"Could I, maybe, um, be bi?"
Looking back over 25 years of queer denial
Unlike a lot of trans men, I did not first identify as a lesbian or bisexual. I couldn’t recognize my queer sexual orientation, including my attraction to women and nonbinary people, until I started living in my transgender identity. That was after 20 years with my ex-husband; we split in 2019, just after I dropped the last bits of denial.
If you want to keep a secret, you must also hide it from yourself.
George Orwell, 1984
2005
I spotted Jo through my living room window while my toddler played beside me on the couch. Jo, bundled in her jacket against the remains of the Connecticut spring, her short, ash blond hair moving gently with the breeze, chatted with a redheaded mom. Many of the moms (and all the Mormon moms) in the Whitehall student housing complex were wives of grad school students, like me. But some of us—Jo and I—had other ambitions.
She earned an MFA and now taught English at a small college while her husband earned an MBA. I worked part-time and would start a double master’s in the fall while my husband of six years was in a PhD program. I watched Jo watch her son toddle about. She scooped him up before reaching a rain puddle. Our schedules had changed, is all, making it harder for me to spend time with Jo.
The schedule change happened to correspond with my leaving the Mormon church where we had met. I lost many of my church friends once I stopped attending services. They stopped inviting me to their wholesome social gatherings. But the hurt from losing Jo was different. I couldn’t tell her about the weight she left in my chest. I couldn’t tell my husband about the weight Jo left in my chest.
I asked my online ex-Mormon friends if the weight was jealousy, if, maybe, “could I be bi?” A straight woman wrote, “Unless you want to eat pussy, you’re not a lesbian.” I tried to pictur—a full-body, visceral disgust hurled the thought away.
2007
Amber took the Amtrak up from Manhattan to stay overnight with me when I had business in New Haven. It was the first time meeting her IRL, after months of mutual ex-Mormon raging and processing online. We had Indian food on York and got happy-drunk on cocktails, swapped stories about post-church shenanigans and faltering marriages, and revealed desires we hadn’t shared in our emails, blogs, in the forums.
Like mine, her husband was her first and only; we agreed we had married too young. Divorce would be easier for her, though; she had no children, and I had my kindergartener to think about.
“My husband is just going through a hard time,” I told her. “He’ll get back into grad school. We’ll come back to New Haven, and everything will be ok.”
Later, I snuck Amber into the hotel room that my office had booked for one. My ears tingled as we changed, our backs turned in modesty, my body sensing her body. Neither of us wore the Mormon undergarments anymore; her sleep shorts exposed most of her thighs. I climbed into the king-sized bed, thinking nothing of two straight women under one comforter; that’s not weird, right? My husband and I use separate blankets, but he runs hot, I run cold.
Amber turned away, “Good night.” The ceiling swirled above me. I imagined grazing her arm with my fingers, scooting close to her, kissing her bare shoulder, spooning. Our husbands would never know, I thought on the edge of sleep. It would still be cheating—I’m just drunk—I don’t know how—not with a woman.
2009
Cait and I found each other in the crowd, halfway up the mini staircase to the raised study area, beaming after nailing our final presentation. This was the last final for my master’s degree, free until graduation.
Graduation. Goodbyes.
My heart raced, my cheeks burned. I won’t see Cait again. We’d spent hours together on this project driving to Hartford, sometimes stopping for dinner, Guinness on tap, and easy conversation. She was the first lesbian I knew to get married—in those years when marriage equality was a patchwork quilt of states. She’d been kind and patient to answer my earnest but ignorant questions. I was thrilled for her.
I considered proposing we get a celebratory beer, just a couple of pals. My husband was home with our 6-year-old; I could get away with it. I turned to her to ask, and I noticed her light brown hair down from her usual ponytail—what a cliché—I longed to dip my fingers into all that hair, cradle the back of her head, lean down and—I almost toppled forward from the urge to kiss her. I white-knuckled the railing as she said goodbye and I said nothing. How could I have said nothing?
How could I have said anything? We’re both married.
Later, I lay awake next to my husband, my body thrumming through my first lesbian fantasy: I ask Cait for that beer and halfway through the second pint, the chemistry overrides sensibility. Leaning her up against the wooden panel wall in the windowless darkness of Anna Liffy’s basement, my fingers sliding through her hair, inhaling her exhale, I dare to bring my lips to hers.
2013
In the small Tanzanian town I moved to for my dissertation research, a Tuesday evening party at the international school teachers’ apartment wasn’t out of form. No need to stall the adult Halloween costumes and drinking until Friday. My draft dissertation was on my advisor’s plate and I was keen to let loose, celebrate. I was flattered the expat teachers had thought to invite me.
Maria, a 5-foot-nothing Filipino American who taught IGCSE English at the international school, answered my knock. She raised her glass to beckon me in, mediocre wine sloshing over the rim onto the wooden floor. She was wrapped in black cloth from armpits to upper-mid-thigh. My ears felt hot.
Two, maybe three, glasses in, my eyes focused on the cardboard-and-tin-foil Apple icon taped on Maria’s back. “Oh, you’re an iPhone,” I said like I’d won a prize for cleverness. I then glimpsed the bull tattoo on her naked upper back and said something stupid like, “Have you always had that?” and brushed the black ink with my fingertips.
Now aware of her body, of her smooth, tan skin, her short-cropped black hair, the cloth stretched across her hips, disjointed bits of data tried to click together in my brain. A wave of tingling pulsed through my chest, up into my head; my ears prickled, my fingers itched.
She looked over her shoulder into my eyes like we both carried secrets. Eye contact is so intimate—I’m an ally—I’ve never noticed how hot you are—I’m drunk—pretty sure I didn’t say that out loud.
Later, Maria asked me, “Is kissing a woman allowed in your marriage? Would your husband care?” They all knew my husband; all the expats knew each other, at least by reputation. Was this question hypothetical or did it have practical application, had they talked about me, about this?
I said, “He very much would care, a kiss is a kiss, even if it’s a woman.” I said, “My pixie haircut, tomboyish clothing, and you-walk-like-a-boy gait turn lesbian’s heads back in Baltimore’s gayborhood. It makes me smile. I’m in good company, I figure, even if they are mistaken.”
2014
Back in the States for my postdoc, I volunteered at the HRC booth as an excuse to attend Baltimore Pride. A young woman carrying many booths’ worth of swag stopped to hear my spiel, “What do I gotta do to get a shirt?” she said in a Baltimore drawl. Passersby earned a branded tank top—a bold yellow equals sign on a blue square—if they donated $5.
“Contributions will fund the fight for employment non-discrimination at the state level,” I recited.
She crinkled her face, “What?”
“People can get fired just for being gay in 32 states.”
“Oh! That’s awful,” she said, “but do I have to be gay to sign up?”
I held out a pen, “Nope, I’m straight, I’m just an ally.”
The Pride outfits—skimpy, sequins, lavish, leather, raunchy, rainbow; glistening foreheads, chests, thighs; open displays of affection. I’m not in Kansas anymore, Toto, galaxies from Utah and Tanzania—if my younger Mormon self could see me now.
When tomboys, butches, and smooth-cheeked androgynes passed by, my head swiveled, eyes following them up the path and out of sight. Flitting like a butterfly: do I want to be them or fuck them? Or both?
2019
In my red theater seat at Center Stage, I lost myself in the story and music of Fun Home. Medium-Alison has her first queer bedroom scene with a classmate, Joan, in her dorm room and sings Changing My Major (to sex with Joan). Alison sang and I gawked at the stage and my body burned with a frenetic energy, surging up and down my chest, legs, head. I’d never felt it like this before, not in the 20 years with my husband. My body was stock-still on the outside but hyperalert. I’m married. I’m married. To a man. Alison stands at the foot of the bed and after belting the last line, parachutes the blanket off Joan’s legs, dives headfirst under the covers and—scene! Blackness.
How did the bright explosion inside me not blind the audience while they sat clapping in the darkness? How did anyone not feel the heat pulsing off my body? I commanded myself to remain immobile as the thrill rushed into my head and back down to my toes, radiating pleasure and Knowledge: I want to do that.
1995
The last time I saw Angela, I stood in the chaos of the church grounds, sweating in the July sun with dozens of other tired, dirty 15-year-old girls, scrambling to grab our stuff from the belly of the bus. I watched Angel weave between the maze of duffel bags, pillows, sleeping bags, those asthmatic foam mats. She found me standing guard over my three days’ worth of gear, suffused with the after-smell of campfires.
Angela smiled, her blonde, unwashed hair falling past pale blue eyes. She dropped her gear next to mine, swiped the stray locks from her face, and tucked them behind her ear; I tracked each movement.
“Found you,” she said. I let out the breath I was holding and mirrored her smile. We turned to keep a lookout for our rides and watched our cabinmates exchange their gushing teenage-girl goodbyes and promises to keep in touch. She and I shared a smirk: what girls.
“I definitely want to stay friends with you,” she said under her breath, leaning close to me. Her interlocked fingers twisted and strained against each other. Or were those mine?
When we had met during cabin intros, she scared me a little: her black hoodie, the tough stance and tight nods, are those four—five earrings in her left? How did we go from strangers to giggling over the grapes that had gone a little fizzy, leaning in, our blonde hair falling into one curtain? Our shoulders and legs touching at the picnic table as we tapped and passed in the Cup Game with the other girls.
We snuck out one moonlit night to push our hands into drying cement under the pines. Using my left fist for extra pressure down onto my starfished right hand, I looked up at her. The aspens quaked their whispers in the wind. Angela gazed back with her rainbow eyes. The silence passed between us. I didn’t breathe.
That hot morning at the church grounds, I spotted Dad stepping out of the family’s green minivan. Angela asked for my number. Did she grab my hand and write her number on my palm, or is that a moment my memory wrote in? We lived ten minutes from each other in the same suburban sprawl along the I-15 corridor but attended different high schools.
“I for sure want to see you again,” she said.
A chemical sensation flashed from my torso to every extremity. A guillotine sliced the air between us, severing the bond. My legs craved to sprint and my face was hot—not from the sun. I couldn’t muster words. I bobbed my head like a boxer dodging under a jab, picked up my things, and shadowed Dad.
Angela called—only once—a week later. She talked about getting together. I don’t remember what I said.
What did she hear in my voice: Apathy? Loathing? Fear?
Thank you for being vulnerable with us ❤️