thelesbianlifestyle.com

Closets are for clothes. So I came out. Selectively of course! I don’t see why anyone should have to wear their preferences on the sleeve. After all, labels are also for clothes. So, no, I don’t hide the truth about myself. I just consider most people unworthy of that knowledge.

Being different from the “certified” norm comes with its pitfalls and this is no different. (And those pitfalls increase manifold when you’re from a country like mine – India.) Being gay in a homophobic nation, and a pseudo-tolerant world, means being a hypocrite by necessity. It means being on-stage for a significant part of your life. The real drama takes place backstage where your friends (and if you’re lucky, your family members) are. Behind the scenes is where your life unfolds.

I’ve always hated pretenses. And yet, from one day to the next I have to pretend to be something I am not. Straight. It’s not so much active pretense, as it is a passive choice to stay mute. Dumb charades, if you will. The charade is mine; the ones who’re buying it are dumb. Each time someone badgers you with questions about your “boyfriend”; you slip on the mask and talk in gender neutral terms. Lights, camera, action! It wouldn’t be too far-fetched to say that a considerable part of my life is white noise.

Being gay has meant being misjudged, misunderstood and mislabeled. Most often by people who have nothing better to do with their lives and time, sometimes by people you consider “friends”; and always on the basis of half-baked notions rife with myths.

So yeah, I’ve been called a man-hater. Just because I’m part feminist and (gasp!) lesbian. (There, I said it! I used the L word.) I’ve had the word “dyke” flung at me like an abuse because I have at some point in the past been tomboyish. I’ve been a stop-gap arrangement and/or experiment for bisexuals and people from conservative backgrounds who were too scared to step out of the closet. It has meant having to hear your so-called lover tell you that you’re a safe bet, since same-sex liaisons don’t pose the threat of ‘pregnancy’. (Like that’s the worst that could happen!)

I’ve seen friends recoil when they “found out”. Being gay has meant being sexually linked with every woman I’ve ever had a conversation with. I’d say ‘romantically linked’ except that there’s nothing romantic about the assumption that all you’re trying to do with your life is jump people’s bones every chance you get.

Being a sexual minority is bad enough as it is, but being a lesbian, however, is slightly different from just being gay. It makes you a minority within a minority. You go through life trying to find the freedom to assert who you are and how real the world you inhabit, the life you live. Imagine living in a room that does not exist. That is what it feels like. It’s just a fancier way of saying that sometimes I live a lie. Because to the world, that is what I do. Every single day.

It’s difficult not having a tangible history. But that doesn’t come close to how painful not having a reality is. How terrible it feels to have the world negate your very existence, or worse, laugh at the possibility of it. Only we who tread this lonely path can know what it feels like to live between the lines.

Mine is an existence made secret by necessity, not by choice. The only choice I have exercised over the past ten odd years is to stay who I am, against all odds. Not all of us are that strong, nor so fortunate. Every once in a while one of us crumbles under the pressure of family and society, while the rest of us sit and watch helplessly.

Being gay means being judged over and over and over again. In a nutshell, I’ve been a topic of discussion throughout my life. And I’ve gotten used to it. What I haven’t gotten used to, is the fact that I can’t talk to my folks about it. It’s not like they don’t know. We just pretend no such thing exists. They don’t bother me with the whole “marriage” issue and the part-denial part-pretence goes on. I’m your average single working woman. Never mind that I am not single. Not by a long shot.

I am learning my lessons. I’m learning that the people who really matter are those that accept you for who you are. That family can still be supportive whether or not they understand the choices you’re making. That in the end, the one thing that makes all the difference, is how comfortable you are inside your own skin.