I like reading the candy hearts, anyway

This post pretty much sums up my feelings about Valentine's Day. I like the little hearts with the dopey messages on them. The rest of it I can live without.

The only other VD-related message in my inbox was from Julie, who sent a link to this article It's a fluff piece, sure, but its author, Julie Enszer, isses an interesting challenge: go the whole day without revealing the gender of your sweetie. No reason to set aside Valentine's Day to do it -- but hey, whatever. Her point is that it's inconvenient and awkward and makes you feel like you're making way too big a deal out of something that's really after all kind of irrelevant. It can make you feel kind of nutty, and like you're hiding a Big Secret.

But it's also essential information, in a certain way.

Straight people often say it's OK with them if people are queer, but why do they have to bring it up all the time? Well, the answer is that, in real life -- if you're at all forthcoming about who you are and what's important, even in a casual context, you might just happen to mention your sweetheart, if you have one. Or a spouse. Who is an actual human, with a gender, and all the pronouns & things that go along with that.

For most of my adult life, I have made little effort to hide the gender of my Significant Other. If/when I had one. If I knew it would be a huge issue for someone and I just didn't feel like educating them right at the moment, I might not mention it, but when I was a sweet young thing, I was a Serious Lesbian, and I didn't care who knew it. I didn't care if my co-workers "found out" because mostly I worked in places where it just wasn't all that interesting to anybody. My family just sort of got used to it and never really made much of a fuss. I was never in any kind of faith community, so I didn't have to worry about getting tossed out if they found out I had a girlfriend and not a boyfriend.

I didn't come out of the closet so much as I just never felt I had to go into one.

And then I was in a long-term, happily-ever-after type thing with the woman who eventually became my lovely ex-wife. We left the Big Gay City of Minneapolis for rural Minnesota and then North Carolina -- not reputed to be exactly hotbeds of gay-acceptance, if you see what I'm saying. But I never made a big deal about hiding it or making sure people knew about it, and when I did say something, I rarely got any kind of response other than an embarrassed "oh, sorry -- you're wearing a ring, I just assumed it was a guy you were married to. Of course it's OK to bring her along." Or maybe a surprised "Oh, wow, I didn't realize you two were, um, oh."

I'm sure there were folks who disapproved or were shocked, but they never said anything mean or nasty to my face.

Yes, I know that I've been lucky. I know a lot of queer people have had to hide this information lest they get beat up, thrown out of the family, kicked out of their church, or fired. All that is real, and horrible; that was not my experience is all.

But then a funny thing happened after the ex and I split up: I started seeing a guy. Nothing serious, but there were times when I'd be talking to certain friends and they'd ask whether I was dating anyone yet. I wanted to tell them that I was, because I knew that the next question was did I want to meet their [neighbor, cousin, sister-in-law, co-worker's niece] who was really cool and -- get this also a lesbian and of course you two have so much in common.

So I'd say that yes, I was seeing someone, and then laugh at myself as I went through all kinds of grammatical contortions to keep from revealing his gender, and then change the subject as quickly as possible. Because even worse than being fixed up with The Other Lesbian I Know was the bullshit I feared hearing (and eventually heard) from people I thought I knew. I was not ready to discuss it.

I did not want to hear the "see it really was just a phase" gloating from my mother; and I really didn't want to hear any bullshit about selling out to the hetero hegemony or cashing in on my "straight privilege" from my lesbian friends. And I really really didn't want to find out which of my straight friends would turn out to have been a closet homophobe all along -- and a couple eventually did; they knew I hadn't been a real lesbian.

And then, I mean, what if I decided to go out with a woman next? I knew that -- fun as it seemed at the time -- what I had with that particular guy was mostly just a rebound-type fling, certainly not a happily-ever-after scenario. I totally dreaded having to explain that, no, it was the guy thing that was just a phase -- I renounce my straight privileges, give me back the mantle of heteronormative oppression -- oh and sorry mom, didn't mean to get your hopes up again about grandkids & all that.

And what if after that relationship ends, I wanna go out with a dude again? Because I might. In fact I have.

Some people might say I'm thinking too hard about it all. In fact a lot of people do say that. It's one of my charms, really: overanalyzing everything. But I still catch myself being vague about the gender of one ex-sweetheart or another, depending on who's listening and whether I'm in the mood to talk about it. Bisexuals are really scary, apparently. More so even than lesbians.

And I still haven't told my mother about all the boys I've dated; it's only been like ten years.

UPDATE: Here's a candy heart generator!