WHAMMY...

I recently ran into an old college classmate of mine and in the middle of our stale, half-assed conversation, the inevitable question arose..."Do you have a boyfriend?" I say inevitable, because I went to, perhaps, the most conservative, traditionalistic Christian college in the country, and whenever I run into people from that school and they take note of my vacant ring-finger, they inevitably believe that something is wrong. (I was not out in college, because I had no idea I had anything to be out about...but I'll get to that.) My answer to this question is always the same. "No...I don't like boys." I use this answer because it is concise, witty, and honest and I like that it puts the person on the other end of the conversation in charge of where the discussion goes. If they think that I am going to burn in a fiery pit of hell and they don't want to talk about, I don't want to talk about it either. If they think that my homosexuality is contagious and want to get out of arms length as quickly as possible, it is probably in their best interest for them to do so. If they want to ask questions because they are curious or want to know if I ever had a crush on them, I am happy to answer their questions.

Usually, the response to my clever coming out statement resembles something like "yeah, I had a feeling" or "I'm so happy that you were able to accept what we all knew" or, if you are my mother, "Thank God, I told everybody nothing was wrong with you!" (The very funny out comedian Erin Foley has a joke in her act about this very situation. Watch it!) Though I would rather receive these responses than a chair being thrown at my head or a lecture about Leviticus; it sometimes pisses me off, because I had NO FUCKING IDEA that I was a lesbian. When I was finally able to identify that the awkward, constant, overwhelming, nauseating, confusing, self-conscious feeling I was having was homosexuality, I accepted my lesbian label with open arms and (I must say, surprisingly) with very little religious guilt; however, not a second before my gay revelation did I have any sort of inkling that I was dyke.

The other day I was looking through some old pictures left on the kitchen table and let me tell you .... WHAMMY .... How the fuck did I not know that I was a lesbian? Here, let me show you...



This is when I won the state science fair in the second grade...for making a battery out of random things I found in the garage. WHAMMY.




This is when my family went to southern Oregon for summer vacation...and the only thing I wanted to do was drive giant ATVs across the sand dunes. WHAMMY.



This one doesn't even need an explanation. DOUBLE WHAMMY. (I'm not even that handsy in public at 23.)

I went to my senior prom alone and in a suit. I have never owned a pair of pantyhose, nor was there ever a time that I put on a ruffled dress without serious tears or flailing arms. I have never hesitated to make a situation more dramatic than it needed to be. I have never failed to know how a cord connects two things together or how to fix the television remote... but somehow, I had no idea that I was a lesbian.

Well, I know now and that is good enough for me.

P.S. In my defense, I am allergic to cats...