BEFORE//SOON//AFTER

it took me too long to realize liking other girls was an option

//BEFORE//
1. When you’re four you have a crush on a boy but only because he talked to you once and you’re supposed to have crushes on boys. You chase him around the playground drawing hearts with your fingers and if you could write you’d doodle his name on your hands because in the weirdest way you want to crush him, if you’d clapped his name would make a small explosive sound, miniature thunder, and that’s something you really want. But you can’t write and you don’t know what this feeling is so you chase him some more and you cry when he stops talking to you.
2. When you’re six you’ve got another crush on the most popular boy in your class. He’s got kinda buck teeth but he’s got dark hair and he’s tall (for a six year old) and he’s nice and you give him a Valentine that says “circle yes or no if you like me back.” He circles yes and you get it back and your hands start to shake and when you ask him, heart fluttering and fingers trembling, if he meant it, his eyes widen and he says, “oh, you meant /like/ like?”
3. Turns out later that your friend in that class had a crush on you that year. He’s in juvie now.
4. Turns out your best friend in that class has a girlfriend now, and you never envied her before but god do you now.
5. In second grade you finally get it, and when you develop a crush on the boy who moved here from Greece, you let it simmer til the summer when it boils over and evaporates.
6. In third grade you tell your mom about the crush you have on the smartest boy in the school, who’s also your friend. At parent teacher night, she tells his dad. You scream and cry and throw things at her, but ultimately you’re glad because now there’s an excuse to feel so awkward around him.
7. Fifth grade and the boy you like tells you that if you think about a person before you go to sleep and they think about you, you’ll meet in your dreams. You make plans and that night you dream of kissing people who aren’t him, kissing people who aren’t /hims/ at all. The next day you go in and he looks at you, so f*****g hurt, and says “I waited for you.” A week later, when you tell him that you have a crush on him, he never speaks to you again.
8. Seventh grade and honestly you shouldn’t even be talking to yourself at this stage, never mind people, never mind /boys/. But you have a friend and he’s a boy and because you’ve got it drilled into your head that boy/girl is the rule of the universe, you develop a crush on him and you tack his last name onto yours and you write his name in sharpie all over your room and now, four years later, it still mocks you. Your friend tells him that you like him, but there’s a snow storm the next day. You howl with the wind, because apparently he ran away from your friend when she told him. Monday and it’s like you don’t exist.
9. Freshman year and you went all the previous year without liking anyone and it was great, but the six year old you liked is now the team’s wide receiver and 6’4” and tan and broad and he’s still /nice./ And you can’t help but like him, you can’t help but sigh a little when he’s reading in English class as “Romeo”, every time romantic lines pass through his lips you just wanna swallow them with your own.
10. Memorial Day weekend and you’re fifteen and in Maine and a boy comes up to you and your friend at the arcade and he’s got brown eyes, which is lucky because he wouldn’t have been able to see them if they were blue because he’s color blind. You spend the whole day together, accidentally asking him what color sour patch kid he wants and getting your palms read, until that night when you all go out for ice cream. You go down to the beach and its dark and you can’t see the water but you can hear it, roaring, pounding, screaming in your ears because he’s kissing you. His lips are moving on yours and his tongue keeps f*****g prodding you and all you can think is that you have to tell your best friend and that you don’t even know his last name. His hands are on your waist and burning marks there and all you can think about is jumping off the playground structure because your heart isn’t beating faster than usual and you thought it was supposed to. His spit is on your cheek and all you can think about is how you chased a boy around a playground and now, eleven years later, you’re kissing a boy on one and its not what you wanted it to be.
11. A couple hours later and you realize that he would’ve kissed either you or your friend. You didn’t matter, you weren’t particularly beautiful or interesting, just a conquest.
12. January, you’ve been 16 for a month, and you’re watching Doctor Who with your dad when all of a sudden you can’t f*****g breathe. But there’s still half an episode left and David Tennant is in mortal peril so you stay. When the credits roll you grab your phone and go to the bathroom and you haven’t even closed the door completely before you’re crying. It hits you like all the cliches, like a train, like a punch, it’s forced its way down your throat like a snake and its curling in your belly and you explode with it, gasping against the rug on the bathroom floor, “I’m bi.” You taste bile and tears and the blood of broken hearts in the back of your throat but you swallow it down. You skip school the next day.
13. You haven’t said the term “bisexual” since that first day and you don’t want to. You’re a two on the Kinsey scale. You’re open minded. You’re straight with a twist. You write it over and over again in your journal, “I don’t want this I don’t want this I don’t want this I don’t want this.”
14. June and it turns out the snake was a caterpillar and its just turned into a butterfly because you’re f*****g bisexual and you /love/ it. All of a sudden there’s new side to everything, new ways to be lonely and new ways to be horny and new people to imagine. It’s wonderful it’s perfect it’s who you are.
15. You’re imagining new things because now you can and you get to your wedding day and you stop short. The male figure in your head won’t budge, the black tux won’t turn into a white dress, the hard shoulders won’t turn into breasts, the close cropped hair won’t turn long and flowing and pretty. You know, of course, that plenty of women won’t wear dresses and won’t have breasts and won’t have long pretty hair, but your fantasy is supposed to, for now. But you can’t get this man out of your head, he’s nailed down on your coffin. Til death do you part.
16. November and your favorite celebrity doesn’t seem to support LGBT+ rights. You f*****g hate him but you f*****g love him and you’re so hurt. So hurt. You want to come out but you don’t know why, maybe just to get your mom to stop talking about dicks because sometimes they really gross you out. It’s 7 pm and you don’t have school tomorrow so you go to bed.
17. You’re about to fall asleep when words start clogging the blackness behind your eyelids and you just want to sleep because that’s when your happy and that’s when no one hates you for loving someone with a vagina so you type them all out in one big breath and here we are.
//SOON//
18. You’re gonna get fucked by a man and you’ll be drunk but you won’t be drunk enough to forget how much you wanted to cry the whole time.
19. You’re gonna get fucked by a man and you’ll be drunk but you won’t be drunk enough to forget how good it was and you’ll probably stay and burn eggs and toast for him.
20. People are going to have a hard time understanding what you mean when you say sexuality is fluid and they won’t get why last week all you wanted was to suck a dick and this week just looking at one makes you want to throw up.
//AFTER//
21. You’re going to write poems about the hairs under her belly button and the mole on the back of her neck and how it feels to kiss the very center of her and how it feels to be held and loved by someone perfect.
22. Homophobic people won’t matter to you anymore.
23. You’re going to get married to a woman and your fantasy will finally look right.
24. You love her and you’re in love in ways you couldn’t imagine before and you f**k in ways you couldn’t imagine before and its amazing in ways you didn’t know it could be.
25. You go to pride parades and paint the word “bisexual” on your stomach because those butterflies are still in there and they’re beautiful and happy and that’s who you are. You’re beautiful and happy and bisexual. 
26. You’re curled up with her and Matt Smith is yelling to Amy about something or other and the breath is gonna get knocked out of you cause god shes beautiful and god you love her and you’ll kiss her neck and fall asleep next to her pulse and you’ll think about what that means.
27. All your kisses mean “I love you.”
28. Your daughter is four and she comes home from preschool and starts telling you about her friend and you know that look you know what it means and so you ask her what his name is and she says, “Emily.”
29. Your daughter is in third grade and she’s telling you about her friend and you know that look you know what it means so you ask her what her name is and she says, “John.”
30. Your daughter marries a man and she loves him to the ends of the earth and after the wedding you tuck yourself next to your wife’s pulse and kiss the vein and you think about what that means.

Author's Note

this is entirely 100% me everything in this happened