More than heterosexual

                                     

As far as identity and sexual orientation go, I have identified as heterosexual for most of my life but I have always believed sexuality to be fluid, I have believed this about my own sexuality. The first physical attraction I felt towards a woman happened when I was in university. She was the friend of a friend and we were never formally introduced but I would feel my cheeks flush and my heart, instead of beating really fast, as I was accustomed when I felt a sexual attraction to a man, would almost come to, what felt like, an absolute stop. But like I mentioned, we were never introduced and so nothing came of that. You may have noticed that when I mentioned an attraction to a woman I used the word physical, but when I mentioned an attraction to a man I used the word sexual. And that was deliberate. My attraction to Camille never felt sexual to me at the time. My frames of reference were not yet expansive enough to comprehend what a sexual attraction to a woman could and would mean for the sexuality I had never questioned.

The second woman I loved came in the form of a character on the Netflix series ‘Orange is the New Black’. The character, Poussey Washington, was not a particularly prominent or multi-faceted character but I found myself drawn to her, paying particular attention to scenes that she was in. Poussey, like Camille, portrayed masculine, but very feminine features and characteristics as well. I liked that. It seems I had a type. The attraction then took on a more sexual nature. I didn’t just find her physically appealing, I imaged being with her, sexually, romantically, intimately. But I met her on TV. Our chances of living happily ever after are about as real as the character she plays.

And in walks Mpumi. A very real, very tangible, very lesbian, enigma of a woman who I met on a work trip to Rustenburg. I met Mpumi and came face to face with the heterosexuality that I had, until that day, embraced without question. The attraction, the soul connection, was almost immediate. I did not meet this woman and think, I want to bed her, perhaps date her for a little while. I met her and something in me shifted…permanently! In a space where I was already questioning so much in my life, she shattered the last thing that seemed unscathed by the quarter-life crisis that was tearing through my world.

I wanted so desperately to be noticed, and found intriguing by this woman. “Men find me enchanting don’t they, why wouldn’t she.” I cringed the moment that thought popped into my mind. I was one of those women…those women who believe that lesbians cannot and do not have a type. Their type is woman. I was those women who thought she was immediately attractive and desirable to any lesbian, to all lesbians, purely by virtue of being a woman. How had society, how had patriarchy sneaked into my subconscious in this way? My heterosexuality had failed me. No, my heterosexuality was not my heterosexuality. It too had slipped through a secret trap door and implanted itself in my subconscious and had tricked me into believing that it was natural, that it was the birthplace of all sexuality and anything otherwise was a deviance. Who died and made you King Heterosexuality? And what did you do to me that I have not thought before to ask you this question, to question your intentions and your motives and push back on the notion that you are the be all and end all, the alpha and omega. I had come face to face with heterosexuality, with my heterosexuality and not only did I not recognise him, I did not like him and I did not understand how he had oppressed me for all 25 years of my life unopposed.

I am fortunate enough to have very liberal parents. Race, age, sexual orientation, it didn’t matter. As long as you were happy and being treated well, my parents had no qualms. My peers, however, proved to be, surprisingly, more of a challenge. My friends have reacted in various ways. Although no one has come outright and said “you’re going to hell if you continue down this path of lesbianism” the reactions have not all been love and understanding. Supportive? Yes. Because I am still their friend after all. I am now “into girls” but I am still the same. Right? I don’t think the world to which I have grown accustomed agrees. This world, constant and unchanging in itself, remains itself, and shows me that I am the one who is no longer the same. I am the one who is now conscious of my surroundings before holding my girlfriend’s hand, before kissing her on the lips while walking to our favourite hangout. I am the one who is aware that people stare, whether in intrigue or disapproval. The world remains the same. But the way I experience it is so jarringly different.

As is my nature I am defiant. As is human nature I don’t like it when things change suddenly. I have never been publicly aware of my sexual orientation. It has never been at the fore front of my identity. I have never worried that people will disapprove of my partner’s gender. I have never considered my partners gender. I have never called anyone my ‘partner’. I was not going to play into everyone’s bullshit. I was going to hold her hand, I was going to kiss her mouth. I was going to emphasise the SHE when alluding to the fact that the person with which I am sharing my life is in fact not a he, as the world is accustomed, but a SHE. I haven’t changed. I am still me. I will do the things I have always done. What can the world do?

The world rapes and murders young, black, lesbian women. This is not new. True to its unchanging nature, the world has been doing this before I knew that I was just like the young, black, lesbian women it is killing. The world kills people like me.

In my attempt to be defiant and hold her hand and kiss her mouth, in my attempt to carry out my heteronormative privilege in a homosexual space, am I spitting in the face of scores of young, black, lesbian women, like the one I am dating, like the ones who have been killed for their sexual orientation? Am I invalidating their struggles? Their oppressions? Am I downplaying their fears? By being with a woman only at the age of 25. By having been with men, unquestioningly. By choosing, consciously, to only be with women from here on out. By essentially bypassing most struggles that black lesbian women face. By not indulging the world by identifying as any one particular sexual orientation. By feeling like I cannot claim lesbianism if I have not struggled for it. My lack of identification is a refusal to be boxed by a world that does not understand, or acknowledge (I can’t decide which) what those boxes even mean, but it is also out of fear and a general sense of unbelonging.

My sexuality, my sexual orientation is now at the forefront of my identity. It is at the forefront of how I think about who I am. Because before anything else about who I am can emerge, the world has to process that I am black, I am a woman, and I am a lesbian, or not lesbian. What emerges, if anything at all, about what else constitutes this being, is not dependent on my character, my strengths, my drive and ambition. It is dependent on whether the world, on that particular day, has decided to let me live, or let me die.