Writing Our History

I went to see a documentary the other night about a man named Baynard Rustin. He was one of the most influential people in the civil rights movement and guided Martin Luther King Jr. through the complexities of non-violence, tirelessly putting his body on the line to push the movement forward…but nobody’s ever heard of him. Why you may ask? Well Baynard lived his whole life as an openly queer man, though maybe not “out” as we would think of it today. He took many lovers and was comfortable with his queerness, but as time went on it became obvious that he would have to choose between (politically) being a black man or a gay man. In the late 60’s he was caught having sex with two men in the back of a car and convicted of being a “sexual pervert”. Shortly there after he was pushed out of the organizations he had fueled and was shunned by those who called him comrade, including Martin Luther King Jr. Over time he “quieted” down his sexuality and went on to organize the March on Washington where King delivered his I Have A Dream speech, and if you look closely you can see Baynard standing right behind him.

After the movie there was a panel discussion and the director spoke at length about how hard it had been to get to the persinal side of Rustin’s life. “As a community we don’t record our history”, she said. Someone from the GLBT Historical Society joined in by sharing how difficult it is for them to piece together the lives of queer folks who have purposely left nothing behind. It made me so sad and reminded me how important written and verbal histories are. It also made me question if my queer relationships were being given the same focus as my straight relationships, especially when it comes to sex.

It occurs to me that other than writing a few dirty emails to the persin I was sleeping with, I’ve never really sat down and written about the queer sex I’ve had. I have pages and pages of sappy/sexy love poems and dirty journal entries about the boys I’ve slept with, or wanted to, but not for the womyn and queers. This shall be a new years resolution. In the beginning I think I probably avoided writing about it because I had no clue what I was doing, what terms to use, how to use them, what was “normal”, or even what I was allowed to call sex and what I wasn’t. I mean, how DO lesbians have sex anyways, right?? I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been asked that and each time the persin is met with annoyance, but in truth part of my annoyance is because I still don’t know what to say (other than mind your own fucking business you skeezy ass dude). Sex outside of that comfy heteronormative bubble gets wonderfully fuzzy and it can be confusing, for queers and our straight counterparts. If dick in vagina no longer equals sex, then what the hell are we talking about? Is it all about going down on each other? Kissing? Finger fucking? Tribadism (huh?!!)? Fisting? Strap-ons? What is acceptable and what isn’t? AM I DOING THIS RIGHT? I was terrified that someone would figure out that I was just making shit up as I went along and that it would somehow discredit my place in the queer community. I was so unsure of where I stood that I couldn’t afford to have anyone tell me I was doing something wrong. In fact my lack of writing about queer relationships may have more to do with the fear of being condemned by the queer community than it does with being outed in the straight world.

Now I’m much more confident in my queerness, which in and of itself is bizarre for me. There was a time when I thought there was only one womyn I would ever be with. That I wasn’t queer so much as I was just head over heels in love with hir. But now we’re broken up and I’m in a place where I can’t imagine dating a (non-trans) man. I still don’t know all the terms, how to deal with “dyke drama”, or where exactly I fit…but sexually, politically and spiritually my “queerness” nourishes me.

I’m still learning about myself and the community I’m a part of, but I know what kind of sex I like, what I’m good at, what my insecurities are and (luckily) I know better than to feel guilty about any of it. There will always be lesbians out there that would say I fuck like a straight girl and boys out there that could never see me as anything but a dyke, but the truth is that most folks I know have sex that blurs definitions and gender. Girls top boys, femmes top butches, queers fuck straight folks and what may feel like sex with one persin might not with another. So I’m going to work on not being so intimidated about writing about my experience. There are few things that have been as empowering for me as being queer and if I died and the history of my queerness was lost I would be real, real sad.