I’m a Lesbian; Here are the Boys I Thought I Had Feelings For (or: Compulsory Heterosexuality in Action)
Few people will ever know what an ordeal it is growing up lesbian. Don’t get me wrong, loving other women is great, but a lot of us take a while before we can safely do that. Even admitting to yourself that you can like women can involve some serious introspection.
A lot of this is because of a little something called Compulsory Heterosexuality. I know what you’re thinking: “That’s a lot of syllables! Talk about three-dollar words!” But really, it’s a simple enough concept. The long and short of it is that everyone is born into a world dominated by heterosexuality, and its culture has a tendency to stick.
I remember being in first grade and being told about all the “looks” boys in my class were giving me. I remember all the pre-teen magazines debating who the hottest Jonas Brother was. I remember playing dress-up games online that talked about how my tacky abominations of outfits (I was a six-year-old, not the next Versace!) would “drive the boys wild.”
Naturally, I grew up thinking I was heterosexual. Society wanted me to like boys so bad, after all. And it couldn’t be that hard.
Try to imagine my relief when I found out I could be with girls. It’s like finding out you can fly. It’s like there was this weight on your shoulders that you only noticed after its removal, and all of a sudden you’re light as a feather.
But this article isn’t about that freedom. This is an article dedicated to the mental gymnastics a younger me did to try and prove to the world (and herself) that she could like men.
(All images are from Unsplash and not actual pictures of these guys. I’m not THAT weird.)
The Guy Who Also Liked Pokémon
Yeah. You heard me right: my first flirtation with liking boys was solely based off the fact he collected Pokémon cards. Our time together was brief: he rented out the Pokémon book at the library before I could, I broke down crying, and then a week later we talked about the cards.
“He likes the same billion-dollar franchise as me,” I thought. “Surely that’s what love is.”
One time, I even felt bold enough to put my arm around him. He was unfazed. So was I: no butterflies or anything.
We were five. I transferred to another school a couple years after that.
Unfortunately, this pattern of “we have the same interests, so we must be soulmates” isn’t an uncommon philosophy for desperate closeted lesbians looking for a straight guy they aren’t repulsed by, whether they’re five or fifteen. This definitely isn’t helped by adult figures in our lives seeing us hold a conversation with a boy and immediately assume the straightest possible conclusion.
The Guy Who Liked Me First, Causing Me To Confuse Flattery With Infatuation
I remember this guy also liked Pokémon. My heterosexual self had a type. We talked about the cards. I laughed uncomfortably when he made fart jokes. He didn’t make fun of me for my irrational fear of balloons. I thought he was a good friend.
Then I made the fatal mistake of listening in on a conversation between his mom and mine.
“He writes about her, you know. On little slips of paper. He writes your daughter’s name. Sometimes there’re hearts. What a little Romeo!”
And for some reason, I remember this terrifying. He liked me: did that mean I had to hold his hand and, gasp, kiss him? Gross. I wanted nothing to do with that. That said, I humoured it in my own strange ways: he always got extra attention, through me sharing my snacks during recess or waiting with him for his mom to arrive. Then I changed schools and never thought about him again until this very moment.
Again, this one’s common. If you couldn’t care less about boys until one pays attention to you, that’s… not normal. Another very lesbian move is actually the exact opposite: being interested in a boy until he’s interested in you. I took shelter in both of these as a kid.
Wait A Minute, This One Wasn’t A Boy
I remember an awkward, dark-haired youth I became close to in eighth grade. We’d come from different elementary schools, but we clicked early on because we shared a Social Studies class and sat next to each other. There was a lot for us to talk about: we liked the same books, the same shows, and kind of gravitated towards each other in general. More than once we walked from school together to my mom’s car or something.
We eventually drifted apart. Our larger friend groups just didn’t mesh together all that well. I went off to hang out with the anime fans, as I was fourteen and thought liking Free! Iwatobi Swim Club was a good replacement for an actual personality. For a while I lost touch with this friend, but I always wondered about what could’ve been. I was pretty skittish around everyone (especially men) but weirdly at ease when it was just the two of us.
Even after I realized I was a lesbian, that sentiment remained. It hadn’t necessarily been a crush, but between all the teasing adults gave me and the idea of being around someone like that without feeling uncomfortable, I did consider it more than a couple times.
Imagine my surprise when we met again in senior year and she revealed she was a woman. I kind of connected the dots after that. No wonder she didn’t intimidate me the way men did: she wasn’t a man. That kind of explained why we’d hit it off so well. We still talk sometimes; she’s the only one on this list you’ll hear that about.
There isn’t really a moral to this story like the others. It’s just a true story and also a fun little way for me to slip in that I don’t want transphobes touching this article. Trans women are women; die mad about it.
That’s Just An Anime Character
Yeah. I don’t really have an excuse for this one. There’re actually a lot of anime characters that come to mind here, but one or two that rise above the rest. They had a couple traits in common that… well… you can just tell a baby lesbian more or less imprinted on them.
For starters, they all looked very feminine. Like, enough so you could squint and mistake them for young butches. This androgyny was key to me, because I really liked the idea of a man that didn’t look like a man whatsoever. There was a brief phase of life where I insisted real-life boys just weren’t “pretty” enough.
Another thing of note is that they were queercoded, or at least widely considered so by their fans. I preferred boys that liked to kiss other boys. In hindsight, this is probably because I didn’t like boys that wanted to kiss me. I don’t know how I didn’t realize I was a lesbian sooner.
Also, all of them were mild-mannered and non-threatening. I liked the nice guys. The kind that people on Tumblr in 2014 called “cinnamon rolls.” Do people still call things that? I don’t know. But now I feel old.
He Was Nonthreatening And Vaguely Nice To Me, Which Was Enough To Keep Me Ensnared Within Heterosexuality For A Little While Longer
Yeeeaaah. This one lingered longer than I was proud to admit. He was kind of a combination of half the guys I mentioned!
Buckle up. This is a long one.
I transferred to a new school in sixth grade, as part of some kinda-prestigious full-time gifted program. This meant I spent all of sixth and seventh grade in a tiny classroom with only other eccentric pre-teens as company. While all the “normal” kids got to mingle and go out and do whatever eleven-year-olds in the suburbs did — I genuinely have no idea what that is, by the way — I was stuck with my hour or three of homework and nineteen other eccentrics who’d somehow convinced the education system we needed special treatment.
Enter a guy in my grade who I saw fleetingly during recess and lunch. He was always followed by a mob of girls and guys alike. Not surprising — he was funny, and sweet, and I kind of envied him in a weird way which meant I was absolutely in love with him.
I remember how I decided, there and then. Yes, this is a boy I’m going to have a crush on. I’ve crunched the numbers. He is conventionally attractive and seems unlikely to hurt me. Great. Dream guy.
And I’ll admit that, for a while, I straight-up followed him around. Like a very small, very confused shadow. I watched him tell jokes and be showered in adulation. I watched him console a crying kindergartener more than once. I watched him practice his lines for the school play.
It was Wizard of Oz, by the way. And he was such a good Cowardly Lion that he was the only actor to perform both nights. That’s right: two tin men, two scarecrows, two Dorothies (Dorothys?). And only one Cowardly Lion.
We didn’t interact much. At elementary school grad (which was a thing, for some reason), we took a picture together. I still have it somewhere. In hindsight, he’d probably posed with me out of pity: I was an untreated autistic child that frequently had full-on meltdowns, and it was obvious how much I “liked” him.
But he was a sweet guy. Sweet enough that, you guessed it, my “crush” persisted in high school. We had Science together first year, and he and I frequently partnered up. People tried to use this as proof he had feelings for me, but come on. Why wouldn’t you partner up with me, One Of Those Kids From The Gifted Program Who Never Spoke To Kids Outside it? Genuinely, the only other place he saw me was in school band, where I got way too into my flute solos. I was mysterious at most, as well as a guaranteed pass in the class.
Again, though, I’m going to reiterate that he was a sweet guy. And we would’ve made a fetching pair: the jock-slash-theatre kid who falls for the softspoken supersmart music geek…
… Isn’t that kind of basically High School Musical?
Goddammit! I was almost Gabriella!
Needless to say, this crush didn’t last. I realized I liked girls, and shortly after realizing that, I realized exactly what liking someone felt like.
The nail in the coffin for my crush on this guy was during a party in tenth grade. We were playing some party game that was more or less a twist on Truth or Dare. I think it was called Paranoia?
Anyways, the rules were simple: you were given a question. You whispered the answer to the person next to you. Then you flipped a coin. If it landed on heads, your secret was safe. If it landed on tails, you had to tell the entire group. Scandalous, I know.
Because we were horrible little demon children, we played with someone’s phone instead of a coin. I don’t know how it came to that. I don’t know how between the eight of us, no one had a fucking coin. And I don’t remember whose bright idea it was to just flip a phone. But it happened. Because high school is a horrible place.
My point is: I got asked something like, “If you had to lick peanut butter off a guy’s naked body, which guy would it be?”
And I realized I didn’t want my tongue anywhere near my so-called “crush’s” skin.
I stammered out his name anyway. Fortunately, the phone landed on “heads.” No one found out I’d lied through my teeth.
Fortunately, I’d more or less connected the dots by then. That just sealed the deal. A year later, I came out to my entire school. Bold, I know.
But when it takes so long to admit something to yourself, you just want to share it with the world.
