Dear Hannah, I’m Sorry I Got You Sent to Catholic School…
National Coming Out Day always makes me feel strange, because I came out when I was in kindergarten. Well, not exactly. I didn’t know what being “gay” or “queer” meant, but I did get in trouble for kissing a girl under the slide during recess. Her name was Hannah. She had long, blonde, braided hair and the brightest eyes I had ever seen. I thought she was beautiful. I thought she was funny.
And I was in love with her.
Considering we sat at different tables during school, recess was really the only time she and I got to “hang out.” We found solace under the slide on the playground, our personal Eden away from the loud boys and horse-obsessed girls that even as five-year-olds, our judgemental asses chose to avoid. We both liked watching ARE YOU AFRAID OF THE DARK? after school and thought purple was the best color, ever. We agreed that the Yellow Power Ranger was a better fighter than the Pink Ranger but disagreed on the great debate over McNugget sauces. (Sweet & Sour > BBQ, for life).
One day, Hannah asked me if I’d ever kissed someone. Not like my mom or dad, but like they do in the movies. I said no, and she kissed me. Hard. Right on the mouth. I asked her why she kissed me and she said, “Because kissing is what you do when you love someone.” So I kissed her right back.
Hannah and I kissed on the playground every day for about two months. Sometimes she’d kiss me because I’d tell her a joke that made her laugh. Sometimes I’d kiss her just because I thought she looked pretty. One time she kissed me because I scraped my knee jumping off of the swing set and while kissing my knee was super-icky, maybe kissing me on the lips would make it stop hurting. It wasn’t sexual, it was love. In the purest and most sincere sense of the word.
And then this lil’ fuccboi named Howard caught us and asked if he could kiss us too. We told him no because you should only kiss people you love and he didn’t like that response. He stomped around about how unfair we were being and ratted us out to the teacher for not inviting him to our toddler makeout party.
Apparently, men telling women what they can and cannot do with their bodies starts at a young age.
Our teacher didn’t know what to do so she called our parents to let them know we had been kissing on the playground. This would be my first exposure to the differences between secular and sacred households. My parents thought it was adorable and moved on from the situation as if they had just been told I learned to tie my shoes. Hannah’s parents took her out of public school and immediately threw her into a private Catholic academy.
Looking back, this plan of attack doesn’t really seem logical. If you’re trying to curb your daughter’s budding lesbianism, I feel like sending her to an all-girl school with uniform-required short skirts and dominant women in all black at the front of the class is probably counterproductive…but then again, my parents let me watch STEPHEN KING’S IT when I was 4 and a half so who am I to judge parenting styles?
When Hannah left school, I was devastated. My first love. My best friend. Gone. I still didn’t know what the word “gay” meant and my parents didn’t ever make me feel like I had done something wrong, but I knew that kissing Hannah must have been bad if it got her sent away. I struggled with that for a long time, and I never really talked about it as I grew up. I sort of purged it from my memory the older I got and spent most of my adolescence dating guys I didn’t like and pining over girls I’d met in my high school’s Gay-Straight Alliance.
The fucked up thing is that our school didn’t actually have a Gay-Straight Alliance. They had a weekly group session with one of the school guidance counselors and the only people invited were people that were somewhere past the halfway mark on the Kinsey scale. I never thought twice about why this group wasn’t open to the students en masse. The school gave us a group session the same way they had sessions for kids with alcoholic parents or those who were struggling with eating disorders. Their intentions were to give us a safe space to talk about our sexuality, and the discussions had in that group are ones that I cherish as core foundations of who I am as a person. It was the first time I ever talked about Hannah. The first time I learned about sexuality as a spectrum. The first time I ever said out loud, “I’m queer.”
I remember having “Gay Spring Break” with many of these people. We spent our entire spring break alternating movie nights at each others’ houses while our parents were at work. It was the only time we were able to be free and comfortable being ourselves with each other. I remember watching THE DEVIL’S REJECTS and my dad came downstairs to ask me to help him grab food for everyone. Between organizing popcorn bowls and pizza slices he asked me, “Are you all…happy?”
You know, because “happy” can also mean “gay.”
Fast forward over 15 years since my first kiss, I found myself in the bathroom at some shitty party in my college town. I had just ended things with the guy I had been seeing (see: fucking) because if there’s one thing a queer woman will tell you, it’s that once you go gay you’re…forever disappointed by the male inability to find the clitoris. Anyway.
I saw a girl across the room. She had a long, singular, Katniss Everdeen-esque braid on her half-shaved head and a full sleeve of cracker-jack box tattoos. I have never been good at guessing whether or not a girl is somewhere on the “gay” spectrum, but the bell jar tattoo she had behind her ear might as well have been the Bat-signal screaming “LESBIAN.” I walked up to her with as much swagger as a belly full of Burnett’s Vodka can muster and tapped her on the shoulder.
BJ: Hey, I love your style. Are you new?
Mystery Girl: I don’t go here. My best friend’s little brother is on the soccer team, so I’m just visiting.
BJ: Aw, bummer for me. I was hoping I’d get to see a gorgeous face like yours around campus more often. (I distinctly remember being proud of this line.)
MG: Ha! You’re cute. What’s your name?
BJ: Don’t laugh, but my name is BJ.
MG: (blank stare)
MG: Wait…like…Brittney-Jade?
BJ: (Internally: WHAT THE FUCK?!)
BJ: Uh…yeah. That’s weird. How did you know that?
MG: Because it’s me?
BJ: (blank stare)
MG: Hannah? We used to kiss on the playground? You got me sent to Catholic school?
BJ: Holy shit.
HANNAH: Yeah! Oh my god! I never thought I’d see you again!
BJ: This is insane. This cannot be real life
HANNAH: I tell that story all the time! This is crazy!
BJ: Are you gay?
HANNAH: Of course I am! Are you?
BJ: I just hit on you so what do you think?
HANNAH: Do you want to go somewhere and…catch up?
BJ: (blank stare)
HANNAH: For old time’s sake?
BJ: Yes. 100%. Yes.
…and that’s the story of the time I fucked a girl I kissed on the playground in kindergarten 17 years earlier.
HAPPY NATIONAL COMING OUT DAY!
