Since I was a young girl, I've always known that I liked girls just as much as I liked boys.
At first, I thought it was me becoming over attached to girls who were being extra friendly towards me. I became angry with myself for creating conflicting feelings about girls who in the end, just wanted to be my friend. As I grew older and gained a few friends that were indeed girls - my tomboy phase lasted until I started middle school - I started to feel uncomfortable around them. I didn't think it was suitable for me to be around them for the same reasons why boys have one bathroom and girls have another. When they took of their shirts or their skirts flew up above their knees - I felt like a pervert. I would force myself not to look. I believed my presence among girls, doing girly things, was inappropriate.
It was Elementary school when I knew of my attraction to girls; when I kissed my first boy, named Joshua Colbert. He was one of the few biracial kids that went to my school, Franklin Square Elementary. Joshua lived closer to Fulton Avenue and I would wait for him at the corner of Stricker and Saratoga Streets before he and I would go into the corner store together to get assortments of candy. (Back when you could get a sandwich bag full of candy for twenty-five cents.) He had really bright brown eyes, doe-like, two large spaced teeth showed when he smiled, and he had hair so curly and yellow it looked like corn kernels. We planned all day to kiss and somehow our plans spread throughout the school. When the day was over, I waited for him on the lot us kids played on during recess. Kids crowded around us, surrounding us in a circle, as they watched us lean in to one another.
His kiss was the most disgusting thing that had ever happened to me at the time. I remember feeling that my entire face was wet; taking the back of my hand to wipe down my face from forehead to chin. He had kissed me, licking my closed lips and entire nose in the process. (I sometimes wonder if he's still a horrible kisser. He was so beautiful. What a shame if he is.)
As all the children began to disappear on their walks home, I myself passed through the small gate opening that us children preferred to use. I started on my short two and a half block journey from my school lot to my front door. I walked down Saratoga street, with its colorful colored houses, some blue, some red, some pink; and instead of keeping straight on my way, I made a left on Calhoun Street. I had two friends who lived on this street, named Chimere and Janiya. Janiya lived directly across from Chimere and I was always jealous that they were able to hang out with one another daily - Janiya was my first girl-crush. She was older than us, being thirteen, and us eleven, I saw her as a blossoming woman. She was dauntingly skinny with the sharpest shoulders. She always wore her hair in braids so long that they came to her waist. She would constantly have to swipe them out of her face, throwing them over her shoulder. Seriously, every time she did that, I got butterflies in my stomach. It was something so simple - literally her moving hair from her face, and I sat watching her, transfixed. (Can you be turned on at eleven?)
Chimere was new to our neighborhood and one of the only people who I felt completely comfortable with. She had pecan-brown skin, a really large smile that showed her gums, and was extremely hairy. I always felt bad for staring at her; searching for an answer or at least trying to figure her out. Her body seemed to be two shades darker than her face, her arms and legs were covered in hair. It wasn't as if she looked like a furry teddy-bear, completely covered in a coat of wool; it was just a lot of hair on a girl who was only eleven years old. Her sideburns were almost at her chin, curling just before they reached, and she had an enormous uni-brow. I was always so fascinated at how she didn't seem to mind how she looked - she embraced it. She joked about her appearance most times and sometimes, when a mean girl at school called her BigFoot or Sasquatch, she would scream to them: "SO WHAT! I KNOW I AM BEAUTIFUL!"
Now that I think of it, Chimere must have been the very first person I can specifically remember to know her worth, even at a young age.
In Elementary School, I had this habit of latching on to people. People who I deemed just as damaged as me or people I believed could help me out of my situation. My friend, Charda, was the coolest girl I knew. She had a completely different life than me, a life I craved. She was an only child, raised by her father, and always had nice clothes. She never had to lie about wearing the same two uniforms every other day, like I did. Me pretending they were different, telling people it was a new cardigan, a new collar shirt - just in the same color. Her dad drove a yellow taxi cab and would bring her and I chicken boxes, from New York Fried Chicken, every day during lunch. Before our last year in school, she moved to California. For years, once I was old enough, I would go and stalk Charda on MySpace. Just checking on her, looking at how pretty she had grown to be, comparing our current lives through her photos. She had palm trees while I slept in a shared bedroom that wasn't actually a bedroom at all. It was a pass-through, an extra wide hallway that my mother was able to fit a bunk-bed in. I feel embarrassed to say I never gained the courage to say hello to Charda. Even through a computer screen miles away, I felt she could see me. And seriously, how do you reconnect with someone and say: "Hi, I used to want to kiss you when we were both ten."
While my very large and very loud family had three lesbians among them (My two great-aunts Francine, Antoinette, and her girlfriend, also named Dee Dee.), no one really talked about sexuality and preference. I knew about intercourse and anatomy. My mother made it her duty to educate us about sex, dating, and our bodies. Yet my mother wouldn't dare to instruct us on the LGBTQ+ community, which was odd for me because my mother had a lot of gay male friends. For most of my life, my mother has always had a friend that was either gay, transgender, or somewhere in between. I knew that most of them were from her former life, the life she had before Christ saved her, but even after, she would still attract friendship in gay men. I always wondered how she could hug someone she said would go to hell.
When she did talk about the LGBTQ+ community, she always mentioned her best friend, Ms. Tony. If you're from Baltimore, you know who Ms. Tony is. He was a legend! (Yass! *Insert snapping fingers here.*) He ran the Baltimore club scene, the Baltimore house-music scene, and wore women's clothing - my mother even did his hair. However, when he did ultimately and unfortunately pass, he was put into the casket in a suit. My mother always made sure we knew that when he passed, he had recommitted himself to Christ, was baptized, and in her words: stopped his evil ways. She would tell this story to me often. As if she had to constantly remind me, her suspecting gay daughter, that all sinners must come back to God or they will go to hell.
My first realization into the lesbian world outside of my aunts was in Elementary school. I participated in a lot of after-school activities, school assembly's, and in my own way, was kind of a teachers pet to my Art Teacher, Ms. Borrows, and my brother Randy's English teacher, Ms. Greene. (Mom, if you're reading this; I had a terrible, horrible, excruciatingly awful crush on Ms. Greene.) I stayed after school to help Ms. Greene clean her chalk board - a teacher that was not even mine. She always wore nice skirt suit-sets; always complimentary to her deep chocolate complexion, which I appreciated. I would stand in her doorway, allowing and waiting for her students to leave the classroom. I watched her become elated to see me ready and willing to help her organize her room. She had the whitest straightest teeth I had ever seen on a person so chocolate. When she smiled, she had dimples that would sink into her cheeks. On one occasion of us cleaning, me wiping down the board, her organizing her desk back in order, she told me she was from down south. I thought she had the most beautiful voice. I loved that she called everyone Sweetie. (Thank you, Sweetie. Can I help you, Sweetie?)
I used to imagine that when she said it to me, she always said it differently. I now realize, she was just a very nice lady who loved her job.
YOU ARE READING
Three Miles in Baltimore
Non-FictionI was born in Baltimore, Maryland to a single struggling mother of four. Last year, in the midst of a mental breakdown, I began writing. I wrote in hopes of understanding my depression. I wrote to calm my ever present anxiety. I wrote to acknowledge...
