Glass Closet

The closet was glass and I still didn’t see it because denial is one hell of a special effect.
I thought I was just a really supportive ally.
I thought everyone wanted to crawl inside their best friend’s shirt and live there like a gay little marsupial of emotion.
I thought everyone watched lesbian porn at age twelve with the computer screen dimmed and the guilt cranked to Catholic.
I thought everyone cried after imagining a wedding and realizing it was two women and one of them was you.
I thought everyone looked at their boyfriend in the dead of night and felt the sudden, feral urge to scream into the drywall.

Not fight.
Not flight.
Just scream.

I watched the Olympic women’s gymnastics team at age six with my jaw slack and my soul whispering
“what the hell is this feeling?”

Spoiler alert:
It wasn’t patriotism.
It was gay.
It was so gay it had glitter and a soundtrack.

Then figure skating.
Age eight.
Watching girls spin like they were trying to escape from Earth itself and I wanted to follow.

I was weird around other girls.
Uncomfortable.
Hyper-aware.
Hands too stiff, smile too wide, like a queer deer in headlights.
I called it social anxiety.
It was suppressed desire with a side of Catholicism.

Eleven of my friends came out to me in high school.
Eleven.
I was the gay whisperer.
The queer confessional.
The emotionally available “straight” girl.
The support system.
The sponge.
The “I wish I were brave like you.”

Bitch, YOU WERE.
You just didn’t get the memo.

I wore pink Docs at 23 and thought I was making a statement.
I was.

It said:
“I want to kiss girls and stomp on the patriarchy.”

But I still thought it was fashion.
Just a quirk.
Just a phase.
Like my “flamboyant shoes” weren’t screaming
“FAGGOT WITH A CREDIT CARD”
at full volume.

I played tennis.
I played dodgeball.
The closet should have had a banner and a marching band.
It should’ve had a laugh track.

The signs were everywhere, but I was too busy writing straight-girl poetry and wondering why my characters kept accidentally falling in love with women.

I told my boyfriend
“I feel like screaming.”
He asked, “Why?”
and I said,
“I don’t know.”
But I did.
I knew.
I was screaming in the pitch of a thousand swallowed truths.
I was speaking fluent lesbian but only in dreams.

I wasn’t hiding.
I was buried alive under expectation, religion, heteronormativity, and a very cute Anthropologie dress I now know was cursed.
And still the closet was glass.
Everyone saw through it but me.
Like the Truman Show, but make it repressed.

Like God said,
“Let there be gay,”
And I said,
“Maybe it’s just seasonal?”

Now I know.
Lesbianism was the genre all along.
Not the twist.
Not the subplot.
Not the B-roll.
The title.
The opening credits.
The gay little theme song that played every time I thought I was safe and straight.

And now, I stomp back through the glass, pink boots, loud shoes, glitter in my teeth, leaving a trail of slam poems and ex-girlfriends.
I wasn’t late.
I was dramatic.
As always.
As it should be.