It had been coming for years but that was the first totally vivid flush of that feeling and that particular self-awareness. I was very turned on and then I had a fear of imminent doom for weeks. I was a high-school student when a girl grabbed my leg at the late night diner where we smoked cigarettes and drank coffee and played western swing on the jukebox.
It came with a kind of all-consuming but ultimately shallow guilt. I wanted badly to fit into the straight, binary world. It took a long time to be comfortable with that. I feel extremely fortunate in that I truly don’t give a fuck when it comes to the gender of the person I’m dating. I’ve had relationships with men and with women and with people who might not identify as either one of those. Identifying seemed like the death of possibility.
#Gay pride tattoo tumblr plus
I hadn’t bothered to try to publicly identify in a long time cause I’m privileged enough not to have to worry about it too much, plus I didn’t really identify as anything. I was a little surprised when, ahead of the interview, I was asked via my management to clarify for the publication how I identified, like sexually and/or gender-wise. I was in their annual round-up of somewhat well-known queer people. A couple of years ago, I did an interview with Out Magazine. The flat-out denial was actually an effort on his part towards generosity. this kind of anti-reality regularly left his mouth and it had long since ceased to hurt. Then I told him, and he sat in the maroon velour and heat for a minute before offering, “For what it’s worth, I don’t think you’re gay.” I laughed. It was the middle of the summer in a part of Texas kind of near Dallas and he had driven me from his apartment complex to my mom’s apartment complex and we were sitting in this heavy heat in his 280ZX just not saying anything for a while. It made it a little easier to tell him what might have been obvious for a long time. It was hot in the way that defeats any attempt at air-conditioning, and the heat loosened muscles and made everybody sweat equally, profusely. A long time ago, I sat in a hot car with my father and told him I was gay.