Out

My first real crush was my second-grade teacher, Miss Tate. She had frosted and feathered Farrah Faucet hair, and she wore bell-bottoms and metallic blue eye shadow.

A little later in fourth grade, I fell for my best friend, Kelly Randolph. She was tall and had long brown hair and porcelain skin. For Halloween that year, I dressed as Tom Sawyer and she as Becky Thatcher. We got to hold hands as we walked around the school in the costume parade.

It was probably also in fourth grade that a substitute teacher mistook me for a boy. I was a tomboy, always wearing the hand-me-down t-shirts and jeans from my three older brothers. In this 9- and 10-year-old period, I also sported a gender-bending bowl-cut my mom gave me in our basement. When we lined up in the classroom to go to the restroom, the sub took my arm, pulled me from the girls’ line, and put me in the boys’ line. It took the protests of all my classmates to convince her that I was, in fact, a girl.

Flash forward to middle school: I adored Billy Joel and was a great poser. I especially loved his pose on the cover of “52^ndStreet,” with his loose necktie, suit jacket, jeans and sneakers. For picture day, I wore one of my dad’s dress shirts and a tie he tied for me, a second-hand men’s suit vest, and jeans. I felt like a rock star.

Some girls called me a dyke. I had to go home and ask my mom what that meant. When she told me that it meant a woman who loves women, I didn’t really get how it was an insult.

Later that same year, in an extracurricular musical revue at school, I sang the solo “Maria” from West Side Story. I was the one person in the cast who could hit all the notes and deliver the song with sufficient emotion. Parents called the school and got the show cancelled after only one performance. I guess a 12-year-old girl in leotard and tights professing her love for another girl through song was too much for them.

I am in no way equating these minor points of gender ambiguity from my life to the deep identity crises most homosexual or transgender people endure. Not at all. Aside from these bumps in the adolescent road, I have fit nicely into the dominant paradigm of binary sexual identity.

I dated men almost exclusively in my 20s, married a man, then cheated on him with another man. I look feminine, I act effeminate, and I present as female gendered in every sense of the term.

I am also very much in love with a woman.

You may remember her from my previous blog post; her name is Stacy. She is pretty much the reason I have not posted in this blog for two weeks. Since our convergence on December 2, I have thought of little other than her sparkling green eyes, her infectious laugh, and her all-encompassing bear hugs. The more time we spend together learning all the details of each other’s lives and hearts, the more certain I am that every step and misstep of my life so far have only been leading me to her.

She and a couple of my friends have asked me if this means I am gay now. I suppose it does, by definition. But I don’t quite know yet if I identify myself as such. I do not resist the term for any political reasons; I simply do not feel any different than I always have. I find women attractive, as I always have, and I find men attractive, as I always have.

Right now, the focus of my attention and affection is on Stacy. I am no longer looking around for someone else to date, be they male or female. That’s the most important point. All else is window dressing.

I think this is the thrust of what Lin-Manuel Miranda meant when he said, “Love is love is love is love is love.” I love Stacy, the person. Any details about her gender or body parts are inconsequential. I think I would fall for her if she were male, or differently abled, or from another country, or from outer space.

Love is love. Love is accepting someone for everything they are, the good and the bad, seeing all of it and wanting more. Love is knowing someone is not perfect, but finding perfection in her crooked grin, her scars, her insecurities. Love is making yourself vulnerable by laying bare all your inner shame and fear of rejection, then finding yourself enveloped in warm, sincere acceptance. Love is being honest—about everything—and receiving just as much honesty in return.

In short, I am in love. And my love is out loud. Deal with it.

Conversation with a new Friend

“I’m going to step outside for a cigarette before it gets crazy,” Stacy said as she put her coat on.

“Okay,” I said, leaning on the counter of the concession stand. “Enjoy your cancer!”

Only after I said it did I realize how that might sound to someone I had met less than an hour earlier. Stacy and I were the volunteers for Saturday’s show, tasked with selling drinks and snacks during the intermission of the night’s show, “Christmas in Akron.” Stacy’s response to my glib comment surprised me.

“I do have cancer,” she said without changing her expression. “But I have brain cancer, not lung cancer, so it’s okay.”

My stomach dropped a little at the thought of having offended her. Then she chuckled.

“I’m so sorry,” I said. Then I put my hand to the corner of my mouth as if sharing a big secret. “You should be smoking something else, then.”

Her eyes seemed to take me in anew. “Oh, I do that, too.”

She didn’t seem in much of a hurry to get outside for her cigarette. The realization of a mutual interest in weed always makes a new person more intriguing. Some of my very best friendships were forged over this kind of recognition.

We spent the rest of the evening in close proximity to each other. The half hour before curtain, we sold a couple cups of coffee and figured out how to track the sales and the money. When JT was beginning his address to the audience, the box office manager told me I could go into the theater and find a seat for the show. I went up the three stairs to the elevated back row and took the seat at the very end. The theater is tiny, and I wanted not only a good vantage point but a little space between myself and the paying customers.

Just before the show began, Stacy came and sat next to me. She showed me pictures of her scars from two brain surgeries and the hair loss during her radiation treatments. At one point, half her head was bald and half hairy because of the precise radiation application. In a shot taken from above, her half-bald scalp looked like a yin-yang symbol. The opposite side of her head — the side not targeted by radiation treatments — burned a heart-shaped area out of its hair.

She was funny and sweet. There were lots of pictures of her cats and dogs. I didn’t mind that. We both laughed out loud a few times during the show. At intermission, we were a well-oiled machine with those concessions. I tracked sales on a paper she had prepared; she helped the couple that bought one of the charity ornaments; we sold all of the “nostalgic” snowball cookies.

After the show, we had a bit more time to talk, as traffic at the counter was much slower. She told me about her girlfriend of 12 years leaving her suddenly, via text.

“Women are bitches,” she said. Then she reached across the counter and touched my hand. “Present company excluded, of course.”

She touched my hand. I wondered how she was going to react when I told her about the break-up of my own marriage. Would I still be excluded from that group?

The box office manager asked if we were interested in joining some of the others for a drink somewhere. Stacy said it depended on where. This was her first night driving alone since the onset of her brain cancer, the first symptom of which was a two-month headache followed by a massive seizure. He disappeared into the theater to drum up arrangements. I didn’t see him again before I left.

Stacy told me she lived in North Hill. I said I was two minutes up North Portage Path. It’s really three minutes. I didn’t want to go out for a drink. I had overindulged Friday night. I needed a break.

“What bar do you generally go to?” I asked.

“Tear-Ez downtown,” she said. “Yeah, I’m a rock star down there. Because of my illness.”

On that last bit, she pointed to the stocking cap that had replaced her Santa cap from earlier. I rather liked her Santa cap. She had brought her own and not had to borrow one of the “volunteer loaners” as I had. I admired that about her.

“I want to walk in there with a rock star!” I was putting on my coat and felt that tingle of mutual attraction, that first hint that something might be beginning.

“You’re going to be here next week?” She was up the few stars near the door to the theater, already in her coat.

“Yep,” I said. “I’ll be here every Saturday. It’s all I can do.”

“I’ll see you next week then. It was really great talking with you, Sharon.”

“Likewise, Stacy. Maybe we’ll go out for that drink afterward next week.”

She gave me her phone number, and I texted her mine. When I got home, I friended her on Facebook. We’ll see.