Women

This Is What It’s Like To Come Out As Queer In My 40s

My early experiences of queerness could have been scenes in a cliché coming-of-age story. Open on the interior of a dim bedroom. Two preteen girls — one with a mop of dark curls, the other, me, in a crisp bob with thick bangs — negotiate who will be “the boy” in their kissing practice.

Fade to the interior of a Jeep five years later. Outside, rain is coming down in sheets. No Doubt’s “Tragic Kingdom” plays on the stereo. A blond girl with glitter in the corner of her eyes sits in the driver’s seat. Beside her is one of the girls from the previous scene, hair longer, but with the same heavy bangs. The rain makes beautiful slippery patterns on their bodies. They grip their knees to keep from reaching toward each other.

Then we see them in a bedroom, sitting on a massive waterbed. The blond girl reaches toward the other one, kissing and grabbing at her breasts, giggling. The other girl pulls away. Then there’s a montage of the blond girl skinny-dipping with groups of other teens, dancing naked with a group around a bonfire, her and the girl with bangs making out with different guys on opposite sides of the waterbed, and finally, after a tearful argument, the girl with bangs walking away.

In the mid-’90s, while I was struggling with guilt and confusion over being attracted to a girl — and her attraction to many people simultaneously — the term “queer” was shifting from an insulting label to an empowering verb as a new framework, queer theory, was uniting academics interested in sexuality and gender that fell outside of heterosexual norms. “Queering” was about more than just sexuality and gender, it also subverted the dominant culture’s position on sex and relationships, what families looked like and how they were formed. It challenged conventional narratives about identity, monogamy and more.

I was far from ready for such an unconventional lens. Just kissing a girl felt like dangerous boundary-crossing, but the girl I was kissing was ready to throw off the whole structure of heteronormativity. Unable to understand each other’s perspectives, we broke up, and, at 15 years old, I went back to dating men. It was easier than figuring out my sexual identity.

I never thought of myself as gay back then. I was attracted to men, after all, and bisexuality was treated with deep skepticism in the ’90s. The few gay people I knew all explained themselves by saying their sexuality wasn’t a choice. As someone who was attracted to…

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