Thanks, but no thanks: on a change of sexuality

One of the topics on LesbianLifestyle.com this month is the following:

If your fairy Godmother told you that you could be a heterosexual tomorrow by the touch of her glittery wand would you allow her to change your sexuality and why or why not?

This was food for thought as this is a question that I’ve been asked many times over the past years. My answer is usually a firm no but I never really took the time to think about the underlying reasons of my answer, which is why I thought it would be good to do so today.

The first and only thought that surfaces is that I really have had an easy deal. Unlike other men and women, my coming out (if any) was not a complex, harrowing, draining process.

I must have been seven when I (subconsciously) experienced my first infatuation with a woman. The location was the Langelinie Pavillion in Copenhagen, she wore a hot pink evening dress and her name was Elise. Over the years, many women would take this first woman’s place. And yet, I never questioned my feelings for these women. They were there, I attempted to deal with my feelings for them for the most part and continued to gossip about boys, neck with them when the opportunity presented itself, date them and later sleep with them.

This was all to change in 1993. My best friend at university, who had been in love with me at one time but never told me about it, and whom I subsequently fell in love with, one evening confessed to me that he was gay. I became his date on his forays into a world that was relatively new to us: the world of gay men and women. After ten months I told him that I couldn’t take it anymore and that from now on he was on his own. Maybe this was the sign for him to get moving, because that evening he found himself a date (the beginning of a ten-year relationship). As I was roaming the venue, trying to entertain myself, someone stood out just that little more than the other women. There was nothing show-stopping about her, except the irresistibly seductive twinkle of her eyes. Next thing I knew, I was kissing her. It was as if a floodgate opened.

I will not go into as much detail about what followed. What is important is that I realised right away that I had always been in love with women but simply never had the opportunity, in my extremely straight surroundings, to exercise that love. From one day into another I swapped men for women. I didn’t give it much thought and I expected the people around me to follow my example. For the most part, they did. I can count on one hand the people who could not deal with my decision. The oldest person in my life, my gran, said ‘as long as you’re happy’. My mum had a meltdown and hated the girlfriend. My youngest sister said ewwww.

My life has continued much in the same vein: my mother adores my partner of 11 years, we have a child, are considered a couple by my family, my SO’s employer and the school, our neighbours. We don’t consider ourselves the ‘only gay in the village’ and we are not in your face gay either. I never made any statements about my sexuality, I simply steamed on.

In Italian they say ‘Icche’ c’e c’e’: whatever there is, there is. In hindsight, it pretty much sums up my attitude to life and being gay. I take it at face value, dealing with whatever is coming right at me. My recommendation to my fairy godmother would thus have to be that she needs to reserve that fairy dust for worthier purposes, such as a second baby, maybe?