The Gay Agenda: And other things I’ve tried to Plan in Advance on Paper

           Welcome to the shit show! I say this as a welcoming to the blogosphere that I will divulge all of my inner most musings whether homo-sexually charged or not. I have wanted to create this space of characters for most of my adult life, and to be honest several years prior when I was a teenager clutching to magazines as if they were the Holy Grail. I learned from a young age watching Elle Woods visit fitness mogul Brook Windam in jail that Cosmopolitan was in fact “the bible”. However, something was constantly missing. I loved perusing the fashion that I would never afford, and the makeup that wasn’t from a drug store, but going through a self-identity crisis I was not really searching for the answers on how to remember my birth control, or what to wear to make him think you’re a “bad girl” (even if you were a 15 year old virgin). Nothing in my life could relate to these articles, and in the mass of how-to's and personal accounts there was nothing there that looked like me, I was aware there were magazines with articles that I could search for that would read more parallel to the feelings I was experiencing, but I was half of the woman this magazine was targeting, and I wanted to feel like I belonged. Mainstream journalism in these magazines was an important part of my sense of belonging, and I read these rags over and over again waiting to be called to the club, and I just wasn’t.

     I used to write “fictional” stories about being in love with your gay best friend, wanting to dress to signal that maybe you weren’t so straight, and what it meant to kiss a boy, but not think you could date a boy. I would pass these writings around my friend group waiting for them to show response not realizing I was narrating the questions inside my head, and was hoping my following would provide me with answers without me having to admit these notions were more than a little autobiographical. Years later I am stuck with the same questions, and a much bigger audience, but left with the same roadblock keeping me from sharing my perspective: Was I gay enough, and could people relate to my experience?

    To this day the standing of my sexuality has been very much been dictated on my looks, and the assumptions that come with being feminine, what the media says is a lesbian, and of course the opinions of my ex who felt any exploratory feeling I had dismissed my interest in women, and would shame me constantly. Well, surprise, I’m a lesbian by my own definition. NO one else needs to verify this, or provide an opinion because I have concluded for myself that is fact-I may have also checked Urban Dictionary. I have been with men and women sexually, I have had crushes on both sexes, but I have only ever been able to comfortably engage in an emotional relationship with women. All of these reasons and experiences, questions, and contradictions I have realized are exactly what makes me qualified to share my feelings and opinions, and validate my questions in the universe both gay and straight. Because I have struggled through the questions I am sure a lot of us share. Coming of age and maturing I have realized that anyone’s opinions are valid whether society views them as “gay enough”, or whether they choose to identify at all.

     Recently, I have gone back to these magazines that I looked to for answers and validation, and I have scoured the internet for answers to the questions I haven’t answered from time or experience (or lack thereof). Google searches, Pinterest, WebMD be damned because when I need to know how to adjust my head game for an outie versus an innie (if ya know, ya know) there is not an answer in sight. The tangible resources that think they are being friendly to sexually active women who fuck women are still painted in the eye of someone who is wearing homosexuality as a fashion statement, or by someone who can comfortably use a dildo to achieve this aerial silk yoga lesbian Kama Sutra, neither of which pertain to me. Why is it I have 100 answers to “How to make him fall back in love with me”, but no one can tell me the side effects of “uhaling” with my girlfriend, and if my attraction to the moaning of butch women says anything about my sexual dominance? I spent years wondering if having any attraction to men dismissed my feelings towards woman, and if I actually located a man on Earth to make me happy could I ignore the feelings I was having. I had no one to turn to.  Well, I may not have all of the answers, but I am here to find them together. Openly, honestly, and willing to explore if we should ever use the word pussy outside of the sheets. I am here, I am queer, and I am ready to explore “What’s in a name: Lesbian, Bisexual, Pan, Queer, Demi, A sexual, and likewise”.