In 1998, I sat in a stylist’s chair and took a photo. Pixie Cut and Gwynes Paltrow She gained popularity with her sliding door in the movie. You may remember the movie. Among them, the life of Paltrow’s character is divided into two parts. In one version, you make a subway when the door is closed. On the other hand, she doesn’t. In the version where she makes the subway, she certainly arrives home earlier than her boyfriend expects and finds him in bed with someone else. She leaves him, shortens her hair and begins a new life. In other versions, she returns home as planned, maintaining her long hair and fantasy.
My stylist first staged a mini intervention. She told me I could Please give me that haircutI didn’t have Gwyneth Paltrow hair so I don’t look like Gwyneth Paltrow. Anyway, I did it. She was right.
Whenever I cut my hair, and now, a small part of me doesn’t believe that a new me is about to appear. Then the next day I realize it’s just me… I’m cutting my hair. That’s a difficult lesson: you can improve and change. But you are still you. With highlights. New job. Bold lips.
Last year I ended my four-year relationship with a man who is a New York police officer. That was the longest relationship I’ve ever had. And it was long enough. I lived alone for 25 years, protecting my time and independence. And I was honest with him from the jump. I never lived with a man and I had no intention of living with him now. But he also had a belief in how love transforms a person. Otherwise, gradually predictable life mergers are inevitable. But the truth is, I was still me… with my boyfriend. Perhaps later than I should have, I canceled it.
They say you can’t decide to turn the switch over and become gay. To be fair is not exactly what happened. Over the years, I had strong feelings for a wide range of women. I kissed my best friend in college, fell in love with folk singers in my 20s, and even my bisexual wife, bored in my 30s, took into account the exceptions that stood out in the best cases.
After all, I’ve been dating a man for the rest of my life and never questioned it in a real way. There were no other people either. And this is how the idea of who you are can be set: zero evidence of the opposite. Even women I found attractive for reasons I couldn’t be articulated seemed to reinforce my heterosexuality. woman A person who looks like a man.
Yes, that’s not what it means.
A month after my breakup, and, interestingly, a week after I hosted a friend’s gay wedding – by chance? – I turned my date search over to women. Just to see.
Most of the profiles didn’t appeal to me. And I saw she: Bleached pixie cut, woman with blue hair wings above her eyes. She didn’t look like a woman, she looked like a nymph. The fairy will seduce you with yellow wood and keep you as a lover in Nick’s belly for 100 years old.
Matched. I gave her a fair warning that she was the last person to meet. First of all, I was not gay. What’s worse, I had just broken up with my long-term boyfriend.
“If I was one of your friends,” I wrote, “I would tell you to run.”
Anyway, we met for coffee. A week later, for brunch. I felt like I was applying for a job that I didn’t qualify for. We kissed shyly on the corner of 72nd and Broadway.
“Do you like her?” asked my friend. “I mean, do you want to go on a date with her or go shopping with her?”
I didn’t know. Part of me believed that there were no lesbians on Earth to take me seriously. What should I do? When I had a man of many years to explain?
The Blue Fairy texted me the next day and said I was in her heart. “I was thinking about your hair,” she said. “I like that.”
“Why aren’t you coming tonight?” she said.
“That’s true,” I replied. “Should I cook dinner?”
“Let’s skip dinner,” she said.
SOS, I sent a message to a friend.
“It’s okay!” they told me. “enjoy!”
She arrived at 6pm and I had to get off the ceiling to answer the door. I know you don’t drink, I said, but I need it.
I almost died a dirty martini in the kitchen and sat by her on the couch. It felt like I was preparing to swing my legs on the fence to jump.
And she kissed me. When I say I feel like I’ve just emerged from a league of 10 under the sea, I try to resist all the exaggeration. As if I had never breathed before and never got enough air.
The next day was April 8th, but I remember it because it was the day of the solar eclipse. And while Manhattan was not in the entire path, the light went down like a dimmer switch and the colour was flattened to sepia tone. My friend Kim and I were sitting on the wall in the park, alternately peeking through the sun through the flimsy glasses swaying in bright cuticles.
“So this is happening,” she said. “right?”
Saying yes was a terrible understatement. of course, yes. I never felt any more yes.
After a few minutes the sun was bloated and the colour was back, but it didn’t look the same.
When I say “it’s coming out,” it’s not that I’m holding a secret. Like a unicorn in my kitchen, like I stumbled over something incredible. How did you get there? What would I do with that? And I want to tell everyone I’ve ever known.
I can’t speak for all the later lesbians, but I think it was pretty easy. When I told my friend that I was dating a woman now, it seemed like he showed me a brunch with bangs. They are Oops, I wasn’t expecting that, but the key is that you like them.
People quickly gave me out – saying things like, “You may not be gay, you may just be in love with this person.” But I didn’t need to protect from it. I felt gay was right. It’s like saying you might like this omelette. That may not mean anything else.
No, I’m sure I like eggs. period.
It shocked me and everyone else as I fell towards my heels for this blue fairy. I was historically and historically slow to assert my girlfriend’s mantle and disgust to let go of my single status. Yes, I wanted to be her girlfriend. Right now. When I said she could move 10 blocks from her apartment all the way to Brooklyn, I couldn’t accept it.
I was different from my girlfriend. I told her that she was the only person to me and I believed it.
This was probably my problem! I wasn’t lonely, I wasn’t a terrible commitment – maybe I was free Gay. And now I was accepting who I was, so certainly this would fix everything.
But deep, I was always worried that I was smart enough, not enough, not smart enough, but simply had a new fear: Gay sufficient. I was gay because of her, that I was simply gay by the association.
It didn’t take long for the red flag to come out and the blue fairy to reveal herself as a master manipulator. July, built on a crazy state: she accused me of having a “wrong attachment style.” I accused her of asking for more than anyone could give. We were probably both.
You know where this is heading. It ended quickly and furiously, as it began. It was the most unbearable division of my life.
For my life, my fear of my commitment was summed up in my belief that I would disappear into my relationship with a man and stop being. And what was causing me now was that if I let her go, I thought this gay version of me would go with it.
It took me a while to realize that without this person I could still be gay. What I was really crying was the loss of something I couldn’t actually lose: myself.
There was no need to make my girlfriend gay, and there was no need to change it. In short, I was still free myself…with a new sexual identity.
A year later, I’m happy to report that I’m still here. I’m still gay. Same hair. New day.
her sisters and Terry (right).
Happy Pride Month!
Terri Trespicio is the author of Unlock Your Passion: How to Create a Life That Is Important for You. Her tedx story, Stop looking for your passionIt has been viewed over 8 million times. She is also the founder New Rules Studiolive, real-time writing workshops to get the job done. She won an MFA in creative writing at Emerson College and lives in Manhattan.
PS “What nine movies and shows with gay characters mean to me” and “Little Gay House” in Portland, Oregon.
(According to illustrations) Julia Rothman For Joe’s cup. )
Source: Cup of Jo – cupofjo.com
