Gender identity can sneak up on you. It might seem like it’s one of those optional thought experiments led by academics, feminists and drag queens, but I don’t think that’s actually the case. I’d venture to say we all have an important relationship to gender identity, which is intimately tied up with our individual sex lives: Who am I attracted to, and who do I fall in love with? How do I perceive myself as a sexual being? What experiences have really stuck with me from my sexual past? Much of what drives pop culture involves gender caricature, which greatly affects how people see and often judge others. I almost feel it’s an insult to the reader to further describe this, but sometimes the most obvious things become invisible to us. Like, why are pictures of Katy Perry as common as those of any politician or religious figure? What does she represent and reinforce? Artistic expression? Um, no. The way that pop culture deals with gender is to divide us into two neat categories. Which might work if we were all permanently 23 years old and made out of cardboard.

As a gay guy, I might have to deal with this a bit more than your average straight person. The term “queer” has become widely embraced by people in the LGBTQI population, as many find comfort in identifying with the “queer community.” In almost all cases of marginalized peoples you find examples of people turning a negative identity that’s been forced on them into something positive. Amazing. But to be honest, I just don’t feel that marginalized at this point. And the terms “queer” or even “gay” don’t really seem to describe me very well. Now, I know that I should be extremely careful sauntering down this thorny path. Let me make it abundantly clear that I acknowledge my relative privilege in this matter. With respect to sexuality, I come from a very progressive family, live in an unbelievably accepting part of the world, and was born at an unimaginably enlightened point in human history. And as a white gay man, it seems out of the large and diverse LGBTQI population, I am first on the list to gain acceptance from the “straight” majority. We have a long way to go, and still have plenty of need to come together in support of one another.

But this is also my reality. And as I try to better understand my own life, sometimes the categories of “queer” or “gay,” “dude” or “chick,” prove more distracting than useful. This might be painfully obvious to you, and if so I’m sorry to have wasted your time. Go back to being awesome. For me, I’m just now having to come to terms with the fact that using the gender of the people I have sex with to describe something essential about me is too easy, and somewhat meaningless. A broad stroke description for a much more nuanced and complicated reality. No matter who you are or how you label yourself, you’re only going to fall in love with an extremely small number of people, and probably be willing to have sex with only a slightly larger number of people. It’s taken a lot of trial-and-error, but I’m finally learning that I have a tendency to fall for a very specific type of person, with a certain combination of qualities. And that person is also looking for certain things, and we would both have to be at just the right point in our lives to be able to say, “Holy sh*t! You’re amazing and I’m in love with you.” Am I still talking about gender identity? It’s probably more complicated than that, but it feels like a good start. Maybe only 10% of the population tends to fall in love with someone of the same gender, but everybody on the planet tends to only fall in love with like 0.00001% of the rest of the people on the planet. This makes us at the same time more similar, and more diverse. And from that perspective, using categories is pointless.

I’m starting to think about my own gender identity and sexuality like an amazing meal. Each plate has its own colors, smells, and serves a different aesthetic and nutritional function. If I want to be present to my life I should try my best to savor it: notice what I like, appreciate the textures, pair it with a good wine, etc. But when I start to mash it all up in my mouth, and it makes its way down to my stomach, it somehow gets distributed throughout my body, where it fuels all the countless, incredible things my organs know how to do, all on their own like a f*cking sci fi film. At that point it’s pretty much all the same whether I just ate coq au vin on a rooftop in NYC, or a bowl of cereal on the couch in my pjs. Which both sound pretty good right about now.