On developing queer confidence
by Eleanor Ball
Image by Yura Forrat for Pexels
I’ve known I was bisexual for almost a decade. When I was fifteen, one year into being out and a few years into my journey of queer self-discovery, I went to Pride for the first time. It would also be my last.
Not that people haven’t—with good intentions—tried to change that. Last June, my mom unexpectedly ran into our city’s Pride parade on her afternoon jog. She happily joined the crowd as it swept through downtown’s narrow streets, riotous and joyful in the beating sun. When she got back home, she burst into my bedroom waving a mini Pride flag she’d picked up along the way. “Have you been to Pride yet?” she asked, flush with excitement. “The parade is happening right now! I just ran into it on my jog. You could walk down and join! I got this flag.” She waved it again with vigor, almost knocking over one of my tiny D&D figurines.
I gently moved the bard out of the line of fire. “I don’t want to.”
Her eyes bugged out. Her arm dropped to her side, flag limp. “Why not?”
Why not, indeed?
—
The fact of the matter is that Pride is a large social gathering. I don’t get less freaked out by that kind of thing just because it’s gay and I’m gay. I wish I could say I’m conscientiously objecting to the corporate takeover of Pride, but I just don’t know how to talk to people.
“I always forget you’re gay,” says one of my gay friends. He says this on the regular. My gay imposter syndrome and writing imposter syndrome are always competing to take up more headspace. I’m tempted to just lock them in a room and watch them battle it out.
(Other recent topics of conversation between us: which Late Late Show merch he should order, how I can’t have anxiety because I’m just shy, and how he won’t be going to Pride this year (again) because Pride is for gays who are Too Loud and give us all a Bad Name. I personally think people who buy James Corden merch give any group they’re part of a bad name, but it’s nice to know at least one other gay person who doesn’t go to Pride.)
What would I do if I went to Pride? I don’t even know how to move my body in a crowd. Most people seem to have some kind of basic instinct for it that just got left out of me. When you’re not there with anyone and you don’t know where to go, how do you move in any way other than strangely, awkwardly drifting, making everyone around you feel extra-awkward by the very presence of your extra-awkwardness? And what do you even wear to Pride when most of your clothes are more reminiscent of Marian the Librarian’s wardrobe than anything else?
A few months ago, at a casual gathering of theater friends I was roped into attending, a couple lesbian acquaintances kindly invited me to go with them to a Dyke Night at a local gay bar. They assured me that I could still come even though I’m not a lesbian, I didn’t have to drink if I didn’t want to, and it would just be a fun time to hang out with each other. It probably won’t shock you to learn that I’ve never been to a gay bar—or any bar. But I’ve read about all these queer people who have found themselves; or their forever love; or their first and worst love; or something nebulous, undefinable, and brilliant in a gay bar, in this unique and safe space with all these queer people together in joyful community, and I want that, too. There are offensively straight women who have had more life-changing experiences in gay bars than I have.
These were acquaintances I wanted to get to know better, and I knew they understood how slow I am to feel at home in new environments and would help me feel comfortable. If I were to go to a gay bar for the first time with anyone, they would be a great group. But as I said “I’ll see when I’m free” over my cup of orange juice, I knew I would never follow up with them about it. I don’t like dancing—I don’t like moving my body in front of people at all—I don’t like crowded rooms, the crush of people, horribly awkward small talk, being hungry or thirsty but it’s a 20-minute ordeal to get anything, screaming over the music, being pushed to the wall because you’re 5’0 and no one can see you, having to stand there and listen to conversations of the people squishing you because you can’t find a way out. Whatever experience I would have at any gay bar might be nebulous and undefinable, but it would not be brilliant, and the only thing I might find would be a hangover.
In high school, these feelings of built-in distance from many queer social spaces didn’t bother me all that much. It felt normal because I was underage (and a rule-follower) and grew up in a conservative religious community, where even sticking Pride flag pins onto our backpacks could be fraught. Vibrant, inclusive, in-person queer communities seemed like the kind of thing that only existed in TV shows and books. But when I went to college in D.C., I suddenly had access to these spaces in a way I couldn’t even imagine before…and yet, I just couldn’t bring myself to take advantage of that access. At all.
What kind of gay person is intimidated by gay bars and doesn’t attend Pride? I feel like I should have some kind of innate emotional connection with these spaces. They should feel comforting. They should feel like home. But they don’t. The fact is, I feel no more excited about the idea of attending a gay bar than I do about the idea of attending a regular bar. “I always forget you’re gay.” Well, who would remember, at this rate?
Since I grew up in a conservative community and have always struggled to connect socially with people, I deeply crave fearless, vibrant queer community. Yet, it can be difficult for me to access so many of the spaces that often serve as the core of in-person queer social and political life because of how my brain is wired. I’ve always thought it was due to something wrong with me—if I was just a good gay person, I would feel comfortable partying it up in a gay bar; if I were the right kind of queer, I would not just be attending my local Pride, but leading the march.
We talk about kids and teenagers “growing up,” but I don’t feel like I “grew up” in any meaningful way until I left for college. Over the last few years, I’ve not just learned a lot about who I am, but come to accept it. It’s okay that I’m a slow writer, it’s not the end of the world that I talk to myself incessantly, I won’t keel over spontaneously if I don’t kick my nail-biting habit by this time next year. The fact that people often read me as straight isn’t an indication that I’m “doing gay wrong,” but rather that queer people are far more diverse in real life than the stereotyped portrayals of us in the media. And my queer space, community, and joy is real, even if it doesn’t always—or ever—look like it does on TV.
The great beauty of queerness—by definition, something beyond the norm—is that it can be practically anything. It can dance on any dance floor, curl around any fence post, sail itself through any sky. Embodying queerness can look like anything, like everything, and it does—because so do we. I believe queer people simply existing together, or existing at all, wherever and however we do it, is a critically important and politically charged act.
My queer spaces are the annotated margins of my theory books and conversations with friends about how sexuality and gender show up in our lives. My queer community is queer techies and actors, who were the backbone of my world in college, and folks working in queer indie lit, who have been incredibly encouraging as I’ve started sharing my writing online. And my queer joy is everywhere: snowfall in April; tea-stained mugs; talking to myself in the shower; listening to Folie à Deux for the umpteenth time and thinking “that sounds gay;” finishing this essay in solitude, and my mom’s Pride flag stuck in a pot on our front porch, the rainbow bright against the snow.
Eleanor Ball (she/her) is a queer writer from Des Moines, Iowa. Her work is featured or forthcoming in Bullshit Lit, The B'K, DEAR Poetry, Rat World, Stone of Madness, and elsewhere.