Pretty

Melanie -- who prefers to be called Leonard these days and whom I call Leo half the time -- referred to me as queer. It is offhanded, a statement of fact for her. (Given who and what Melanie is -- a polyamorous lesbian -- this could not be further from an insult. I have not understood that word as a pejorative for decades outside the hatefully twisted mouths of bigots. However, they could make the word "radio" sound like a slur.)

I pause, thinking that I ought to correct her. I am, after all, heterosexual to the extent that my father said once that I was "blinded by [kitties]." I find men unpleasant, which might represent something bordering on dysphoria. As I've aged, the accumulation of male traits irritates me, but it might be the aging more than the masculinity that gets on my nerves. I cannot deny that my ideal body better resembles some elegant androgynous fantasy elf, but there is no effective elf surgery. I wouldn't undertake it if I could.

Yet, if someone were to assume I was cis and straight without reservation, I can't deny that a part of me wouldn't feel its hackles raise. Not so much because I am not these things, but it is not necessarily the people with whom I intentionally align myself. The first time Melanie referred to me as cis (after our romantic relationship had ended, casually in a Tumblr post), it did seem like a casual slur. I did not know its intention and doubted anyone had directly called me that before.

My hackles did not raise when she called me queer. I only wanted to have the record that I didn't appropriate, but I found nothing offensive in her usage, perhaps because she is queer.

My wife is queer (pansexual, nonbinary). There may be something in that makes me at least queer-adjacent by the transitive property. Amber does not care much when addressed with feminine pronouns (nor is she bothered by they/them), but she would do without prominent breasts if she could.

I do not own the adjective "queer," even as I don't exactly want to pick up the label "cis" and stick it on my shirt. The latter reminds me of those trucks that roar down my quiet street, full-sized American flags rippling in their wake (and often Trump, Blue Lives Matter, Confederate, or Gadsden flags as accessories). They are not patriotic -- they hate most other Americans -- but they have taken this default of their birth and turned it into a threat. Before 9/11, though I was asked to pledge to it every morning (something I became uncomfortable doing since sixth grade -- it seemed fascist before I knew the word -- and would at best stand), I considered the flag as a neutral, if ubiquitous symbol. After that, it became a middle finger thrust at anyone who might be an enemy. This had not been my assumption for the United States before -- did we not want your huddled masses yearning to breathe free? -- but it only soured after.

Being cis would be a circumstance of my birth. I am not proud of it because it is not someone about which I could be proud. Being queer would be a choice, even though it would also be a biological fact. Queerness was the consideration that one is willing to take a bushel of strife in exchange for being more authentically oneself.

Though my life, people have assumed I was not straight or cis. In middle school, I began to grow my hair long and kept it that way into my mid-twenties. I took some pride in this -- more than I wish I had -- and acknowledged that it could be perceived as other than masculine. Once, around fifteen or sixteen, my equally longhaired girlfriend Virginia and I kissed in a mall, and guys shouted that we were "dykes," which tickled me. Primarily cis, straight people (but also a couple of gay men) have thought that I was not straight, but I had no hesitation correcting that I am the only man who will ever visit my bed. Even Melanie assumed before our first meeting (and until I demonstrated otherwise) that I was a transman too insecure to fess up to it.

When I took a creative writing class in college, our instructor took gravely ill with something that required convalescence. Another man, younger (but not young) and brash, substituted. I remember only two things about him: my class decided that we did not like him and that he boasted that he was published in an anthology for trans women. He was emphatic that he was in no way transgender, which I found morally ghastly. (However, I do admit the guilt of thinking this was a faintly understandable way to get a publishing credit.)

I'm sure that, if one goes far enough back into my youth, I thought problematic things about queer people because they were the Other. Hating gay people was de rigueur, and I cannot imagine anyone in my elementary school could comprehend a trans person, though they existed (more in secret). There, queer was an insult. Then, queer was prefaced by "Smear the" and proceeded by piling on one of the boys in the schoolyard and beating him senseless. (I can't even be sure that this bizarre game was associated with same-sex attraction in our childish brains and might only have been something that rhymed. I also haven't a clue why every elementary school had this game, at least in the 1980s, a more benighted time.)

The first time I met an out lesbian, it was one of my mother's friends when I was no more than twelve. My mother had warned us that Cathy was not straight, an idea that filled me with mild panic. Then I met Cathy, she offered me peanut M&M's and Pepsi, and I actively decided, "Well, these gay people are not so bad. It must be every homophobic person in my class who is wrong." Cathy became one of my favorite people in the years I knew her, and I always looked forward to seeing her. Though young then, it banished any notion of homophobia from my mind. I couldn't love a gay person and cope with the idea that people could hate them for who they loved.

Queerness is more popular now, in a sense, but phrasing it that way makes it sound like a style or fad. Queerness has existed in humans for as long as history details, though it is rarer that they have been more than monsters or jokes.

Am I queer? I feel I will get along better in a room with people who admit some deviation from what is considered "normal." I joke -- and with established precedent -- that any woman to whom I am attracted either isn't straight or isn't a woman. (Elliot Page, I am looking at you for a few seconds too long.) I have reacted with faint blushing when a guy hits on me, which is easier than a woman doing it now because I can say, "I like women, and that short one over there in particular. But I'm flattered." I wrote a high school psych paper about how I flirt like a girl. My mother has called me the daughter she never had, which I am sure wasn't meant as a compliment. I don't want to be a woman and am not bothered much by being a man -- but I might prefer being called pretty. I don't love any labels. I only know my thoughts and actions. I can say that I am attracted to women and don't wish to change my gender but calling myself anything based on that seems unnecessary. I will gain nothing from it and feel I will be diluting the force of the words by misappropriating them.

last watched: Umbrella Academy
reading: My Best Friend's Exorcism