When I Knew

When I was twenty-four, I got carjacked early one morning in the parking lot of a 7-11. I stopped at that convenience store every day on my way to work, even though I should have known better. This 7-11 was not in the best part of town, but I was young and naive and refused to accept that there was any truth to any stereotype. You know, that bad people did in fact live in the bad parts. Then two crackheads kidnapped and searched me for money, pried the dashboard off so that they could rip out my stereo, and left with my tire iron and jack [I assumed to sell as scrap, although at one point during the ordeal, I did worry that they might bash in my head with the heavy equipment]. I quit buying coffee at that particular establishment, choosing instead a store in a better neighborhood.

My lesson was that there is truth in stereotypes—maybe not universal truth but some real accuracy nonetheless. So I don't know why it took so long [another whole year] for me to realize that I was a lesbian when I met so many qualifications of the stereotype. I drove a truck, a purchase that my family and the salesman tried to dissuade me from buying, probably because of the message it sent. I didn't wear makeup or high heels and pulled off bras as soon as I left work. I bought shirts almost exclusively on the men's side of the Gap. I didn't have a boyfriend and couldn't think of a single reason why I would want one, yet I still identified as straight. I remember I was teaching a night class one semester when an older butch told me that she had some "friends" that she thought I would enjoy "meeting." She said it just like that, as if there were quotation marks around the words, code I was supposed to recognize. I didn't get it, although I must have been sending signals that she had obviously picked up.

I finally knew I was gay the evening that Meg confessed. We were in my living room, Meg up on the sofa wrapped in a Mexican blanket while I lay stretched out on the carpet. She had something that she had to tell me, and it took forever for her to spit it out. I don't know what was the hardest part of the confession for her, that she was gay [she never used the word lesbian, and, come to think of it, in the 80s, the word did seem to falter on many tongues] or that she was attracted to me. Maybe it was that she was still in a relationship with an older woman, and her feelings for me were really complicating that situation. When she finished, the proverbial lightbulb went off. I realized that all of my feelings for her now made sense, that I was attracted as well. Of course, I didn't say that. Insight might have struck lightning fast, but I wasn't prepared at a moment's notice to become gay, so I told Meg that her sexuality didn't matter and we could still be friends.

Eventually, Meg and I did try a relationship, which ended badly. For an entire year afterward, I would hit a specific section of road on my way to work and start crying. I balled up that Mexican blanket, stuffed it in a green garbage bag, and threw it out with the trash. I dragged the sofa down to the road too. And I wasn't done: I ripped up the carpeting and repainted the walls. I'm not sure if I was trying to get rid of the Meg stain in the house or my self-revelation. But that was when I knew.