YOU SIT IN THE DARK, I'M COMING OUT OF THE CLOSET
Kera Bolonik

“…There was nothing more disgraceful in high school during the 1980s than being a dyke (how handy that it should rhyme with that other epithet for me, favored by the nastier among the country club set). If I were to come out, wouldn’t that reduce my entire identity to whom I desired, and invite everyone to judge me? Wasn’t that opening the door to rejection? Wouldn’t admitting such a thing complicate my friendships with female classmates?

Besides, the only women I knew to be lesbians were spiky-haired, whistle-wielding gym teachers. Then there were those we assumed were lesbians: those clingy, needy girls who hugged and cried a lot, and stared too long in the locker room. And then there was Tziporah, the subject of whispering and pathetic sympathy. I did not want to be any of those people. (In college would I learn the nuances and lexicon of lesbianism, with its full array of butches, femmes, tops, bottoms, lipstick dykes, riot grrrls – but my adolescent mind imagined only three equally horrifying possibilities.) I’d hate for The Crewcut Beauty and Pavia to think I had ulterior motives. And yet, I felt guilty for secretly desiring them even though I’d never have the guts, or the know-how, to do anything about it. I mean, who would ever feel comfortable in my company? I didn’t even feel comfortable in my company.

“What do you want from me?” I asked my mother in the backyard. I started to cry.
“ Anything,” Mom said. “You have to shed some light onto this dark, morbid act of yours.”

I scowled at her. “It’s not an act!”

“ Then what is it?”

I shrugged. She wasn’t going to get it out of me, not now, not ever. It was better that she thought I was morose than a pervert….”

Kera Bolonik, a native Chicagoan, has been living in Brooklyn, New York for more than a decade, and still, she speaks with those flat Midwestern “As.” Her writing has appeared in New York, The New York Times, Glamour, Salon, The Nation, Nerve, Slate, The Chicago Tribune, The San Francisco Chronicle, Washington Post Book World, The Boston Globe, The Forward, The Advocate, Tin House, and Bookforum magazine, among other publications. She is the co-author of Frugal Indulgents: How to Cultivate Decadence When Your Age and Salary Are Under 30 (Henry Holt/Owl, 1997).