Dear Professor Julie Abraham,
It’s midnight, and I have to tell you about The Death of the Heart, and how Elizabeth Bowen is clever, and tragic, all at the same time. You’ll notice this isn’t the reflection paper you assigned re: the queer interpretation of Virgina Woolf’s texts (due today) and is instead a letter to you about me.
I am wearing short-shorts with a squirrel motif emblazoned on the front, and a tank top that says TOTALLY Not a Girl on one side and has a male symbol on the other, all of which is written in red marker. The white of the shirt (which, I couldn’t say before, is what I wore when I performed with my boyband) is stained pink from the time I washed it and forgot that pen is only mostly permanent when met with water. I am listening to Justin Timberlake singing about girls, and he’s calling them “bitches.” If you were here, you would make a face I have seen you make where your jaw tightens and your eyes narrow almost imperceptibly. You are sort of scary.
What I wanted to tell you is that I am not a lesbian.
I have been making wildly inappropriate jokes about characters being gay due to their choice of sensible footware during class in order to see what I can get away with now that I have a shaved head. I am a very good actress, but beyond that, my whole post-pubescent life I have been mistaken for a dyke. This is a funny sort of identity crisis, as the experience of being called a dyke when one grows up in San Francisco is, I would imagine, somewhat different than if someone is growing up and called a dyke in Southern Australia (where you say you’re from). In a family that has never once worried me about my sexuality, in a town known for its leniency towards homosexuality, I got the constant reminder that being gay is okay (it’s great! it’s fun!), and that I have nothing to worry about.
Only I am not a lesbian and never have been. I’ve tried it, a little, who hasn’t, dabbled here and there. I have treaded the rainbow path, but as frustrated and hurt and betrayed as I’ve been by boys, I have never once considered giving them up for good.
Girls have fallen for me. I can’t forget (with a weird sort of fondness) the number of girls who told me they were in love with me in high school. In my sophomore year of college, there was one chick who had it bad. Oblivious to it all, I was flattered when told, but I never felt a particular sense of having missed out on anything (vaginas are great, I’m sure, but they’re not for me).
I do, of course, acknowledge that you probably don’t care about my sexuality. It is entirely possible that never once did you think I am gay. You probably find my sense of humor engaging, and so you don’t get offended when I make lesbian jokes. But somehow I know that if you were to find out that I am a poser, a fake, a straight in dyke’s clothing, you wouldn’t be happy. Or perhaps I underestimate you.
Either way, I needed to come out about this, and hope that this letter breaks the news to you as gently as possible. My mom calls me a cultural anthropologist—I went to Catholic school as a Jew, and have on more than one occasion taken classes that de-marginalize race, gender, and sexuality; these intersections fascinate me, and it pisses me off that an interest in these issues is often considered gay, like you can only care about various “–isms” if they directly affect your life. But whatever. I digress.
I guess it’s sort of a weird statement to make—to come out to someone as being not-gay. Truth is I hate it when people define themselves by who they have sex with. What does it matter, really? Isn’t saying that one is a lesbian or a straight woman or a dyke only re-instituting a different sort of norm? Lesbians wear sensible shoes and like to hike and have dogs and process everything. Straight women wear high heels and like to be told they’re beautiful and if they don’t marry then they’ll have cats and always need to talk.
Queer, okay, so that means that I’m different. I am a connectosexual, after all, and know that I do have a curious ability to fall in love with people regardless of body parts. Bisexual, you could call it. But honestly, Julie Abraham, I’m more concerned with what else there is. Namely: why aren’t I having sex, any sex, gay, straight, dyke, queer, hot, tame, dirty, safe, overwhelming sex right now?
I am much more concerned with this.
For a long time I took offense when people assumed I was gay. It made me feel unfeminine, ugly, overweight; embarrassing to admit this, as it is counter to every fact I know about what being a lesbian actually means.
But I didn’t understand that for most women, being loud and confident and unafraid to speak up is a rare quality. Too often people confuse being awesome with being gay, i.e. the saying, “That’s gay.”
I have realized, too, that a part of me wants to be a lesbian because there always seems to be that moment, the sudden ah-ha, standing in a bookstore, waking up in the morning, walking across a bridge, kissing a girl, brushing my hair, when everything suddenly makes sense. Oh! I like girls! So that’s why I’m different! I like thinking that in a single instant the truth gives context to a feeling of difference that has lurked throughout an entire lifetime. I am attracted to that moment. But mine has not yet come.
I’ve gotten a lot off of my chest. I hope you aren’t too shocked, and if you are still reading, I want you to know that Virginia Woolf has changed my life, and The Death of the Heart took me three weeks to read because it was really boring, but also entrancing in a strange, masochistic way. And maybe you should check out J. T. sometime. He sure beats The Indigo Girls. Figure of speech, of course.
Most respectfully yours,
Alanna Coby
P.S. You do have the most sensible shoes I have ever seen.
***
Original art by Ilyse Magy.
***
Please submit your own funny writing to our Rumpus submission manager powered by Submittable. See first: our Funny Women Submission Guidelines.
To read other Funny Women pieces and interviews, see the archives.
