A life without compromise – Chapter 2

STEPPING INTO THE LIGHT

I came out at 32 on Sept 10th 2001, right before the dreadful landmark Sept 11th terrorist attacks in the US. I remember this not as a delusion of grandeur but only because it was pointed out by my best friend who reacted to my disclosing e-mail aptly as “more drama than Sept 11th”. Strangely, I also saw that as privately significant because it made me realize how fragile our lives are and just living in the shadow of my true identity would only be selling myself short of what was left on earth.

So I strengthened my resolve from that day on, having come out to myself first, then to my closest and dearest friends, even to my ex-now-gay boyfriend, that I would have to make a significant paradigm shift (yes, I am truly indoctrinated in corporate-speak!) In a word, I knew my life from that day would be different.

Years later and it has been nothing but a confusing flux of changes, sometimes even to the point of breathless chaos.

The first day when I admitted that I am gay was well, rather exciting, almost as exciting as say acquiring a new pair of kickass shoes which you just couldn’t wait to show to the world. Well, I suppose I was overcompensating as a late-bloomer of sorts so the first thing I did was to hunt down every possible form of gay literature, media and even fashion statements. I e-shopped with a vengeance and ran up a sizeable bill within the month just from the sheer excitement of reinventing myself, atoning for my decades of homophobia by being exaggeratedly proud of my homosexual identity. I was what you might call a ’screaming ranting dyke’, for want of better phrasing.

(e.g of merchandise)

Of course, when the apparent trend of being out and proud started to settle into mundane reality, I realized that I haven’t really changed to the rest of the world because I was still that married mother of two young children who still had to trudge from day to day in her banal and really ordinary life.

That was until my ex-now-gay boyfriend (let’s call him xngbf) gave me a congratulatory note urging me to hang out with him at places which would jack-start my latent gaydar, to put it mildly. First it was gay clubs in sleazy parts of the city on Friday nights, then when he thought I was ready, he gave his lesbian party contact a call and ta-da, next thing I knew I was standing amidst a crowd of really interesting looking women at a pub called ‘Mad Monks’ and it was a mix of nervous anticipation and giddying excitement (and I was yet to touch a drop of alchie!) I felt so many eyes sussing me up like I was the latest slab of strip-loin (pun intended) shipped that Friday night. So xngbf introduced me to this group of really corporate-looking women who proceeded to cajole me with the apparent rites of passage of stripping me on the pool table (thank god they were jesting, given the really frighteningly bullish dykes hanging in that part of the room!).

So after a few more trips to these places on either Fridays or Sundays, I had more or less been initiated into a sub-culture of the party-loving gay community. It was at first a thrill each time I got there but after a couple of drinks and mindless conversation, I started to realize how ‘cruising’ or seeking for that partner at such places was really a shallow and disenchanting preoccupation. Perhaps because I had built up this expectation of gay women just waiting to jump on anything and everything the way the gay men displayed their enthusiasm at their clubs.

I discovered that lesbians operate on an entirely different approach. One that was rather ‘cliquish’ and exclusive, so much so everyone you meet is already attached or would rather just talk or dance with their own circle of friends.

THE FIRST

So by March the following year, I had vowed to myself to drink less and stop frequenting those pubs because it really brought me nothing but a hangover and a dull and deep disappointment.

Strangely the evening I had made that resolve was also the same evening I would meet my first partner.

The essence of what we were, let’s call her J, was that we connected not that evening at the pub with some friends but the following Saturday online. She had sent me an IRC message asking me if I remembered her. Suffice to say I was intrigued, if not impressed by her audacity! How often would a teen deliberately chat up a 30something knowing that she is?!

So the IRC conversation turned out to be significant in the way your life would take on a path I would never had foreseen at the start of my rather sedate year. I recall telling another gay friend how I was not ready to make anything other than friends with the community, simply because emotional baggage from my 7-year marriage was not entirely sorted out.

But here was a precocious Lolita of sorts who held her own with her depth of perception and seeming maturity of experiences. At some point we were trading domestics of child rearing and cooking! But the point which blew us both off our cosmic reality was when she mentioned her dad’s name which to my astonishment and delight was spelt exactly like my dad’s. We both identified that such a discovery was not only priceless but also life-changing.

And our lives were overturned, indeed. I know mine was. Here I was, a 33-year-old mother re-living her life with a teen, re-learning the niceties of dating, the rituals of making love, and the rudiments of bedtime politics. I only speak so superfluously because till date, I am somewhat disturbed if not baffled by how such a liaison came to pass. Everything about it was so wrong yet everything about it felt so right then. Yes, it was a lot of an emotional roller-coaster ride where most of the time I hardly thought about it, only allowing my heart to lead the way. Foolhardy as this may seem, but I wanted so much to believe I had met my cosmic partner, albeit our age, timing and circumstances were so conflicting, though this ironically spurred me on to allow myself to discover more of what I would become with her because of the rarity of our connection.

etched on skin

Of course, in any comedy of errors, this one was already awaiting to happen. And this had nothing to do with the many external tensions from peers and public. We had to skulk around in the shadows of our guilty conscience — guilty not because we felt what seemed like love, but bothered more by how the world would overwhelm us with dread and disapproval.

In all, the relationship was deep and intense. It lasted barely 3 months but while it did, I felt my almost dead spirit for loving resuscitate itself. I felt hope.

So when it ended I grieved from a loss I couldn’t really fathom except that I knew I had lost a part of a new me — a me who could be more certain that this is whom I would like to be from this point on. The me who had been reborn on 10th Sept 2001. The me who had come home to herself.

Coming up Chapter 2, Part 2