I just don’t understand some of these women,” she said, looking around the room at the joyful group of dancing lesbians.

The first time I thought that Olivia might actually stand a chance at survival was Sunday, the first full day of the cruise, when I attended the welcome mixer for “Generation O,” which is how Olivia refers to its precious few millennial and Generation X clientele. I’d have to come to terms with the fact that I can’t control how other people feel, can’t hold out for universal approval. I think there was also a part of me that liked tempering my fastidious long-term planning, my conventionalism, my seriousness with their wild spirits, their rejection of every social expectation. Seeing everybody swap out their board shorts and tourist tees for suits and gowns, I felt overwhelmed with care for all these women; most of us, when we were actually in high school, didn’t have the opportunity to dress according to our gender presentations or have women as dates on our arms. When Lynette came back to pick me up for real an hour later, I’d tried to pass off an ankle-length plum wrap dress and heeled sandals as formal wear.Still, in opening up my relationship — and in trying to convince myself that maybe I didn’t want marriage or kids or the trappings of conventional adulthood — I wanted to see myself as the cool, hip queer I hoped I was: someone who doesn’t have to subscribe to retrograde and patriarchal notions of what love is, or could be. There is this girl, and after we’ve been pretty close friends for a while, I realized I was attracted to her.

We weren’t allowed to have pets, but, like good millennials, we had plenty of plants, and interests outside of each other: my roller derby, their ultramarathons. I’ve happily participated in lesbian meme culture that celebrates thirsting after middle-aged actors; I’ve swooned over historical photos of ’70s butches in three-piece suits; I get particularly flustered whenever I watch or read anything about queer relationships with age gaps, like in Chloe Caldwell’s iconic novella Women. Olivia was hearing stories about the ill-fated cruise that sailed in Mexico during the 2016 election, during which the women on board managed to find a Trump piñata at port on which to take out their anger and fear.The second dinner session has just let out, and the Rendezvous Lounge (which is as tacky as it sounds) is overflowing with lesbians. They’re not a fan of weddings — the pomp and circumstance, the big, grand displays of public affection. I met my roommate, Erin, through an accepted students group on Facebook, the summer before my freshman year. I’d been up late celebrating at the wedding, slept through my alarm, and barely made my flight to Puerto Rico.

But I still wondered — as people around me whom I loved began to move away from the genders they’d been assigned — what I should be doing, if anything, about mine. Once, after I came in her hands, I burst into tears (yeah, I know, big dyke energy), and she held me tightly in her strong, sure arms. This is a way of being respectful to your roommate and acknowledging that the space is just as much theirs as it is yours.

Even though cruise companies are actively trying to capture the millennial dollar, which is sort of working, cruises still aren’t exactly a popular travel option for my peer group; we tend to favor more “ authentic” travel experiences (whatever that means). I have found love and community unlike anything else I’ve ever known in what still exists of lesbian culture, despite all external (and, TERF-wise, internal) attempts to exterminate it: the art, the literature, the physical spaces. Later that week, we’d have a couple long dinners, just the two of us, indulging in the obscene number of courses you’re afforded during a cruise meal and bonding over the strange particularities of being a professional homosexual.