Embracing Queer

Today I went on my first official queer date. And my first date ever with a woman. 

A little over a year ago, in September 2021, after a couple months of very intense climbing and regular weight-lifting, I had gotten as big & muscular as I had ever been (at least up until then), I had been using “they” pronouns officially even at work for about a month, and was finally really embracing and starting to feel more deeply, or more openly or consciously, the boy in me. And I can distinctly remember this one morning as I was getting ready to go to work: I saw myself, my strong (naked) shoulders in the mirror, I really saw the boy in me, and I realized all of a sudden that I felt less attracted to, or less interested in, (cis) men and then the thought came to me, very clearly, “Now that I am openly a boy maybe I don’t need to be with a boy as a partner”. 

Gender identity and sexual preference are definitely two distinct things. And yet, as my own gender identity has been evolving or, rather, coming out and expressing itself more openly and clearly (even to myself), my sexual preferences have also been shifting. Or maybe just as I’m finally allowing my “gender world” to express itself in a more flexible way — even beyond the “gender-non-conformity” that has always been part of me & my character — in parallel I am also allowing my pansexuality, which has always been part of me as well, to come out and express itself and find its way. 

It’s as if my gradual changes and growth had finally led me to say “Fuck it!” to the whole of heteronormativity. 

My entire life, as far as I can remember, I have been fighting or resisting or at least questioning norms that have always seemed artificial to me. But I have also stuck to some of them — heterosexuality (or the semblance of it), for instance. Maybe because it was so easy for me to be in romantic/sexual relationships with (cis) men… Or maybe because I felt the unconscious need to hold onto something, at least one thing, that was (perceived as) “mainstream” or “solid”. On the other hand, though, I’ve somehow always been peeling away layers of “mainstream” from my life and pushing my boundaries of exploration further and further, especially since moving to California. And now I feel like I’m finally letting go even of the last little shreds of “certainty” or “mainstream”. After embracing my own queerness — first in my polyamory, then in my non-binary/trans-masculine gender identity, and then in a romantic involvement with a non-binary friend — now I’m totally letting go of almost everything that I’ve known or done before in the romantic/sexual sphere and allowing my queer gut & queer heart to take the lead, at last. 

After having been a tomboyish & sexually oblivious girl, then turning into an attractive & (sexually) confident woman, I’m now in the shy, sexually/romantically awkward teenager-boy phase. Totally out of my depth. With hardly any idea of what I’m doing. Scared but excited. And fully relating to that favorite quote of mine by André Gide: 

“On ne découvre pas de terre nouvelle sans consentir à perdre de vue, d’abord et longtemps, tout rivage.”

(“One doesn’t discover new lands without consenting to lose sight, for a very long time, of the shore.”)