It’s the time of year when I get pretty self-reflective and that means looking back to the days when I wasn’t out as queer or trans.
Now, I stayed in the closet for a LONG time. Way too long. Over 25-years too long, if I’m being completely honest with myself. But even though most of my life feels kind of like a haze due to dissociating so much from the world around me, now that I think about it there were still some pretty obvious signs that I was always REALLY fucking queer.
That Time I Rocked Out to “Bette Davis Eyes”
I used to work in the kitchen at an upscale restaurant for most of my late teens and early twenties. During those formative years I picked up a LOT of toxic masculinity being surrounded by dudes whose entire social existence circled around getting drunk, getting high, and getting laid. Yet even though I tried to walk the walk, and talk the talk, of a slick, aggressive, boisterous, party dude constantly looking for sex, there were a couple things that maybe pointed to there being something amiss in my cis manhood.
For example: I fucking loved “Bette Davis Eyes”. I mean, not just liked it, I loved it. That song was my fucking jam y’all and every single time I had a moment alone at work where I was closing the kitchen, or prepping food, or washing dishes, I had that shit blasting in my ears from my iPod, and I was shaking my ass like I was in fucking heat.
Unf!
I recently found that old iPod and holy gay, Batman…
My Closet Full of “Chick Flicks”
Hey, you know what’s even queerer than listening to “Bette Davis Eyes” at work while pretending it’s something more “manly”? Buying sappy teen romance movies and hiding them better than you hide your porn because you don’t want your friends to know that you feel feelings… or that you wish you were as pretty a girl as Mandy Moore.
Of course, I’ve since come to realize that I am actually more of a non-binary androbabe than a trans-fem, that doesn’t change the fact that I not only bought as many 2000’s rom-coms as I could… I buried them so fucking deep in my bedroom closet at the time that I’m pretty sure most of them are still back in that old house.
All Those Times I Secretly Wore Panties to School
Hey, you know what’s even queerer than a closet full of “chick flicks” and listening to “Bette Davis Eyes” at work all shift? Secretly buying cotton sports bras and silk panties to wear under your clothes to school. Now, I’m not saying that all people with a penis who wear panties are queer, but I am saying that I sure as fuck was.
The Copious Amount of Cock Sucking
You know what’s even queerer than listening to “Bette Davis Eyes” at work, hiding all your “chick flick” movies in your closet while silently wishing you were a girl like Mandy Moore, and secretly wearing sports bras and panties to school? Doing all of that AND also sneaking out of your bedroom window in the basement at all hours of the night to suck SO much cock.
No, seriously. So much. Like, I was sucking cock all through High School, almost every second day, and I stopped counting early on at the 10th guy, or something like that.
They were mostly complete strangers. People I had met through a local online cruising forum. It allowed for enough of a disconnect that I didn’t feel I needed to worry about any of my friends, classmates, or teachers finding out.
And, believe it or not, I was pretty sure it wasn’t gay cause we weren’t actually “fucking”, you know? I mean, it’s just sucking dick.
Was it all incredibly dangerous and reckless behavior? Yeah, sure. Of course it was. But as a deeply closeted, self-hating queer who refused to accept reality it was all that I had and looking back at everything now it’s just so clear to me how, frankly, ludicrous it all was.
You know what I hope for in 2018? I hope that more and more young adults don’t have to hide the music they like, or the movies they love, or the clothes that make them feel good, out of shame from rigid gender expectations. I hope that more and more schools offer queer inclusive sex ed, and sexual health resources, so that less youth engage in unsafe sex practices as their only outlet for sexual pleasure because they don’t know any better. I hope that more and more people grow up in safe and loving families, communities, and environments that are free of the toxic cisnormative and heteronormative expectations forced on us all.
Cause all of that shit is EXACTLY why I stayed in the closet so long and it needs to fucking stop.