Revised: Leaving

I’m not leaving because I’m a bad person. I’m not. I hold doors for the elderly and I help pregnant women carry their groceries and I’m nice to animals. But I’m not leaving because she’s a bad person, either. She’s a wonderful person – smart, funny, kind, and great at video games. She’s pretty, too; the pout of her lips and the way her eyes crinkle at the corners when she smiles make her face inviting.

But I’m not a lesbian.

I tried, for her, I guess. I mean, I hadn’t ever met a guy I was interested in, so I gave it a shot. We dated, held hands, kissed and went to movies. And when she came out to all of our friends, I was right there next to her, declaring myself to be bisexual and proud. And I was. Proud, I mean, not bisexual.

Shit.

Okay.

We met in elementary school, in second grade. A new school building opened that year, and new zones were put in place, a new teacher told us all to get to know each other and Voila! Katherine and I were BFFs Forever and Always (I know, I know, but that’s what’s in the yearbook my mother bought me so long ago).

I was a shortish, pudgy thing with unruly red hair and two buck teeth. She was blonde with pigtails, glasses, and overalls with pink buttons. I still remember, because I wanted my mom to buy me overalls with purple buttons to kind of match hers. I never got them, but Kathrine and I got matching Barbie backpacks instead.

We did everything together. We had tea parties in the park, painted our nails, and had our exclusive little birthday slumber parties. Time passed, and we got more friends, of course, but nothing compared to the two of us. By fifth grade, people were jokingly referring to us as the same person – Beth-Kat – because we were ‘joined at the hip,’ as her mom would say.

In sixth grade, nothing really changed. Boys were cuter, I guess, but Kat and I made a pact to put each other first. No stupid boy was going to destroy our friendship.

“Promise?”

She was really earnest, narrowing her eyes in a way that she thought made her look serious, but reminded me of my aunt’s poodle when you blew in his face.

“Yeah, yeah, Kit-Kat. I already told you so.”

“Well, yeah, but we should promise to not care about boys, like, at all,” she pressed, leaning close and hissing like this was some all-important swear.

“Well, sure, that’s cool,” I’d said, and I picked up the Nintendo 64 controller, because she was seriously delaying the game and I was winning for once.

“Promise.”

“Geez, Kathrine, I said okay! That’s stupid anyways. What about getting married some day? I thought you really wanted that.”

“Oh please, Bethy, like I’d want to marry some dumb boy. I’d rather marry you.”

I’m pretty sure she was making fun of me, or something, but then she pushed the start button, and I had to concentrate if I wanted to win this round. I didn’t, but I maintain to this day that it’s because Kirby is a crappy character to play.

Looking back, that probably should have set off some sort of warning flag or something. But it didn’t, because she was my best friend. Besides, she’d been talking about a boy named Collin James – a greasy, creepy monster whose only delight in life from second grade to fifth was to follow us around and throw dead worms at the back of our heads. I couldn’t imagine marrying him or any other boy back then, either.

Sometime in the next year, though I can’t remember when (it was a Friday, I think), she told me she thought she might be…

“G-A-Y,” she whispered in the dark of my bedroom.

We were both completely beneath the blanket, facing each other, knees touching, faces close together so we could sort-of make out each other’s features, if we squinted. She’d asked if she could sleep over the Monday before, then spent the entire week quiet and trying to avoid me. It had been obvious that something was up. But this? Being… gay? That was big.

“Are you… like, are you for sure?” I’d whispered back. “Like, completely serious, no bullshit?”

“You shouldn’t cuss.”

“You just told me you’re gay. I think I can cuss this one time.”

“That’s dumb.”

“What’s dumb is my best friend telling me I’m dumb for cussing when she just told me she was gay. That’s dumb.”

She sighed, and I could hear her fidgeting with her fingers against the bed sheet. I saw one of her hands come up to pick at her face, something she did when she was nervous. Her mom hated it.

“What… what if I am, though? I don’t… I don’t want to go to hell.”

“So… don’t be gay?”

“I don’t want to be gay, retard. It just kind of happened.”

“Okay, so it’s not your fault, then, right?”

“You think so?”

“Sure. I mean, we’re still cool, right? Like, you’re not gonna quit hanging out with me and spend all your time with Ashley and those other… lesbians, right?”

“Totally cool, I promise.”

And that was that.

Until it wasn’t that, anymore.

Two years later, Kat leaned in for a kiss, and I didn’t jump away. We were in the same position, but in her bed this time.  She leaned in, and planted one on me and I was so shocked I had no idea what to do so I laid there and let her press her lips against mine.

That was not my first kiss, but it was my first kiss with a girl, so I guess it counts, sort of. When it was over, I inched away and turned my back. I wasn’t interested. I wasn’t a lesbian. But I didn’t get up and leave because this was Kat. She was still my best friend.

We spent an awkward month and a half not talking about it.

After enough broken eye contact and nervous smiles, her mom called mine to ask what was going on with us. We both made up wildly different stories to tell our parents. I told my dad she was busy with school work, since she was always struggling with her algebra. She told hers that I had adopted a stray kitten that died of worms and hadn’t recovered. 

Her drama made me laugh, even though my parents wanted me tested for parasites. When I confronted her about it the next morning at school, barely able to speak through tears of laughter, she couldn’t help chuckling along. And so, we went back to being best friends, like nothing had happened – except she reached out and held my hand on the bus back home from school. She pointed out that I was never interested in guys at our school, whispered in hushed tones in the back of the bus, and asked if I’d never considered girls. I walked over to her house with her and let her kiss me in her room, again. It wasn’t that bad, and by the end of the night she convinced me to agree that we were Girlfriends, instead of just Girl Friends.

We came out our senior year, and it was anticlimactic at best. No one threw bibles and other than a few “No way, you mean they’re lesbians?” no one cared that we were, in fact, lesbians. A few of our mutual friends, girls we had classes with, weren’t shocked in the least. The one outwardly gay boy in our graduating class threw glitter in the air over us at our graduation.

Then we went to community college, where being gay meant small town activism in the form of flyers and poetry slams and rainbow pendants. The LGBT student community was just as vocal as any environmentalist/pro-life/pro-choice/anti-hunger group on campus, and the efforts felt great, important. Kat and I shared the work and helped put on some of the best flyer campaigns that campus had ever seen. We were the local lesbian poster couple.

And then…

Kathrine said she wanted to get physical, like, for real. We’d been together for four years, and she loved me. And Lord knew I loved her as much as I could. Still do. But we’d never gone beyond kissing at our drunkest, because I just wasn’t comfortable with it. It felt wrong, and her hands on my breasts and hips and between my thighs just made my skin prickle. Maybe it was just because I was never in whatever zone she was in – that romance novel, heaving bosom, breathless passion that seemed to be the goal of all.

Generally, I just felt too hot, like she was smothering me.

I knew, deep down, that it hurt her. She sometimes told me, usually when she was high, that she didn’t feel attractive. She’d put on weight in high school, where I’d only gotten thinner after puberty started. Mild acne and glasses made her feel nerdy and uncool. To me, she just looked like Kat, beautiful and sweet. I just… didn’t want to have sex.

“So you don’t love me?”

She put her hands on her hips, and used that reverse psychology bullshit she’d picked up in a basic psychology class. She was always being manipulative that way, like she didn’t think I could tell she was doing it, like I was stupid.

“You know I do.”

“So what? I’m ugly? You’re really straight?”

“How about ‘I’m just not comfortable with this and I’m exercising my right to say no’? How ‘bout that?”

“That is so typical you,” she hissed, throwing her arms up and stomping around. “Always trying to make me look like the bad guy!”

I barely kept myself from blurting ‘Girl’ like some of our more flamboyant friends are wont to do. “I can’t help how I feel. I love you, but this isn’t –”

“So what, you don’t have a sex drive? You think just because you’re a woman –”

The rest is more bullshit.

But that got me thinking. The part about not having a sex drive, not the woman part. And the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. The more I looked back at those important pubescent years with the boys and the girls and the magical fucking changes, I realized that the changes didn’t happen for me. Boys were still boys, and girls were still girls, and Kathrine was still Kat, and I was still…

I tried to explain it to her, some friends, and, eventually, a counselor. The one with the degree in understanding people was the only one who thought I knew what I was talking about.

“From what you’ve told me, it would seem that you’re asexual, Bethany,” he said, glancing at me over his glasses. How cheesy is that? “It’s not a crime, and it doesn’t make you any less of a person. You should talk to your partner and see if you can work through it.”

“How do I work through not having a sex drive? How do I tell my girlfriend ‘Hey, sweetie, guess what? We’ll never have sex!’ like it’s no big deal?” I admit I might have been a bit hysterical.

“I never said it wasn’t a ‘big deal’,” the doctor explained, and he was the picture of calm. “I said it’s not a crime. Sexuality is different for everyone. What you have to do now is work to make it work in your life and your relationship.”

I spent the last twenty minutes of my therapy session switching between crying, swearing, and asking questions. There were some resources available, little online pamphlets and books written by learned psychiatrists. I took a couple home and gave them a read between literature assignments.

I started to spend a lot of time in chat rooms and “Ace Online Communities” where I could find them. It was more of the same of what the doctor told me, except it was coming from people living genuinely happy lives with partners who were either the same or just plain understood. I wanted that with Kat, so I paid attention, asked more questions, and prepared to share a large part of myself with the woman I loved.

We were lying on the bed in her apartment, cuddled close together, with my head on her shoulder. She had her arm around me, and we’d been watching The Little Mermaid.

“Kat,” I said. “I think… I’m asexual.” And I explained it the best I could.

She didn’t believe me, so I brought Kat to see the Doctor.

“She’s asexual, Kathrine. It’s not a crime, and” the rest of the spiel.

After hours of talking and shouting and silence, she said she understood. She said she wouldn’t pressure me anymore. But things only got worse as she promised to help me change. She wanted to be physical, light the fires or something similar. She wanted to express our love and had no idea how I could not want sex. Obviously, she thought, there was something wrong. So, together, we would fix it.

A week later, she told me we’d go to the local sex shop and see if we couldn’t find something to help me – some pill or toy or video that would make me… less of myself and more of what she wanted. I didn’t want to, and said so.

“So what? You won’t try for me? Why are you being so selfish?”

“I can’t change who I am, Kathrine.”

And that was when I realized that I really can’t change. I can’t make her happy, no more than she can make me happy. So, I’m leaving. It’s not because I’m a bad person, because I’m not. And neither is she.

But I’m not gay.

And I’m not straight.

I just am.