting plight of the baby dyke: do I want to be her or fuck her or both?

The years flew by, I grew up, and lived out my teenage dream: I had sex with women. Fell in love with women. Fell apart over women.

The L Word went off the air after six life-affirming seasons, and it wasn’t long before nipple confidence was nothing but a mere fever dream of seventeen.

Until this Saturday, that is.

When I found myself, now a seasoned thirty-nine divorcée, smack dab in the middle of LA’s very own “Dyke Day.”

Dyke Day, I’ve come to learn, is an annual LA pride event, beloved by the lesbians of the Western Hemisphere.

It’s text-book lesbian, but in a way that’s uniquely California: thousands of dykes gathered harmoniously in a sprawling park, where they pitch tents in the grass and spread out beach blankets and share vegan meatballs and spiked kombucha with their neighbors. Rescue dogs freely roam the wildflowers fields and the air smells of hummus and pussy, the “eau de parfum” of the lesbian.

I arrived at noon with my New York friends.