It was my first university party (my only university party) where I also had my first experience of casually identifying myself as bisexual.
“So what are you?” asked Brittany, a new friend. She had announced she was straight, as had her friend. “Bi,” I replied, keeping the syllable as short as possible. I had hopes that there would be no follow-up, but she responded, “oh, no way!”, and the friend responded, “oh, so do you think Christian Anderson is hot?”
I did not know what I felt in that moment, and I hardly know any better now. Shame? Confusion? Shock, most likely, would have traversed my body. What was this new space I had entered? This conflict where I was not fighting for my right to exist against the pressures of Christianity, but where I was asked to become the entertainment?
“No,” I responded, “it’s not like that for me. I’m also demisexual, so I need a close emotional attachment to be… like, into someone.”
“Oh.” the friend responded. “Okay.”
It was December 2019, the closing years of the 10’s, the last breaths of “normal” we would breathe. I’m in the subway with my friend Kimmy. I can remember the leather jacket I was wearing, the yearning for acceptance in our friendship, but I cannot remember how Kimmy brought up the word “yaas” around me. I cringed. That word, which so many queer men embraced like a tender hug, to me felt like a violation.
“I don’t know,” I responded. “I’m… just working up to being gay enough for yaas queen, you know?”
She gave me a look, mouth slightly agape, of approaching understanding. It was a half-truth, and we could both tell. What was this “work” I was participating in? What did it mean to be “gay enough”? Even I could not say. What I knew, though, was that it flattened me. I was to be a smiling queer, a forever-fountain of positive effeminacy, perhaps an acceptance of their womanhood within myself. I could not be that for her, even for myself if I wanted to. In those days, self-expression was hard enough to achieve without an inner critic’s harsh reprimands. Being somebody else’s smile was beyond me.
“So, do you have, like, a sparkly dress in your closet?” Steph asks me. We’re in the park, her child Jonah playing on a nearby swing set with his father Jay. “Um,” I respond, “not really. But I do need something flashy for Pride maybe…”