Since age five, I can honestly and with absolute confidence say that I wanted a girlfriend. I liked girls. They were pretty. They were sweet. They had great little smiles, pink lips and long hair that flowed in the wind like a horse’s mane when they ran. They liked to play house, practicing their future skills as proper wives with their Easy Bake Oven treats, Fisher Price sweepers and plastic dish and tea sets. None of the boys liked to play house with the girls. Someone had to be the husband. So, I “reluctantly” volunteered to be “Daddy” for a series of years until it became obvious that I was enjoying myself a little too much. But for many a recess or Saturday afternoon, I was the King of several castles and the Ken to many a school chum’s Barbie.
I remember distinctly wondering why God made me like girls. If we were made to like boys, then why did I like girls? What was wrong with me? Was there some sort of mistake in the genetic margarita of my mother’s womb that left me in the wrong body? Did liking girls mean that you were secretly a boy? The notion of “lesbian” was outside of my knowledge base. I had no idea women liked other women. The only thing I knew was that men liked women, and somehow there must be some really big mess up that put me in “this” position. I prayed every night for almost two years for God to change me into a boy. After all, I acted more like a boy than a girl anyway.
I was a true tomboy, absolutely nothing like any one hoped I’d be. They tried to make me be frilly and girlie, but I wasn’t comfortable being feminine. I’d rather be in pants and a nice shirt, jeans and an undershirt, shorts and a t-shirt. Anything but a dress!
I remember feeling so betrayed when my breasts showed up, and I had to get a training bra. Why did I want to train them? I wanted them to go away!!! Then, I figured God was some sick bastard who had made me his personal joke. He’d put me on this world to suffer for His amusement, punishing me with no hope of salvation except reincarnation, where maybe I’d get it right and end up in the right body. I struggled, successfully, making myself more and more frustrated and miserable as the years went by, and I could not stop myself from being attracted to girls, and by then, some of my teachers.
Hormones kicked in, and I was even more miserable, until one day while out with some of my cousins, I heard them talking about this girl they went to high school with named Alice. There was a huge controversy because Alice and another girl in their school had become girlfriends. She was a homosexual. I quickly went home and looked up HOMOSEXUAL in Webster’s Dictionary, and there it was. The answer. I wasn’t a joke. I wasn’t in the wrong body. I was a homosexual. I liked my own sex.
Footnote: see Lesbian. Turn pages. Wow. Not only was I a homosexual, I was a lesbian! And then followed by one quick trip to the library, and a good listen to Elton John’s “All the Young Girls Love Alice,” I started to understand. I had taken a bite of the forbidden fruit, and my eyes were opened.
TO BE CONTINUED….
