My first boyfriend’s name was Hank, a gangly boy with caring eyes amid a flurry of acne. His voice was lower then anyone else’s in our 8th grade class and I remember watching the movements of his Adam’s apple utterly hypnotized. After three weeks he made a move to kiss me, and my body positively revolted at the idea. I broke up with him a couple days later outside in the school quad.

Something was amiss. My locker was wallpapered with Neve Campell, Christina Ricci, Lucy Lawless and Angelina Jolie with Leonardo Decaprio representing my only nod toward testosterone. It wasn’t ’till I caught myself stalking the pretty redheaded girl from AP Government that I realized: I was officially a pure blooded lesbian.

Fast forward 12 years later. My quarter life crisis happened differently then others’: 25 years old, working in New York City, I wondered who I really was. I’d challenged my own views on religion, politics, morality, so why not sexuality? I’d been bedecked in rainbows for over a decade, and I started to wonder…what if I could date a guy?

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That Thanksgiving back in Hometown, Oregon I got an invitation to meet up with some old friends. Hank stood tall among my former classmates. His boyhood acne was gone, but the same glimmer in his eyes peeked out. We talked easily through a decade of living. Soon the rest of the bar faded out and we were 13-years-old again cutting through the labels of life. We finally kissed between darts and beers. Sparks flickered—small at first—then growing into a firework crescendo at his place later that night.

The next year was a series of emails, cross-country flights, and text flirting. He was kind and intelligent, a down-to-earth organic farmer with a Buddhist disposition. I was amazed by the ease he put his arm around my shoulder, and how little of a reaction we got from anyone else. This world of straight dating was uncharted territory. It felt easier and less remarkable.

But ah — if it wasn’t for that pesky little thing called sex, we may have made it. My straightness threatened to buckle when confronted with actual masculinity. The penis was an abstract painting. The newness intrigued me, but I couldn’t make logical sense of it. I just took a deep breath and hoped to come out the other end. A song accompanied my first blowjob on the radio: “Just keep going, just keep going…” with me nodding my head along to the mantra. I felt like there was something very wrong with me, especially compared to the patience and kindness of Hank. I wanted to love him.

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It was supposed to be about the person, not the gender, but good ol’ mother nature doesn’t roll that way. I was gay, am gay, and will probably always be gay. I told Hank the truth while watching Macbeth on our college lawn. That’s when I realized how much he’d come to love me. And how much I’d opened him up the past year.

He hasn’t spoken to me since.

But ho, there’s a light at the end of this boy meets girl, girl meets girl, girl meets boy again story. A couple months after we dated, Hank’s facebook profile was awash with photos of him and a happy little hippie. His smile couldn’t be bigger, or his clothes more covered in gardening stains. I’m so glad that he’s in love, and I hope she practically ravages his body with want for sex. As for me, well this girl met a girl who creates fireworks the size of planet bursts. She’s beautiful, intelligent and I am in absolute adoration of her lady parts. Sometimes it takes a venture to the other side to realize who the hell you really are.

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Juggler’s Daughter is a late 20′s lesbian, west-coast hippie with a dual hero and victim complex. Read more of her work at jugglersdaughter.com.

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