Jenny (Part 2): Technology as a Practice Forum

As a member of the Oregon Trail Generation, Jenny came of age alongside technology. We have similar memories of this: chatting via AOL in middle school, discovering music via Myspace in high school and stealing it via Napster in college.

She described that feeling of entering her first chatrooms as a painfully shy middle school student.

"It was the first feeling of being anonymous," she said, "which gave me the freedom to say whatever...it helped me learn that I could say whatever and it won't be shot down."

Today, school kids are identifying 100% with their online profiles, and cyber bullying carries all of the drama and danger of face-to-face bullying, so I wonder how many young people today discover this feeling of anonymity. When technology first emerged, it was everything.

Jenny remembered her AIM chats with her first (male) crushes, and how she used technology to make friends senior year of high school at Interlochen Arts Academy.

At Interlochen -- again I was really shy, really self-conscious -- I started a Live Journal, which was like the first blog. A lot of us had them, and I ended up making friends through that, that I was having trouble making just in the world...We had this whole interconnected thing. Because I was so shy, people didn't know me very well, but they got to know me more through my Live Journal. Then, I ended up dating one of the people who I'd connected to on Live Journal. He was a male who, shortly after dating me, came out. And I took many more years. 

Jenny described Live Journal as a Facebook-like platform in which you have a network of people, and keep a journal. You could share your journal with the public, keep it to your friend network or make it completely private. I was surprised to find that Live Journal is still around.

Her description of Live Journal, and how it worked for her, made me think of how I'm branding this blog. Although I'm sharing the blog with friends and family and even a few colleagues, my name isn't on it.

I can explore this writing voice and connect to readers and like-minded writers, all in a relatively anonymous setting, thanks to technology. In a year or two -- if it continues to feel satisfying and vital -- I'll find a way to weave together my current education-focused brand with Gay Happiness. But right now, the task is simple: write.

When Jenny first came out, she went immediately to OKCupid, but the way that she branded herself on her profile changed significantly in a very short time.

"I wasn't very popular on there right away," she said. "I was like, 'I'm not sure if I'm gay. I'm pretty sure, but I just want to date some women.' I don't think anyone wants to read that!"

In those first iterations of her profile, Jenny was trying to be as honest as possible. "I identified as bi," she said. "That lasted for about a year, and I changed it gay. After I realized that no one was going to date me if I seemed so unsure, I got rid of all that."

And that's the luxury of platforms like OKCupid. You're name isn't attached to it. You're free to change your identity daily with little to no consequences. You can experiment, see what feels right. Sometimes, you even feel like you're leveling up.

"There was a question on OKCupid," Jenny said, "'Have you ever had a girlfriend or same-sex partner?' For a while, the answer had to be, 'no.' Then when the answer was 'yes,' I felt so great!"

From her first curious flirtations with gay boys in high school, to embracing her own gay identity in her twenties, technology was pivotal every step of the way.

"Technology has helped me be more comfortable in myself...it was this practice forum where I could be a more honest, less shy version of who I was...It would have been much slower for me to get comfortable with myself without technology."

And that's why we're lucky, the Oregon Trail Generation and everyone who came after. Relationships, identity and our future's course have been taken out of the domain of stuffy living rooms and parent chaperones. 

Increasingly, young people have the chance to explore what they want their own future to look like in a forum that is safe from ridicule. And thanks to the Internet, there are more and more stories of gay happiness for these young people to stumble upon and see: it really does get better. 

On Interviewing Angels

My first blog interview is tomorrow, with Jenny. She's getting up a little early on a Friday to let me come over and spend the morning with her and her dog, Snow. As I begin this new part of the writing journey, I'm thinking about the damage that generalizations do, and how we can't avoid them. Also about sameness and difference.

No two childhoods are the same. No two gay people are the same. No two coming out stories are the same. And yet, by gathering multiple human stories on a similar theme -- how LGBTQ people find their unique brands of happiness -- I feel like an outline or shadow will begin to sketch itself. If not guidelines or instruction manuals for young gays, then a reassurance of the plurality of gay happiness.

Jenny introduced me to Mary Oliver years ago, and this poem resonated this morning:

Angels
By Mary Oliver

You might see an angel anytime
and anywhere. Of course you have
to open your eyes to a kind of
second level, but it's not really
hard. The whole business of
what's reality and what isn't has
never been solved and probably
never will be. So I don't care to
be too definite about anything.
I have a lot of edges called Perhaps
and almost nothing you can call
Certainty. For myself, but not
for other people. That's a place
you just can't get into, not
entirely anyway, other people's
heads.

I'll just leave you with this.
I don't care how many angels can
dance on the head of a pin. It's
enough to know that for some people
they exist, and they dance.

Mary Oliver is a poet who lived for forty years with her partner (they called them companions back then), photographer Molly Malone Cook. Cook passed away in 2005, but Oliver is still going strong at 81, just a few years younger than my grandmothers.

Tomorrow, I will start interviewing the angels and trying to get into their heads.

But first, I need to figure out how to turn my phone into a recording device, and delete enough data to be able to hold these interviews. It's the Oregon Trail Generation -- I'm confident I can figure it out, but it's not second nature. I don't already know how to do it.

To the next chapter!

Dreams of Pregnancy

They say dreams of pregnancy are not usually about pregnancy itself, but about being pregnant with possibility. Women dream about being pregnant when they are on the verge of something, not when they're actually contemplating getting pregnant. In my case, perhaps there's a little bit of both.

The dream itself isn't worth going into, except to say that it took place in my parents' bedroom. A woman doctor put her finger inside me to confirm that even though I was spotting, I was still holding the baby.

I'm not too high on dream interpretation, but I believe in symbols and stories. Dreams create an opportunity to unpack something that's scratching at the subconscious. My parents' home, where I lived from the age of four until I left for college at seventeen, is never far from my dreamscapes.

My gay identity and relationship with my parents are complicated by the fact that I couldn't wait for childhood to be over. I don't remember acting like a kid, being carefree or comforted by the presence of adults. I was not abused. But I was never comfortable, either.

Flannery O'Connor said, "Anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days."

I was a wide-eyed, thoughtful and anxious child. Although sometimes moody, I was a pleaser who gave the impression of being wise beyond my years. My brother and I received unsolicited compliments from our fellow churchgoers about our impeccable behavior. I learned well how to keep my inner life protected.

To this day, Jenny will note discord between how I claim I'm feeling and what I'm outwardly projecting. I've learned to say things like, "I was self-conscious about that," or "that made me anxious," because I literally don't know how to act in a way that will show those emotions to a friend or partner.

Maybe feeling one way and acting another is simple adulthood, and I learned it sooner than most. If that's the case, I'm ready for whatever is next. My father's side of the family is Dutch, German and Scandinavian. Whatever is next, I will not learn it from them. They do not talk about upsetting or complicated matters, at least not with one another. This wedding on Saturday is beginning to weigh.

Although I'm out to most family members, I still have a hard time, in each new social setting, entering and navigating their rituals and conversations. Sonia will be with me. I hope I am pregnant with the possibility of being strong and confident and -- dear God can I hope -- a little funny.

On Tuesday night, I went out with Jenny and two friends, a lesbian couple pregnant with their second child. The couple was open and forthcoming about their process in the manner of a truly tight and confident family. We discussed sperm banks, using a known donor and adoption as ways we'd all considered making our families.

Of course, the pregnancy dream could have simply been a wisp of a memory from that night. Sonia and I have talked about adoption, but the possibility of me carrying a child isn't off the table.

After dinner, I walked with the couple and told them a little bit about this blog. "I don't know what it is I'm trying to work out," I found myself saying, "But I'm working something out, and enjoying the process."

I rambled a bunch, too. I need to work on my elevator speech.

Whatever happens Saturday, I'd like to think that I'm pregnant with that unknown: what is here, where it is leading me.

Fluid Sexuality and Why Everyone Is Queer

The movie Kinsey (trailer here) came out in 2004 and was my first introduction to the idea that human sexuality may exist not as a binary (with bisexuals carefully balancing between the two extremes), but as a fluid spectrum.

Today, there are dozens of internet hacks creating ridiculous surveys to reveal your sexuality to you. The most simplistic I found, at the very top of Google, was by Dr. Epstein.

Doctor of what, I wonder. (Yes, that's mine!)

There were less than a dozen questions about dreams, waking fantasies and real life. Each question had a weight of exactly "1," and they were added up in the end. Because the only difference, for me, was the frequency of sexual activity (much more with Sonia than with a random male), I was bisexual leaning toward homosexual, but with a range that took up nearly the entire chart. 

More thought went into OKCupid's Sexuality Spectrum Quiz, but don't try to take it unless you have an OKCupid account, or you're willing to get one. The questions were more nuanced and reflected a more contemporary understanding of sex and sexuality, but you can't see your results without an account. One of the perks of having a live-in girlfriend is that I don't need one of those anymore. So go have fun, kids. 

Where you fall on the spectrum changes through time. For me, I guess that means that I'm somewhere in the 2-13 range on Dr. Epstein's chart at any given moment in time, which is the same as saying nothing at all.

When I was twelve or thirteen and had my first sexual encounters with my best friend (a girl), I didn't label myself. At some point subsequently, I called those encounters "experiments."

Through high school, college and my early twenties, I was mostly straight. I identified as straight, I sought the attention of men and enjoyed it when I got it. I had at least one phenomenal boyfriend that I grew uninterested in for no good reason, and one good fuck buddy who was too old for me and broke my heart. I enjoyed all of it, and made out with some women, too. 

When I was 26, I met my first girlfriend in the basement bar of a gay nightclub. She hit me like a ton of bricks. Even though I thought it may be a one night stand, I called my best friend Liz immediately afterward, excited and giddy, as though the world had just opened up. 

"Your life story is not your life. It's your story." Who said this? 

I repeat it now because I'm aware of something I could have also said about that one good fuck buddy, who is still a dear friend: "He hit me like a ton of bricks. Even though I thought it might be a one night stand, I called my best friend Liz immediately afterward, excited and giddy, as though the world had just opened up."

Yup. It still works. 

As a result, I called myself bisexual, queer and gay. Now I use "gay" to explain my living situation in shorthand (we're not roommates), but most of the time, I just say, "My partner is a woman," or "Sonia is my girlfriend." 

The Oregon Trail Generation, and the millennials that followed are understanding this fluidity more than any generation. I'm so grateful to have been born into this time. Growing up with the Internet, I was able to find, in each city I lived, work, community and lovers who fit the life I wanted for myself. We can curate our lives with more grace and communicate ideas whose time have come with more speed than ever before. 

On the ground, that means more people identifying as (and joyously reappropriating) queer than ever before. Not only do I not want to be put in your box, but I won't presume to create my own label. I know that I am a mutable and developing being who won't stop changing until I'm dead. 

So let me live how I please. 

Gay Squared

Gay squared: as in, both gay and happy. Is it possible?

After I finished Gretchen Rubin’s The Happiness Project, I decided to start a blog to find out what you think, and share my evolving thoughts on the subject.

The Happiness Project sat on my shelf for almost three years before I picked it up. It’d been given to me by Liz, my best friend from college and a straight woman, at a time when our relationship was strained. I didn’t picked it up for the same reason I never picked up the books called “Finding Your Pathway to God,” and the like, given to me by my mother from the age of thirteen onward. A gift in the form of a judgement.

I finally did pick Rubin's book up, following a yoga weekend, Liz’s alternative bachelorette party, during the summer of 2016. It was a quick read, pleasant and light. I liked the businesslike approach Rubin took to her own life and improvement. It felt familiar. Familiar, too was her self-deprecation, her love of urban life and her too-quick criticism of others, especially those closest to her. What wasn’t familiar, however, was her straight, nuclear family: loving husband, adorable girls, one set of grandparents around the corner, the other across the country but very present.

I’m a 34-year-old queer woman, the daughter of an Evangelical Christian and a Catholic, living with my Korean girlfriend, Sonia, in a major east coast city. Sonia is first generation American and has an actual language barrier with her own parents; my parents and I all speak English, but as you’ll see in future posts, that doesn’t always mean that communication happens.

Rubin’s book brought up some questions for me. What does happiness look like for LGBTQ people who can’t share their happiness with the tribe in which they were raised? (There are still too many of us in that boat.) How do we affirm our happiness in a way that makes it easy for others to see, regardless of creed? Perhaps most importantly, how do we protect our happiness from those who would demean it?

Alongside these questions, for me, is a unique relationship to technology highlighted in Anna Garvey’s article on the Oregon Trail Generation. I was born in 1981. In sixth grade, I typed the log of my science fair project on a typewriter; I stenciled the backboard with stencils purchased at A.C. Moore. The very next year, I typed my science project into our Apple computer and printed the pages out on our dot matrix printer, carefully removing those perforated edges.

As I was growing up, so was the internet. I remember venturing into my first chat rooms in seventh grade, meeting kids like me (at least, I hope they were kids) from around the country, making small talk and feeling the world open up. Prior to that, I’d only had books as evidence of what regular life was like outside my little nuclear family and immediate experience. Books and TV didn’t count, to my mind; that wasn’t regular life.

Now the director of a regional nonprofit, I cut my teeth using online outreach to find constituents at a time when most of my supervisors were still learning what social media was. From then to now, when I have found myself stymied, personally or professionally, I have turned to the web in various forms, whether it’s learning a new application or finding a top ten list of ways to talk to your Evangelical mother. Sonia and I met on OKCupid almost three years ago.

Which brings me to my relationship with you, reader. I'm looking for something, and believe in the discipline of daily writing practice, but it's easier with an audience.

What does gay happiness look like today, and how do we affirm it?

I look forward to sharing my observations, analyses and stories, and reading yours.