It Gets Better

I think.

I watch a lot of documentaries about the Alphabet Soup crowd (LBGTQ). I think Netflix thinks I'm gay. I've watched Milk, Boys Don't Cry, Transamerica and that Drag Queen pageant movie. (Please do keep in mind that I also favor documentaries about the food industry, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Julie & Julia - I do have multi tracked interests.)

It would be easier to be gay. To want to marry a woman. My mom could wrap her head around that. We've de-pathologized homosexuality in "Enlightened Western Cultures." But really, I like penises (the real kind, attached to male bodies) too damn much to start fucking women. Also, could *never* marry a woman. I have been seeking the company of men for most of my life. I don't understand women well enough to be friends with most of them, let alone want to date and marry them.

It would be easier to feel as though I ought to have been a man. It would mean that a wrong switch was flipped when I was being formed and I came out with the wrong body. It would necessitate expensive surgery, and then the problem could be fixed. But really, I like my boobs. Took me long enough to grow the damn things. I like my hips, I like my ass. I like wearing corsets and bodices and things that make me look more female. Even when I dress in drag, it's always slanted femme. I never try to pass.

Instead I have a normative gender identity, normative sexual orientation, but a societally disapproved means of sexual fulfillment. It's not that I can't orgasm from vanilla sex. It's not even "well, I have a whole menu to draw on, but I order the bondage fun more often because I like it better" kind of thing.

The orgasms are fundamentally better. They happen more fluidly, with less determination. My body works the way it's supposed to when it's tied up or being hurt (or tying up and hurting someone else). My brain switches into "let's have sex now please" mode from being insulted and degraded and owned (or insulting and degrading and owning) in a way that "I love you sweetie" just doesn't make it happen.

There isn't a YouTube campaign for people like me. No one is raising money for a hotline so that kinky 16 year olds don't kill themselves. I never wanted to kill myself. I just wanted to bury the dark part of my sexuality forever. I was a good girl, good girls didn't want that, didn't need it with their sex like they needed air. I'm not a part of that lovely set of letters. I'm a straight white girl. What inner turmoil did I have?

Never mind that I rebuilt my self love over years. That I had my own outing and coming out processes.

It does get better. I've had some amazing friends, people who accept me not in spite of who I am, but because of it. I've had some amazing men in my life, men who've let me teach them and teach me and let me be precisely myself in their arms.

It got better. But it also stays hard.