Left-handed, blue-eyed lesbian

I keep thinking that I should write a post about being a lesbian. We are you know. Gay that is. The problem is that I can’t for the life of me think of anything to write about it. It’s one of those things about you that just is. What is there to say? To me it’s in the same vein as the fact that I am left-handed or have blue eyes. What is there to write about? I can see the post now:

So… I’m left-handed… Using the left hand is just what feels natural to me… My eyes are blue… My eyes have always been blue… I have an uncle with blue eyes… You know who else has blue eyes — Paul Newman… yes sir… They sure are blue…

You see the problem. Something that feels like such an utterly natural part of yourself doesn’t appear to lend itself well to being explained to other people. It just is.

Now I’m not saying that’s how its always been. When I first realized how madly I was in love with Stace, it was a double whammy. First, because I had finally fallen head-over-heels-crazy-in-love with someone. Second, because that someone was a woman and I had been unaware up until that point that I was gay. Looking back on it I can see that I always was, but I’m not the most introspective person in the world so who knows how long it would have taken me to figure it out if it hadn’t been for Stace. My feelings for her are so powerful they sweep all else before them.

Those first few years we were together were more than just an exploration of our relationship, that period was also the first stage of becoming comfortable with a whole new aspect of your personality. We didn’t know any lesbians in our day-to-day world and what with being relatively anti-social we didn’t exactly make much effort to go out and find some. So we existed in our own little lesbian-bubble for quite a while.

Then, about a decade ago, we got online and man was that a shock. Tons of Lesbians. And Dykes. And Grrrls. And TransMen. And TransWomen. And Butches and Femmes. They were all everywhere. We stumbled across a very cool group at AOL and hung out on their virtual porch talking with them and exploring this whole lesbian thing on a broader plane. I remember long message-board conversations about virtually every nuance of the whole GLBT world. They were informative, educational and funny and I’m still friends with many of them today.

That’s where I learned that I was Butch. I didn’t even know there was such a thing. I just knew that, for the most part, when they described “butch” the description fit me like a well-worn pair of steel-toed Redwings. After I started exploring my “butchly-ness” (which is surprisingly similar to “studly-ness”) on the porch, Stace at first thought I was acting more butch than I actually was. Then she decided that I was just allowing the stuff that had been kept tightly inside for so long to come out.

Probably it was a little of both. Sometimes I can exaggerate the swagger a little… ok… sometimes a lot… especially if its likely to impress Stace… or better yet make her laugh… but mostly these days its just who I am. Pretty much like the whole gay thing. 578 words to say there’s not much to say about it.