My name is China, and I’m a 29-year-old lesbian. I can’t begin to tell you how good it feels to finally say that! It’s been a long time coming.

A year ago I was living a lie, married to a nice guy and truly believing that the Sapphic relations I’d experienced in college were just a phase, a thing of the past. Then one day, in the midst of this delusion, an angel from those past days came back into my life to save me.

In college I’d fallen under the spell of a black art and theater major named Sherri, an amazing woman with an amazing personality whom I found sexy as hell. There was no way I could have resisted her seductive powers, even if I’d wanted to.

Under Sherri’s tutelage my sexuality blossomed, morphing quickly from straight to bi to fundamentally gay. I lived for the wonderful times Sherri and I spent naked in each other’s arms. I learned to love the taste and feel of her in every way. Soon I was hopelessly in love with her.

It was Sherri who named me China. My real name, Vivian, did nothing for her. China, she said, sounded soft and sensual, like me. It thrilled me to hear her call me that, and so for Sherri I became China.

Those college years were magical, and we expected our relationship to continue out in the real world. But life can take strange twists, and I lost Sherri. I guess I panicked, and in some kind of defensive reaction ended up putting my true self back in the closet, telling myself Sherri had been an aberration. China was banished and Vivian returned. I met a guy and convinced myself I was in love and could lead a so-called normal life.

My new husband and I bought a house and settled down. Things seemed to go along okay, but after a while I got restless and found myself a part-time job behind the register at a fast-food joint. One Friday out of the blue Sherri walked into the restaurant and back into my life. The sight of her was both intoxicating and terrifying. She was even more beautiful than I remembered, more refined and elegantly severe. My heart responded at once, and so did my body. I could barely catch my breath.

She waited until I got off work and we went to a coffee shop, where I rambled on while she just sat staring at me with those intense emerald eyes. Then she stopped me cold by reaching across the table and running her dark fingers through my hair.

“I don’t think this style suites you, China,” she said. “I think we’ll have to change it, don’t you?”

I couldn’t breathe! Hearing her call me by that name brought back all the old feelings a hundredfold. Nothing had ever sounded so right.

Sherri must have taken it for granted that, after all the years and in spite of everything, we would be together again. When she spotted my wedding ring, she looked me in the eye and simply said that that would have to go. All I could do was nod.

I let her take me home and fuck me that night, and the old glory came flooding back. From the second I saw her again, I knew I had been lost all these years and now had found myself again. Or, rather, Sherri had found me.

It’s not easy to tell your husband that you’re sorry but your marriage was a mistake and you intend to spend the rest of your life in the arms of another woman. But I did it, and soon I had shed my married name as well as my original one. Now to all the world, but especially to Sherri, I’m just “China.”