late bloomer
sometimes you have to release the drafts to move on. today class we'll review some history and ponder over the following question: how the hell did we get here? *tw: s.a. and substance abuse*
i’ve told the following story to less than a handful of people, only when in a state of crisis, but in this moment i am calm and feel as though i can see all the details clearly. i can finally sift through them with enough strength to hold myself afterwards. sometimes you just have to speak out loud for things to make sense.
picture: you’ve 17, mildly to wildly unpopular depending on who you ask, and deeply closeted yet somehow don’t really know it (you do, but you don’t, but you do). you’ve kissed close friends at sleepovers “for practice” without a second thought, and i mean really kissed, deeply, softly, and with just the right amount of tongue. that frequent youtube search “girls kissing”, that your dad discovered on your computer in the 5th grade and shamed you for?
really paid off.
before that search your kisses were mediocre at best, but you’d been chomping at the sapphic bit for a while. you’re also boy crazy. journaling about how cute they are in your loopy pretty princess handwriting since the 1st grade, always begging your mom for another notebook from the 99 cents store to do it in. another for the collection. you’d write endless love letters to every nick, john, matt, and lucas (hi guys!!) in your high school class, your prose reeking of compulsory heterosexuality with just a tinge of genuine fervor that you’re only now able to acknowledge.
there was one boy in particular you were fixated on for your entire teenage tenure. your mother even wrote your names in a heart on her vision board, your delusions genetic. his golden eyes, his dark curls, his lack of speaking directly to you even once. he was so easy to project on to, so obviously pretty in a dykish way. no wonder you threw your first party at the end of your senior year in hopes he’d show up. you’d banked on your one mutual friend being able to pull through for you and convince him to come. one night with him was all you needed to prove you were fun, that you were beautiful, worthy. that would be the night you’d hoped to shed your sad wallflower persona.
the night of your party word gets out that you are host of the following things: alcohol served speakeasy-style out of your basement laundry room because you don’t want your mom catching wind despite the fact that you don’t drink, and girls. in response a band of guys on the wrestling team show up in search of a good time. each knowing your name even less than the last. one initiates a game of beer pong, another tries to hit on your friend, a third has sex with another friend of yours in the backseat of a car that belongs to neither of them.
by almost 1 am the party had just died to all but three. that same third lingered, with two of his fellow teammates passed out on your basement couch. stratus clouds started rolling in. he offers to help you clean up the wreckage, the red solo cups and bottlecaps strewn across your backyard. you’re struggling to hold an umbrella and a trash bag at the same time. your naturally textured hair threatening to return to it’s pre-straightened state if you don’t keep it protected. he stops searching for trash in the dark and approaches you until he is within an inch of your face.
“can i kiss you?” he asks, unprompted, unprovoked.
your initial and most truthful response, is no. you’d previously attempted to say hello to him in the halls, acknowledging his existence with a smile that never got returned. he was very cute, charming even, but you were waiting, saving your first kiss with a boy for someone you really liked. someone who now looking back, for obvious reasons, did not show up.
he persisted. over and over.
“can i kiss you?”
“can i kiss you?”
“can i kiss you.”
until it no longer became a question. thankfully, things didn’t go as far as they could’ve. they wouldn’t get that far until you’re 21 and your depression is peaking, but that night they did go far enough that you spent the summer developing a penchant for lukewarm canned beer, and onion rings from burger king to sop up all the poison in your gut, and amnesia to block out the fact that he’d been sitting in the front seat of your best friend’s car while she drove, flirting with her endlessly while you sat in the back and watched, just days after what he’d done. he conveniently developed amnesia as well, forgetting your name and that night, never acknowledging it or you whenever you crossed paths that summer.
his actions singlehandedly tore straight down the middle of your friendship. you could barely stand to be in the same room as her for weeks. she was white and thin and conventionally pretty. he wanted from her what he took from you, and he was willing to be sober and polite to get it. a luxury you weren’t afforded. the two of you stopped speaking after you’d snapped under the weight of a secret you didn’t know how to tell. you wish you had the words then. you wish you had your friendship now.
summer ends and at the start of your freshman year of college you meet a nice boy in english 101, and decide you have a crush. you ask him out and he says yes under the assumption that your request to hangout was oriented towards friendship. the next day in class you overhear a conversation between him and a friend that makes you realize he’s gay. all your chips had gone into this new basket. he was kind and sweet and offered to proofread your essays. you wanted this to work so badly that it hurt. you needed to know you weren’t damaged, that you were deserving of a good time, and you are, but in that moment all you could feel was the pulsing sting of rejection. that rejection sends you spiraling all the way to a white walled room at nyu langone in the west village for 8 hours, a few blocks away from campus.
4 months later, you voluntarily get down on your knees for the first time and then experience your second assault all in the same week. a few weeks after that, you meet the first girl that affirms your queerness. she’s edgy yet kind, and out and proud. you look at her with admiration and adoration all at once. you always thought you could be gay, but never had any concrete examples to give that theory roots. sleepover make-outs didn’t count, (we’ve all seen jennifer’s body!) but that meeting changes everything. every passing thought, every tear shed, every lingering glance at someone you “just think is so cool” finally makes sense. every blank gets filled. you swear off men for the next 6 years assuming that’s why everything hurt so bad, because your gay, and not because it understandably just hurt SO bad. deciding you never really liked them anyway temporarily quells your ache like a salve, until you do.