Geeky Turn On!

Prologue

Ask any lesbian how they found out they were gay, you'll be given tons of different answers. Some will tell ya about how they figured it outby falling for a classmate. Others will tell you how they just "always knew." Others still will tell you they figured it out by comparing the thrill of being with a girl over how ho-hum it felt to be with a boy. Me? I'm pretty basic.

I figured it out when I was a fourteen year old watching Xena: Warrior Princess. If you've never heard of that show, it's pretty much the gayest show ever before being gay on TV was popular or acceptable. Also it had Greek Mythology in it and most of it was all flipping wrong, but that's another story. Anyway, that show helped me figure out I'm a carpet munching lezzie.

I can actually pinpoint the Eureka Moment. You know how in the intro you get close up shots of Lucy Lawless putting on the Xena armor? And for like a split second the camera focuses on that bust to die for? That's what piqued my interest, but the Eureka Moment came seconds later. It's THAT shot, of Lucy Lawless turning around and smiling as the wind blows through her hair; when I first saw that, it was like there was this third eye in the middle of my forehead that had been closed my whole life and then suddenly, in that moment, it opened up and EVERYTHING in my life made sense! I was GAY!

So I tried coming out to my Dad, and he was all "pfff, no you ain't, you're just confused." Which wasn't fun, but you know. Whatever. Maybe he had a point; maybe it wasn't so much that I was "gay" as it was that Lucy Lawless was so hot, she temporarily made me gay. I mean she had that kind of energy on screen, you know?

Soof course I TRIED to shrug it off. Then one day I started watching this show, Cleopatra 2525, and it starred Gina Torres. There were two other girls, too, but I forgot their names. Anyway, I saw Gina Torres in that form fitting outfit, and I was like "damn." I still sometimes look her up; man, what a woman. She was legit the first woman I ever mastur...wait, is that oversharing? I think that's oversharing, sorry. Anyway, moving on.

Then one night Dad was watching WWE wrestling, and one of the girl wrestlers came out; a tall blonde with one hell of a fit frame. I think her name was Trish something, I don't remember. Anyway, I was ENTRANCED by her, to the point that I completely zoned out everything around me. Eventually, when the match ended, Dad shook me by the shoulder and said "yup, you're gay. Ain't no straight girl ever drool over Trish like that."

"Is it OK?" I asked. "I mean, do you still love me?"

"Well, yeah," Dad said as he looked down on the floor. "I mean, I ain't happy about it, but I ain't gonna go around like you ain't my daughter."

And that's how I officially came out as gay. Now keep in mind this was the early 2000′s, barely a decade after people actually stopped treating LGBT+ folk as social pariahs and actually tried seeing them as human, but just a decade before Modern Family made being gay look OK. So it was kinda hard to have friends back then if you were LG, hardly anyone thought the B was real, the T was a joke, and the +wasn't recognized at all. So, what's a girl with few friends and no social standing to do?

Playvideo games, duh. Also watch Anime, read comics....that sort ofthing. These became my haven, helping me to really feel "safe" asit were, helping me form my own identity beyond just being gay.

Well, actually, kinda no. See, I had already been a hardcore gamer girl since I was five, thanks to the Super Nintendo that my dad gave me to distract from the fact that Mom ran off with her rich flip of a boyfriend. I suppose it helped me process that trauma of knowing my own mother was enough of a taint that she'd abandon her five year old daughter in exchange for that easy money, but it did make me having a social life harder.

Then, as I became a teen and went through puberty, I discovered Anime and comic books. Dad remarried, I went to college eventually, and I got diagnosed with Autism. It sucked at first, but anime and video games helped everything feel better.

And now, even today as a thirty something mess of a person, I'm still into all this stuff. And I wouldn't have it any other way...