NOTES ON THE SCALES OF SEXUALITY (A COLUMN) — ANONYMOUSLY SUBMITTED

The Michigan Marriage Pact. I sighed and got comfy on my bed, thrilled I had found a new way to procrastinate. On a scale of 0 – 5...

How satisfied are you with life?

Do you go with your heart or your head?

How spiritual are you?

I was zooming through each question with less than a minute of thought. Maybe I’d get back to my essay sooner than I’d hoped.

What is your sexuality?

My finger hovered. [ ] Straight [ ] Bisexual big elephant of my religion, Christianity.

I knew that I’d been through several stages of on-and-off questioning since high school, but whenever I thought I came to a conclusion, like a duct tape over a black hole, the thing opened up again.

Where was the option for unsure, fluid, or at least mostly heterosexual? But I knew leaving it open ended would only tweak my results, they were here to make matches afterall. I settled with

[X] Straight and went on my way. There were still fifty questions to go, and my essay was tapping its foot at my desk, waiting.

I reeled at the sudden stop in my brain’s sprint. What was my sexuality? They say that sexuality is a spectrum, but I never quite determined where I really stood.

This is probably due to the

When the results came out, I was in a study session with my friends (all church people), and they were all pestering each other to reveal our results.

And as everyone snuck behind my shoulders and creeped a peek at my inbox, I knew picking straight had been the right call. In my spam folder, I tapped open the email and scrolled down.

Now without further ado, your optimal Michigan Marriage Pact match is:

Colby Hopkins.

As I stared at the whitest, straightest, blandest name I’d ever read, I knew this couldn’t be it. It was just a game, and I had taken the quiz for fun, but the algorithm determined that this was the type of person I was meant to be with.

There’s no way.

—

This weekend, in my diary, I wrote:

“Hmm. Maybe I should stop being so apologetic. Today at the VJin1 cupsleeve event (1) at the Korean dessert cafe, a girl called me hot. And I straight up malfunctioned, then she malfunctioned because I malfunctioned, and during the short-circuit, she probably deducted something along the lines of, “oh shit, she’s straight and I’ve made her uncomfortable, abort.” And I could not look anywhere, not at her or Jinny or Anna, my straightTM church friends, if I ever had any, and I’m not even sure if I can say any of this right now, not because I’m afraid of getting canceled but because the guilt is like black quicksand slipping into my chest, slowly, silently, eating away at me. And I already told Poulson-Bryant that I’m writing my essay about Christianity x LGBT even though I’m not even LGBT like confirmed, so I’m sooo imposter syndrome right now,

(1) Members of BTS whose birthdays are in December pg. 19 probably the most I’ve felt in my life, ever. It feels impossible, like I’ll never overcome this, nor figure it out. I’ve realized it’s only myself that’s stopping me, really. I don’t even feel super bogged down by people around me, at least explicitly. I think.” —

(2) An event at a cafe run by fans of a celebrity / band, typically on an anniversary for the group or for a member’s birthday. Any drinks ordered will come with a special cupsleeve for the event. Additionally, fanmade merch and freebies are typically sold.

Where it all started, was Twitter. BTS Twitter.

I joined this circle in early high school, and expected to scream about some hot boys. What they don’t tell you before joining the fandom is that everyone is gay. Or at least, that’s what it feels like.

I was starting to question my sexuality at the time, and was coming to a conclusion, or so I thought.

There were these things called carrds, which are like pages where people can share bits of information about themselves, so you can learn a little about them before following their profile. Everyone and their mothers were making carrds and putting their sexualities in them.

I opened the website to create one, but stopped before even choosing a layout. If this were to change somewhere along the way, would someone notice? I couldn’t claim I was bi and then take it back, right?

What if I get canceled?

Carrds went out of style a year later, but the thought never left my mind. —

“Here’s my hot take: Jesus couldn’t care less if I’m gay!”

We were sitting on the curb outside of my dorm, and I had just been walked home by Jae (who was also my bible study group leader, and had been my designated older sister last year). She had just come out to me.

I, in all honesty, had not seen that one coming. Mostly because I didn’t realize that was allowed. There were a few flamboyant, confidently out, unapologetically themselves gays in ourchurch, but none who I could identify much with. Seeing Jae – Korean, grew up in the church, quite similar background to that of my own – felt groundbreaking. The concrete beneath us shattered and I had entered a new layer of this earth.

“Does anyone else know?” I asked.

“My roommates, Xavier, and now you.”

Xavier was one of those quite obvious, full face of makeup, singing-the-high-notes gays who was a part of our church.

“Did he know?” I asked.

“He was like oh yeah, I’d figured.”

I liked considering sexuality as fluid, always changing, evolving – like scales a snake could shed and redon. I guess somewhere down the line it unfortunately became a matter of density, of standing on a scale and seeing how far the number could go.

“Do you know what I mean by queer?”

I shook my head.

“Queerness is just — living out of a binary — and how it doesn’t have to be one of these two set things that have been boxed off for us.

Maybe we were both about to get zapped, but I was feeling more enlightened than ever (aside from certain spiritual encounters).

I liked the way she kept repeating the word queer. —

I, quite frankly, feel like a kid when I go to my younger sister of four years for romantic / sexuality advice. She is fifteen and bi and receiving confessions from girls over the phone, while I cannot even decide if I am or not. A bouncer is standing at the pulsing rainbow doors, and holding it a crack open. I can hear music and dancing inside. He gives me a look under hisheavily polarized sunglasses. Am I in or out?

I am the only one in our fam ily my sister has come out to and we are still unsure if she will ever tell my mom. She grew up in San Francisco, her best friend in college was gay, but she’s told us before that she doesn’t “agree with homosex uality” and will agree with God’s opinion (which is a bit ironic considering she’s the one I have to nudge awake during service, while the first thing I do on waking up most days is read the Bible) – It’s hard to predict

reaction, you know?

My sister sat at the edge of my bed. She had just told me about her latest confession, her first time receiving one from a girl, when I told her, “You know, I had this thought when Jae came out to me, wondering if Xavier could tell, or if he would think to classify me as gay, if hisgadar would pick up on anything, or meep a flat “STRAIGHT.” And I really thought for a second, that that was how I could close the case once and for all: If the magical 200% accurate, exclusive to gay people Gadar picked up on something. Enough to say I’m actually bi, for real.”

But the thing is, I don’t really feel like anything. Not this, nor that enough. I feel stuck in a place between. In between in between.

But maybe I can get behind the idea of queer, or of having no label at all. According to Jae, isn’t that its definition, after all?

The illustration on pg. 23