by Hannah Hart
Needless to say, I never did find a church that was quite the right fit. Jehovah’s Witnesses were against all other forms of religion, no matter how Christian they seemed. I knew I didn’t want to be a Witness (because that shit was crazy), but I still loved Jesus and God and wanted to continue my worship. I just couldn’t figure out how.
As freshman year was coming to a close, and despite efforts to convince myself that I had crushes on the guys around me, I could never maintain my interest or find a spark. Still no boyfriend/future husband. I figured it was because my childhood had screwed me up. I was damaged goods. Incapable of loving anyone romantically. Possibly ever. Becoming a nun was starting to seem like an option.
But instead of moving to a nunnery I did the next best thing and moved into a sixty-person, all-female co-op. A co-op is an off-campus public house open to anyone attending a school nearby. Hoyt Hall had sixty other girls living in it and was sure to keep me chaste and safe from the Devil’s fornications. I moved to avoid the boys so I could avoid being so tempted. Yep, nothing but me and the ladies. Safe from all physical desires. Yep. Yep. Yep.
. . .
Oh, the lies we tell ourselves.
That first fall at Hoyt Hall was very full and fast. Our co-op operated on communal labor. Everyone had “work shifts,” and there were management positions along with those shifts. We each pulled our weight to maintain our home together. I shared a double room with a girl named Lana who was so brilliant and strong that we would do push-up contests as study breaks. She later learned how to fly helicopters and became a National Forest firefighter. Now she’s married with babies I think. I hope she is happy and well.
Lana showed me how strong a woman could be. And I met so many other wonderfully strong and interesting people in that house: transfer students, five-year graduates, women from differing racial and socioeconomic backgrounds, women who liked to have open and frank discussions about mental health, women who knew how to cook, women who knew how to eat, women with different abilities and talents, women who struggled and triumphed. They all challenged and inspired me in every possible way.
Oh, I also met lesbians there. Bona fide out-and-proud lesbians.
Obviously, I avoided them like the plague.
But flirted with all the straight girls.
But not like . . . in a gay way, of course. Because being gay was gross. Ew.
I was just flirting with girls whom I had tingly feelings for because . . . well, you know . . . friendship?
Part of me believed I was exploring the freedom of being flirtatious on girls to prep for the boys, because anytime my flirtations with a straight-identifying girl led to a quiet confession of feelings on her behalf I would reject her and tell her that she had been misinterpreting my intentions all along.
Then, at night before bed, I would read my Bible13 and pray. Pray for a husband, as I did every night. Pray for Jehovah to bring me a husband.
Late in the semester, before winter break crept up, I found out that I would be getting a single room in the spring. Someone joked that it would be the year when I would “for sure get some lovin’,” and I’m sure I gave a thumbs-up in return. The single room was available because it was the smallest in the house (the width of a large walk-in closet), but it was the first time in my life I would have a room all to myself, so I was thrilled. A bedroom of my own design. How blessed these new beginnings were sure to be. The first night I spent in that room, I read a scripture that struck me:
“When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.”
James 4:3
I remembered a talk in the Kingdom Hall my father had given about how we could not pray for specific things, because it might not be in God’s plan for us to have them. Instead, we must pray for the strength behind those things, for the meaning behind them. I had spent more than a year and a half praying for God to help me find a husband. But maybe I hadn’t found him because I hadn’t been capable of it.
That night, instead of my usual prayers for a man to sweep me off my feet, I prayed: “God, please help me to understand my heart. Please guide me toward love.”
Someone tapped my shoulder.
“I like your jacket.”
She smelled like gardenias.
During my sophomore year I dropped my French classes because I didn’t want to go to France. I realized that if there was any country in the world I wanted to visit, it was Japan. The home of Sailor Moon! So I started taking Japanese classes five days a week so I could apply to study abroad in Japan the following fall.
On the first day of the new semester I sat down in Japanese class and felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned around, and the girl behind me complimented my jacket. It was a maroon jacket, made from some sort of sport material, and I felt it was too small for me—too tight across my shoulders and too narrow at my waist. I was used to wearing things that were baggy. When I turned to look at her, it felt even tighter.
“Really? Thanks! I got it from the free pile.”
“What’s a free pile?”
“Oh it’s like this pile of free stuff in the co-op where I live. We are really big on recycling, and when you have something that’s still good but that you don’t need, you just put it in the free pile for someone else.”
“Wow! So it’s like just lots of free clothes?”
“Mostly clothes, yeah, but also other stuff. School supplies, stuff for your room—”
“Like lightbulbs?”
“Ha! Actually no, not those. We have those in the maintenance closet, so if somebody needs one for a personal lamp, I usually just let them have it. Oh, I’m the maintenance manager, by the way, so I have the key.”
“Maintenance manager?” She looked confused; her face was so expressive, and also so pretty. Her features were strong but strongly feminine. It was a little distracting when she spoke because just looking at her was overwhelming my senses.
“Yeah, it’s a position in the co-op . . . like a job? And then my rent is cheaper because it’s a big responsibility that you fill daily, not weekly like the other work shifts. Best part is that it takes a third off the price of my rent. It’s a cool system, a little complicated, but simple when you get the hang of it.”
I felt like I was babbling in another language, neither English nor Japanese. But she actually seemed interested and curious. It was nice.
“I’ve never even heard of the co-ops, to be honest.” She was polite. “But that’s probably because I’m a freshman. I still live in the dorms. I was thinking about becoming an RA next year though.”
“You should definitely move to the co-ops! It’s great! You’d love it!”
“Would I?”
“For sure.”
“And how do you know what I’d love?”
I paused.
“Well, you love this jacket, right?”
She laughed. I felt her eyes lingering on mine. She replied in Japanese, 14
It was incredibly sexy when she spoke like that. Wait, sexy?
I felt as though the wind had been knocked out of my stomach. My shadowboxer had landed a punch.
Class started, and by the end we were officially study buddies for the new semester. Her name was Emiko, and she had grown up speaking Japanese at home (her father was Japanese, and her mother was mixed). She was already fluent in the language so the classes were an easy A for her. She was just trying to brush up her skills to work toward a dual major in Japanese and Peace and Conflict Studies. I didn’t even know that was a major. What a splendid major. What a splendid person.
We were still talking when we left class, and there was so much more to talk about. We had Japanese class together in the morning five days a week and lunch together more often than not. She was so driven, it was inspiring. At the time, I was working toward only one major (English Lit.) with a minor, but by the end of that first week she was convinced that I should be going for two degrees at once, just like she was. She
had such faith in me.
By the end of the second week of the semester our strengths and weaknesses were aligning. Her courses were heavy in essay writing, and she was struggling because her professors told her that her essay topics “weren’t complicated enough.” I told her I loved to complicate things and writing always came pretty naturally to me.
“I write most of my essays at five a.m. I just set an early alarm.”
She scoffed, “I write most of my essays till five a.m., and then I sleep for two hours.”
“I’ve never been a big fan of sleep anyway.”
“I love it. I just don’t get enough of it.”
“Well, I can help you with your outlines and then maybe you can sleep more? You help me enough in Japanese.”
By the end of the third week we both began to talk about our families and we realized we’d had similar roles at home. Children taking care of parents and younger siblings. I’d never felt such kinship with someone.
At the beginning of the fourth week I invited her to a house party my co-op was throwing. She accepted and said she was looking forward to it. Before I knew what was happening, I told her she could sleep over after the party if she wanted. She said that sounded good, too.
Oopth.
As I counted down the days to the party, my heart was racing even in my sleep. I was nervous. More nervous than I had ever been. In the face of chaos I was always focused and steadfast, but now with everything going according to plan, I was feverishly afraid.
According to plan? And what was my plan, exactly?
I couldn’t sleep and I couldn’t eat, and eventually my friends in the co-op took notice. Dinner was a communal event. People cooked in the house as part of their work shift, and the best cook was a woman named Anjelica.15 She was the boss of our house. Her hair slicked back into a tight braid, she and Meredith (a proud Italian and her best friend/part-time lover) would cook cumbia music rang through the house. They had lived in the house longer than almost anyone else and were both transfer students who had met years previously. At first I avoided them because I was scared of being seen with lesbians, but as my worldview expanded, so did my friendships. We had a playful friendship, they were older and wiser and bolder, and I was precocious and curious and inept.
On the Friday of the party I skipped dinner altogether. Instead I hid out in my room, trying on different outfits. There was no mirror in my room, so I had to march to the bathroom every time I wanted to check on how I looked, staring at the floor to avoid eye contact with anyone I encountered along the way.
“Corazón! Watch it!”
Anjelica shouted from somewhere behind me. I looked up and narrowly avoided smacking into someone who was carrying a pile of decorations for the party.
I muttered “Sorry” and ran into the bathroom to check my outfit. Dissatisfied, I exited, only to see that Anjelica was still standing there.
“Come to my room and talk.”
Meredith was there, too, and the conversation the three of us had changed my life. I told them everything: that I had been questioning my sexuality, that maybe I had always been questioning my sexuality, that there was this girl I really liked, that she was my friend and I could not stop thinking about her, and that I didn’t know what to do about it because no matter what I didn’t want to be gay. I was shaking as I told them and sometimes my eyes would tear up, but mostly I just couldn’t breathe. Then I was being hugged—tranquila, tranquila—and then I was crying, but only a little because of the tightness of my jaw.
Anjelica and Meredith were patient and didn’t judge me, even though I was acting as though being gay were some sort of sinful curse. After living in an all-female house for so many years, they’d seen people come to accept themselves in all sorts of ways. I apologized for avoiding them when we’d first met. It was just that Anjelica was such a bold personality and so proud about being a lesbian that I didn’t think we could be friends. She laughed and told me that she’d had her struggles, too. Her family was devout Catholic and she was first generation—her parents had come to the United States from Mexico. Maybe they knew she was a lesbian, but they never talked about it.16
Still, I insisted that I wasn’t really a lesbian and that this girl was just a big complicated mystery I couldn’t solve. They didn’t push me any further, which was good. I think their patience gave me enough space to eventually accept my true feelings.
By the end of our conversation, it was decided that I would talk to Emiko before the party. I wrote down what I was going to say and rehearsed it, repeating my speech as I walked to her dorm to pick her up and walk back with her to the party.
As we walked back, she kept asking me if something was wrong. I suggested stopping at a café at the halfway point between us. I did so intentionally because I figured that if things didn’t go well she wouldn’t have to go too far to get back to her dorm and I would already be halfway to the comfort of my friends.
We sat side by side on a curb outside the café, in the glow of a streetlamp behind us. The air was rich with night-blooming jasmine, but all I could smell was the gardenia perfume she wore.
“Is everything okay? You’re making me nervous.”
“Ha! No. You make me nervous!” I was a little too loud and a little too abrupt, and thank God I could improvise because that wasn’t the first line of my speech. “No. Um . . . sorry, that’s not what I mean. You actually make me . . . happy. Really happy. But it’s the kind of happy that . . . also makes me nervous.”
“I don’t understand,” she said gently.
“When we spend time together, it makes me feel so good. I’m so happy to have you as a friend. I’m so happy to be with you . . . but . . . I think it’s because I want to be with you. I think. Maybe. I don’t know. Sorry, this is all just kind of—”
“Ah. I think I understand.”
“You do?”
“Yeah . . . I do.” She reached out to touch my hand. “I get it. I feel that way, too.”
“Happy?”
“Yes, happy. But nervous, too. Confused. Mostly confused.”
“Right? Okay, cool. Same! Oh, my god. What’s happening?” She laughed and I laughed, and it suddenly felt like the air wasn’t so thin. “Do you still want to come to the party? Because it’s totally okay if you don’t. I actually chose to tell you here because that way this café is in between us, so if you wanted you could just walk home or I could walk you home or whatev—”
“You’re just so sweet.” The words fell out of her mouth as though she were exhaling, and I couldn’t tell if she was talking to me or to herself.
“I try!”
We were quiet for a minute. Smiling at each other and then looking away and then looking back and smiling. Finally she said that she’d still like to go to the party, if that was all right with me. I told her of course.
The party was a blur of music and tequila and dancing, but when we stumbled into my room at the end of the night we were suddenly sober. We stayed up talking before brushing our teeth and then getting into my twin-size bed. I lay on my back while she lay on her side facing me. I was sure my heart was finally going to burst through my chest. I let out a deep breath and turned toward her.
“So, I’m just going to kiss you now, okay?”
“Yeah. That’s okay.”
“Great.” She moved onto her back, and I leaned over her and kissed her.
She tastes like Aquafresh.
First kisses are supposed to be awkward, but I’d like to thank the heavens and whatever powers that be that this one wasn’t. Somehow our mouths met perfectly and our breathing matched in time. I felt my heart and my thoughts slowing down. In fact, everything was slowing down. Everything that existed within me was settled and calm. No shadowboxers moving in tight circles. Just the feeling of her mouth and body against mine.
When I came up for a breath, somehow it was morning and somehow clothing had been removed. In the span of a few hours we had gone farther than any sexual experience I’d had.
I checked the time and laughed.
“How is it eleven a.m.?”
“I have no idea.”
I lay back and felt there was something I needed to ask her. “Did you . . . were you thinking about me being a girl? And you being a girl? At all? Any of that stuff?”
“Not really, no. I was . . . pretty distracted.”
“Yeah, me, too.”
“But I don’t think I’m gay, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“Same, yeah. Yeah, me neither. I just . . . like you.”
“I like you, too.”
We slept some and then had lunch before I walked her back home. Neither of us wanted to kiss good-bye in public. But it was more than enough to smile at her as she walked away. I was glad we were on the same page.
But I think that was the last time that we ever were.
She smiles after she kisses me. She’s straddling my lap. I’m sitting in a swivel chair. We are surrounded by computers but I locked the door so no one could use them. She wants to say something.
“When I kiss you, your lips feel so big, but when you smile your lips disappear.”
“Well, when you kiss me my heart feels so big, and when you smile everything disappears.”
She rolls her eyes and calls me a poet. She smiles and kisses me again.
I wasn’t gay the spring and summer that we dated. I wasn’t gay when I would go down on her for hours or frankly anytime we had sex. I wasn’t gay when I was watching her sleep or holding her hand in mine and thinking about what it would look like if there were rings on those fingers. I certainly wasn’t gay when Pride parade came around and I would rather be caught dead than wear a rainbow or celebrate. I wasn’t gay when she was telling her family about me and I was lying to mine. I wasn’t gay when people asked me who I was dating because she and I weren’t dating: we were in love.
Good thing was that she wasn’t gay either. She was just experimenting and that’s what she told everyone. Which is why she was comfortable talking about it.
But I couldn’t talk about it with my family because I knew we weren’t an experiment. We’d get married (as two straight women) and then and only then would I tell my family. I didn’t need to say the word “gay” because this wasn’t long term. I wasn’t gay at all, I was simply hers.