3 minute read
How I learned to stop worrying and became a lesbian
With a little help from the film ‘But I’m a Cheerleader’.
‘But I’m a Cheerleader’ is a 1999 film where an average American cheerleader named Megan (Natasha Lyonne) is sent by her parents to True Directions. True Directions is a 2-month program run by Mary Brown (Cathy Moriarty) and taught by Mike, (Ru Paul) an “Ex-gay” teaching queer people how to be straight. During the program Megan meets Graham (Clea Duval) and the two form a romantic bond throughout their time there. With the help of two ex-ex-gays, Larry and Lloyd Morgan-Gordon, she learns that it's okay to be gay and it's normal that she as a woman likes other women as well.
So, picture this, it’s June 2021: I was celebrating my 21st birthday when I decided to pay a visit to The Men's Gallery, a local strip club in Hobart. Now at this time, I had been struggling with my sexual identity since January. For ages I thought I was bi, but my attraction to men wasn’t as strong as it was with women, and I had found myself becoming less and less attracted to men. This put me in the head space of, “am I bi? Am I actually a lesbian?” Those questions and more were answered the second I walked into the strip club. I met my friend who works there as an exotic dancer, I gave her some money and we talked, had some drinks at the bar, as I was standing there, I admired the women working the floor and I start to think, “Maybe I am a lesbian” which turned into “Yeah I am a lesbian.” Later, my friend goes up on stage and I go sit on one of the seats next to it, my friend gets up, starts working the stage, dances, then comes up to me, takes my glasses off, puts them on her face and asks me, “Are any of your piercings still healing?” (I have a lotta facial piercings). I say, “No.” She then gets on all fours, faces the pole, hooks her feet over my shoulders, and rams my face into her ass. In that moment, I think, “Yeah, I am defs a lesbian!” I died, saw God, (they were ethnically ambiguous) and came back a lesbian. The next day I went to a movie night at my friend Eli’s place with a group of friends. My friend Angus was in charge of what movies we were watching; one of them was ‘But I'm a Cheerleader’. A scene at the beginning that really resonated with me was a scene between Megan and her boyfriend, they are making out in his car and Megan isn’t really into it, her mind wanders, picturing other women as she is making out with her boyfriend. It spoke to me because I, too, felt like that a lot when making out with guys in the past. So having a moment like that in the film after realising I was a lesbian really resonated with me.
