i have never once in my life doubted I was gay when I was alone.
it was with people. maybe at a club when I was feeling insecure in my too-tight shirt surrounded by men, on my mother’s couch when she told me to “keep my doors open” like I was a university student picking my degree, in the car with a 20 year old boy speeding down a highway at 4am. maybe I am not gay in the basement of his parent’s house as he fucks me, maybe I do not like woman then, when I am staring at his ceiling.
i knew it didn’t feel the way it was supposed to. by it, I mean men. They were suffocating and I left when things got too serious, liked the chase, hated the sex, liked the eyes down my shirt, into my chest. maybe they could be a woman if I tried hard enough, maybe if I fucked enough men I wouldn’t like women anymore, maybe if I met the right one, the right one…
I was never straight in my friend group, always a mysterious were-not-sure reserved we don’t ask type of friend. yet, even now at 21, I find myself twisting and turning my sexuality over. I’ll pin my sexuality for later like an unfinished draft in my notes app I wrote at 4 am, turn over my sexuality like a pillow at night when you turn it over to the cold side.
And the worst thing, I thought, was that I was too gay. i prided myself on being the cool kind of gay, the boys still like her because she’s gay kind of gay, the right amount, a quarter teaspoon, a dash of salt, a recipe of queerness that appealed to the male gaze.
the gay that they wouldn’t hate me for. The kind of gay that wouldn’t get killed. The kind of gay that boys still liked and jacked off to. The “lesbian” as the top porn search kind of gay. Sexy gay, still-pretty gay, fuck-able gay, feminine gay, quiet gay, subtle gay, not-really-gay. straight.
and I was good at it too. so good at knowing the line of when my queerness was taking up too much space, too good at knowing when I was with the wrong people and too bad at knowing it was time to leave.
I was a gay that you could package and sell, accessible queerness for the homophobic, not too in your face, and commodified for the middle aged male.
when Margaret Atwood said “You are a woman with a man inside watching a woman.” she said it for me. me, still trying to please the man they packed inside me. I swear they held my throat open as they stuffed him into my stomach, I swear I can remember a dream I had of that moment at 13, when suddenly, I woke up and sat at my desk and felt like I had to fix my posture for the man watching me. had to stick my tits out, pierce my left nipple and get a brazilian.
I knew then too, i was supposed to hate myself. it was a religious act at 13, a mantra, a prayer to repeat to yourself. and some nights i found myself at the foot of my bed even though i did not believe in god, whispering words to nothing, not a prayer, but a plead that i could love someone.
but the right kind of someone.
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