Cataloging Desire
Photo by Heather Suarez
“Who was your gay awakening?”
People ask me this question in games of truth or dare and in late night deep talks. Every time, I pause and shuffle through a list of famous queer women in my head. I usually choose a name at random, and no one usually questions my choice. This ordeal is easier than explaining I do not have a gay awakening. I never saw a beautiful woman grace my television screen and realized, right then and there, that I was gay. As a teenager, I did some introspection and spent many restless midnights trying to analyze my own romantic feelings. Like the literature major I am, I analyzed myself like a novel and came away with a conclusion: I could learn things about my own desires without another person in the picture.
When people ask me who my gay awakening was, they assume that I came into my own queerness because of the influence of another person. I don’t blame the people asking me this question; many people do have a clear point of reference for their personal gay awakenings. I do not. My desire lives within me and me alone.
I think of my desires — romantic, sexual — like ordering at a restaurant. Perhaps you visit one and order a new type of food, maybe a fun-shaped pasta with a lemon sauce. When you tell people about your meal, you’ll likely note which foods you liked (the heart shaped pasta) and those you didn’t (the lemon sauce was too sour for your liking). The commonality in all of these observations is that you center yourself. You say what you did or didn’t like. The restaurant might be where you found out something new about your taste palette, but the discoveries you uncovered about your taste palette are not dependent on the restaurant.
That’s how I think about desire. I might learn new things about myself with a person, like I might learn I love to cuddle while watching a movie. However, I learned that about myself by reflecting on my experiences. My partner at the time is not the reason I understand my desires better; it’s the work I’ve put into thinking about my experiences with other people.
I had fallen into the trap of tying my own desires to past relationships. The quality of my ex-girlfriend’s punchlines did not make me realize I love humor in a relationship. However, in the aftermath of the relationship, I associated her jokes with what I had realized about humor. Once I thought about the relationship more, I remembered the joy in my laughter. The way it felt so wonderful to let out my real laugh next to someone else. That feeling is unique to me and my body. My desire to laugh is mine.
I have gotten into a habit of reflecting on past experiences more in an attempt to reclaim my desire. I don’t relive the ways past lovers kissed me, trapping myself in nostalgia. I relive those kisses to clarify for myself how I like to kiss. I want to name my own desires; it’s empowering. I want to feel secure enough in my own desires to be able to articulate what they are. I am no longer a half of a whole, a part of a memory that needs another human to be complete. I am a full human with my own desires.
One night, I sat down at my desk and wrote a poem. It flowed out of me. I thought of the sensations I remembered liking in a kiss, in a cuddle, in a hug. I made a catalog of my desires. I wrote about relishing, remembering; places, hands and shivers. The poem felt vulnerable — it listed my desires earnestly; writing it, I realized for the first time that I had a better understanding of my own desires than I imagined.
When someone asks me who my gay awakening was, I want to show them my poem. I want to explain that when you try a new food, you decide if you like it. I want to explain the feeling of remembering how I laughed with an ex, but forgot what joke my ex told me. What I want to say feels selfish and ego-inflating, but it is the truth: in a way, I was my own gay awakening.