ash🍃

first we must understand: there isn't a "wrong" way to be queer. i know this and you know this, we both understand this logically. the secret is that i still feel i'm often wrong in my queerness, somehow.

for a long time i identified as bisexual. i heard it a lot, then, about how to be queer the right way. i had multiple partners imply that i would eventually "choose" another gender. i was constantly inundated with requests for sexual favors. my queerness wasn't taken seriously by either straight people or other queer people - the assumption was that my queerness was temporary. even when i began exclusively dating women: when i called myself gay, i genuinely received hatemail about how the word gay was reserved for real queer people, not for bisexuals. i was invited to the party, essentially, but i wasn't invited warmly.

even now i see it. that any "straight appearing" couple is, in some way, not being "queer enough." that bisexuals shouldn't speak about their own queerness, that would be taking up too much space. that to be a real queer person, you must have some kind of list of (usually sexual) credentials.

so maybe that is where i learned it.

i've been out as a nonbinary lesbian for a while now; but i wonder about this a lot. i wonder if i would have figured it out sooner if i'd felt less pressure to act a certain way. heteronormativity versus my own community. maybe it is that i am on the spectrum but - there are moments where it feels like i'm not doing gay the right way. i think it's an observable truth that there are people who are more accepted in the community. that the community does shun others while still paying lip service to "diversity." that there is a visible in group, and an invisible out.

in part i know i do not "look" nonbinary. in part i know i do not "look" gay. yes, i know this is not technically a thing i am supposed to say - i am supposed to remind you that gender and sexuality has no true appearance. but this also just... isn't my lived experience. i know people do not look at me and see "they/them," and i know people do not look at me and see a lesbian. i lack a certain type of aura, i suppose.

and i want to have that, desperately. i want it to shine out of every pore of me. it just doesn't.

maybe it's because i was not raised with the same cultural touchstones that seem to pervade the constant narrative of what queerness "looks like." no i have not seen the L Word nor really any of the "queer media" legacies, but thank you for suggesting them to me. no i don't really know how to do carpentry. no i was not on a softball team - i did ballet, actually.

and i just do not have the same interests as often pervades every "queer event" in my locality. with all due respect, one can only do so much drag-bingo-brunch-drinking-trivia-comedy.

it is as if other queer people - cooler, more interesting, doing it correct effortlessly - are behind a glass door. i am allowed to watch. i am allowed even to be in the room. i just always feel like i'm a strange visitor, and unwelcome to it.

for the record, i want queerness to be bold and brassy and wild and free. i want rainbows and banners and shouting. i want us to remember the names of every person who worked for our freedoms, and i want us to do so loudly.

i go to these events and i can't help but feel: they're very lovely, but somehow, they're not for me.