But Daddy, I Think I Love Him? Maybe?

by Sophie Joo // @sophie.joo

Jennifer Tilly as Violet in Bound (1996). Violet is a self-identified lesbian who has relationships with men.

For so long of my life I wanted to be a boyfriend’s girlfriend, I thought it was the coolest and most desirable thing in the world, and I couldn’t understand why for so many people it seemed so achievable and for me it seemed so difficult. 

In Year 6, I used to traipse around after this fluffy blonde-haired boy then immediately U-turned to his friend after he asked me out during Mass; in Year 7 I dated the ‘boy of my dreams’ for a week  and we never spoke once, before his friend told me I’d been dumped. 

I spent the majority of secondary school following around one boy who was aloof, mysterious, my friend, and he would sometimes want me and sometimes not. We both loved Pokemon and All Time Low and The Walking Dead and we talked every day and I kept hoping, longing, that one day he would be ready, and turn around and want me.  

From then on, I would meet boys, pursue them, they would inevitably not be attracted to me for  whatever reason but want to keep me around, and we would go back and forth. I’d cook for them, sew up holes in their trousers, sit in the passengers seats of their cars, pay for their parking, text them all day, watch them kiss other girls at clubs or parties. Their mothers loved me and would  badger their sons about why we weren’t together, and they’d send me screenshots of these texts like it was the funniest, most implausible thing in the world. To be with me. 

I spent so much time blaming myself - I was too ugly, too fat, too loud. I left the club too early, I didn’t pick up on signals, romance made me panic, I had intimacy or commitment problems. But I  think part of me felt some faint security in the fact that we would never be together. I got to play  girlfriend and not have to do the things I didn’t want to (sex). And so I carried on, every two years  or so finding a new man to do this with, each time getting progressively worse, wondering what was wrong with me that nobody wanted to be with me. 

A man entered my life slowly, subtly, and he was quiet but he gradually revealed himself to me.  When he was speaking I’d stare at him and not be able to believe that he was real. I’d watch him  lean back, play with the his hair at the nape of his neck and feel jealous of his hands, of him for  having his body and being able to do whatever he wanted with it. I remembered every  conversation we had, every quick glance we exchanged, every time it verged on becoming  romantic. Nights we both ended up at felt important, it felt like he was waiting for me to show up,  he beamed when he saw me, he parted crowds to greet me. 

I thought of him constantly. I sat at home and zoomed in on his sincere smile when I stalked his Instagram and it made me want to cry. I watched him interact with other people, his big doe eyes smiling at them, and I remembered when he looked at me like that. I know he didn’t love whoever he was speaking to and he didn’t love me but he looked at us both like he did. I think he loved  everyone, he was like this big adult puppy who wandered up to people in the street and stared up  at them, pawing at them, begging them for treats, hugs, validation. I saw so many of the girls he  spoke to on nights out looking at him the way I looked at him. I felt like I was below him,  physically, and I looked up at him the way a toddler looks up at an adult, tugging on their trouser  leg, as if to say, tell me what to do. Tell me how to feel.  

I overthought everything I said, every move I made. I felt so intensely that I couldn’t believe that my emotions weren’t a physical thing, some sort of monster or demon that followed me around  that I could try and whack away when it was embarrassing for it to be looming over my shoulder.  A burger to devour; a rock song to slam chords down to; dishes to throw against a wall. 

We were never together. Not even remotely. He was just my friend, not even a close one, that I felt  like I was in love with. Every slight semblance of flirting was something to dissect, to drone on  about to my friends in the pub. They’d meet me with concerned, blank or bored expressions and  I would feel awful but I couldn’t stop. 

How could my love for him be so dramatic, so colossal, when we weren’t together? When we’d never kissed, never come close? Because he leaned against walls and called me “Soph” and glanced up at me from under a furrowed brow and he wore baggy jeans and liked Radiohead and bought me drinks and asked me for cigarettes?  

* 

I used to force myself to go on dates with guys to escape these weird entanglements. I learned The Game. It took me years to learn to play it, then I got addicted to it when I finally caught on. I picked the parts of myself that I knew men would like the most and made them louder. I wore form-fitting dresses that made me feel uncomfortable when I looked in the mirror. I had blonde, highlighted hair, a full face of makeup. 

I sat quietly and listened and pushed my personality down on dates but amped it up whenever I wanted their attention. I held their gaze for sightly too long, then looked away and looked back. I gasped at the right moments when they kissed me differently even though it did nothing for me, I got them glasses of water after sex, I took birth control, I liked Instagram pictures of people that  we both followed so that my name would come up underneath, watched their favourite movies and TV shows. I sat and listened to so many men harp on about completely fucking pointless things that I had no interest in just for the possibility of a semi-exciting romance. Part of me loved  it so I could feel desirable, wanted. Sure. But it also made me feel weird, empty. 

Listen, male validation is like crack. Women have been quite literally brainwashed into it. I’d  reminisce on nights when I’d met men or some banal development had occurred in a situationship and they’d always feel so important. Every year when spring rolled around I smelled the pollen in the air in the evening for the first time it would make me nostalgic for nights lost running around clubs after men that didn’t want me. This important feeling was created by me, I romanticised  these interactions for sure, but as a woman you’re meant to have these things feel important  because you’ve been forced into thinking that this is the most exciting thing that will happen to  you in your life. A cool, attractive dude maybe wanting you, if he’ll just stop hanging out with his  Boys or snogging your mate instead. 

I resented men, for the way they made me and my friends feel. I resented them because, big shock, the world is built for them, and a Good Man has to make a conscious effort to not conform  to that. And straight women have to make a conscious effort not to as well - to not push their complicated, funny, whole selves into something digestible to them. I’ve watched so many of my  interesting, funny, beautiful friends dull themselves down around their distinctly average  boyfriends, opting to sit next to them playing Fifa in bed for coming and hanging out with me. I’ve  watched them follow men around clubs, feeding them cigarettes, rizlas, papers, filters like a walking vending machine just so they’d spend more time with her. I listened to them talk shit  about other innocent women because they’d slept with a man that they were interested in. I came  round their flats that their unemployed boyfriend had left messy when he wasn’t even contributing  to the rent. I consoled crying friends sat on curbs, because of literally anything their boyfriend had  done, and for some reason she ended up being the one that got laughed at for it later. And now as a lesbian who keeps many arty, long-haired straight male friends around (ALHSMFs,  if you will), I am all too familiar with the look of desperation in the eyes of a beautiful girl who has  waited until he’s gone to the toilet to ask if he’s said anything about her, or is seeing someone, or  if there’s anything she should know about him. And every time I just think, really? Him? You could be frolicking in a field in a long farmer’s dress, learning to churn your own butter with your  beautiful girlfriend, but instead we’re sat here discussing my friend who I’ve just seen hoover  down a double cheeseburger in two bites mere hours before this. 

I’ve born witness to the dreaded ick many a time. I’m convinced that the ick in general is a  concept made up by closeted lesbians to reaffirm their straightness - don’t get me wrong, nobody  wants to think about their boyfriend in the barbers chair with a cape on. But I realised what was  separating me from the straights was a tendency to get the ick at the drop of a hat. For example,  when he’d arrive at my flat with a backpack on, even when he was staying the night; when he  snorted whilst laughing; when I saw his bare arse in the morning and I felt inexplicably nauseous. 

The penny began to drop and I realised women did not make me feel nauseous. I realised I could  just date them, like I’d always wanted to. I honestly thought of dating woman as some sort of  fantasy that I wasn’t allowed to actually pursue.  

In the process of coming out I unearthed a load of really fucking gay memories I’d pushed down from my childhood - 

• I used to scroll through the Victoria’s Secret website literally just to look at women in their  underwear 

• I had deep obsessions with Kim Possible, Lara Croft, Violet from The Incredibles • I used to rewind this one episode of Futurama where a cartoon lady got her boobs out (God,  what’s with the cartoons?) 

• I used to rewind Santana and Brittany kissing on Glee 

• My Sims repeatedly ended up gay even if I had crafted a whole intricate, straight storyline for  them 

• Along with my One Direction fanfiction

• YES I went on Club Penguin and pretended to be a boy so I could get a girlfriend • And Habbo Hotel 

• I think I even did it on Build-a-Bearville 

• I had a deep affinity for George Michael 

• I mean, I was actively watching lesbian porn for crying out loud, but was deluded enough  because some other girl who is also definitely NOT STRAIGHT told me that it was just ‘better’  than straight porn and ‘everybody does it’ 

In school I was called out for looking at the other girls in the changing rooms (lol. Does every gay  person have this shared experience?) and I never participated in PE again, crying to the teachers  who doubled as therapists and opting to do revision in the library instead. I feel robbed of  participating in team sports because I was always bottom set and embarrassed about how I  looked in a skort and that I was looking at the other girls’ skorts too much. When I was having  these panic attacks, I had no idea what I was so worried about - I think I just attributed it to  insecurity, but when the PE teachers would tell me “everyone feels the same way - nobody is looking at you”, it never helped because I was looking at everyone else. I was looking at them to  compare them to myself because I was insecure, sure, but I was also looking because, well, I  wanted to! And there’s nothing wrong with that! 

For so many years I felt shame at looking at people. I still, as an adult, panic and look at the floor  whenever one of my female friends is taking their tops off and their boobs are out because I don’t  want to be creepy or stare too much. Listen, if that’s where your eyes go, and that’s what you’re  interested in, there is no shame in that. I wish I could shake it out of myself. Men certainly don’t  take any issue in staring at your boobs or your bum when you walk past them, even your  ALHSMFs who you love and respect - they’ll still just stare while you are having a conversation  with them. Obviously I’m not suggesting you should ogle your friends or make them feel  uncomfortable, but if you are attracted to the female form and you happen to see that  unexpectedly and you get a sudden rush of: why do I feel this way? Why am I looking? Am I  looking for too long? You shouldn’t feel sick or embarrassed, you should just simply understand:  oh shit, I love boobs! That’s great! I don’t want to kiss my friend of many years, and maybe I’m not  romantically attracted to them, but on a base level, I’m attracted to this form, and what a delightful  surprise that I have just seen boobs when I wasn’t expecting to. Amazing! 

Ultimately - having sexual desire for the same gender is not shameful. This is such a basic  principle that took me so long to understand. Yeah, I could read it on paper and be like ‘duh, of  course’, but I never applied that thought to myself, never put it into practise on what it actually  meant for me. I knew I had a sexual attraction to women, I knew any sexual circumstances with  men made me feel uncomfortable, and I spent so long psycho-analysing myself and trying to find  reasons to not be gay, when sometimes, you’re just fucking gay.  

Whenever I had negative thoughts about my sexuality and the idea of ‘not wanting’ to be gay, I always struggled with wondering why. My mum and dad wouldn’t have disowned me, my mum in particular, even though she’s not here anymore, always told me it was fine if I was gay. So when I’m at my darkest moments, I wonder and wonder how on earth I could ever have any ill feeling  about being gay, when there are people so much worse off than I am, whose parents would disown them. 

Then on Christmas Eve I see girls I went to school with in pubs who smell like vanilla and have  thick hair and bare skin and good posture. They share bottles of wine and smoke vogues. They  look me up and down and stifle laughter as I approach to join the loudest table in the smoking  area, but later, when we are all drunker, they tell me that they remember me from school, I’m  ‘actually really funny’, and that I look so much better now that I ‘know myself’. The insolent posh boys are now more comfortable slapping me on the back and laughing in my face rather than behind my back.  

I wonder if I ever knew myself at all, if I do even now. If I had crushes on any of these girls that I’ve shoved so deep down inside of me that any opportunity for love happening is unlikely for me - I’m too scared of what they would think if they knew, and it puts things into perspective a lot more.  

How lucky I am for these to be my only fears? They feel overwhelming and scary enough as it is,  but for so long women like me had these fears and thoughts, but they never got to figure it out  because the world was less liberal, they didn’t have safe spaces, it was scarier, they didn’t have  research or knowledge or content that could help them.

We are all so lucky, for the women before us that were brave and the women that weren’t, that  wasted lives in heterosexual relationships because they were scared, or that ran away from home because they weren’t. 

* 

I still think about that boy all the time. Every time I run into him it feels like a knife to my gut, every  time I see him on the street from the top deck of a bus or in the back of someone’s Instagram. There were days when every thought I had, even if it wasn’t about him, was somehow in relation to him, I was living for him. I achieved things and posted them on Instagram and part of me  wondered if I ever even cared about the goal or if I just cared about him maybe replying, liking the  post. 

If I’m gay, how could I be possessed by this guy all the fucking time, bore my friends about him,  drive myself insane with paranoia over whether he knew how I felt or not? If I’m not in love with him, where do those feelings go? What about all the songs I associate with him, and the feeling that gives me? What about that monster behind my back, where does that go? If I’m not thinking about him, what do I think about? 

Eventually I realised that the longing I felt, the intenseness of the emotions was all a desire to be  with him, but not for myself, not for a love that I would want. I didn’t love him, I loved the idea of  him loving me and us being together all to prove to other people that I was normal. The version of  myself that I pictured when I fantasised about us being together wasn’t me - she was a skinnier,  prettier, more feminine, quieter, demure version of myself that just wanted to hold his hand in the  cinema and daintily rest her head on his shoulder. He wouldn’t even be able to hear her breathing  during the quiet parts of the film, wouldn’t be able to hear her chewing popcorn. She wouldn’t  interrupt the film to whisper to him ‘what’s he in?’ and she wouldn’t tell people talking in the  cinema to shut up. 

In reality I am loud and brash and very passionate about things that are extremely niche, I have a  strangely shaped and complicated body, sometimes I accidentally dribble a bit when I speak or  snort when I laugh, I sometimes get a little patch of hair that grows on my boob, I had a YouTube  channel in Year 8. 

As much as I have tried to, as many times as I’ve learned the game, it’s never worked out for a  reason. I have never been able to suppress myself for a man, or lie to myself for the sake of  something that won’t make me happy, and for that I am thankful. 

Maybe my feelings for him were so intense because there was an element of real love to it, I don’t know. Feelings are complicated and messy and honestly, I could write about it forever and go down a million different avenues and never know for sure. But what I do know is that since I’ve come out, I feel so much more myself than I ever have. I love being a lesbian, I love being a stereotype and wearing my white vests and my baggy jeans and listening to boygenius and fancying Gillian Anderson. I feel understood by other people when I tell them what I am, even if it’s scary.

Now when I think about love, and what it will be like to be in love, I think of my longest and  deepest friendships. They are my equals. I haven’t put them on a pedestal, and I don’t believe that  they're above me, or that I’m not worthy of being around them because I’ve idolised them so much. Frankly, our relationships are boring. They are stable and boring and we do the same things  all the time because I will never get bored of being around them, of laughing at nothing with them,  being amazed that we still have things to talk about. And if I can accept that in a friendship, I can accept it in romance. How fucking incredible will it be to be able to feel this way about someone, and want to fuck them? Now I fucking get it! I get why those straight girls sit around while their boyfriends play Fifa, cause they actually are in love! And who am I to judge?