One evening, Kate showed her boyfriend a video she had just received in an email. Kate and Stanley were an ordinary couple. They had been together for almost three years, and their relationship was great. But their dynamic as a couple was about to change drastically.
"Who is this woman?" Stanley asked his girlfriend, Kate.
"I don't know," she replied. "It was just a random video attached to an email. Nothing harmful."
Indeed, the video seemed harmless enough: a beautiful woman in a low-cut dress speaking calmly about joining something called The Cult of Lesbos — a religious organization neither Kate nor Stanley had ever heard of.
Stanley frowned. "Lesbos... Isn't that the name of a town in Spain?"
Kate chuckled. "No, it's actually an island in Greece, near Turkey. It was home to the poet Sappho, who wrote about love between women. That's where the word lesbian comes from."
"You sure know a lot about this stuff."
"My best friend Annie's a lesbian. She told me about it."
The video continued to play. The woman in the dress spoke passionately about the beauty of the female form and the supposed ugliness of the male body. Her voice was hypnotic, her words oddly persuasive.
She ended the video with a declaration: "You know I'm right. You too have lesbian desires. Embrace them, and join the Church of Lesbos!"
Stanley burst out laughing. "‘You too have lesbian desires!’ Seriously? Well, I do love beautiful women… That’s half the definition of a lesbian, right?"
Kate grinned. "And I am a woman. That’s the other half. I guess that makes us both half-lesbian. Maybe we should join the Cult of Lesbos."
"Or… we could forget this weird video, enjoy our evening, and make sweet love like a good old heterosexual couple, as we've done for almost five years."
Kate leaned in, eyes sparkling. "I like that idea. Come on, big stud. Make love to me like it’s our first time."
Stanley swept her into his arms and carried her to the bedroom. They undressed each other, laughing between kisses, until their bodies met in perfect rhythm. Their passion was intense, familiar, and yet tinged with something the video had awakened. At the peak of their pleasure, both closed their eyes, and, for the briefest moment, imagined themselves as two women, tangled in desire, joined by a shared longing. In their minds, they weren’t Stanley and Kate anymore, but two sensual souls exploring a new kind of love on an island shrouded in mystery.
Exhausted and satisfied, they drifted into sleep.
That night, they both dreamed of a sunlit island filled with beautiful women. They could see it clearly but no matter how hard they tried, they couldn’t reach it.
And in perfect unison, still sleeping, they whispered: "Yes… I will join the Cult of Lesbos."