National Coming Out Day

I've been debating about what to say today.

I came out for the first time shortly after my 19th birthday, and the first person I came out to was my sister. I had my self-classification moment because I was suddenly naked and in bed with a woman, and it didn't seem like such a bad idea. I have been identifying as a lesbian roughly ever since.

I didn't come out to my mother until several years later, on the phone, in a bit of a crisis, after I had just dropped a glass on the floor and was reaching to clean it up. She said, "Oh."

After several wildly unsuccessful relationships I had largely (if not entirely) given up on the idea of them altogether. It was too painful, and they only brought me heartache. (Or is that what I remember best? I don't know.) I bought a condo and settled on in for the long haul. I'm good single. I enjoy it. I toyed with the idea of dropping the label altogether. Can you be a lesbian and be single? Of course. Can you be a lesbian and be committed to not getting into another relationship? Sure. But it feels different. I wondered what it would be like to say nothing about sexual identity, to not use the terms at all, but people just ended up presuming and not questioning their presumptions, so I found that, even when I was trying to question my identity and be open to other ways of labelling myself, I kept getting shoved back into the box that didn't quite feel...right. It didn't feel wrong, it just didn't feel descriptive enough. People always started with the wrong idea.

It started with things like...if you like women, you must want to sleep with all of them. (No.) You must gawk at them on the street. (No.) I didn't even know how to express this, but being a girl seemed to help. People like the idea of a girl who doesn't gawk. It fits into a particular caring loving mode. (What can I say: I'd rather touch bodies than look at them. My eyes just aren't all that good.)

I had never slept with a man. I had never had an particular urge to do so. I was at peace with my identity.

And then...

Well, things change, I guess.

Or they don't. That's the funny thing.

I met him four years ago. We argued about academics and politics and all kinds of things, and he helped me learn PHP/MySQL. I never thought of him as someone I'd date because he's a boy, he's in Virginia, and we only really argue all the time. We stopped speaking to each other about two years ago in a fit of pique.

Then about 8 months ago we started talking again, randomly. And the first thing I said when we did was something like, "So...anything new in you life since we last spoke?" and I knew what I meant by it. I meant: "Are you dating anyone? Please tell me you're not dating anyone."

Rather than brush this under the rug I pulled it out and really looked at it. What was I feeling here? And why didn't it feel unfamiliar? Had I always felt this way about him, but I just hadn't allowed myself to feel it? Had I just had blinders on where it came to him, because...he's a he?

When we first met face to face shortly thereafter, he looked terrified and flustered and I was speechless. (Which is really saying something; I'm never at a loss for words.) He gave a wonderful public lecture and I watched him. I thought, would I? Would I really? This question threw my whole world, my whole self-identification, all my labels, all the things a person clings to as the boundaries within which s/he self-defines, into question. My response: maybe. (I have two possible initial responses: ABSOLUTELY NOT or maybe.) We talked for a while, and before he left I hugged him.

I went to visit him for a week and had a great time; he came to visit me here for Thanksgiving and we also had a great time. Things feel like they're falling into place, and it all seems very easy and natural and...likely.

I don't really feel any different. I guess I was never one to oggle women or men; so I can't say some switch has been flicked or something like that. At the moment I'm confused about what makes me imagine I'm one thing or another, but it doesn't really matter; there is this person, and I love him, and he loves me, and he is male, and that's okay. No, not just that it's okay, that's how it is, and that's good. I don't feel any different. I don't feel like my life has taken a radical shift. It's just...

He makes me happy. He makes me laugh. He is brilliant and interesting and there's never a lack of scintillatingly interesting conversation between us. He makes my life feel easy, and he falls easily into my life. It feels as if we are two radically different pieces of music with the same tempo, that when played together sound oddly whole. When he's not with me I miss him, but missing him feels like acknowledging the wonderfulness of a shiny quality of the universe.

Maybe I was never quite one thing or another from the start, or maybe I have changed over time. I'm not interested in classes of people, I never was; I'm interested in individuals and the qualities they have. I'm interested this one in particular.

On National Coming out day, I'm not sure what I'm coming out as. And I guess I've ceased to care. I think that's the greatest thing. I answer to all those names now; lesbian, bisexual, straight, I don't care. I can be any of them at any given time, they are all valid answers, they are all valid ways to be happy in the world. I could have been any of them.

Am I unique? Is this about the Kinsey scale again, am I fitting somewhere in the middle, easily classed? I don't know. How many of us can morph from one end of the scale to the other, depending on the particular qualities of any given person? I bet it's more than you'd think. What about you?