Still, I had a lot of questions that I was too embarrassed to ask her (read: all the sex ones). I finally broke down and told my very close friend Sally, who is gay, what was going on, and she was endlessly reassuring-she was the exact right level of thrilled confirmed that it sounded like my crush at least wanted to make out with me and encouraged me to not get too in my own head about labels.
If we made out and I didn’t like it, I’d feel terrible… but if we made out and I did like it, I would, at some point or another, have to confess that I had never had sex with a woman before and had no idea what I was doing. I also hated the idea of using another person to “experiment.” I was worried about the possibility of it going somewhere. That was definitely the case for me-I was really in my head about labels like 'queer' and 'bi' (how dare I claim to be of a marginalized group when I had no lived experience to show for it?). Realizing you have queer or bisexual feelings, particularly if you’re an adult over the age of, say, 20, can lead to getting caught in a cycle: I want to explore these feelings so I can figure out how to label myself… but I need to label myself to date/kiss/fuck a real person according to the rules of that label. Part of my confusion was about what this crush even meant about me. I had no idea what to do with this information.
