I knew I was gay when...(Part 4)

So, after those experiences and confusion, what would make me actually consider how I was feeling and who I might be, you ask? One person. Leah Mitchell*. Fast forward 4 years. It’s Spring 2009, and I’m a junior in college. Nearly all my friends were abroad, so it was a weird semester to begin with. Leah was in a class I was taking, and we had some mutual friends but didn’t actually know each other. I did, however, know she was gay. And that fact alone made me blush just by looking at her. But for whatever reason, and I’ll never know whether it was just the right time or that Leah was the right person for me to have a crush on at the time, I NOTICED Leah. And, all of a sudden, it was like, holy shit. I can’t stop thinking about this person. And, like a cheesy cliché, I started understanding all the love songs and the feelings and the crazy distracting thoughts I had about her. And the worst part? I had no one to tell! But I finally admitted to myself that shit was getting real. I spent nearly every night that semester listening to the same song and just thinking about her with terrible knots in my stomach. I couldn’t ignore how I felt about Leah. And maybe that was okay. And so began my more public coming out process, which is ongoing to this day, but whose isn’t? I never was actually with Leah, but it didn’t matter. She was my gate. For whatever reason, she was the one who made me feel like I could be gay.

I wish I could say that once I accepted my gayness, I was not awkward and asked Leah out, but that would be a total and complete lie. I was awkward as fuck. That April, my school hosted a campus-wide gay pride event. Some club had the a whole rainbow spread of different colored jello, and all I wanted was some of this jello. I realize that this sounds like a metaphor, but I’m talking about actual literal JELLO. I was so focused on this goddamn bright jello that I didn’t even notice who was running the table. As I approached the table and finally looked up, I saw that Leah was one of the people in charge. I literally stopped in my tracks and did a complete turn around and hustled away. I didn’t look back once, and I could feel my face turning red. I needed to get myself under control and fast.

I never ended up even kissing Leah, but by the time finals were over, I had actually worked up the nerve to have a conversation with her and that was enough to make me feel like I was literally floating. The conversation was utter small talk about one of our reading assignments for class, but the fact that she engaged with me at all and then SMILED on top of that was more than I would have ever expected. She graduated that spring, and I went home to a summer of The L Word and faced with the prospect of coming out to my family.**

The good stuff doesn’t come until I started my senior year of college. I came back to school SO SO ready to finally make out with an actual woman. Although my crush on Dana Fairbanks (Why, Ilene Chaiken? WHY?!) had sustained me over the summer, it would no longer do. And then, a mere two weeks into the semester, I found myself hanging out with a friend of my best friend’s. And you guys, she wasn’t wearing a bra, and I could totally tell. I was completely beside myself.  Not only was this girl super hot and smart, she was ACTUALLY gay. Trifecta! By the end of the night, it was just the two of us watching some tv show that neither of us actually cared about. ALL I could focus on was the fact that our arms were just barely touching, and holy shit, the electricity! When she finally kissed me, it was like validating everything I had been feeling for the last eight years. I felt all the feelings and was totally, at least for those moments, complete.

We didn’t work out. Turns out we didn’t actually have all that much in common, but all that doesn’t matter now. Because now, 12 years after I seriously started noticing my homo feelings, I’m with an amazing woman who makes me feel all the feelings all the time. I feel validated and like those 12 years packed with emotional ups and downs were not in vain.


**To be followed up in a separate post.

I knew I was gay when... (Part 3)

March 2005: But the feelings kept coming back. One morning when I was almost 17, I woke up feeling odd. It was a feeling I’d had before, but like last time, I was unable to place it. But as I remembered the dream I had the night before, the description for how I felt also came to me. Ashamed.

I had dreamt about kissing another girl, and not just any girl, a good friend of mine. In the latest dream, we had been cuddling. We had hung out the night before, and the dream started out in the same way. We had been huddled together to protect each other from the horror movie we were watching—I’ll admit it. I had some moves even back then. Being so close to her felt good, and I remember not wanting it to stop both in real life and the dream. But then the dream quickly progressed beyond the events of the previous night.  In the dream, we had been cuddling and, suddenly, kissing, in that way only dreams allow, without a clear sequence of events. No leaning in, no talking. Just cuddling, then kissing. Good kissing. Kissing that made me feel that peculiar feeling in my stomach when I woke up. I remember feeling panicky and trying to calm myself down. Why the hell was I dreaming about kissing girls? Was that normal? Maybe it was just my way of expressing platonic affection for my friend? I rationalized the shit out of this dream.

During this time I often turned to a dream I once had where I kissed a boy from my math class. It was my proof that I was Straight with a capital S. After all, there was no such thing as sometimes wanting to kiss boys AND girls. Actually, I think the thought that I was maybe bisexual gradually slipped into my consciousness, but I wasn’t even ready to handle that. Instead, whenever I doubted or questioned my attraction to boys or girls, I returned to that one dream. I held onto it like a life raft. And yet, my dreams with sexual undertones (or, let’s be real, overtones) featuring other girls far outnumbered my dreams where I kissed boys. 

August 2005: I was about to start my senior year of high school, and I was feeling pretty damn good about life. I had my friends, my car, and a new sense of freedom that came with being the oldest in the school. To top it off, I was dating a boy. Take that, gay thoughts! One night, before I inevitably broke up with him, we were watching a movie and snuggling in his basement. I use the word snuggling loosely. We were barely touching due to my vigilance and his timidness. Also, the fact that his multiple brothers were stomping up and down the basement stairs the whole night didn’t help the situation. But despite the barely-counts-as-snuggling, I remember that my heart was beating faster than usual and I was a little nervous. And here’s the thing, here’s how I know I was trying SO hard to be straight: even at that point in the night, I was still wondering whether I was nervous because I wanted Jake* to kiss me or because I was terrified that he would.

The night wore on and neither one of us made a move. I was both disappointed and relieved and confused. I was feeling all the feelings, guys! I wanted to have a boyfriend, because it secured my place in my heteronormative world. Talk about the majority culture ramming norms down people’s throats.

He finally kissed me after walking me to my car. I smiled and said good night, but as I got in my car and drove away, I was devastated. I think I had thought that Jake’s kiss would be a make it or break it situation. And it was break it, for sure. I felt trapped, confused, and utter dread in the pit of my stomach. I even calculated how long I could date him before it would be socially appropriate to break up with him. I wanted more than anything to feel attached to him, to want to be with him, but instead I just felt completely alone.