story time everyone. gather around. auntie kristin has a story to tell about when she discovered she could be a lesbian.
i was a sheltered young pup. i went to a private catholic school up until 6th grade. a school where classroom size was under 20, unless it was harvesting season and the mexicans came up to do migrant work, then we’d have ruby or raul join our ranks. oh god, i just had a flashback to when raul snuck a pocket knife into school, cut his arm, and wrote “B L O O D” with his…blood… across his desk. oh raul, such a sense of humor.
anyway, small classrooms. so small that the only mildly attractive boy/girl ended up being your crush for seven straight years. said crush was probably your first kiss during a game of truth or dare (who CARES if you were actually kissing his feet in his garage filled dead animals his father hunted the previous weekend. this was amour). this crush was also the reason you joined junior great books and dressed like a boy. because of course, if i wore an orlando magic jersey to school everyday and tucked my hair into a hat, and let my frida kahlo uni brow shine gloriously, how could he resist my sex appeal? this was before i discovered that boys who like girls don’t like girls who look like boys. it was also during a time where i decided to educate everyone in my class who didn’t know how babies came into existence by drawing diagrams in the snow at recess that looked a lot like this:
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but that’s beside the point. the point was that private school made me a very odd child which should have been reason for my parent’s concern. you’d think when my mom came into my bedroom to find me not dressing up my barbies but undressing them with my guy friends she would have been slightly worried. i asked her about this recently and she said, “do you remember when you asked me how babies were born?” i said, “no.” apparently i was three. and i asked over and over and over. my six year old brother hadn’t started asking, but my persistence paid off. my brother and i were sitting in front of a comic book illustrating the joy of procreation–a book which said that sex feels like a “tickle.” my mother finished the book and i said, “READ THE PART ABOUT HOW IT TICKLES AGAIN!” she said she knew then i was a pervert.
anyway, once private school ended (6th grade) i was transferred over to PUBLIC SCHOOL where educational opportunities were better (read: i wasn’t being taught by unlicensed teachers) and being a part of a sports team meant you actually didn’t get cut instead of you were recruited so that a team could exist. public school was when i decided to start wearing glitter, eyeliner, cutting my own bangs, and wearing extreme flare pants and malibu musk. i just HAAAADDDD to get a boyfriend. all the cool girls were doing it.
fast forward awhile. i had a few boyfriends here and there. most of which never talked to me, dumped me through friends, pushed me down the bleachers at sporting events, and gave me notes folded into heart shapes. but i never kissed any. until chad.
chad is that boy you know is still making women question their sexuality. he’s the guy that should have been pulled to the side at a young age and sent off to an island where he could never ruin a girl’s dreams of fireworks, romance, and scenes from disney movies. to this day the thought of him makes me cringe. if we were in a place where lex talionis ruled, chad would no longer have a tongue.
chad was my boyfriend of four days. i don’t think i had ever talked to him before, but we happened to be on a LUTHERAN church retreat. i have to be specific. catholic retreats are sexually segregated and we feel guilty for even having sexual organs in the first place, let alone desire. LUTHERAN retreats were full of soda, candy, pool tables, movies we could watch in the dark on a big couch, and limited adult supervision.
anyway, chad asked me to go for a walk in the hallway. i was so in shock that my boyfriend was actually talking to me that i agreed. he was giving me the tour of his church…what could go wrong?
i’ll tell you what could go wrong. he could bring you to the church library where he would shove you up against the stinky old books and force his tongue down your throat like a frog trying to catch a fly. and as your experiencing your first french kiss from a boy you’ve only said hello to once, all you can think about is THIS IS THE WORST THING I HAVE EVER EXPERIENCED IN MY ENTIRE LIFE.
for the women out there, it felt the way you feel when you realize you’ve gotten your first period. at first you’re kind of in shock. what IS that? and then that panick sets in. and you’re freaked out. and feel cheated. and sad. and angry that this thing your mom warned you about is here and you have to start going to that “emergency cabinet” that contains pads every 21 days.
it was also like when your mom told you that you had to start wearing deodorant because you smelled like “B-O” and you didn’t know what that was, but it sounded like the worst thing in the entire world. and you wanted to kill “B-O” so that it could never humiliate you or your armpits again. and then you cry.
it was like that. so…
i did what anyone would do in the situation. i had my friend sarah dump him for me immediately. i also went home and told my mother that i was in fact a lesbian.
long story short, for an entire year and a half i thought i was gay because the thought of kissing another man made me gag. my mom kept reassuring me that i probably wasn’t a lesbian and that grandma says not everyone likes making out. it’s normal. whatever grandma, you never had to kiss chad.
then one night i thought about what being a lesbian entailed. and i discovered leonardo dicaprio. and i decided i probably wasn’t gay, just suffering from post traumatic stress disorder.
the end.
