PINK is a column that explores lesbian sexuality. This column is specifically about navigating the world as a girl who likes girls. It will celebrate the good, shed light on the bad, and revel in the sexy, lascivious, and laughable.
“I kissed a girl and literally felt nothing,” a friend once said to me.
“Yeah, same here,” I quickly responded. I was lying through my front two ffucking teeth. At the time, I was twelve or thirteen (or however old you are in the seventh grade), but I was nine when I saw two girls kiss on television for the first time and ten when I took my fifteenth “Am I a Lesbian?” quiz online. Often, middle school chats with my female friends during lunchtime closely mirrored this one, and the ending of these conversations always resulted in a conclusive, “Yeah, lesbians are weird” or “Boys are so hot!” or “I just could never date a girl” or “Ew, that is so gross.” My weekday conversations all marched to the beat of this homophobic drum and my weekends were not very different.
My mom, being the devout Christian that she was/is, made sure my Sundays were spent at Mt. Zion Baptist church in the rural town of Belton, South Carolina. Even though it says very explicitly in the bible that God loves everyone and we are all his children, I think it is safe to assume that the pastor of Mt. Zion forgot about this section, because those scriptures were never apart of his pulpit rhetoric. I spent Sunday after Sunday hearing my identity reduced to an unforgivable sin. This was one of the few sins that wasn’t socially acceptable. You could lie, fuck before marriage, gossip or even cheat on your spouse, but according to my pastor, being gay was one of those sins that would get you sent down to hell! Dancing with the devil was exactly what I was going to be doing if I kept watching “girls kissing” compilation videos on YouTube. Panic-stricken, I vowed to myself that I would be straight, no matter what. I’ve never been good at keeping promises, though. This promise to myself lasted roughly six hours before nightfall. My nightly ritual was back, soon I watching more girls kissing compilation videos and wondering when it was going to be my turn.
There were no out lesbians at my school or at my homophobic Baptist church. The only lesbians I ever saw were the lesbians on TV, so when I met my older cousin’s LESBIAN friend Stephanie*, I was obsessed! I remember this like it was yesterday. My older cousin was “babysitting” me while my mom went out with her sorority sisters for the day. We were watching music videos like we always did, and in walked Stephanie in all of her stem (term in the lesbian community for a woman who presents in both a masculine and feminine way) glory! I could hear the hallelujah chorus singing as she walked through the door and our eyes locked.
It felt like the floor beneath me had disappeared. I thought that lesbians only existed within TV and computer screens but here was one in the flesh. I had so many questions I was dying to ask her. She was dressed pretty masculine, and since she was the only lesbian I had ever seen in person, I thought that all lesbians were supposed to dress this way. I assumed that if I wanted to commit fully to my lesbian identity, I would also have to start playing around with androgyny. I had so many things I wanted to ask her, but somehow I couldn’t get close enough. My older cousin and aunt were in the room with us the entire time Stephanie was there, and they knew nothing about my lesbian identity — so I tried not to act too interested. I wasn’t until three years later that Stephanie and I would really get a chance to talk and she would end up being the first person I came out to.
My older cousin got married. I was in her wedding and so was Stephanie. This was an all weekend affair.
Thursday: the wedding party arrived in Belton.
Friday: the rehearsal dinner.
Saturday: the wedding.
Sunday: I told Stephanie I was a lesbian.
I told her the day after the wedding. She looked at me with gentle and reassuring eyes and even though she didn’t explicitly say it, I knew that she had been in my shoes before. She immediately responded, “How long have you felt this way?”
“My whole life.” I quickly told her not to say anything to anyone in my family, especially not my mom. I shared all of my feelings with her. I told her about the state of confusion I had spent the majority of my adolescent years in because all the things that my friends felt about boys — I felt about girls. It felt so nice to be heard without judgment. She had a calmness and serenity about her. When she hugged me at the end of our conversation, I was so grateful for Stephanie and am grateful for her to this day.
Three years after the wedding, I came out to my mom. I had just started dating a cute girl on the high school soccer team and I figured this was monumental enough for me to finally tell my mom about my sexuality. Her reaction was much different from Stephanie’s. There was no calm, no serenity, just tears. So many tears and anger and raised voices. “You’re going to hell,” she said before she slammed the door of her bedroom.
She wept the rest of the day, I could hear her from down the hall in my room. My parents were divorced and both my mom and I were always a united front, but that night I had dismantled the unit. She made that clear as I heard her screaming to my dad on the phone, “Come to get her! I don’t want her in this house, I don’t even want to look at her!” She couldn’t bear to look at her child anymore: the child she had created and brought into the world. It felt like someone had punched me in the gut and knocked the wind right out of me. My heart had been shattered. How could my mom be so cruel, I asked myself. It took two weeks for my mom to allow me to move back in, eight months to agree to let my high school girlfriend come over to our home, and finally, one year for her to apologize.
Five years later, I am now out to nearly everyone in my family. I no longer spend my time hiding my sexuality; these days, I live more authentically in Brooklyn with my amazing girlfriend. We have hosted both of my parents as guests in our home and my mom is fully loving and accepting of me and my identify. We are closer than ever. Last but not least, I have retired from watching “Girls Kissing Compilation” videos on Facebook, and have instead started kissing (and fucking) girls in real life.
*name changed to protect the identity of the real person
Photos (in order of appearance) by unknown artist, Matthew Tammaro, Matt Jackson, and Chloe Sheppard.Â