inkskinned:

lesbian is a porn category. i see myself at ten, hearing it for the first time on the school bus. “what’s that?” i ask. when i get home, i have to ask my mother what “gay” is, and she recoils. says it means “happy.” i trust her. i don’t know she’s not telling the whole truth. 

i don’t know that gay also means the opposite. that gay means a snort, a punchline, an insult driven in between comments as if it was the natural resort. that’s so … gay. and lesbian? lesbian is this word dripping with untouchable connotations, somehow slimy and dirty and forbidden at school. during recess, a girl accuses another of being one of them. she gets sent home and we have a talk about how this school doesn’t tolerate bad language. so it means swear word, then.

i used to find myself singing songs i’d make up about pretty girls and shame would crawl up into me until i couldn’t breathe. i forced myself to change the pronouns, even though i was alone, because some part of me knew that it was wrong to be singing about girls. that it wasn’t normal. at thirteen i said i hated boys but when people asked me if i was gay, it was asking if i was damaged. i spat out that i would never be. i couldn’t be. when boys didn’t like my friends, we’d giggle behind our hands that he must be secretly gay. and wasn’t that funny. i’d been taught from fifth grade human sexuality. no one had ever said that girls could appeal to me. 

what’s silly is that i knew when i was young and i sort of just boxed it up. i told myself it was a problem for when i was older because it was something dirty and sexual and i knew it was only for adults. at fifteen the word “bisexual” made me laugh. “choose a side,” i said. because i’d heard it said before. i only saw it mentioned when we brought up anyone slutty. that’s the thing, isn’t it? when we erase gayness from our school systems, we let kids find out through media. and gay is a porn category. lesbian is a porn category. bisexual is a porn category.

the first time i fell for a girl, i was doomed. do you know i didn’t realize it was love. do you know that i dreamed about her, made myself sick over her, told myself that i was somehow still straight, even though she made the earth move. it wasn’t until we almost kissed, our mouths minutes apart but missing each other by the bell ringing, did i find myself looking back up “lesbian” “gay” “bisexual” in google.  was i okay? was this normal? could this condition be passing? maybe i was just in a phase. everyone said bi people are just experimenting. i still wonder every day – am i really straight? am i really gay? am i lying?

bisexual is still a bad word. it reeks of that middle syllable, emphasis on sex. emphasis on our duality, on our hearts that just want happiness. bisexual is a joke. it is “i’m not into labels” on t.v. and it is “alone” in my life. it is a risk of being kicked out of either community. of belonging to none. of sickness. i say “i’m queer” a lot. recently a girl told me to stop using it, even after all the research and personal reasons i have for using it, because it’s a slur. because anything i could be is a slur. 

at seventeen i had no friends because i’d had a girlfriend. she wasn’t even actually my girlfriend, just my friend i kissed often. it was complicated. i still called myself straight then. at eighteen i kissed girls in the darkness, felt them shooting up my veins. they called it a friend kiss, so it was, because it wouldn’t be fair to them. at nineteen i dated a girl because for once i had the option. i didn’t tell my parents even seven months in. once when i am alone and a little drunk i go to see exactly what this porn would be like, if it’s something i would like. glass-eyed women with long fingernails stare into cameras, moaning. their sweat-slicked bodies don’t look like they are enjoying anything. the title reads about how two naughty married women stray from their husbands. they don’t have sex naturally. i turn it off and feel sick to my stomach for days after. when i kiss her, i see them, and i wonder if i’m doing it wrong.

i’m twenty-three and my suitemate says, “it’s not that i have a problem with gays, it’s that i can’t stand watching them do anything like kissing.” so i say nothing. my heart booms against my blood vessels. i have to turn off adblock so i can illegally stream the crystal gems. in my sidebar are girls naked and wet-mouthed and hungry, looking at the camera with letters dancing over their head. i don’t look at them. on facebook is a clickbait article about, “how all girls are secretly lesbians (and how to find out if you’re one of them).” one of them. it turns out that the way is just if you objectively find any other woman attractive. it talks about how all girls are “a little bit gay” if they’re drunk and partying. that a little gayness is alright if nobody is in their right mind. 

i see myself typing in those words once again. that frantic, panicked, scary google search. the crime i had to commit while nobody was home. because i knew. i knew somewhere that it was wrong. “what is lesbian?” my little fingers typed. i want to tell myself: don’t look, young one. turn off the screen. go outside. the answers you get will ruin every beautiful thing.