It's like Walking...

You just keep putting one foot in front of the other...one word after the other.

Yeah, that was my weak ass epiphany.

I was gonna write something over at darkdaughta's about how I came to love men. We've been...scratch that... I've been avoiding this conversation over at her place for months. Well, not exactly this one, but just conversation about compulsory heterosexualism and christianity and monogamy in general. But now I'm going to start it over here, and then post it in the comments over there somewhere (to make sure I'm not running from whoever just found me over there...and because there is no longer a link back to my place from over there)

Why now? I don't know. I think about my life, all of it, all the time. But I never write about sexuality, christianity, or love either, really. I also hardly write about the man. I think most of this is because this is not what my blog is about. I do occasionally get personal here, but really I write about school-getting here, staying here, and eventually leaving from here. I write about myself as it relates to school.

But school's out.

So. When I was younger, I didn't have a lot of friends - not because I wasn't cool...but because my family is huge. I mean really huge. There are so many cousins that we could hold an official sports game, crowds included, without any help from anyone else. I had no need for too many extra people to play with, I had too many as it was. This lack of need for too many outside friends is still kinda true to this day...that is, if I actually lived near my family I would not need very many other people in my life. But as I got older and started going to school, maybe the 6th grade, I began to have a decent number of friends who I kept up with. They were all girls. The friends I had that were boys were just neighborhood boys that I saw around. As soon as I started making friends I realized that I was not your typical little girl. I didn't care enough about boys. I didn't care enough about make up. I didn't care enough about the 'cute' clothes. I cared..I wanted to wear make up, I wanted to wear clothes that I thought were cute, but not for the same reasons and not the same kinds that my friends were dying to wear...the kinds that made the boys turn and look. I liked to paint and draw and color, and make up to me looked like a lot of fun, and I loved doing my hair in so many creative ways. Soon enough, junior high (7th and 8th grade) it was made very clear to me by girls, that I was not good friend material. I can only listen to you talk about boys for so long...that's when they kind of girls I hung out with changed. I opted for the rougher, tom-boy girls. Girls who didn't spend all day talking about boys. And we had a lot of fun times, a lot of rage was expressed, and I learned to spit, and fight, and curse "like a boy." But as it turns out, those same girls, by high school (9th grade) had crossed over to the other side! I had not. It was so sad. I missed them. I missed their boldness, now turned coy. Now batting eyes at boys. Now squeezing into the tight jeans, on a diet...always on a damn diet. They ditched me. Called me names like butch and gay and dike. (It didn't help that I dressed like a boy a lot) I never lashed out against those terms, believing that "being defensive just makes you guilty." Yep, back then being gay was something you were 'accused' of (and still is, I realize) So what's a girl to do? I said screw them, and found girlfriends who weren't as caught up in the hormone fest. Girls who were shunned because they were too smart, or too fat, or too black, or whatever else is 'bad' in teenage girl terms....that and...boys. I found boys. Boys who I wasn't interested in for the same reasons as other girls were interested in them, but because they seemed to be so laid back. (I would later learn that black boys learn how to look this way...how to always seem as though they have no feelings, no emotions, when standing in front of others) But back then all that mattered was that I didn't have to have on make up and I didn't have to be anybody else but me (I thought then) and I could hang with them, no strings attached. They let me hang out, they treated me as equal (as far as I knew what equal was back then...which doesn't look like equal to me right now) and they didn't call me names. I still had a few girlfriends that were very cool girls, and for the most part we keep in touch, but I didn't hang out with them as much as I did those boys.

Eventually things got even crazier with girls because they couldn't understand why I got to hang out with the boys when that's all they ever wanted to do. So then of course I became even gayer to them. Still, no problem...by this time I hated "females" anyway - except those who had managed to stay true. I was an easy person to make fun of - I was (am) fat, dark, and had short hair - all cardinal sins in girl world in the 90's. I didn't have my first boyfriend until I was 18 years old. This was on purpose. I had been propositioned many times, but I was determined not to have sex until I was 18 because so many of my cousins and the girls around the way had had babies too early. Yep I figured when I got a boyfriend I'd be screwing, therefore, there was no reason to have one until I was ready to give up the panties. My first boyfriend was 28 years old. (Yeah mama, 28 - don't have a heart attack) I know what that looks like, but hey, I was 18, and had very little patience for boys my own age because by this time I knew what they were like - I mean I had spent the last four years in their intimate space. Plus, I had been working A LOT since the day I became old enough to work, had my own stuff and was moving into my own place as soon I walked across the high school graduation stage. We had a good time, me and him.

So what does all of this have to do with heterosexuality? Girls have turned me OFF for most of my life. In the beginning they were so cool...I remember the slumber parties and I had a good start with attending Girls Inc most of my life. But then it changed with the hormones...they became snottier, and meaner, and boy crazed, and down right hateful. It wasn't until I saw all of that in myself...could appreciate it in myself...that I stopped hating them in general...I am just now getting to place where I crave interaction with women. I wish i had more/closer girlfriends.

More layers to come...