Sexuality

A co-worker stopped at my desk today, scanning my photographs as she asked about an accounting publication I was supposed to have been working on. Her eyes paused on one particular photograph, one of my sister and I hugging in front of my family's old beach house.

I cherish this picture because it reminds me of the house we never should have sold and the pure unabandoned love that I can feel for my sibling. My sister is nothing like me, tall, popular, imposing, and ever so shallow and lazy. Once in a blue moon we get caught up in our familial positions and express our true protective nature for each other. This photo captures us at our most open moments with each other, moments that rarely occur and are often forgotten.

"Is that your girlfriend?"

Now I'm not sure what made her think that I was a carpet muncher, because I'm not, I adore dick, but that's not the point.

My entire life I have been mistaken for a lesbian. It started in middle school because I played sports and didn't wear lipstick, (my mother said it was enough that I had breasts I had to paint my face to prove I was a woman too?) In high school it was spurred by a fit of insanity. Literal craziness, I woke up in the bathroom with a chunk of hair in my right hand and scissors in my left. Black outs were frequent for me, they hadn't balanced my medication properly yet. In order to repair the damage I called my friend Raquelle to come over, too embarrassed to go to a salon to fix the mess I had created. She cut my hair to even it out and I was left with what could best be described as an angry bowl cut, it looked like my head was growing a mushroom cap. The short hair didn't help people's confusion when it came to my preferred sex.

I cut it even shorter in the eleventh grade, walking around with a pixie haircut because I couldn't be bothered with my physical appearance (I was such a rebel!) My boyfriend in the twelfth grade would tell me about how people who saw us in the street from a distance would ask him later who the little boy he was walking with was. He begged me to grow it out, which is probably one of the reasons why we didn't last.

But it wasn't just my hair, I was an awkward female. Carefully hobbling in high heels, forgetting to cross my legs on the rare occasion I was forced into a skirt or a dress. Slouching, burping, yelling, and pretty much refusing to give up on the tomboy persona I had wrapped myself in for so many years.

My summer job during high school and college was working at a day camp as a life guard. One of the first girls I worked with hated me so much that she ran around telling everyone I was gay. I can still remember one of the directors, notorious for being a dirty old man, following me around asking questions. Adding to that the fact that I was in a bathing suit (a full piece functional racing suit but none to good at providing coverage) and he was fully clothed, I just wanted to drown myself.

"So do you like do everything with them?"
"Have you had a long term girlfriend?"
"Does she have a nice ass? How about her? The tits on that one slay me!"

I guess to him it was like having an attractive guy friend to shoot the shit with, well perhaps not exactly. I think he was storing images and ideas in his mental spank bank, the idea of which makes me cringe to this very day.

As I continued to work there it because obvious through my hormonal teenage exploits that I was in fact a boring hetero like the rest of them. But that one manager held on with desperate hope that I was bi-sexual, reminding me till the day I quit about the conversations (there were never any conversations just him rambling on and on about the underage girls he wanted to do dirty things with while I listened in horror and amusement,) we once had.

The funny thing is even though I was so "butch" I never had issues attracting men. But once they had me it was all about changing how I looked.

"Tanya, you'd look so nice if you wore a skirt once and awhile."
"Tanya high heels turn me on."
"Tanya I love you but you dress like a bum."

I kept none of them around too long.

The ironic thing is that my current man, well besides loving me for who I am and letting me have the big balls in the relationship, has been encouraging me of late, to cut my hair again. After years of letting it grow out into long brown locks, he thinks I would look hot with a bob! He also finds it quite amusing that when we go out I get hit on by girls. I don't know perhaps he's trying to encourage something that might benefit his fantasies later on.