queer story 7 - jess
“You’re a woman who works in technical theatre. You must be at least Bi.”
Have you ever seen The Producers? There’s a character in there who is the butt of a joke; a character who is the stereotype I am expected to be. Her name is Shirley Markowitz and she’s the lighting designer for the flamboyant director. She’s butch, she’s a theatre lighting professional, she’s there to be laughed at.
“Couldn’t you get more feminine steel caps? Those boots make you look like a dyke.”
At drama school, a large proportion of people who enrolled straight, left with same-sex partners, paid no attention to gender norms, dressed how they wanted and shouted loud and proud in the LGBT society (in the days before the + was added). Theatre schools should be the best places for this transformation. I missed the boat.
“It’d be hot if you’d make out with another girl.”
I never discovered my sexuality on my own terms as a teenager. It took me until my late twenties. In my defence, however, it’s very hard to think about yourself, and your needs, and your desires, when you’re sixteen and in an abusive relationship. When you’re being forced into a sexual relationship you’re in no way ready for.
Being a lesbian was mostly shown to me through other people’s desire, other people’s disgust. The butts of other people’s jokes.
Until I met three women who changed my life.
You’ve met them all: Chloe , comic genius, Elizabeth, your tiny narrative host, and Sara, bright-haired goddess, mother of cats.
Slowly, gently, I started to name the things I’d probably always felt.
Theatre is a comfortable place to be a lesbian.
My job was never going to define everything about me, but I spend so much time working that it was bound to be a bit of a factor. I came out whilst working on a show about sex workers rights, surrounded by glorious queers. The father of a cast member tried inviting me back to his place; his daughter laughed and said, ‘She’s a lesbian, dad.’ It was the first time anyone had looked at me and read me correctly. I was still moving the word about in my mouth at the time, working out how to shape my lips around it.
Flat shoes are the way forward.
I liked those dyke-boots, but I didn’t have the vocabulary at the time to dismantle the waste-of-space man before me. Or to do as I dearly wanted and kick him in the crotch. Let alone the fact that when I started out, it was almost impossible to buy a pair of steel caps in a size six. They were one of two pairs I had found in extensive searching. I had my heels phase and I gratefully retired them all when men’s desire was no longer a concern to me. My feet thank me continually.
I kissed a girl and I liked it.
The first woman I kissed was the wife of a friend of mine. It was an open marriage, don’t look at me that way. I was struck by how tiny and soft her lips were. It was a quick step to Bi from there, then, when that no longer fit, I tried something else on.
“Chloe? I think I’m...I think I might be a massive lesbian.”
She wasn’t surprised.
One December, a few years back, I took my waist-length hair to a gender-neutral barber in East London and told them to cut it off. That was two months before I came out.
Coming out at 28 wasn’t easy. I’m not sure it would have been much easier at an earlier age, but when people have got used to seeing you as straight they make a funny face when you tell them something different.
Thank Sappho for Chloe, and Sara, and Elizabeth. How lucky could a girl be to find three other women whose journeys had converged with her own so perfectly?
Every so often, I wonder what my life would have been if I had realised sooner. If I had stopped for a second and really analysed the fact that I didn’t enjoy sex with men; that I never thought about them and felt that stab of desire, a stab that I knew about, knew so well, because I’d felt it when looking at women.
Maybe school would have been worse: there were three out queers in my year when I left school in the early 2000s. And believe me when I say this weirdo didn’t need any more reasons for people to make fun of her.
University probably would have been better. Looking back now, most of the people I remember being kind were the queer women on my course.
It doesn’t matter: until I met those three women, I don’t think I could have done it. There is solidarity in numbers, in friendship, in shared experience. Dancing with the three of them at a queer night in South London, and at Tate’s queer fair when I’d only just come out was the most comfortable I’d ever felt.
As queer people, family is not always your blood relations. Blood relations are not always an option. It’s the people you find who to share your life with that become that family. In my case, the women whose stories converged with mine, pushing each other forward, encouraging our collective truth. If didn’t have them in my life, I might still be searching for answers, for a place to fit in.
Without them, I might never have found my family.
Jess is a writer, performer and theatre professional. She is a queer feminist and activist, whose writing focusses on LGBTQ+ character representation, mental health visibility, and the lives of women.
Follow her on Twitter @jglaisher or find her at jgrenaissancewoman.com, tiny letter: https://tinyletter.com/jglaisher
queer story is an ongoing narrative on coming out and being part of the queer community
If you have a tiny narrative to share please get in touch at thetinynarrative@gmail.com