There's a lovely woman I know through Facebook.  I'll call her Belinda.

I recently made some status updates on Facebook that referenced my civil union last month.  In response, Belinda sent me a private note. 

"I don't want to sound ignorant or insulting, but I didn't realize you are a lesbian," she wrote. "I guess your devotion to Duran Duran is what threw me off." (That was my favorite part.)  "Anyway," she continued, "I was wondering if any of your other FB friends (who don't really know you, like me), questioned you like I am."
 
In a later note she wrote that she's "fascinated by gender performance, sexual preference and issues of that nature, especially all of the ambiguities therein" and expressed a hope that I would write a personal essay about it.

So I guess this is my very first blog entry by request.

I didn't take offense to Belinda's message.  In fact, I was impressed by her frankness.  I don't have any shame issues around my sexuality, so it was no more insulting than if she'd written to say, "I didn't know you were blind/Asian/from the South/a mother."  (And just to clarify, no, I am none of those things.)

Actually, I have wanted to write about this, for quite some time.  Some people do seem gobsmacked when they learn I have a same-sex partner. 

I guess I come off as very straight.  And that's O.K. by me.  I'm not out to make a point about my sexuality or anyone else's by looking or acting any certain way.  I couldn't care less how I "come off", really, except that I resent the whole idea of labels ("labels, schmabels" as Belinda put it) and the stereotypes into which many people (gay, straight, and everywhere in between) expect other people to fit. 

Yes, that's right.  There are gay people with certain expectations about how other gay people "should" act, too.  And I find it ignorant, unsophisticated, and irritating.

I remember being in my early 20s and sitting along a banquette at a lesbian nightclub called Hepburn's in Philadelphia.  I was there with two friends; a very "gay-looking" gay woman, and a gentle giant of an African-American man, gay and Jewish in a beaded yarmulka. 

A female ambled over to us.  She was what you'd call "butch" in the extreme.  Everything about her was harsh-looking.  She wore a wallet on a chain, her hair was dyed platinum and cropped ultra-short.  Her eyes were small, narrow and dark like a rodent's.  Her nose was long and thin.  Her teeth were small and perfectly even; their edges looked sharp enough to engrave small keepsakes.

She leaned over me and thrust her face close into mine, scowling.

"ARE YOU GAY?" she demanded.

I immediately felt foolish.  I didn't know what I was.  I usually dated guys, but I felt like I could be...well, anything.  I was flesh and nerves and thoughts and emotions and electrical impulses.  And all of it was caught off-guard.

"I..I don't know..." I stammered, trying to pull back and put some space between us, though it wasn't easy.

She shook her head and cackled.  She looked at my lesbian companion and said:

"Certain people just have no business being here, ya know what I mean?"

To my dismay, my friend nodded, like she understood.

So for a long time I felt like I wasn't "allowed" to have a sexual and/or romantic relationship with anyone but guys unless I was willing to cut off all my hair, start listening to Melissa Etheridge 24/7, wear plaid flannel shirts and take up hiking.  I'm still angry about it.  Today, I'd tell that bitch where to get off. 

Belinda was curious about my sexuality, and asked me politely to clarify it.  I'll try.

I recently got civilly united (married, if you want to look at it that way) to a woman.  However, in my 39 years of life, I've dated mostly males. 

The "mostly" part is the result of:

a) having spent eight of my adult years in a committed relationship with a man; and
b) having lived in a highly homophobic household for all of my teen years and the very early part of my twenties.  Since I liked guys, it just felt easier back then, and safer, to stick with them.

So that you'll understand what I mean in part B, I offer a true story.  It was the day after Thanksgiving, I think.  I was a young twenty-something and still living with my parents.  A group of us were gathered around the dining room table playing Pictionary: me, my then-boyfriend Rob, my mother, my aunt, my sister, my brother, and a friend of my brother.  My dad was sitting in a recliner in the next room, watching TV.

Someone brought up Madonna.  Opinions began to flit back and forth across the table -- she was a trendsetter, she was a skank.  And purely as a joke (because while I dig Madonna, I don't really diiiig Madonna), I said, off-the-cuff:

"Well I'd do 'er."

That was all.  

I'd do 'er.

Really, I was just kidding.

I think my mother, aunt and boyfriend all groaned.  My sister, in her teens, went stiff in her chair, palms flattened to the air as though pressing it away from her, to the left and to the right, and bleated in staccato:  "I, did NOT, just, hear that."

The next thing I saw was my dad's face, arms and torso flying towards me across the table, like an evil, angry, moustached Superman sans cape flying at me in 3-D.  His hands went for my neck, and as he groped for it, one of his hands pressed my Adam's apple and it produced a weird sensation in my throat, like the bonging of a bell.  My boyfriend immediately shot out of his chair and I remember his voice shouting "Whoa whoa WHOA!"  Rob was trying to push my dad off of me; my mother and aunt were trying to pull my dad back in the opposite direction.  And then he said, with stiff jaw and spittle forming at the corners of his mouth:

"If you wanna be a fucking faggot, you won't do it under my roof!"

My mother kept saying his name, "Larry, LAH-ree!"  Once they'd separated him from me, my mother said wearily, as though scolding a dog, "Oh, Larry!  Go sit back down and watch TV, for Christ's sake...".  She sighed heavily. 

And that was just a joke.

For the most part, I liked guys.  I was even engaged to marry one, but for various reasons I called it off.  When I became an unattached woman in New York City (who also happened to be estranged from her parents -- their choice, and ironically, it had nothing to do with sexuality), I broadened my dating options to include women.

When I met my now-partner Lori, her face made me instantly happy.  Big warm brown eyes, a kind smile.  Even my grandmother, who has since passed away, observed sweetly in her child-like dementia, "This lady has a nice smile.  Doesn't she have a nice smile?" 

Lori brings out the best in me, because she inspires me to practice love, kindness, patience, understanding -- all on her.  She makes me want to practice those things.  Every day, I put more of that good stuff out into the universe, simply because she's in my life.  And it spreads to other people.  It would be a greater effort to suddenly switch to total bitchdom just because I've turned away from Lori and towards someone else. 

But am I gay, bisexual, or what?  Do I have to choose?  Must the gender of my partner dictate my status?  Does any of it really matter in the grand scheme of the universe?

Even when Belinda wrote to me and said she didn't know I was a "lesbian", I kind of laughed.  Neither did I!  I mean, I guess technically I am.  I go to bed with a woman every night.  And I don't mind being called a lesbian.  But perhaps I confuse people like Belinda because lesbians don't often sit privately in their living rooms and shriek over Duran Duran videos.  Do they? 

Do lesbians maintain crushes on Johnny Depp, Colin Firth, and the Dyson vacuum cleaner man?  Sometimes when I'm feeling down-in-the-dumps, Lori scans the web for particularly hot pictures of John Taylor and Simon leBon and e-mails them to me.  And I love that. 

Am I straight because I've enjoyed the way a cock feels when it's just the right length and thickness and stiffness so that I can really feel it filling me, because I loved that sweet ache when the head went a little too deep, because I loved feeling the thing trembling and jerking inside me when it exploded? 

Am I straight because I've enjoyed the moment when I first took a cock in my mouth and he gasped like a little girl?  (Or does that make me a pedophile, along with the 30-inch-tall Shirley Temple doll in my bedroom?)  Am I straight because I know exactly how to give a downright artistic blowjob and have the instincts to know when every little move I make is precisely the perfect one for that very moment in time? 

Am I straight because I loved how my soft, supple skin and abundant curves poured over a masculine body?  Am I straight because the very contrast of my femininity against a masculine figure magnified my own beauty and sexuality to me, made me enjoy my own body as much as his?  

Am I straight because I've enjoyed being wrapped in stronger arms than mine?  Because I've treasured the sound of a deep voice laden with emotion reverberating through my body, or breathed down my neck? 

Am I straight because I think "Jane Eyre" and "Pride and Prejudice" are the most romantic, heart-throbbing love stories ever written?  Because I have a t-shirt that says "I (heart) Mr. Darcy"? Because I decorate, sew, and shop?  Because I've got a Hello Kitty rice cooker? 

Or am I gay because I don't like the idea of having a dick head jammed into the back of my throat?  Because the idea of swallowing makes me want to vomit?  Or because I almost never paint my fingernails?

Maybe I'm gay because muscles do absolutely nothing for me.  Because when somebody looks at a guy and says he has a "great ass", I have no idea what they're seeing -- to me, they all look flat and potentially hairy.  Or maybe I'm gay because I fondle boobs other than my own and like it.  Or because the place between a woman's legs can be sweet as candy and smell like flowers, or in some cases, Italian herb crackers, and not in a bad way. 

Am I gay, perhaps, because the sensation of my buttery body writhing against another woman's is deeply arousing?  Because I love the way my partner's hair falls over her face when she's laying on top of me?  Because some mornings I can sit there and watch her sleep, and run my fingertip along the curve of her uncovered hip or the line of her calf and feel like my eyes will never get enough? 

Is it gayness to be proud of my artful ability to bring my partner to mind-altering orgasm because I understand the terrain?  Because innately I know how to move, how and where to apply pressure, when to ease up -- drive her manual transmission with awesome expertise on a road like a silk ribbon all the way to the finish line.  Is that irreversible gayness?

And what are you -- gay or straight -- when you realize one day, hey -- my labia are like deflated balls, and my clit is essentially a tiny little dick!  Are you just a little bit gayer because you can conceive of that clit being longer and extending from your body, because you can imagine a dark silky place like a giant curved tongue engulfing it, and understand how pleasurable that would be?  If you suddenly get a clue about what it feels like to be a guy, should you throw away your heels and have an operation?  Does it make you more gay than straight to be a woman who can imagine having a cock of her own, and the thought of having it sucked is a major turn-on?  But if the idea of wearing a dildo does nothing for you, are you back to hetero again?  

Are you gay when you're a straight woman who sucks her man's nipples? 

If you're a woman who had girl-on-girl action only once, in college, and liked it, but then got happily married to a man, can you still claim straightness?  Or have you been checking off the wrong box? 

Having written all this, would you believe it if I said I'm really not that sexually-driven?

I like having sex when I'm aroused.  I don't get aroused every day.  Blame it on my English bloodline or the anti-anxiety meds.  Either way, I can't say I'm unhappy.

Other stuff gets me excited, too.  Ideas.  Solutions.  Imaginary characters.  Psychology.  Mysteries.  How things work.  Second-hand furniture.  History.  Making things. 

And just because I can potentially enjoy sex with a male or female doesn't mean I'm a horndog.  I'm not jonesing for everyone I meet.  Shit, I'm so self-centered, most of the time I don't even notice you people.

I'm attracted to intelligence, cleverness, personality, something in the eyes.  Especially brown eyes.  Something about the way a body occupies space in a room.

At the same time, though, I can be non-romantically, non-sexually "attracted" to people with intelligence, cleverness, great personalities and pretty eyes and want them in my life.  I can feel warmly about them, love them, even love touching them without it being sexual.  I feel that way about people I admire, friends, children.

I'm simply not hot for everybody I lay eyes on.

It pisses me off that there are still so many rubes in society who see a same-sex couple and immediately think of fucking.  Perverse fucking.  The thought of gay sex makes them squirm with unease (or sends a shiver down their spine that's not altogether unpleasant, and that in itself disturbs them, so they instantaneously repurpose the feeling as disgust).  Their uneasiness drives them to wage war on The Gays. 

I find it all so stupid, especially since sex is a relatively small part of my same-sex relationship.  Most of the time, we're busy talking.  And laughing.  We laugh a lot.  We also comfort, inquire, make plans.  We snuggle.  We buy groceries and put them away.  We watch American Idol.  We agree, we disagree.  We compare notes.  We read to each other.  We take turns cleaning out the hair trap in the shower.  We drop in on her elderly parents.  We share Duane Reade Rewards points.  We spend time with friends, separately and together.  We maintain our own interests.

Is that so creepy?

And yes, it's true that by making a sexually exclusive commitment to a woman, I've cut myself off from sex with men.  But if I'd happened to fall in love with a man (which has always been possible), married him and agreed on complete sexual fidelity (which is my style), then I'd also have made myself unavailable to other men.  And to women too, for that matter.  With every commitment, you sacrifice something.

Oh, make no mistake.  I'll have crushes all right.  By the dozens before I'm through.  But I figure I'll just work them out in fiction or something.  Do you know how many times Rachel Maddow and I, and Michael Johns and I, have fallen madly in love in my daydreams? 

So there it is.  I'm a girl who most definitely likes boys and is in love with a woman.  She's a woman who's rather boyish herself sometimes, but I prefer her to look like a girl.  What does it all mean? 

I wish it didn't have to mean anything.  I wish ignorant grown women from Texas wouldn't snicker and try sneaking pictures of my partner and I holding hands on a tour bus.  I wish politicians didn't want to deprive me of my human rights based on the gender of who I love most.  I wish certain militant dykes wouldn't eye me so suspiciously, like a light-skinned mulatto sneaking into the back row of a KKK meeting.  I wish old white ladies' faces wouldn't drop so dramatically when it dawns on them that Lori isn't just my roommate. 

I wish people could all just be people without one's methods of reaching sexual climax being a big fucking issue.


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Read also "Lust, Kindergarten and Davy Jones"!