I only knew how to have crushes on boys. That was the behaviour that was modelled to me. When I would get together with friends to talk about who we liked, I would say boys names. Despite feeling warm giddy feeling for girls I didn’t recognise them as crushes. Even when I did, I never talked about it to others. It was my dirty secret. Looking back, I had been secretly crushing on women my whole life.
My first real crush was one of my mum’s friends. Her name was Jo and she looked like Alanis Morissette. She was boisterous and witty and always wore jeans and a t-shirt. I wanted her to like me. I hung around and listened in to her conversations with mum. I liked it when she talked to me and I always tried to be clever and witty. I was ten, so obviously my wit would have been as sharp as a door knob but she would tell me I was cute and I liked it when she said that.
There were no doubt other little crushes before then. I remember an endless stream of girls and women from about age five that I wanted to be close to. Early on I would ask them if they wanted to be my best friend and that worked about 50% of the time. When that was no longer an acceptable way to approach people, I started hanging out in the same crowds, hoping we would get closer by association. Despite displaying all the obvious signs of having a crush on someone, I remained clueless to the fact that I was actually crushing. For a smart kid, I really was quite the dumb ass.
It wasn’t until grade eleven when I auditioned and got into the school musical that I met the first woman who I openly acknowledged I had feelings for. Her name was Kim and she was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. Up until then I could dismiss my crushes on women, but she took over my world. I needed to be around her as much as humanly possible.
Thankfully our drama teacher took high school musicals very seriously so we had a hell of a lot of rehearsal time. I didn’t know who she was but since I was one of the leads in the play, she knew who I was. By then I had become something of a personality at high school. I got involved in everything – music, sports, debating teams, public speaking, theatre sports, everything. I was one of those kids. Everyone knew me as “Spud”. A nick-name a popular teacher christened me in grade eight and it stuck around until graduation.
Even teachers supported the idea that I was some sort of genderless character. I actually quite enjoyed the ambiguity of being called Spud, but being seen as genderless made it difficult for me to understand my sexuality, or who could be attracted to me. What would they be attracted to? I am not man, I am not woman, I am potato? I would not learn the term non-binary for at least another ten years.
Musical practice fast became my favourite pastime. She was one of the chorus singers and had a small role as a musical trio in the play. I would stop everything and watch them rehearse from the wings, slightly out of sight. They weren’t particularly good at singing, but I loved it all the same.
One day someone in the cast had made mention of the fact that they weren’t very talented singers and the rumor made it to her ears. She was devastated and it devastated me to see her that way. I’d never been so affected by another person’s feelings before. I couldn’t stand to see her sad so before the bus arrived carrying all the cast members to dress rehearsal I raced ahead in my little car to buy her some flowers.
In my haste I hadn’t thought about how I was actually going to pull this romantic gesture off. I stood in the dressing room with a giant bunch of flowers panicking. FUCK, this looks pretty gay... I was absolutely not ready to out myself as a raging homosexual so I wrote a note and left it in front of the mirror. To the Top Tones,
Your singing brightens up my day.
Love,
Your biggest fan.
My plan worked. She started smiling again. She even cried. Since it was perfectly disguised by anonymous group adoration, they all smiled and cried, but i didn’t mind. I had reached my target.
Kim and I became best friends pretty quickly. She was the only one who was allowed to put my makeup on at dress rehearsals. She knew it made me uncomfortable and I hated all the fuss that people made about me wearing it. She always made sure it was done tastefully and discreetly. I would get nervous when she was so close to my face.
You want to kiss her. You want her to do your makeup because you want her to be close to your face so you can just lean forward and kiss her. You are a dirty fucking lesbian!
The voice in my head was harsh and relentless. It questioned everything I did. It threw God and sin and shame at me like I was being stoned. It drove me mad nagging me to be honest about what I really was.
After many, many awkward encounters written and directed by myself, I finally confessed my love to Kim. It was met with hesitation at first. She identified our relationship as platonic love not necessarily sexual love and I agreed, dying on the inside just a little. Eventually I couldn’t hold in the need for it to be more than just a ‘spiritual connection’ and I leaned in to kiss her. It was a disaster at first but that torture was short lived. It wasn't long before her hands started to reach for mine and we became lovers.
We spent a year in secrecy while I finished my final year at high school. There was no precedent of openly gay people at our school so it was unclear what sort of reception we would be met with. I had been voted school captain and we decided it wasn’t worth losing that title and potentially the respect of teachers and peers so we stayed in stealth mode. No one questioned us so we thought we did a great job at going under the radar.
The next year we moved out of home and set up our own little love nest safe behind closed doors. Our public profile was still pretty reserved. There we some spaces we felt ok to be together in, but we were ready to let go of each others hand at any point should we need to. Despite being in a relationship with a woman for over two years, I still wasn’t quite comfortable being ‘out’.
Apparently my sexuality was no secret. Everyone knew but didn't want to broach the subject until i was ready. I wanted people to ask me questions so I didn’t have to initiate the conversation. And so family and friends continued in silence, never discussing the big gay elephant in the room. I interpreted the silence as shame and bottled it up with my growing collection. Well played everyone, let's never do that again!
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