Blue ink

On the second girl I loved

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I didn’t know, when I was a child, that I would grow up to write and speak of my homosexuality from a frame of defensiveness. That is the frame of bisexuality — one in which proof is demanded and no proof feels like enough. How many photos of how many exes have I posted on my instagram? How many women have I fucked and how many have I loved? The story of my homosexuality is an older story, and in its origins, the frame is not defensive. My homosexuality had the air of absolute truth — horrifying, undeniable reality.

When I was ten years old, in sex ed class, we watched a video that had clearly been made in the 1980s. In this video the adults on screen described what they called a “crush.” They said it was something we might start experiencing around this age. They said a crush was when you think about someone all the time, when you get butterflies in your stomach at the sight of someone. Realization dawned on me as I listened. Yes, I knew what a crush was. What they were describing was exactly how I felt about my best friend, Kathleen. Their next words were meant to be reassuring. The smiling faces on screen declared that these were “perfectly normal feelings to have about someone of the opposite sex.” And there it was — the terrible realization, the irrefutable proof.

The story of how I ended up with my first girlfriend is so good; it sounds like a movie. Though there are details I leave out, for simplicity’s sake. I want it to be a feel good story, the icing on the homophobia cake. But I’ll tell it to you straight. I always had a crush on some girl. A hopeless, impossible crush. This time it was Carolyn. I wrote her name in blue ink inside a heart just beside my hip bone with a ballpoint pen, hidden from sight. I leave this detail out when I tell the story because it aches with too much longing. I leave this detail out because I don’t want you to know how many girls’ names I have written on my body in secret. Her name was still on my hip when I heard her talking about a boyfriend in the city. And there it was — another straight girl. Of course. What was I thinking? How could I be so stupid? (And the shame — the unspeakable shame. All that longing, all that desire — unwelcome, unwanted.)

I had years worth of diaries with scrawled handwriting and constant swearing lamenting my life inside the closet. From ten to fourteen I didn’t say a word to anyone except in the strange new world of the anonymous internet. But it didn’t matter. I emanated gayness. I was teased as all strong girls are teased. I was called a lesbian. One day in science class I snapped. I said yes, yes I am a lesbian. I remember the worried look on Kathleen’s face as it became less clear that I was joking. The boy who was teasing me kept asking me if I was serious and I kept saying yes. After him, it was others. Groups of them. I was a nobody weird girl in grade ten but this was big fucking news in a small town high school. Groups of kids I’d never spoken to, even older kids in grade thirteen, approached me and asked: Is it true? Reckless, I just kept repeating Yes.

By the end of the day the entire high school was abuzz with the news. The word dyke was levelled at me again and again. I was told I was disgusting with mimed vomiting for effect. I was told I would burn in hell. My friends told me I needed to tell people I was joking. I told them I wasn’t joking. A silence fell as glances were shared. I felt alive with some kind of power, a fearlessness I did not know I possessed. And then — the part that’s like a movie. The story I love to tell. At the end of the day as the students filed on to the row of parked school buses saying their final goodbyes, Carolyn approached me. In her hand was a handwritten note, blue ink ballpoint pen just like her name on my hip, folded in that perfect way that teenage girls did back then, into a tiny little square. She handed me the note like she was doing something daring, impossible, and I took it like I was taking the last breath before descending into water. Her eyes met mine and in that look was rebellion.