Inseparable: Desire Between Women in Literature

by Emma Donoghue

I—an old fool—have been sipping at your mouth as if it were honey,

“We cannot say63 that because most people see things we call red as red that those who see them as violet are mistaken.”

Queers fit the vampire profile even better: a hidden identity revealed only by subtle signs, a nocturnal subculture of predators looking for naïve victims to recruit into their lifestyle. And it is hardly a stretch to draw an analogy between same-sex desire and the vampire’s thirst for blood: a secret craving for the exchange of fluids by mouth, a nonreproductive melding of bodies, associated with disease, sterility, and death.

So now I wear66 this label “Queer” emblazoned across my chest. Or I could always carve a scarlet “L” on my forehead. Why does everyone have to put you in a box and nail the lid on it? I don’t know what I am—polymorphous and perverse.