, or what it was like to be both perfectly, flawlessly gay and yet impossibly stupid, and proud of each in equal measure. It was exactly what I needed.“Writing Around It” by Madison Malone KircherSomewhere buried on the internet is a short piece I penned years ago after a not-particularly user friendly update to the Seamless app. So not user friendly, in fact, that I had mistakenly ordered pizza using an ex’s credit card number I had on file.
Months later, in October, I wrote a story about how a popular dating app was matching me with women using the app’s BFF-searching feature, even though I was swiping for people to sleep with. It was the first time I called myself a gay woman. No hedging. No hiding. I’d finally reached a point where not calling myself a lesbian felt made me feel as uncomfortable as I’d felt about the label years earlier.
Not everyone is queer, of course: I didn't even think I was, myself, until somewhat recently, and I wonder if it's because of how I’ve experienced this world, and its patriarchy, as a woman. And it wasn’t until even more recently, just last fall, that I started talking publicly about it. Occasionally, when someone hears that I didn’t know for a long time that I’m queer—in my case, bisexual—they express confusion, even disbelief. “How did you not know?” I’ve been asked.
There’s a tenacity that’s instilled in us—those who have to steel themselves against fire and wind every year. We know what’s coming, how to prepare, and how to rebuild if all else fails. Perhaps this is why I’ve always been comforted by the idea that I can always start over. I’ve already done so a few times.
I realized quickly that to explore 30 years of repressed queerness without resentment toward myself or my husband, I had to do it outside of my marriage. I had to extricate myself from the situation completely and immediately in order to start fresh. But that didn’t mean that it didn’t hurt, or that it wouldn’t get ugly before it got better.
In my six-square-mile all-black town, gay people were called “punks, “sissies,” and “dykes,” or were said to have “sugar in their tank.” Growing up, I believed that being gay was something black people only did to achieve a closer proximity to whiteness, or because they were abused and needed to find love in unconventional ways. I never thought that was me.
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