In my early 20s, in the candlelight of a Back Bay apartment [in Boston, USA], I kissed a girl. It was immediately my favourite thing to do. I wanted my boyfriend to go away forever. Oh my God, I am a lesbian! I thought. As Jessica became my first girl, my boyfriend became, for quite some time, my last boy. Sex with him had always felt blatant and pre-configured. The sex I entered into with Jessica was a dark forest, a fairy tale you get lost in. I realised that with men, a part of my heart was on high-alert, always. With my boyfriend, some essential part of myself was not at play in the sex we'd had. Yet within moments, Jessica, this stranger, had access to it all. I was whole.
I wanted to build my life around this experience, and I did. Revising my hetero history, I decided the eyeliner- wearing goth boys I pursued in high school were simply the closest I could come at the time to a girl. I got rid of my thrift-store lace dresses and popped on a baseball cap with dyke emblazoned above the brim. I shaved my head. There I was a dyke, I had always been a dyke, and I would always be a dyke. Now, buzz off!
Coming out in the early '90s, at a time when the fight for gay rights was gaining ground, a solid, even confrontational sexual identity was demanded (we were born this way, dammit!). Anything less was seen as wishy-washy, smacking of internalised homophobia. For gay women, an interest in men marked one as a traitor to queerness and feminism. People who identified as bisexual were schemers looking to keep one foot in the world of heterosexual privilege. As for those who opted out of a sexual identity, well, they were quite possibly insane.
This story is from the July - August 2022 edition of Cosmopolitan India.
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This story is from the July - August 2022 edition of Cosmopolitan India.
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