(Don't ask me how I know this.)

1. My mom volunteered at my brother's Boy Scout camp every summer. I got to go along, and I loved it. I got more merit badges than he did. I can still build a fire with nothing but a dull pocketknife and some old Ranger Ricks, in a pinch. (I think I have more Boy Scout badges than Girl Scout badges - and I was a kick-ass Girl Scout.)
2. When I was two years old, my parents took me to a petting zoo. While I was there, a goat ate a large portion of my dress. I remember thinking, "Thank God."
3. While my friends spent their summers reading Seventeen, working on their tans, and thinking about boys, I spent mine building forts in the woods with my brother's friends. It's true, you know: tomboys grow up to be lesbians.
4. My mom made me wear my hair in a cut called a "wedge" between third and fifth grade. Closest comparison would be, maybe, a chili bowl? Think Jim Carey in Dumb and Dumber. And it really didn't bother me all that much.
5. I was the only girl in my high-school Construction Technology class. Both semesters. See #3.
6. I'm better at mechanical drafting than picking out dresses.
7. In my youth group, I think I was the ONLY girl who had no problem saying "no" to whatever boyfriends I had at the time.
8. As Molly pointed out while looking through my pictures from junior high, high school, and college: I have always had one tall, thin, blonde friend at a time...
9. I really thought a ponytail, every day, was the way to go...(Still do...)
10. I have never in my LIFE been able to grow long, pretty nails...
11. I was always getting into superclose relationships with "best friends," many of which ended badly because one or the other of us would get jealous or pick stupid fights.
12. Always, always had my hands in my pockets.

Attention, Lesbians:

Maybe I'm over-stepping. I'm new here, after all. But I think - we're in this together, right? - that we need a code of conduct. Just some ground rules. Because no one can win when we all play by different sets of rules, right? And I love lists. And - forgive my narcissism - I really want to be the gay Martin Luther, a voice calling in the wilderness, posting my 95 theses on the door of the First Church of the Sexually Deviant. Appreciation and apologies to those from whom these tenets originate.

So much ado about so little substance. Jesus, I haven't even written it yet. Here:

1. You can only sleep with a woman twice before someone develops feelings. If you don't want a relationship, get in, get off, get out - twice - and never look back.

2. Your period? Your business. Necessary info: Bleeding or not bleeding. Unnecessary info: Feelings, physical or emotional. Cramps. Bloating. Heaviness of, ugh, flow.

3. I love to cuddle, but don't you go crying on me. Spooning is not an invitation to spill your guts. Sorry you have a mean mom. Sorry no one understood you. Look, if I don't love you (and, uh, if I did, I would TELL you), I don't wanna deal with your emotions leaking out your eyes. Jesus. Let's all just cut ourselves.

4. If you want me to call you, say so. If you want me NOT to call you, say so. Just because I'm a girl, and therefore also equally batshit crazy, doesn't mean I have any means of processing a deeper meaning than what's right in front of me.

5. It's said that women just SPEAK more than men. About seven times as much. I think we should all agree to, you know, correct this. I suggest mandatory 30-minute increments of silence, spaced throughout the day.

6. Your ex, your business. My ex, my business. I don't need to know every detail of why you and Pookie didn't work out. I just need to know that, um, it didn't.

7. Sharing is caring - I will definitely be borrowing your hoodie. Maybe your diesels. Probably your sunglasses. But, look. No one likes a dyke-alike. Moderation is key.

8. No getting pets together! Ever! Until at least the three-year mark. It's staggering how many dykes still have to talk to Fluffy's babydaddy, no matter how horribly the relationship went down in flames.

9. One faux-hawk per couple. No exceptions. Hookups included.

10. I vote that mandatory nipple rings be stricken from the Lesbian Uniform.

11. My roommate is right. Every lesbian should bring a resume to the first date. Qualifications, experience, education, work history, objective. I mean, let's all just get our crazy out on the table from day 1. Oh! And I will need at least 3 references, with contact information.

12. I submit that we need to tone down the Lesbian Menagerie. 3 fluffballs per homo, no exceptions. You. Do. Not. Need. Seven cats. Really.

13. I know we're all strong feminist women and we want to, you know, assert ourselves. But can we just all agree to shave our underarms? Please? Nobody likes a pit beard.

14. Going out to dinner once is NOT a contractual obligation that takes both parties off the market, post-haste.

15. CUT. YOUR. NAILS.

More to come. Suggestions? Additions? Deletions? Requests that I die in a fire, and soon?

Love,

Kate
The Gay Martin Luther

Greetings from Evansville, Indiana, home of the throbbing Purple Aces, the world's tastiest donut shop, and more churches and parachurch organizations than you'd think a town of 150,000 people could possibly support. Yes sir, yes ma'am, Evansvillites (Evansvillians? Ha! Evansvillains!) have got religion. They are, for sure, churched. Wanna-be Bible-belters. God bless 'em.

Blessings. I've been blessed more times here in E-ville than a hay-fever victim at a church picnic. Drive-through workers. Hotel clerks. Waitresses. Furniture salesmen! Most recently, it was Aaron, a young man I really took a shine to when he was helping us pick out a couch for my brother's new apartment. He was all that a salesman should be: courteous, eager, liberal with the bottled waters and complimentary bags of popcorn. He was respectful of our price range, attentive to likes and dislikes, enthusiastic without being pushy. I liked him. I really did! From the moment he greeted us with his slightly clammy handshake, to when it came time to bid one another so long (and thanks for all the fish). And then he had to go and BLESS us. Damn. "Okay, thanks! Y'all be blessed, now! Bye!"

It was a sneak attack. It was a left hook from nowhere. It was a well-laid banana peel. It was a back-handed zinger of a compliment from my mother (you know - like "I was looking at your high school picture today, and you used to be SO PRETTY. Before you gained all that weight." Thanks mom.) It sounds so innocuous, so positive, so well-mannered and small-town charm-y. Who could possibly take offense to THAT?

Oh, I think you know who.

FIRST of all, just, you know, grammatically? It's awkward to say that. Be blessed now. It's an injunction, the onus of which is on me to receive the blessing. Be blessed. NOW! Um, okay. Sure. Because I have a lot of control over whether a higher power chooses to bestow unmerited favor (blessings) on me. Be. Blessed. Now. Y'all? Be blessed now. It's all a bit heavy-handed and, you know, forceful. And really. You're not the boss of me; I can do what I WANT, nah nah.

And so on.

Secondly. It is POSSIBLE that I don't believe the same things that you do about God, Aaron? A blessing is basically unmerited favor from a higher power, right? Because if I were receiving favor that I deserved, it would be a REWARD, not a BLESSING. And if it were unmerited but unfavorable, it would be a curse. On that, we can probably agree (and if not, I'm sure you'll comment).

So what if I'm not so sure I want unmerited favor from the higher power in whom Aaron believes? What if Aaron worships the Almighty Flying Spaghetti Monster, who bestows favor by turning everything I touch, Midas-meets-Rachel-Ray-like, into pasta? And what if I don't WANT that kind of pastafarian nonsense? Or what if Aaron's god is (and this is not too much of a stretch for some certain kinds of Christians) the god of the white, straight, and conservative? I think I usually have my finger on the pulse of the evangelical movement in America, and that's the kind of god that a lot of "Christians" really get behind. So if this god is going to bless ME, well, he's gonna have to bless out the gayness and the Democratic bent. And I'm just not ready to be that blessed.

The point is, I get it and I appreciate the goodwill behind the sentiment. But...think before you bless. It's presumptuous, it's awkward, and it reeks of the characteristic arrogance of today's modern Christian, assuming that everyone is on their team and wants what they want and believes what they believe, or that if they're on a different team, that Christians, in their infinite wisdom, know what The Lost are missing in their sad, evil, depraved lives lived apart from the love and light of the Gospel, and feel an intense moral obligation to, in their own small, colloquial way, "go and make disciples of all nations".

Especially in Evansville.

So. All I'm saying is, think before you bless. If you agress when you bless, you cause distress and it's a mess. So...can we just stick with "Have a nice day"?

(Oh, and Aaron? If I have completely misjudged you and you're not a Christian at all, please forgive me. My entire entry is predicated on the assumption that you're a disciple of Christ. But if your blessings are from the Goddess, or the Universe, or Allah, or whatever...you can still just keep them. I'm doing okay in my perfectly unblessed, rich, wonderful, undeservedly good life. It's not that I'm not grateful that I have it so good. Or that I think it's by my virtue or the sweat of my brow that I have what I have. I just don't go seeking blessings out to live my life as I wish.)

August 18, 2008.

All the signs were there. From childhood, looking back now, I can trace the course of this - this thing. I can see it more prominently at some moments than at others, and I have felt it even since I was little. It was a differentness, an awkwardness, an otherness that I hoped no one noticed, and that I fought back as hard as I could. Because, you know, when you're eight? Differentness is pretty scary, even if - and especially if - you don't have a name for it, don't have a way to articulate the disparity you feel, even as a child, between what you WANT to be, how you WANT to feel...and what you're stuck with.

I'm engaged. He is a gift. Words get stuck in my head around him: kind caring generous sensitive understanding good-hearted strong masculine soulful genuine and oh, my god, how I love him. And oh, my god, how can I do to him what I am doing? He LOVES me. He is planning to spend the rest of his life with me, and I really thought that would happen.

Until Friday.

It doesn't matter what happens, doesn't matter if nothing happens. I'm changed, I'm transformed, fuck it - I'm evolved and I'm evolving. And it is fucking terrifying. Because now, instead of planning my wedding - my mom just called to see if I had picked a date and looked at the church online yet, and no, I haven't - I am planning my confession. I am planning my self-discovery. I am planning to break his heart. But...I'm breaking my own heart tonight.

Don't the most cataclysmic things happen on the most banal of occasions? People fall in love at the grocery store, and people die on their morning commute, and people are conceived, created, fearfully and wonderfully MADE during some really boring sex. It was just a surprise party, and for god's sake, not even for someone I really know. But we didn't have other plans, Dusty and I, so we went. We put balloons on chairs and birthday hats on plates and celebrated Emily's boyfriend having come into the world! Surprise! And surprise, I didn't know that I was coming into something too - or out.

She kept taking smoke breaks. She had this air like she was just tired of it all, bored to death by Emily's perfectly nice friends. She floated above us and all around me, disinterested, as we talked about how to brew beer, and the upcoming Colts season, and what to be for Halloween. And whether a certain friend of mine just might ALSO be a lesbian. It's not like it's hard to tell. Right? All the signs were there.

It started with Tammy McCarroll. She was in fifth grade, and I was in fourth, and holy shit, did I have it bad for her. She picked me for her team once, and I bet if I looked for it, I could still find the entry in my diary from when I got home from school that day, the one that said things about myself that I wouldn't really believe or understand until now. I mean, every little kid idolizes a big kid. Right?

But then, in sixth grade there was Holly. She was from California - how interesting. I didn't know anyone else from the West Coast, and she fascinated me. And in eleventh grade, there were Sarah and Cori - a banner year! And Emily, and then Stacey, and, yeah, Dusty's brother's ex-girlfriend, who came to our engagement party. But I was DRUNK! It could have happened to anyone.

But then there was Drea, and suddenly it was in my face, and I found a word to describe myself that I had never used before. An ugly word - lezzzzzzzzzzzzzbian. The formation of its syllables makes me tense up and me glance over my shoulder. Lezzzzzzzzzzzbian. The word itself is gross, aberrant, downright fucking SIBILANT, and drawn out, and entirely too indiscreet. Men have it so much easier - "gay". There's nothing off-putting about "gay". I mean, shit, the word MEANS happy. But lesbian? I think associating the word with myself is more of a shock than recognizing that what that means, pertains to me.

Drea. The hipster. I mean, I've always been fascinated by lesbians, at least for the past decade or so. And Drea is a particularly fascinating lesbian. She DID it, you know? She is not your ordinary, garden variety, corn-fed Indiana dyke. No baggy acid-washed denim shorts. No too-long frizzy hair. No butchery of any kind. (It's pretty easy to neglect to realize you are a lesbian when you are surrounded by only bulldykes.) She had the cool haircut, the hipster look. Fascinating. Oh, and the fuck-you attitude.

She said I outed myself at dinner. How do you out yourself when YOU DON'T EVEN KNOW YET? But SHE knew. And when she came over later, after many drinks and a brokered meeting (thanks Em, and really? You knew what you were doing.), she understood that. And she understood ME, and everything I babbled about to fill the too-big space between my mouth and hers. And it wasn't weird when she kissed me. Or when she stopped, and we just talked. Or when I had to kiss her again, in the middle of my street, my body on top of hers, because if I didn't, and she left, I would die somehow. And she understood, because even though I know she didn't want to, she took me home.

But I was DRUNK. It could have been anyone.

Until the next morning, when I woke up and my fiance was gone (did he KNOW?) and I had to remind myself to call HIM before I called HER. She understood that too.

And everything I have told her in the non-stop time I have spent with her since I met her.

No wonder lesbians bring a fucking U-Haul - they get addicted to each other. They live and breathe each other. They INGEST each other. And I am completely, absolutely, utterly famished for this one other human being, this soul that, for once, my soul feels connected to. I have found the person who fills the hole that I didn't even know I had.

And there is no way this can ever end well. The crash can kill you if you get too high.

October ??, 2008.

A trip to Baltimore for her birthday. Stolen kisses in the car, at her parents' house, at the movies, at work. A thousand text messages and a password on my phone. Relationship counseling with Dusty. Breaking my mother's heart. Calling off my wedding. Sleeping on the floor with her at her new apartment for over a week because I only ever wantd to be close to her. A thousand, hundred, million, trillion stupid arguments. She told me that I didn't ever FIGHT for her - really? I guess leaving your fiance - and you LIFE, and your FAMILY, and your FRIENDS - is not fighting hard enough.

She went on a business trip two weeks ago. Was supposed to be a few days, and she would be back. But when she left, she LEFT. Her return was pushed back and pushed back a hundred times - I still don't know when she is going to return. Worse, even when I talk to her, she's gone - it's gone. I have chosen her over every other meaningful relationship in my life - knowing, of course, that you never end up with the one you left your fiance for - and now she is gone and every time we talk on the phone it's a fight.

I'm telling her, tonight, that we're through. And I just don't know what do do besides sit on the floor in the shower and let the water run down over my body and cry, cry, cry.

How did I end up here?

November ??, 2008.

Tara. April. Joy. Sarah.

I want my life back.

That hole? The one that Drea filled? Nothing else fills it - no one else fills it. She doesn't even fill it anymore - it just doesn't fit now. So I'm wandering around with pieces missing from my heart, and no one can fill it in. Drinking can't fill it. Pot can't fill it. Speed can't fill it. I even got a new dog, and even Charlie can't fill it.

I've had my heart broken before - Jason, you broke it once. But I had no idea it could feel this bad.

March 19, 2009.

I wish I had something beautiful to write here. I wish I could write from the place I used to write from, the place I wrote from for one second back in August, the place I used to write from in college. I don't know where that place is anymore, but I think I know why I can't find it.

Peace.

Peace is fucking up my writing.

It's been seven months and four days since I met Drea and gave up everything for the feeling of her - Dusty, my financial security, my close friends, my relationships with my family, the respect of my boss, my own goddamned identitiy. And when that came crashing down around me, like I knew even from the first second I met her it would, it was a pain I didn't think I would ever be able to bear. All I wanted was my life back, my Dusty back, my understanding of myself back. But there was no way back onto that path.

It's been a very long, difficult few months, these. After Drea, I lost all traction on my life and made some very, very bad decisions.

But I'm back, and I'm okay, and I'm - dare I say it? - HAPPY.

This is the most honest I have ever been, and I'm finally starting to know myself. I know who my friends are. I know my family will always love me - even if maybe THEY don't know that right now. I know that, fuck it - I'm STILL evolved and I'm evolving.

Drea is the worst thing that ever happened to me, and the collateral damage of that failed and ill-fated relationship has been staggering. It took so much out of me that I thought for a while there was absolutely nothing left. She was a Holocaust on my soul.

But she is also the best thing that ever happened to me, because without her, I wouldn't have been forced out of that closet. I wouldn't have been forced to confront a LOT of things about myself that I didn't like and didn't want to believe. And I never would have started the process of being, well, just being okay with that.

In a lot of ways, Jason, my relationship with you wasn't so different. When I met you, I just completely fell for you, hopelessly and recklessly, and I pursued you at great cost. I think you pursued me, too. And it didn't work out, and it got ugly, and we both got HURT. And frustrated. And angry. And exasperated. Our relationship and its ending was the most painful and difficult thing that had happened to me so far in my life. And I didn't think I would ever really recover from that, or love someone with that kind of abandon. And, you know, I had to leave the continent to cry my last tears about that, on a ferry from Valencia to Ibiza, with Ben Folds "Wandering" turned way up on the iPod you gave me, sunglasses on, hat pulled down, head buried in my arms, sobbing privately and gut-wrenchingly because it just plain hurt and it wouldn't stop. But then it did. And the lessons I got from that - from you, Jason; from you and me - changed me and evolved me and bettered me.

And then I met Drea, and I loved her immediately, and in much the same way. I just opened myself wide to her. I took as much of her into me and gave as much of myself to her as I possibly could. I filled myself with her, gorged on her, sickened myself with the overindulgence of her. And when it ended - like I always told her it would, like I always knew it would - it cleaved me right down the middle place of my heart.

It's funny because I didn't think I could love someone like that again. I loved her without hesitation and without reservation and without fear. And it was one of the most beautiful loves of my life for as long as it lasted (which was, obviously, not very).

I learned as much from me and Drea as I learned from me and you, Jason, and the next time I get my heart broken, I will continue learning.

That's what makes the catastrophe of two of the most meaningful, difficult, heartbreaking relationships of my life a darling disaster, an affectionately remembered hazy sort of trainwreck.

It's been a long road and there's been a lot of pain.

But I think it really is true.

We'll all float on okay.