Dating a girl, as a straight girl
(This piece was submitted anonymously.)
I never questioned my sexuality. It never crossed my mind that adapting to a queer identity might have suited me better. Growing up an alien amidst cute white Jewish girls, hugging myself when we would change in the girls locker room, I caught glimpses of their smooth, small bodies. I wondered what it must feel like to have one. To fit into the smallest size available, swap clothes with your girl friends, hold each other without self consciousness because you were physically the same. I thought it was never possible I could be gay because the only female body type available was unattractive to me. I didn’t want to hold and be held by a tiny slip of a thing, it just wasn’t my type. Thus I determined, abjectedly, that I was plain old straight.
In fact, I never realized, growing up, just what my type was and what I wanted. I went out with whoever asked, never pursuing myself someone I was attracted to. The boys I went out with were generally tall and slim, with undefined chests and limbs, but with deep smiles and beautiful hands. Physically speaking, I had to get used to them before they got used to me. I had always been told that love grown from an intention, and if I intended to find what I sought in them then there it would be.
I was never difficult to turn on sexually, but difficult to make climax. I was too inexperienced with myself and had the notion that completion was when I got too tired of trying. Half a decade of disappointing hetero monogamy later, I decided to try something new. My last breakup was a particularly devastating one, and now I wanted to break the cycle. I wanted men of different body types, ethnic backgrounds, emotionalities. I became more assertive, preferring to vocalize what I wanted when it failed to be produced. Satisfaction was easier to come by, but I still always felt like it was work reaching my fulfillment.
Nowadays, amid modern media-savvy white culture, it is cool to recognize sexuality as a spectrum, and to perform your gender as a fluid expression of self. I began to vocalize what I found attractive in the girls I liked, and I definitely had a type. I still never considered being intimate with one; I never considered what a profound experience it could be for me.
In college most of my closest friends came out, and when I asked them how they determined to do it I got vague responses. They’d always felt different, ashamed, weaker psychologically than their peers. Out of coincidence they were all naturally introverted, which I never attributed as a reason for these responses. I needed someone to tell me the sweet pleasure of being with the one they chose, of the sexual bliss and desires finally unchecked. In my head gay was what you were when you didn’t fit in and couldn’t very well explain why. It was incongruous with an extrovert like me.
I began dating girls online. Only there could I match with those of my type. It was my best friend who suggested I try it. I admired her courage to be sexually fluid, though I never could quite grasp her resistance to any terms to describe it. She proclaimed herself straight and exploring, though the exploring part seemed to have on her greater impact. She was also of a conservative Muslim background and would not adopt a term as neat and trendy as heteroflexible, non-binary, or queer.
I came across the profile of a girl I was instantly drawn to. She was tall, curvy, dark, and South Asian; my type exactly. She had gorgeous get black waves, full eyebrows, dusky eyes, and delicate gold nose jewelry. I knew I wanted to share something beyond a friendship with her.
I told my best friend about her excitedly and embarked on one of the best dates of my life. She was interesting, funny, loved all the same things as I did, and came from a similar background. She understood me well, looked past my chattiness and charm to the shades of things I couldn’t describe. She made me feel so comfortable and so sexy. She gave me playful touches on the arm, face, and hair, and hit on me with suavity. I took her cue and did likewise, and was beginning to really enjoy myself when she asked if I was out yet. A nervous laugh was all she needed to determine that answer.
Islam does not support homosexuality because that would be to deny procreation. That is the be all and end all of the argument. There is nothing about virtue, demeanor, being vulnerable to the devil, or losing your virility. There is nothing about setting a bad example for the community or influencing young children. There is nothing about losing your mortal or spiritual constitution, or making void your prayer. Islam is homophobic where procreation is concerned, and procreation is the duty of every sound man and woman. It is better to be sick than to be gay, so to speak.
I would have countless arguments about this with my father. I would argue that what was written in Islam was not a prescription of sexual identity; what was written was necessary for sexual reproduction only. In the time of the formation of Islam, in vitro, in utero, adoption, and surrogacy were not known as safe alternatives. In the time of Islam sexual identity was unnecessary to be prescribed; there already thrived throughout the world non-binary norms that conducted a peaceful way of life.
She kissed me goodnight and my heart was pounding. My lips tingled and I couldn’t believe the way I was feeling. My imagination was running miles before me, my cheeks flushed. I texted my best friend that I was finally beginning to learn myself. I asked if it was normal to question my sexuality at this late an age, to want to, to need to, rather, break the binary wall. I voiced a doubt in my head if it was just an autoerotic fantasy brought on by serial disappointment with nearly every male I’d been with in my life. There were other factors in my life where I was experiencing disappointment, and I was uncertain if my desire for this girl was a scapegoat.
I tried even to calculate my punishment for allaying this sexual deviance. I wanted her, I surprised myself being so forward with her, and I wanted her to teach me how to make love to a woman. As I walked home I wondered which subculture I belonged to now; should I begin going to queer colored open mic nights? Should I revise my style to be more androgynous, should I wear less makeup? How much Muslim-ness could I hold onto if I still outwardly displayed a hetero woman, and showed affection to men and women both? I figured I would turn to God for these answers, to hope not to be fixed but to find my peace.
When she led me to her room I hesitated in my step. I gave an awkward smile and she took the wine glass from my hand and kissed me, lifting my dress over my head. I was carried on a thrill so alive that I didn’t mind being the amateur. She made me orgasm so fully and so effortlessly that I surprised myself at how beautiful it felt to open myself. She was patient and talked to me often, telling me how she felt about me and what she wanted to do with me. I felt like I could fall into her and she wouldn’t fail to bear my weight. Nothing about my conflicted state of mind detracted her; nothing about my intimidation disheartened her. I felt the endlessness of the night, of the climax, together with her.
She encouraged me to vocalize anything, to lay bare my fears so we could wash them away. She was bisexual and related also to my attraction to men and desire to one day be serious with the right one. I wondered if closeting myself was the reason for all the difficulty I had faced in my young adult life. I wondered if this was why I felt depressed often, like I could never achieve what I wanted; why I always fell short of my own expectations of my myself. Who knows, she replied, but one step at a time.
Where I felt like I was falling apart in other areas of my life, I did have her to make me whole again. As I outsourced my longing and loving to her, I never once considered coming out to my family. Best friends knew, and to them only was where I kept it. I knew my parents would be disappointed, disastrously emotional, and weakened by my coming out. They were getting too old to bend their views and so their faith might have just weakened altogether. I would rather sacrifice the strength of my faith in Islam for the strength of theirs.
My current boyfriend, and soon-to-be fiancé, knows all of my story and is unshaken by it. He neither sees it as a moral defiance nor a transgression due on the part of youth angst. He knows that of all the diversity of beautiful beings I have been blessed to meet, I chose him.
I would never have bounded that division of prescribed heterosexuality if it were not for the faith of my best friend, my ex-girlfriend, and my boyfriend. Having the confidence that I can identify what in my life has been giving me dissatisfaction and then setting it right has made me a sexier, stronger, and more vocal woman. When I’d broken down and told my boyfriend of my experience, he said he loved me more for it; loved me for the fact that I did know what it was my soul wants. His Islam chose to embrace me rather than cast me out. And even if I can’t be out to my family yet, I still have hope that soon I can.
The Islam I’ve chosen to embrace discerns by the strength of your faith, not by the gender biologically assigned to the person asleep beside you. I refuse to believe that a god with the profound wisdom to accept all beings as equals and all affections as just would care to exclude the queer. I refuse to believe that The Almighty would reduce the human experience to an ultra linear quest for procreation; as if all our emotions and lived experience is just for survival of the fittest.
One day if I have children I will tell them that no experiences are wrong so long as they are safe. No one can predetermine your identity before you’ve lived enough to form it; no one can judge your life by the religion you take. And most importantly, no crisis of personality, be it sexual identity or otherwise, can ever take away your religion.