Ready, set, queerer!

Ok.  So I’m going through some changes. I think. Self awareness, fashion, sex, gender, sexuality, presentation.  Not sure I even have the words for all of this. Kind of scared to do this publically. But then I know how helpful it is for me to read the thoughts of others going through uncomfortable and beautiful metamorpheses.  And how much it helps to share what is in my head, heart, brain and skin.

I could start from the very beginning. Or just start where I am at right now, and unravel a little.

I think the hardest part of what I am going through is the world outside.  Just as soon as I come out a little more to myself, or allow myself to be just a little more who the fuck I am, then I take something from outside of myself personally.  Maybe it is personal.  Maybe I do a triathlon and think and think and think while I swim bike and run and wonder “can I really do this” and somewhere along the way as I realize that I am doing this I think so loudly I want to shout it, “I AM SO GAY!!!!!” and it makes me happier than ever.  And then the next day I mention a woman I am dating to my mother and I hear the disappointment in her voice like icicles weighing down a moustache.  “Do you still wish I wasn’t gay?” I inquire?  To which I receive the lovely, “I can dream a little, can’t I?”

OW. Wow. I felt like I was punched in the heart.  And that’s perhaps the way it always was growing up.  Except I don’t think I ever really got to the full moments of coming out to myself however I was before I got punched in the heart.  I just was stifled all along before I ever came out.  As a high schooler I wasn’t allowed to play ice hockey because as a girl I was supposed to be a figure skater.  As a hippy tour kid I would come to visit my mom and she would have a bottle of “Smells Begone” right inside the front door.  When I finally found someone capable of commiting to a relationship with me enough to bring home to visit, of course he wasn’t good enough.

And then, after coming out as bi, there was always the hope after every breakup that my next relationship would be with one of those creatures with a penis.  Once, while coming out of surgical anesthesia at age 30, I said to my mother, “Do you still love me even though I’m gay?”  She didn’t say a word.

It’s a wonder I even let myself be who I am.  Well, I do. One moment I feel great about it all, and the next self conscious.  One moment one thing feels great, and then the next I wonder about everything.  I think about boxes and labels and who needs to know what and/or nothing. And when it comes down to it, all that really matters is that I am comfortable with myself.  Even if I prefer femme tops and butch bottoms.  I’m talking about clothes here. Boxer briefs and a corset. Mmmm. That feels great right about now.  I feel queerer than straight, butcher than femme. And a little like…no…a lot like nothing that really even has a name.  Not that the general public understands anyway.  I’ve been reading a bit here and there.  Some S. Bear Bergman, some Kate Bornstein.  Wikipedia’s definitions of butch, boi, genderqueer, and genderfuck.

And then just living. Allowing myself to tell myself the exact opposite of what I might have told myself growing up, or yesterday, or last year.  Like, in my fantasies, sometimes I am a man, but I don’t want to be one in real life…or maybe I do? or not? or just a little…and what is female masculinity? who am I attracted to?  am I attracted to you because I want to be you? or do you? or both?

And allowing all of that to just be beautiful, ok, honest, and fluid.

Whew…I like opening this fountain…of genderqueer butchdom…or something.

xoxo,

Zoey Rayal