Ellissa, 43, on Growing Up Shy and Lesbian
Back in high school, did you have girlfriends, boyfriends?
None. I never dated anyone until late in college. I was a lesbian, and it was the 80s or 90s. I couldn’t be out as a high-school kid, and I was pretty shy, embarrassed, horrified, at the idea of dating in general. I just had a lot of — even now, I’m 43, asking someone out on a date is not a thing I do. It’s a thing I plan to do, but I’m not actually doing it. Back then, dating wasn’t a thing at all.
There’s the shyness. Was there any kind of familial “you shouldn’t do that”?
Of course. It’s kind of hard to remember the level of that. I mean, I came out when I was 19. I came out my sophomore year of college. I came out, and promptly took over the GLBA. It just was like, “I’m going to be the gay one,” but I didn’t tell my family until a lot later. My sisters knew because they know all of the things, but I didn’t tell my parents. At one point my dad, who’s driving me home from college, or back to college, or something, we’re in the car for an hour, and he was like, “I know about you. I know about your friends, and I didn’t raise you to lie. You will not lie about your life,” and I was like, “Oh, shit.”
He basically was like, “Get out of the closet. Have some respect for yourself. What the fuck is this? Who do you think you are?” My father’s amazing, and this was before Ellen, before — everyone was closeted back then. It was hard, and so then it was like, “Okay, great. I came out, okay, yes, fine, but I’m not going to tell my mom.” I was like, “You tell her.” He was like, “I’m not telling her. I know that woman better than you do, and I’m not doing it.”
I told my mom, and that’s when all the — she’s the religious one, so that’s when all of the bible-hurling happened, but it was a lot to carry as a kid. I certainly wasn’t thinking about — I was more concerned about getting laid than dating. I thought “I’m never going to have sex. There will be no sex in my life until I’m 35, and I live in New York City, and I’m a doctor. Then I could have sex.”
Why?
Then I’ll be far enough from my parents. I’ll be in my own life. I will have enough professional status to — I’ll have cachet; I won’t be an outcast.
Power.
I’ll have power, yeah, but it was about social power, it was about socially being acceptable to other people and then I could have sex because there’d be some kind of baseline.
Your attraction as a girl was mostly to girls, women? That’s an added layer, right, on top of everybody’s usual dating woes growing up as a teenager and trying to figure out sexuality. You’ve got a layer that complicates it.
Yeah, totally. I don’t know what other people were doing or how they were navigating being teenagers, but I was –
Sex and dating was less of an option for you.
It was not an option. In my mind, it was not an option at all. First, I’m going to get really great grades, and be a great athlete, and get to college. Then in college I’m going to figure out how to be awesome at whatever. You are a person that’s been in the box, like success is grades, and success is impressing the right professors, and success is leading clubs on campus. It was do all those things, and be successful, and that’s all.
As a kid before you went off to college, you must have had sexual feelings.
Sure. They were all abstract. It was all reading. It was all fantasy, intellectual, but not in the real world. I had a couple of inklings that I knew I liked girls. There was a girl on my soccer team, and I was walking up the stairs behind her, just mesmerized by her calves. It was like, “Okay, right, okay, I got it.” I had crushes on my coaches. I knew that, but there was not a real-world plan to actualize any of that.
When did I have sex in a way that actually meant something to me? In college I had run-ins with boobs that freaked me out for a couple of years, where someone from class, friends, whatever, social situations — I just remember I had a crush on this girl, and she somehow figured that out, because I wasn’t very forthcoming about that fact. She invited me over to her apartment. She lived off campus, very fancy, and I went into her bedroom. Suddenly, we were kissing, and then, suddenly, there are boobs involved, and I was like, ahh! I ran. I ran down the street, just — I freaked all the way out and ran away.
She took her shirt off or something?
She took her shirt off or something. I don’t know. Boobs were out, and they were there. I was like, holy shit, and I ran away in a panic.
Why?
Panic. I still panic, actually, at the thought of boobs. That’s ridiculous. I just have a lot of, I think, anxiety around sex and sexuality that is a very — it comes from a very, very deep sense of shame and embarrassment, and it — once I get — once I sort of get over the initial, oh, my God, is this really happening — oh, my God, it’s happening, ahh! Once I get over that, then I’m fine. Then, I’m not embarrassed anymore, and I can sort of be reasonable, but there is that initial, oh, my God. Am I expected to take my clothes off as well? This whole cycle of anxiety that still happens, actually, now that I think about it. Hmm. I’m going to have to stop that.
What is that anxiety about?
I have had an unwillingness to be seen and to be seen as desirous and therefore to be potentially rejected in a moment of desire. That is the crux of that moment. You’re on a first date or something, and it’s time for the kiss. That moment is like a horror show. I hate that moment, but then, after that moment, it’s fine. After that, I’m fine, and I have a relatively broad sex life, if you will. I’m relatively willing to explore and figure things out and engage, but it’s that — right up to the brink of actual physical intimacy, that’s the –
Potential for rejection.
Yeah.
It’s the fear of not being desired.
Right. The fear of being wrong in my desire, like how did I miscalculate this? You’re not actually interested in me, or something like that, that kind of thing. Yeah.
After the first set of boobs that you ran from –
I ran screaming. I did eventually have sex. It did happen. I had this girlfriend that — actually, that was probably the first time — my first real girlfriend was the first time I was in bed with somebody completely naked, and I think that was a big difference, not as a younger person fumbling around, fumbling with clothes and cars and things like that. Being in bed and being naked and being there for hours and having this space to explore and the time to just relax, relax into feeling, relax into sensation and just be open, that was also — that was my last year of college. That was great. That’s probably where I learned the most about comfort with sexuality.
Okay, and tell me about the first time. Can you remember?
Hmm. No. The first time, I think we were at a party. I think I was drunk. I can tell you about a time, but I don’t know if it was the first time. It certainly wasn’t the first time. We went back to her dorm room. She lived by herself in the dorms, and I don’t really — I don’t quite remember how we got in bed, but I just remember being in bed with her and feeling — having a sensation in my chest of this expanse of feeling and going, what? Am I having a heart attack? What is that? It didn’t feel like pain, so maybe not, but being very surprised that physical emotion could happen in my chest and that physical expansion could be real and not just be a song lyric. It’s funny, because that same physical expansion is what I’m feeling into now, lo these many years later where I’m like, oh, I’ve been clamped down in my emotional expression, sexuality and otherwise, for decades, probably since college. Only now, I’m beginning to have that sense again of, oh, I can open into life. I can expand into life, and life is here to meet me. It’s not something that I’m not a part of, where my abstract intellectual thinking self, my analytical self, my working, leading team self, my I’ve got to get shit done self, there’s no time for that shit. There is a way in which, when you really lean into intimacy with people, you can feel that. Whoa. Hey, I’m here, and my body is actually open to connecting with other people, which is the exact same sensation that I had in bed on campus so many years ago. Huh. Interesting. Again, eye-opening.
For more on why This Is Real Sex exists, read here and here.
To be the first to get people’s stories of their sexuality delivered directly to your inbox, send an email to thisisrealsex@gmail.com with the word “subscribe”.
