Looking back, my story looks like a bit of a cliché. I grew up “feeling different” from other people. I attributed most of it to wanting to be just like my older brother. I get my skepticism (religious and otherwise), my taste in music (for the most part), and my early attempts to skateboard from him. The rest I attributed to my not wearing anything from American Eagle, where it seemed 90% of the people at my school bought 75% of their wardrobes.
In high school I considered myself an ally to gay individuals -- and even had a token gay friend to prove it (admittedly, I did have a pipe-dream crush on him). Bi and trans issues seemed entirely irrelevant in my little Conservative Christian farmer town, so I didn’t include them in my ally-ship. I occasionally hoped that my relationship with my best friend could be more than platonic (a word I actually learned from her, oddly enough), but I just assumed that I was straight. After all, how could certain guys give me the weird giddy feeling if I was anything other than straight? Androgynous-leaning skater boys were just my type and were no indication of a potential attraction to girls, right?
I went off to college and went through the typical “forming my own identity” schtick, but it took me two and a half years before I recognized my bisexuality. I quickly found Autostraddle, a website by and for queer women that led me directly to the moment when, sitting on my bed in my little one-bedroom apartment, I released into the ether a quiet “I’m queer!” It also caused me to fall into yet another queer lady cliché -- watching The L Word -- which I quickly put an end to in an attempt to evade an obsession with the fabled Shane (it didn’t work).
I keep my queerness fairly quiet at home, frankly because the subject hasn’t come up. It’s pretty common for me to single out a certain woman in whatever we’ve recently watched and say “I love _________. She’s my favorite,” with a ridiculous smile on my face, but the fact I do the same with men keeps my coming out at bay. On social media I’m more or less out. I often share my newest crushes on people of multiple gender identities, post links to articles about LGBTQA news and issues, and make coded jokes about my queerness. One of these jokes (in this particular instance about Natasha Lyonne’s character in Orange is the New Black) was so thinly veiled that my high school gay friend sent me a message, short and to the point: “Are you a lesbian?” I responded with the equally simple “Bi, actually,” before the conversation diverted immediately to vapid fluff.
Just like that, I was out to someone I actually knew. A tangible, real person. I was scared and excited and immediately wanted to shout my identity from the rooftops. (Spoiler alert: I haven’t.) This lack of being officially out to everyone I know often causes me to question the validity of my queerness. Am I actually queer or is this just some form of petty rebellion? But then I see a picture of Kate Moennig and know the truth. I am queer.
