Out

My first real crush was my second-grade teacher, Miss Tate. She had frosted and feathered Farrah Faucet hair, and she wore bell-bottoms and metallic blue eye shadow.

A little later in fourth grade, I fell for my best friend, Kelly Randolph. She was tall and had long brown hair and porcelain skin. For Halloween that year, I dressed as Tom Sawyer and she as Becky Thatcher. We got to hold hands as we walked around the school in the costume parade.

It was probably also in fourth grade that a substitute teacher mistook me for a boy. I was a tomboy, always wearing the hand-me-down t-shirts and jeans from my three older brothers. In this 9- and 10-year-old period, I also sported a gender-bending bowl-cut my mom gave me in our basement. When we lined up in the classroom to go to the restroom, the sub took my arm, pulled me from the girls’ line, and put me in the boys’ line. It took the protests of all my classmates to convince her that I was, in fact, a girl.

Flash forward to middle school: I adored Billy Joel and was a great poser. I especially loved his pose on the cover of “52^nd Street,” with his loose necktie, suit jacket, jeans and sneakers. For picture day, I wore one of my dad’s dress shirts and a tie he tied for me, a second-hand men’s suit vest, and jeans. I felt like a rock star.

Some girls called me a dyke. I had to go home and ask my mom what that meant. When she told me that it meant a woman who loves women, I didn’t really get how it was an insult.

Later that same year, in an extracurricular musical revue at school, I sang the solo “Maria” from West Side Story. I was the one person in the cast who could hit all the notes and deliver the song with sufficient emotion. Parents called the school and got the show cancelled after only one performance. I guess a 12-year-old girl in leotard and tights professing her love for another girl through song was too much for them.

I am in no way equating these minor points of gender ambiguity from my life to the deep identity crises most homosexual or transgender people endure. Not at all. Aside from these bumps in the adolescent road, I have fit nicely into the dominant paradigm of binary sexual identity.

I dated men almost exclusively in my 20s, married a man, then cheated on him with another man. I look feminine, I act effeminate, and I present as female gendered in every sense of the term.

I am also very much in love with a woman.

You may remember her from my previous blog post; her name is Stacy. She is pretty much the reason I have not posted in this blog for two weeks. Since our convergence on December 2, I have thought of little other than her sparkling green eyes, her infectious laugh, and her all-encompassing bear hugs. The more time we spend together learning all the details of each other’s lives and hearts, the more certain I am that every step and misstep of my life so far have only been leading me to her.

She and a couple of my friends have asked me if this means I am gay now. I suppose it does, by definition. But I don’t quite know yet if I identify myself as such. I do not resist the term for any political reasons; I simply do not feel any different than I always have. I find women attractive, as I always have, and I find men attractive, as I always have.

Right now, the focus of my attention and affection is on Stacy. I am no longer looking around for someone else to date, be they male or female. That’s the most important point. All else is window dressing.

I think this is the thrust of what Lin-Manuel Miranda meant when he said, “Love is love is love is love is love.” I love Stacy, the person. Any details about her gender or body parts are inconsequential. I think I would fall for her if she were male, or differently abled, or from another country, or from outer space.

Love is love. Love is accepting someone for everything they are, the good and the bad, seeing all of it and wanting more. Love is knowing someone is not perfect, but finding perfection in her crooked grin, her scars, her insecurities. Love is making yourself vulnerable by laying bare all your inner shame and fear of rejection, then finding yourself enveloped in warm, sincere acceptance. Love is being honest—about everything—and receiving just as much honesty in return.

In short, I am in love. And my love is out loud. Deal with it.