I Want the World to Know

Sometimes a new colleague or friend will ask for my Coming Out story. These days, the question causes a quick flicker of surprise, as I forget that I am supposed to have one. How privileged I am, and how far we must have come, for me to be able to forget, even temporarily, and just… be me.

Perhaps part of the reason for that is that I’ve grown increasingly invisible to men on the streets and in bars. So those leering invitations to be ‘cured’, those interrogations, have stopped. Occasionally, holding hands with my partner, I’ll notice people register us, react in a way which is (for most) completely involuntary; looking that bit longer, their eyes slowly processing our hands, then our faces and genders. And just like the coming out question, it causes a brief jolt of surprise- a reminder of your otherness, seeing yourself through the world’s eyes.

And when I’m asked that question, I realise that like any story, you have to choose a beginning. Though the truthful answer is that sexuality is a murky, nebulous thing, messy and complex. It’s not a neat story (though don’t we humans love those?) And certainly as a teenager it felt that my awakening to desiring other women happened suddenly one Saturday afternoon, though the truth is there were clues all along that I didn’t spot. Or I did, but only out of the corner of my eye, and I kept them in my peripheral vision, moving forwards, blinkered, so that they fell behind.

Remember crying in a pink satin dress and ringletted hair? Loving my old man jumper and holey jeans (also the ninja turtle patches that were ironed on them?) Secretly throwing a gifted My Little Pony out the window in disgust? Singing West Side Story in my mother’s dressing table mirror in a baseball jacket and Elnett-quiffed hair, desperately wanting to be in the Jets (these days of course I know the Sharks were way cooler)? Having intense crushes on girls at school in year 6, feeling a strange new feeling lying in bed, back to back in Forever Friends nighties, the flesh of our thighs touching? Then later, year 10 maybe, going to the off license to buy Smirnoff Mules (remember those?) and kissing a friend in the alleyway whilst our older-looking friends went inside, an intense ten seconds that neither of us mentioned again (until I bumped into her in Brixton ten years later and we hooked up, but that’s a whole other story.)

So to my blinkered, deep-in-denial teenage self, cycling through boyfriends at a dizzying rate, (feeling excited when I’d wanked them off behind a wheelie bin, or given a blow job under a tree, never thinking about my own pleasure, just how intoxicating it was to be wanted and seen as attractive under the all-important male gaze), the Saturday afternoon in question came as a shock. It threw me into a whirlwind of self-doubt and seemed, at the time, to change the course of my life.

My family had recently moved house, and my mum had thrown herself into the local community with gusto. She’d joined some sort of Street Party Committee, where she’d made friends with a single dad who lived down the road with his teenage children. Now mum was insisting I make friends with the daughter, who was my age, and asked us to make a banner for the street party (there was some sort of tenuous reason, like us both doing art GCSE, that adults invent when forcing children to interact.) Anyway, when I went down the road of terraced houses, and met her, she’d just had her tongue pierced and was wearing eyeliner in carefully drawn cat-flicks. She radiated sullen defensiveness, which I could already see was a carefully erected barbed wire fence to keep people out. But as we painted, and hung the banner out to dry, bit by bit, she opened up. By the end of that afternoon we had in-jokes and a plan to hang out the next day. We soon became inseparable, another intense friendship for me to add to my list of things that were definitely normal and NOT a sign of anything, and I had boyfriends so it was FINE, ok?

Then the Saturday of the street party arrived. The Saturday. It was established that she was into Teenage Rebellion and I was easily led, so soon we had stolen a bottle of wine from the party and snuck back to her house to drink it. We were listening to music, then the room was spinning, so we lay down on the bed. She was close to me and I could feel her breath, as she asked whether I’d ever kissed a girl. Then she kissed me. And we kissed for a long time and this wasn’t like with boys, this had a sweeping, fierce intensity that cut through the blur of drunkenness.

That night I lay in bed wondering what it meant. And when I saw her next I knew something had changed in me. Every time she was near me I shivered with desire. When she lay her head on my shoulder I thought I’d spontaneously combust. And so I asked her what the kiss had meant, and she shrugged it off, said it was just ‘experimentation’. I was baffled and hurt.

And then I spent the next two years writing daily love letters to her (which I never sent, but kept in a box, and then a bigger box, as they grew in number). Being furiously jealous of her boyfriends (who were never good enough). Kissing again, sleeping with her, and then not being allowed to talk about it. Basically we were in a very unhealthy relationship, and even then I realised it, so I attempted to extricate myself from the friendship, but she’d call me or write me a note with all of our in-jokes on, and I’d come crawling back, pathetically.

This became a pattern. Obviously the question ‘am I gay?’ would lurk, in the dark corners, but I could banish it with the following reasoning: you’re not gay because lesbians have short hair and sensible shoes, plus you go out with boys, you’re just in love with her, which is different, it’s just her and will always be her, because you’ll love her forever (till the veins of time run dry, the heavens shatter and God cries- that is the opening to a poem-letter I wrote, which is so hideously, cringingly embarrassing that I’ve only included it so you could see the level of melodramatic ridiculousness I was indulging in). But – amazingly- this wasn’t true. It turned out that in sixth form I would have similar feelings and even similar tortured secret fumbled relationships with other girls. I can remember going to one of those formal ‘prom’ type dances which teenagers have, in a hotel, and slow dancing with my boyfriend, my head resting on his shoulder as I stared across the room at the girl in question, making fierce eye contact with her as her boyfriend held her. Then she’d guiltily look away, and laugh with him, touch his arm, and I burned with jealous anger.

Even on my gap year, when breaking up with a boyfriend, he said he thought I was in love with my new intense-best-friend-secret-kiss-sharing-crush, and I laughed, as if this was the most ridiculous suggestion ever. Internally I wondered how he’d seen, how he’d noticed, which is hilarious as you may have guessed by now that I’m not exactly subtle or prone to downplaying things.

Then university happened and I went off to study drama (how apt, you may be saying). I spent my first year going over familiar ground- sleeping with so many men that I lost count, hoping that statistics would matter, the kissing of enough frogs. Meanwhile, guess what? I also had a secret affair with a girl in my halls, and shared a kiss with a girl who I worked in the student bar with, who had a boyfriend. After that kiss, I remember wondering if maybe- just maybe- the time had come to try meeting an actual- deep breath- lesbian. Someone who was ok with their sexuality. Someone who had accepted it anyway, unlike me, though I was finally there- wanting more than fumbles and secrecy.

One day I was walking down the road in a miniskirt and knee high boots (it was 2002, okay?) and I saw a girl off my course, stopped to chat, and she asked where I was off to. I ashamedly mumbled the name of a cheesy, naff night that my housemates were making me go to, and asked where she was going. Oh, just the LGBT fundraiser, she replied, all breezy. My mind whirled. I had seen the LGBT society adverts and posters, but had been too scared to go there alone. But she was going there! I knew she liked a bifter, so I casually alluded to having a big bag of weed and invited her and her friend over for a smoke later. And sure enough, that night, my Nokia 3330 glowed greenish-yellow and she texted that they were coming over. She stayed the night. My housemates wondered about this the next day. This was it. The moment. I summoned my courage and told them that (dum dum DUUUUMMM!) I thought I was bisexual. They smiled and said that they already knew that. What? It turns out I had only been hiding it from myself.

That girl from drama became my first girlfriend. The time came to tell my mum, and she was a bit troubled by it, as a concept. A long silence down the phone line. Then she met the girlfriend and loved her, and so my coming out was pretty easy, as they go. I guess that’s what people are asking for, when they want your Coming Out story. But they don’t begin in that moment when you tell others. First you have to come out to yourself, which is, in some cases, a long, difficult process. And you might even have to do that more than once. I’ve danced across that LGBTQ spectrum, from B to L, back to B, then Q- until deciding it doesn’t really matter to me anymore. Also, it isn’t over when you tell your closest friends and families. You come out all the time, again and again, when you meet new people, start new jobs. And for me it got easier, no deep breaths needed, until it felt as natural as saying where I lived.

Perhaps one day, we won’t need Coming Out stories, but until then, this is mine, in all its messiness.