The Story:
When I was 29 years old I fell in love with a woman and was in a relationship with her for three years. After that I dated and slept with random men, then became involved with another woman for about a year.
Am I gay? I never really thought about it before. I mean yes, in the traditional definition of having sexual relationships with people who identify as members of the same gender, I am. But also I am just myself. It is my observation that some queer people feel very much like they want their sexual identity to be a prominent and at times political part of who they are. Some queer people, as a result of upbringing or religion or just their own perceived self-identity struggle with the idea or the actions of being gay. "What does it MEAN that I'm in love with you?" my most recent girlfriend used to wonder.
I have never found questions like that confusing to me. I did not predict being queer or set out to date women but when it happened it was just normal, I was just myself. The emotional connection was amazing, since as Alef says "Girls write better love notes and give better presents" than boys, and once I got past the surprise and confusion of what to do with all those breasts in the same place when making out the physical connection was very fun too. Sitting on my couch snuggled up with a girl didn't ever seem that different from sitting on my couch snuggled up with a boy, which some would argue was perhaps easy to accept because it was taking place in private...but lying on the grass in the park, wrapped up in a blanket being cozy with a girl wasn't that different to me than doing the same thing with a boy.
During my first queer relationship I did not come out to many people, not because of shame or confusion around being gay but rather as a side effect of the relationship itself and how the two of us had met. My second queer relationship was much different and while I never "came out" in the Guess What Y'All I'm Gay kind of way, I began to be much more open with my friends and colleagues about the person whom I was dating.
Earlier this summer I left the city and moved to camp where I became a member of a brand new community. No one here knew me so I could introduce myself to them however I wanted. For the first time when meeting new people I spoke freely about my ex-girlfriends and my ex-boyfriends and I can see the ways my perception of myself has shifted as other people's perceptions of me have evolved.
The Lesson:
This morning I went to the Infirmary to see my housemate, the nurse, about a reproductive health question I had. She was taking my medical history and when she asked me about current sexual partners I explained to her my recent adventures at the river. "With a man, you?!" she said, "Whoa--I never would have guessed. That teaches ME to never make assumptions about my patients!"
I realized it teaches me never to make assumptions about myself either. Where in the past I would have guessed that being partnered with a woman was the exception and with a man was the rule, the nurse had predicted the opposite. Maybe I need to start predicting that too, or instead stop making predictions altogether and realize that I am many different things at the same time.
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