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Notes & Queeries: Friends and “The L Word”

This is the first installment of Malinda Lo’s new monthly column focusing on the personal side of pop culture for lesbians and bisexual women.

Four years ago when The L Word first premiered, I ordered Showtime, then I called a bunch of friends and invited them over for dinner and the series premiere. Although there was a bit of dyke drama – a friend’s ex-girlfriend walked out when she saw that her ex had brought a new fling with her – we mostly had a grand old time. For the next two months, my apartment was filled every Sunday night with lesbians watching The L Word and getting tipsy on countless bottles of wine (unless we drank cocktails – I can’t remember).

But then things started to get out of hand. My friends began to invite their friends, and by the time a friend of a friend invited a woman she met at Dolores Park earlier that weekend, I knew it was time to call the whole thing off. Thus ended my short stint as an L Word hostess. It was quick, exhilarating and came to an abrupt halt because of another woman. Much like many lesbian relationships.

Since then, The L Word has played a complicated role in my life. As a writer for AfterEllen.com, I have essentially been forced to watch The L Word for my job. And as one of those contrary students who always hated any fiction that was assigned in English class, even if I might have liked it had I discovered it myself, I have developed a similar sort of feeling for Showtime’s lesbian soap.

On the one hand, there are plenty of things to analyze – this season, for instance, I’m actually intrigued by the show’s attempt at a meta-narrative about itself – but at the same time, the show often feels like an assignment to me.

I know that there are plenty of L Word viewers who feel differently. I’ve been astonished at how dedicated the fan base is, even going so far as to organize international L Word conventions. This is the kind of ardor I’d only expect from sci-fi fans – and I’m one of them.

But The L Word, for me, has never come close to my TV faves, The X-Files, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Battlestar Galactica (the Katee Sackhoff version, of course). Maybe if The Planet were actually a planet, and Jenny were some kind of super-intelligent but inscrutable alien, I would suddenly become a hard-core L Word fan. There’s something about the grandness of science fiction that seduces me in a way that a show like The L Word, with its more intimate dramas, will never be able to do.

Nevertheless, I watch the show. It’s my job. And I watch the reaction to the show, and I marvel at it. The unwavering investment in Bette and Tina’s fractured relationship, the heartfelt mourning over Dana’s death, the vitriol against Jenny – it all amazes me. These characters have clearly become touchstones for so many viewers.

The question “Which L Word character is your favorite?” – closely followed by “Which L Word character would you date?” – has become a standby getting-to-know-you question among lesbians. Even though I don’t count The L Word as one of my favorite shows, I know that I would be suspicious of anyone who answered “Papi.” (And for the record, Bette is my favorite L Word character, but I wouldn’t date any of them. Well, maybe Tasha, if I were forced to choose.)

I have found fault with many of The L Word‘s story lines, but there is one thing that I have always felt it did right. It revels in friendships between women. Many television shows have tried to do the same, most notably Sex and the City. But none have reflected the way I feel about my friends in the same way The L Word does.

I think that’s because there’s something more visceral, more familial about friendships among lesbian and bisexual women. It’s not only because our friendship circles often include our ex-girlfriends – with all those attendant layers of physical intimacy and emotional entanglement. It’s because coming out brings us together in a way that friendships between straight women do not.

We’ve all gone through the experience of discovering that our sexual orientation does not fit the norm. Some of us had more painful coming-out experiences than others, but we’ve all seen how it can twist up our biological families or the families of our friends. We’ve all felt homophobia in one form or another, and it never feels good.

So yes, I think it is about friendship borne out of shared adversity; I have felt similar connections with my Asian-American friends. There’s nothing like discrimination to bring people together. But it’s also about the experience of being women who love women. I feel as though there’s a secret, shared joy in that – we all know what it’s like to look at another woman, to touch her, and discover for the first time that she feels exactly right.

When I had a lingering cold that was making me feel quite miserable, my friend Dawn brought me her homemade chicken soup – still among the best soups I’ve ever tasted – along with mint tea and a copy of Finding Nemo to cheer me up. When I was heartbroken over a particularly awful breakup, my friend Sarah invited me to stay at her house for a week, where she pampered me with a massage, frequent soaks in the hot tub and hours spent lounging in her home theater, watching DVD after DVD on the big screen.

When my grandmother passed away, all of my friends offered their support, listening to me patiently even when I lashed out at them in my grief.

It’s no wonder, then, that in the gay community, friends do become family. I think it’s no accident that the biological families of the characters on The L Word rarely make an appearance, and when they do, it’s often in story lines about their difficulties in accepting their lesbian daughter. Unfortunately, that is still the reality for many LGBT people. Friends often accept you even when your family does not.

As the fifth season of The L Word moves into its second half, Showtime still has not announced whether or not it will renew the series for a sixth season, and I no longer watch the show with a group of friends on Sunday nights. Other things have changed as well: I live in a different apartment; some of my friends have had children; some have moved on to different lovers. And I am no longer in touch with some of the women who crowded into my living room back in January 2004.

But if this is the last season of The L Word, I think I will put on the hat of L Word hostess one last time. I’ll make dinner, but this time I’m not going to issue an open invitation – I’ll only invite the friends who make up my own chosen family. We’ll get together over cocktails (if it’s the last episode, we’ll need something stronger than wine), and we’ll watch Bette, Tina, Shane, Alice, Jenny, Kit and all their assorted lovers, friends and enemies create a fictional lesbian universe one final time.

I think it’s only fitting, because even if I never loved The L Word, I did love what it did for lesbians: It gave us a publicly validated community. It gave us the opportunity to get together with our friends, every Sunday night, and celebrate each other.

Malinda Lo is the managing editor of AfterEllen.com. Watch her on The Lo-Down or visit her website for more about her.

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