Does your Love Need A Label?

Lesbian, Your Gay, Bisexual… in an Era When Celebrities and the Rest of Us Are Proudly Declaring Their Sexual Fluidity, Do We Still Need Orientation Labels? Michelle Tea Explores How We Got to This New Frontier of Sexual Identity – and Where We Go From Here

IN MY EARLY 20s, in a candlelit apartment, I kissed a girl. It was instantly my favourite thing to do. I wanted my boyfriend to go away forever. ‘Oh my God, I’m a lesbian!’ I thought. As Jessica became my first girl, my boyfriend became, for quite some time, my last boy. Sex with him had always felt pre-configured. Sex with Jessica was a dark forest, a fairy tale to get lost in. I realised that, with men, a part of my heart was always on high alert. An essential part of me was not at play in the sex I’d had with my boyfriend. Yet within moments, Jessica – this stranger – had access to it all. I was whole.

I wanted to build my life around this experience, and I did. Revising my hetero history, I decided the eyeliner-wearing goth boys I pursued in high school were simply the closest I could come at the time to a girl. I got rid of my lace dresses and got a peak cap with ‘Dyke’ on it. I hit the mall in search of T-shirts to wear with cut-off army pants. I shaved my head. There: I was a dyke, I’d always been a dyke, and I’d always be a dyke. Now, buzz off!