So I date girls now

I wrote about it here AND on Mashable dot com!

“Dear Him, 

I wish I hadn’t tied your tie. 

I didn’t even know how to tie a tie. I think that may have been the biggest problem.

In that moment, my gravity shifted. You became the person to whom I would always bounce back. The moon, the stars and the sun became your children.

And so began a poem I wrote at 17. 

It was the fall of my senior year of high school, and I felt heartbroken. A year earlier, at 16, I became enamored with Jacob, who lived down the street and starred in every straight play in our high school’s Black Box theater. The aforementioned tie was part of his costume. (I think it was Chekhov?) (We went to a very artsy public high school.) 

Earlier this summer, I read that poem and others at “My Twisted Mind,” a very cool event at Singer’s in Bed-Stuy hosted by the amazing P.E. Moskowitz. In a brilliant and refreshing concept, writers and artists shared work penned between the ages of 12 and 17. It was cathartic, to say the least, and inspiring to hear the teenaged versions of writers like Ashley Reese and Mackenzie Thomas and Ivy Wolk. 

I arrived at the function slightly buzzed from an aperol spritz. I had come from a first Hinge date with a woman. 

---

I’ve written a lot about men.

The old flame who ghosted me after having diarrhea in my apartment; the Hinge guy who left mid-pizza because getting high and ordering pizza wasn’t his ideal second date, for some reason; the Irish guy I met on Tinder in Dublin who visited me in Paris. 

For a while, it felt as though my creativity depended on feeling devastated by men. My final portfolio for one poetry workshop in college was almost entirely about guys who sucked. Like this one guy:

“There’s a photo of you on Facebook 

in the sand by the ocean with your girl.

And I wonder if you remember 

how you told me 

it’s impossible to go to sleep when we’re in bed together.

We never went to the ocean.

No,

you saved those things for her.” 

Or this other guy, whom I actually met in that poetry workshop:

It’s 4am 

and it hurts to lay there when he won’t hold you 

but you ask him to stay. 

He says he needs to leave,

but he wishes he could press his thumbs 

into 

your thighs. 

I’ve written almost nothing about women. 

Let this be the first time. 

On the question of my sexuality, I have long embraced the luxury of feigned ambivalence.

Do you remember Pitbull’s “Hotel Room Service” music video? It came out in August 2009. I was 12, and watched VH1 every morning. Pitbull tried to act sexy, and I found him disgusting, so I rolled my eyes as busty women in lingerie danced around him suggestively in a hotel room. And then I didn’t really have time to register the feeling before the panic set in. I knew what the feeling was, and I knew it couldn’t possibly have anything to do with Pitbull :(

That song made me anxious for years. Then, in high school, I started telling people about it flippantly, as though my attraction for women were actually a joke. “I mean, I was like, super turned on by Pitbull’s ‘Hotel Motel Holiday Inn’ music video in middle school, and it couldn’t possibly have anything to do with Pitbull, so.”

Early on in college, I was pretty open about being into women. I downloaded Tinder right when I turned 18 and immediately set it to girls. But took another ~10 years to actually allow myself to act on how I felt.

I have a story out on Mashable today all about this.

I interviewed amazing women and brilliant researchers and wise therapists and genuinely kind publicists and even a tech founder and CEO! And I wrote about inching my way out of the proverbial closet, swipe by swipe.

As Charli XCX says, “Girl, it’s so confusing sometimes.”

As Chappell Roan says, “You can kiss a hundred boys in bars, shoot another shot / try to stop the feeling.”

As Renee Rapp says: “I had body dysmorphia and feeling like I had too much of an ass.”

As Renee Rapp also says: “I never consumed any piece of queer media up until maybe three months ago … I’m watching all these movies and parts of gay culture, specifically lesbian culture, and I’m like, ‘I love this.’”

And finally, as Billie Eilish says: 

I’m grateful to be able to say that I’m queer, to be writing about it and talking about it and living my truth.

What a time to be alive! 

xox