Twenty hot lesbians in a cabin in the snow. It sounds like a budget porn plot from the 70s, but it was the pitch my sister gave when she convinced me to try out skiing for the first time.
I am not a sports dyke. I am a like-to-read-books-and-sit-in-saunas dyke.
But, like an understimulated editor on a slow news day, I fell straight for the pitch.
Until that weekend, I am not sure I had ever seen a pair of skis before. Skiing was for rich white Harrys and Hannahs who could pronounce Thredbo properly and point out Aspen on a map.
But, armed with some quickly borrowed snow clothes and a deep mantra of “life is for living”, I rocked up to the mountain to meet these 20 hot dykes. The pitch did not lie. Just imagine the hottest group of women and enbies you have ever seen in your life – that was them.
I am, despite how the rest of this story plays out, not a complete fool. So I did a quick lesson. Go, turn, stop. It didn’t seem that hard.
On the bunny hill, I was picking it up quickly. I was whizzing and whipping down that slope – yelling at all the slow-ass Harrys and Hannahs to get out of my way.
I was commanding the mountain. I was a natural. A ski god. An avalanche. I was starting to think about the Olympics.
So when the hot dyke crew said who wants do the next hardest, I gave my strongest, sure-fire, I’ve-got-this nod. Darude’s Sandstorm was playing in my head. I was living in a music video.
To get to the top, we had to take the longer chairlift up. When I realised this, I panicked. I felt as though I could feel my blood pumping. My mouth went dry. I am terribly afraid of heights. I had been so confident, so ready for the next run. I did not feel the same about the chairlift. I dropped my hand into my pocket and pulled out half a prescription muscle relaxant. I swallowed as we got in line.
Down the slope the dykes went, down I followed. Then wham, bam, stacked it.
Instantly, my mate Nay was by my side. I got up, dusted the ice off, got back into the skis (with help) and started again. Slowly, I came around the corner – meeting the steepest run I had ever seen. We are talking sheer cliff on one side, with nothing to stop me flying over it, and hundreds of metres of hard icy snow on an almost 90-degree angle to get to the bottom. Cool, cool, cool.
Wham. Down again. I looked down the slope. Nay, gently telling me to hop back up seemed very far away.
“OK,” I said to them. “I did take a sedative – for the chairlift.”
They blinked at me. “You’re … stoned?”
“Kinda, yeah,” I said
“Oh God,” they said.
Up I went again.
Then big wham, bam. Down again. The ski jammed on top of my knee. Pain across my tendons – tendons I didn’t know I had and certainly shouldn’t feel. The hot dyke crew all paused – waiting to see how I went, just metres away. They grimaced. I grimaced. This was not sexy.
Nay again next to me.
“I don’t think the sedative helped,” they said.
My sporty dyke cosplay was starting to wear off. I realised there was no way I was skiing down this slope. My knee hurt. My heart hurt. My pride! Sandstorm had definitely stopped playing. It was like when you’re at the club at 6am and the lights come on.
So I took the skis off, and while the dykes sang “She’ll be coming down the mountain” at me, I trudged, in my boots, wincing at the pain, all the way down. The great walk of lesbian humiliation. I had been truly humbled by the mountain.
If I was rich I would do it again every weekend.
