It’s a little like rain on a window.
It’s 11:34a, and I’m sitting in the food court of the Sharpstown Center a few blocks from the library. Today was my first day walking the nearly three miles from my apartment to the library; I thought, carrying the laptop bag, that it would take me about an hour and a half. It took me fifty minutes, and here I am killing time until the library opens at noon. My shoulders ache a little; the laptop’s heavy. My eyes sting from walking on a major street for almost an hour with dirty air blowing into my eyes and irritating my contact lenses. My hair is a mess, but this time I had the sense to use better gel. My nostrils are full of the scent of wild onion flowers, more potent than I’ve smelled since childhood summers playing in my grandmother’s backyard in Ponchatoula, Louisiana.
For some reason those years and that place were on my mind today - likely because as I walked, I passed dozens of children and teenagers. Everyone’s out on break and enjoying the sun paired with the cool spring wind; it’s a lovely day. Arrogant boys with that swagger that owns the world jerked their chins at me in passing on the sidewalk; harried mothers shepherded their children along and smiled in acknowledgment when I stepped onto the grass so they could pass without hindrance. Most of the children looked happy, chattering gaily with their friends. A few isolated themselves, held back from the others and keeping, for the most part, quiet. They didn’t seem miserable; just…separate, as if there was something that set them apart from their friends.
I want to say that I remember that feeling, but in truth, it’s barely a shadow of recollection, faded by time. I’ve said before that I didn’t even know what homosexuality was until my early teens; I had no idea what the word was for why I felt just a little different from my peers - why when one of my closest neighborhood friends started noticing girls, I subtly started noticing him. The thing was, I didn’t care. Although I have a bad history with my family, I didn’t have an unhappy childhood despite being poor. I wasn’t a miserable outcast, isolated at an early age by my sexuality; that didn’t come until my preteen years, and that was more caused by my surly attitude, smart mouth, and budding misanthropy. It wasn’t because of any inner knowledge of difference, isolation. Many people say they knew, from the moment they became self-aware. I didn’t. And I didn’t need to.
What I knew, as a child, was that I could catch dragonflies by the wings, holding them carefully until they got used to my touch and would settle on my finger without coercion, only to start and fly away if I moved too fast. I knew that pine trees were all wrong for tree houses, but for ground-level clubhouses it was always best to layer a thick sheaf of fresh green needles over the outside of the structure and stick it in place with the thick, resinous sap, so that water would sheet off and it would be safe to take shelter from the rain. I knew that if you plucked the stems of wild clover flowers and tied them around each other, you could make a necklace that would leave pollen all over your shirt and fill your nose with its sweet, musty scent all day. I knew the smell of thick swamp mud, the faint bubble that pops to the surface right before a mud turtle comes floating up to stumble into my grip, the wet squish of a crawfish’s mud cone as I kicked it over with my sneakers. I knew skinned knees and Sega on a rainy day at O’Neil’s house, and going home to the soft, homemade sugar cookies that my mother always baked no matter how tired or angry she was.
I knew all I needed to know, as a child. I didn’t know that I was gay, and I wouldn’t have wanted to - not in this world, in this time. I was a child for as long as I could be, blissfully unaware and wearing my heart on my sleeve, unaware of the hurt and the wonder, the struggle and the beauty, that could come from one single word that has, in many ways, shaped my life since then.
And no matter how many people proudly proclaim that they’ve known since they were toddlers…
I wouldn’t change that. Not for anything.
Make up your own tags. It’s like a Choose Your Own Adventure book.
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March 21st, 2008 at 9:56 pm
I’ve known since I was 3, but I never knew what I knew…I just knew. I always knew I was a strange kid and because no one ever really said anything to me directly I was kind of stupid…and did whatever I wanted whether it felt good or not. I was strange, and it wasn’t until I discovered homosexuality when I was 10 (o ye gods who brought me porn…), that I realized…’So that’s what I am..?’
I couldn’t talk to anyone, and I learned by ear, kept my secret a secret until several predator’s online seduced me into their web of play and lies and deceit. Once I’d been ‘educated’ via internet I pretty much shut them from my life and they forgot me in time. Growing more I realized my behavior in high school had to change, mostly because my friends weren’t with me anymore and I had to grow up fast. So I retracted myself into my own little bubble once more and kept everyone who came into contact with me OUT.
I still can’t talk to anyone, not really, so my new addiction is detectiving!! That’s not a word…but it’s what I’m doing now…
–Lynn, future detective(hopefully)
March 21st, 2008 at 11:42 pm
There is part of me that _wants_ to claim I knew before (and there are moments I remember being like 6 and checking out a muscular guy mowing his lawn and…yeah), but I can’t really say I knew for certain until I was about 10 or 11 and I started hitting puberty. Then, it wasn’t just Pam Anderson on Baywatch in my wet dreams, it was that blond guy and Michael Bergin there, too. I just knew it, so I accepted it.
Now when mom and dad found the collection of cutouts from muscle magazines, that’s about as far from acceptance as you can get…
March 22nd, 2008 at 2:41 am
Like Lynn, I’ve always known. Although knowing, it doesn’t make any less special my similar childhood memories. Great post, makes me yearn for (much) younger days.
March 22nd, 2008 at 7:33 pm
I thank the gods every day that I didn’t even have a concept of gay or straight or bisexual or what have you until I was in middle school. I was already isolated enough, being a teacher’s kid, but I’m glad that aside from that my childhood was uncomplicated and happy. I don’t think the sunlight has the same quality it once did now that I’ve grown up. I’m fortunate it lasted until I was fourteen, and I’m so happy I wasn’t forced into growing up too quickly like so many of our generation.
March 24th, 2008 at 4:10 am
I knew that I was somehow different for most of my childhood, but most of it had nothing to do with my sexuality. Part of it was looking very different from most kids my age, part of it was caused by being smarter than most of the kids around me.
But part of it definitely was linked to me being gay. When most other little girls were finding boys scary (the “cooties” stage), I was afraid of other girls. I didn’t exactly know, but I knew that there was something different.
I cross-dressed for five years or so, starting in sixth grade, and I figured out about my sexuality about a year and a half into the time when I cross-dressed. Of course, now girls clothes feel more like cross-dressing than the other way around. People mistook me for a boy even before I made a conscious effort to look like a boy. So during my junior year in high school when I started dressing in girly clothes was really the first time that I was treated as a girl.
I think that I was aware of my mixed up gender identity long before I was aware of which gender I was interested in.
Adri S.
March 26th, 2008 at 4:25 am
I didn’t realize I was bisexual until the first time I did some serious introspection, which was near the end of high school. Afterwards, I finally understood why I felt so awkward around my roommate at summerrqueer.” I just knew, starting when I was about 2, that I didn’t care whether I was a boy or a girl, so long as I got to be me. camp one year–she was beautiful, disarmingly funny, and one of the sweetest, most charming people I’ve ever met. I just didn’t realize until much later that, yes, I had a huge crush on her. (I didn’t even know that people could be bisexual until I was 15. Hurrah for growing up in the Deep South.)
But I’ve always known I was genderqueer, long before I heard the term “genderqueer.” I just knew, starting when I was about 2, that I didn’t care whether I was a boy or a girl, so long as I got to be me.
March 26th, 2008 at 4:26 am
Crap, my computer messed up my comment. It was meant to read like this:
I didn’t realize I was bisexual until the first time I did some serious introspection, which was near the end of high school. Afterwards, I finally understood why I felt so awkward around my roommate at summer camp one year–she was beautiful, disarmingly funny, and one of the sweetest, most charming people I’ve ever met. I just didn’t realize until much later that, yes, I had a huge crush on her. (I didn’t even know that people could be bisexual until I was 15. Hurrah for growing up in the Deep South.)
But I’ve always known I was genderqueer, long before I heard the term “genderqueer.” I just knew, starting when I was about 2, that I didn’t care whether I was a boy or a girl, so long as I got to be me.