Being gay has never been the ideal identity in mainstream U.S. culture. Casted as the best friend, the vague partnered neighbors, or the bullied outcast, society makes its peace with the otherness of same sex desires by leaving us in the background of the heterosexual kisses in the rain. How can a heteronormative culture come to terms with same sex partners when love has become the dialogue of a man and woman?
As a gay woman, my own sexual identity was a mystery to me until high school. Unaware of stigmas or acceptance, I faced my own desires with fear and insecurity. I panicked when I crushed on boys and caught myself noticing their girlfriends as anything but rivals. Staring off into the distance, I noticed cheerleader skirts and freckled faces more than quarterback smiles and cologne. The awareness of otherness only heightened in middle school as girls paired off with boys and spoke of kisses and sex. I was falling behind on the quiet norm of heterosexuality and any sexuality at all. I wasn’t attracted to any boy and fell victim to a loneliness I attributed to my overambitious school schedule. Locker rooms began to be an open space of change that I couldn’t face at all. Eyes on the ground, I locked myself in stalls and ran out as soon as I changed.
In more than one way middle school changed me and threw me further back in my journey to sexual awareness. I desperately changed my appearance: curled eyelashes, shorter skirts, eyeliner, and fake boyfriends. I wanted nothing more than to understand and fit in. I wanted the boyfriend that would awaken the butterflies and light me up inside out. The numbness worried my mother. Questions began to vaguely hint at whether I was attracted to men and why I couldn’t seem to find interest in a boy. One song changed my life that lonely eighth grade year: Katy Perry’s I Kissed a Girl.
Life is a complicated mess for everyone and anyone. In a group of friends where the last thing I wanted to do was start a conversation over lunch about whether they also noticed the other girls and not the boys, I wondered at how much longer I would’ve lasted to come out if I hadn’t taken the plunge in high school.
So what the hell do we do as a society when I only had one song to wake me while everyone else seemed to have hundreds of years of love ballads to daydream about? I began to realize how lost I had been my entire life, how much social stigma had plunged me into a state of ignorance about something as innate as my own sexuality! I wondered why something as clear as the color of my hair now had been such an obscured mystery? Who hid it from me?
Now on a mission from who knows where, I am on the hunt for music, film, and art I can understand. Perhaps one day I’ll be able to turn on the radio and hear a genuine song about love between two people of the same sex at least 6 times in the same hour. Maybe girls kissing on screen or on the tv will stop being masturbatory material for men one day. Maybe people will stop commenting on how I don’t look like a lesbian.
I can only hope for the LGBTQA kids sitting next to their parents in the family wagon.
- Clara
Clara Acosta is a 19 year old on her way to a Froot state of mind. Grumpy most of the time, she's the sarcastic Debbie Downer of any group with an overtly sensitive set of feelings. Cradling Marina Diamandis and Florence Welch as the icons to worship, she's the friend well on her way to an existential crisis every Wednesday night.
