just when you thought it was safe to forget about the 'closet'

Once upon a time there was a princess. She had never been locked up in a castle and she didn’t have an ugly step mother. Her step father hadn’t been much fun, but that was beside the point.
Now, she wasn’t a beautiful princess, just an ordinary lass, perhaps with a few more curves than needed, without a ship-launching smile or even good teeth. She wasn’t endowed with talents of making small woodland creatures sing songs with her or make well crafted ball gowns out of fluff, though she was a mean pizza maker, and had an A at maths AS level, but she’d never really thought of those as man-attracting qualities. Yet one day for no particular reason she began to catch the attention of some of the princes of the land.
She had seen other princesses, both friends and acquaintances, who turned on the charm when the princes turned up. They were prepared to sit on laps, laugh riotously at silly jokes, smile, bat eyelids, wear their ball gowns short at the leg and low at the top, and these techniques often worked, but this princess didn’t really think she’d employed such techniques. It could almost be said that she avoided them purposefully (though perhaps she was mistaken there?), and these other princesses did have their followers, and this was understandable, however this princess didn’t really think she made much of an effort in such areas but occasionally ended up with similar results.
These such events began to make her paranoid. She was afraid to be nice to any princes in case they misunderstood her friendliness.
The paranoia developed. the princess began to find it hard to tell if princes were being friendly or expecting more. She realised that the paranoia was over the top, but didn’t know what to do about it. She knew that it was most probably bigoted to think the princes liked her, and wished she didn’t believe it, but was afraid to risk not believing so. She knew that she was naïve and knew little of the world’s perils, and such things that surprised her were normal for many. She knew that to certain friends her paranoia was probably boring, and that it could make her insensitive, snappy or unpredictable sometimes, and she wished it didn’t. But there it was, it was true.
Eventually the princess decided that the easiest option was to lock herself away in her own fortress (not a tall tall tower due to the obvious symbolism connected to such buildings), hoping that no princes would follow her there. She understood that there were princes who could be trusted, but thought that perhaps if she were to get rid of those others that couldn’t it might mean pushing away those that could too. Again, she wished it was not true, but feared it had to be so.
But she could hope to be rescued by her own brave princess, she supposed. She resolved to start learning to be attracted to girls for real, and to wear big T-shirts and baggy trousers if ever she went out in public again.