the rainbow room

When I got there the lights were already dimmed and a movie was projecting on the projection screen. I didn't see the girl I was supposed to meet, I looked around and tried to pick out the features of all these kids sprawled out on the floor couches and yes beanbags. Cute girl on the couch with sharp eyes and cheekbones but her head's resting on someone's lap and I hook my thumbs through my belt loops and can't believe I can still feel awkward, here, surrounded by queer kids most of whom are probably younger than me. Maybe I'm just awkward cos I'm standing up, don't wanna conspicuously look round to find my friend, don't wanna sit down and seem sister outsider or naught...

When I'd been there a minute I spotted Marlene sitting on a chair toward the back of the room. Marlene's this rad woman who works for Planned Parenthood and organizes this place and makes me grin, sent me absentee ballot in the mail with a sparkly sticker. If I have a mentor no matter how briefly it'd be her. We hug, and talk in that way when small neat words whispered so as not to disturb the film will do to express respect and interest etc.

I remember this summer when I drove myself home from the shore heart pounding. What music was I listening in the car? Probably the mix tape with Team Dresch, summer soundtrack. Ha fucken ha, parents had stumbled upon my queerness and I had to get out out out and it was Wednesday and yeah, I navigated to Doylestown and went in that little room downstairs the Planned Parenthood door rainbow flag hanging small and quiet outside and it was dim in there with all the high school fags and the girls I never quite believed weren't straight. Fucken Rocky Horror on the screen and for the first time I watched it all the way through. Made jokes. My heart stopped pounding its way out my chest cos here I was, and it was fine. Sitting there in shorts and ridiculously short hair and queer in that bisexual way I was then, watching Tim Curry strut around in garters and thinking, here I am. I remember this summer and all the shit, and I think that night made me feel a lot more okay.



ps-the rainbow room is a meetin' place for local queer/questioning youth. weds nights from i think 6 onwards, in the downstairs of the planned parenthood which is on main st. if my horrible street-memory serves me right.

'baby yer sex in my jeans, yeah yer sex in my jeans/tell me do you want me, do you?'

'cos i want you too!'

[ahem, the entry, rather than lyrics...]

* * * *
Sometimes songs don't fit me cos I wasn't queer when I was 14, I can look back and edit my life to fit some narrative but when I was 14 I wasn't consciously gay. I mean I thought I liked boys but I wasn't giving head on vacation, I was pulling out of my Oasis obsession and making my first zine. Sometimes now I look back and I wonder if maybe the reason I never did much w/boys in middle school + high school is that on some level I Knew but I am reluctant to really think that cos it seems like me carving away my past to fit some story to tell myself now.

So looking back at the past few years of my relatively short life is a way for me right now to come to terms with the possible past-tenseness of my bisexuality. I'm realizing that it's possible to not have some essential sexual identity that follows you from birth to grave, that yr 'real' identity may arise early late in between or never. That me liking boys in the past can certainly be authentic for me *then*...I'm just feeling like now I'm more of a fully-formed erotic person than then, and in that sense my attraction to women is way more important in giving me traction in desire + identity than my 14 year-old crushes. That I can be a dyke and take my bi-consciousness that forced me to look beyond simple binaries and identity clubs along with me. That monosexuality doesn't have to be monosexual if I really think about what it means to claim sexuality based on biological gender.

Right now at this moment right now I am feeling so safe in claiming queer and I don't know if you can imagine how good that feels. My nails are bitten down and coffee is the reason for all these entries, and I'm starting to dream about the summer. I'm thinking about visiting my grandparents in Cape Cod and going to Ptown w/them and how I'll feel walking down those streets swarming with leathermen and lesbians and spectating straights. If I'll feel my queerness held secret within my chest or reaching out like all open palmed.