Finding my identity

In 2003, my mother had bought me a new dress to wear at a family reunion. It was a pink dress that had yellow flowers on it, but I feel uncomfortable wearing it because of the way I walked. I also thought that everyone in my family would laugh at me and make bad remarks. My mother wanted me to try on my new dress in the bathroom before the family gathering started at 6:00 pm. When I looked at myself, trying on the dress, it looked astonishing on me, but I still felt uncomfortable. When I walked out of the bathroom to show my mother, she was sitting in the living room.

“Awe, you look nice,” my mother said.

“Thank you,” I said, not really content.

“Now let me see how you walk around in it,” she said. I listened to what she told me and rotated around the living room.

“Oh naaw, Ciara. You gotta change that walk of yours,” my mother said with a mean look on her face.

“What do you mean I have to change my walk?” I asked.

“I mean you walk like a boy, Ciara. You gotta change how you walk to a girls walk. You is a girl. You suppose to walk like a girl,” she said.

“I don’t think I can’t change my walk, mama,” I said.

“Well at least try, Ciara. You can change that,” she said looking serious. I did not say anything after that. I just walked back into the bathroom and took my dress off and put back on my night clothes and waited for the time to change for the event.

It was after 7:00 pm when the chef was carrying the food out of the kitchen and setting it on the buffet table. When I had just about everything on my plate I walked back to my seat by the window where my mother and I were sitting.

“Ciara, you still walk like a boy. Change that,” my aunt, Shug, informed me.

“I told her to stop walking like that,” my mother said. I did not say anything. When I was done eating everything on my plate, I realized that I did not get anything to drink. I was nervous that someone would say something negative about me in this uncomfortable dress. I urged myself to get up out of my seat, and my body started to tremble. I ambled up to the cooler and took out a Coke. When I strolled back to my seat, I noticed that my cousins who were sitting at another table were laughing.

“Ciara, why you walk like that?” my cousin Angelic said, laughing.

“I don’t know,” I said walking back to my seat. Throughout my youth I was meditating about the questions my family and classmates would ask me, like why do I walk boyish? Why do I talk boyish? I did not have any idea what they meant. When I had turned 10 years old, I was living at my grandmother’s house with my brother Glenn. One night my brother and I were lying at the end of the bed watching the film, Soul Food, that my brother had on the small black RCA TV on top of the VCR. I only observed their haircuts and clothes, and how the males dressed. When I would watch women in motion pictures, I would get this intense feeling that I never understood. When films would show females, it would be a different interest of how I would observe them. Not just the woman's hair or clothes, but I would perceive their body gestures and poses. In films with sex scenes, I only kept my eyes fixated on the women instead of the men. As a child, I did not know why I found women more appealing than men. I always felt that there was a boy living inside of my body instead of a girl. There were a lot of times as I got older, into my teens, I would always imagine myself altering my appearance to a male appearance. I felt uncomfortable living in my own body.

In my late high school years, having feelings for the same sex was making me feel distressed and miserable because I had thought that I was the only human being on Earth feeling that way. Sometimes I hated the way I felt so much that I deserved to do harm to myself. Every day coming home from school, where I did not have many friends, I would go into my room and lie on my king sized bed with dark brown and beige zebra stripes. My room was large. The walls were white, and the floor was built in brown wood.

I would close my eyes and have deep fantasies about my female classmates and teachers that I was attracted to at my school. I would have images in my mind about having sexual intercourse with them. I thought this experience was abnormal and unnatural and I felt that I needed some therapy because of the way I was feeling. Every night I would wail myself to sleep feeling extremely depressed, thinking that I do not deserve to be on this Earth if I continued to feel that way about the same sex. In my mind I would repeat the word gay in my mind:

I am a gay girl. I just have to deal with my feelings. I’m gay as hell and I will always be gay. I am gay, and I’m going to hell.

When I felt extremely miserable, I would turn on my small red laptop and watch lesbian and transgender pornography and masturbate because I would think that feeling would fade away but I realized that made the pain of lusting for women worse.

Graduating from high school felt lonely for me still since I was concealing myself in the closet and not telling anyone about my feelings. I did not think about having a boyfriend at that time. There were guys that were interested in me, but I never was interested in wanting to be with them even though I wanted to do the right thing which was natural to me like having children and get married.

When I was at the age of 19 and attending Harold Washington College, I would pray every night that my feelings towards the same sex would go away, but they never did. One night I was sitting on my bathroom toilet praying:

“God, I pray tonight that I come to tell you my lord, to help me overcome my miserable feelings and give me strength, and encourage me to do the right thing of being with the opposite sex. I still want you to always accept me having these intense feelings about women. My Lord, I feel that being gay is not for me. I think that lifestyle is hard to enter into for me. I am not asking you to change the word of being against gays, but wanting me to do what works for me. I want to accept myself. I hope the man that I will meet someday would be a good man who believes in you, my God, and goes to church sometimes to hear the holy word spoken. I also hope someday that I will eventually meet a man that accepts me, Amen.” After that prayer, I kept the faith of what I prayed for and I hoped it would come true someday.

In 2015, my third semester at Harold Washington was very interesting for me. During that semester, I took two courses, history and geography. I thought geography was dull and difficult because I did not understand the concepts of reading maps, but I enjoyed learning in my history class about neighborhoods and reading about the Chicago fire. I had a very nice and hilarious instructor named Domenico Ferri. In the beginning of that semester I always sat in the front of the class until one day he assigned us to write a paper about historical and famous Chicagoans.

“For this assignment, I want you to explore different museums to get some ideas to write about in your essays,” Mr. Ferri said. It was puzzling for me to find a museum to go to. After my history class I was walking to the bus stop on Washington Street. I sat down and waited for the J14 bus. I was meditating about my life, plus killing time so that the bus could arrive soon. While I was doing that, a guy sauntered towards where I was sitting.

“Hey, ain’t you in my class?” the guy asked.

He was a medium height and thin. He had Hershey dark skin and wore glasses, and he had his black Nike cap cocked backwards. He was also wearing a dark jacket, and his shoes were spotless, as if he did not like to get them dirty.

“Yeah, I’m in yo class.” After I said that, the bus had arrived. We both got on, and we started conversing about our assignment in history class.

“Aye, you know what musuem you goin too?’’ I asked him.

“Naw, I’m tryin to figure that out,” he said. “I know there is a museum close by where I live,” he added.

Where is that at?’’ I asked.

“That’s on 56th Street,” the guy said.

“Awe, okay, I would not know how to get there,” I said.

“We can go together and I meet you up there,” he said.

“You wanna go this Saturday?” I asked.

“Okay,” he said with a serious look. “What yo name and phone number is? Imma key yo number in my phone,” I asked him.

“Bernie Powell,” he said. “Like Bernie Mac. My real name is Bernard, but my friends calls me Bernie.”

“Awe, okay, Bernie Mac,” I said joking. He laughed and glanced at the window. I was keying his name and number in my tiny government phone.

“Why you wanna key my last name Powell in yo phone?” He asked.

“I said, yeah, I wanna know yo whole name,” I said.

“Man,” he said giggling.

The reason why I wanted to know his name was because I thought I had found something interesting about him that I had never thought I would ever find in any other males. When we were taking the bus home together, I told him all about my life story. I noticed that he was a good listener, and I found that intriguing. I wanted to get to know him more. I was thinking maybe I could do the right thing with him of wanting to build a future and to have children with him.

Saturday came, and my mother drove me to the Dusable Museum. The place was small and had little historical archives. I came across an archive of Harold Washington’s displayed statue, which I found interesting to write about. While we were walking through a small archival room, observing famous paintings and statues. I noticed that it was only Bernie and me in the archival room.

“Awe I see some black statue niggas in here now. Look, here go Harold Washington, my nigga,” I said. Bernie laughed very hard. He did not say anything, but he laughed at my hilarious jokes. When we were finished walking through the museum, I was about to call my mother to ask her to come pick me up.

“You can ride with me. I take you home. I don’t mind,” Bernie said.

“Really you don’t mind?” I asked.

“Naw, what you want me to drop you off at?’’ he asked kindly.

“You can drop me off at my grandmother’s house. Me and my mama go over there every Saturday,” I said.

“Aww, okay,” he said. We walked toward his baby blue car.

“Awe wow, you drive this small blue car?” I asked, cracking a smile.

“Yeah I know my car looks feminine, but this was all they had. As long as I am riding in a car that get me somewhere,” he said.

“That is what’s up and true.”

While Bernie was driving me to my grandmother’s house, we were conversing about our career interests and hobbies.

“What you majoring in?” I asked.

“I’m tryin to get into technology but I heard you have to be good in math to that, and I’m not good in math,” Bernie said.

“Awe yeah, you have to know a lot of math if you want to become a technician, welder or a mechanic,” I informed Bernie.

“Yeah, but I was thinkin about doin some comedy, like stand up, cause that’s what I’m good at, making people laugh,” he said.

“Oh really? that’s good,” I said. Bernie did not strike me as the type of guy that was interested in making people laugh because of his quietness, and I had not heard a joke from him yet.

“Yeah I love comedy too. I implement a lot of comedy in my artwork and writing because I’m majoring in art & illustration,” I said.

“You liked to draw?” he asked.

“Yeah, I like to draw comics and incorporate comedy into it to make the comic readers laugh. I love making people laugh, did you seen what I just did in the Dusable Museum,” I said.

“Yeah you is funny, I never met a girl that is educated and has expectations on what she wanna do in life,” he said. He then grabbed my hand and added, “I think we have something in common.”

“Yeah I think so too,” I said.

“I was thinkin maybe me and you should go out sometimes. What you think about that?” I asked.

“Yeah that sounds cool. We can do that,” he said.

Arriving at my grandmother’s house and getting out of Bernie’s car, I was hoping this miracle getting to know Bernie would come true. I thought there was something about him that I liked, and he was a really nice guy.

Our first date was at Subway in my neighborhood. We got our two submarine sandwiches, potato chips, and drinks, and we sat near the window. It was nighttime, and we were conversing more about our life stories. After we ate, we sat in the Subway car lot. There were not any other cars around.

“So, what’s up?” I asked.

“What you mean what’s up?” Bernie asked.

“You wanna go back there and do it?” I asked.

“Awe, have sex is what you mean?” Bernie asked.

“Yeah, ain’t that’s what you really wanted?” I asked.

“Yeah, but I could have waited cause most girls would wanna wait,” he said.

“Yeah, but I’m different,” I said.

“Well, okay. Let’s do it,” he said. We moved to the back seat of his car. He was watching me swiftly undressing.

In the car, I was on top of him and he was sitting down as we were humping each other. He had the radio on in his car to a hip hop station. He started to kiss me around my neck and eased his way to kissing me on the mouth. I hated when guys would kiss me on the mouth. I always had fantasies of kissing and making love to a woman. While he was enjoying my body, I was thinking to myself that I hoped this would be over. Soon he was making love to me, so I pretended to make love to him, and kissing him all over his body. As we were done having sex, we quickly put back on our clothes, looking out to make sure no one saw us that we were naked.

After that first date night, we had many more date nights every Friday. A year went by and it was not a perfect year for me. Even though I wanted to build a future relationship with Bernie, I still had feelings for the same sex. The miserableness and loneliness came back again, and I did not want to confront Bernie about my feelings towards the same sex. If I told him, it would tarnish his heart. So I still kept my sexual identity concealed. He was the type of guy that loves to keep having sex for the enjoyment of it and I disliked it. Every time we would have sexual intercourse, I did not feel content about it. I did it because I thought sex was part of a relationship. Every Friday night, going out with Bernie made me feel sad. I thought he could do better than being with someone like me.

After dating for awhile, Bernie had noticed that my walk and the way I talked was different from the other girls he had met in the past. He just always thought I was just boyish. However, in the summer of 2016, Bernie was sensing that I was hiding something from him because of my distance. I was making up excuses of just wanting to hang out every other Friday instead of every Friday. We were not seeing each other often. As my miserableness got worse, I really wanted to go out and have sexual intercourse with a female. There was a friend that I used to hang out with from high school named Jordan from Harold Washington. Some days during the week, he took me to a strip club, and we had sexual intercourse with women there.

I was lonely and miserable because I wished I could confront Bernie about my feelings and I still wanted to do the right thing with him even though I had messed up and cheated on him.

In the winter of 2016, was when Bernie could not take my distancing from him anymore. One night, on a Saturday at my grandmother's house, I was in my aunt Sandra’s room watching a movie that had gotten interrupted from Bernie texting me.

“We need to talk,” Bernie said.

“Talk bout what?” I asked, responding back feeling extremely nervous and my body was in panic hoping that he did not figure out what I was hiding from him.

“About how you been distancin yoself and not showin me any affection like most females would show to their boyfriends,” he replied. I had paused for a minute and had put my phone on the bed thinking about how I should respond to next. Before I was about to reply again, he had sent me another text that said:

“I don’t think this relationship is goin to work out if u keep doin what doin, cause I can’t be in no relationship with u if you not showin me no affection,” he said.

“Can I call u now?” I replied, wanting to get the conversation over with.

“Naaw I’m at work, I get off at 12. U can call me when I get off,” he responded.

“Okay, cool. When we was done texting, I felt sad and nervous of having that talk with him and I had started to cry and I could not do anything else. I had turned off the TV and laid down thinking he would not accept me if I confess to him about my feelings.

When I went home, I called him on Facetime using my laptop. I was sitting at the grey dining room table. My legs and arms started to quiver with nervousness.

“Yeah?” I said. I just wanted to get this conversation over with.

“Yeah I called you because I can’t take this distancing and not showing me no affection,” Bernie said. He looked sad and concerned.

“You say I don’t show you no affection, like what?” I asked.

“You know, when I be downtown going to work and coming home from work, when I get on the bus. I always see a lot of young couples standing by the school all cuddled up. I always see the girls sittin on their boyfriend’s laps or kissing them or even holdin they hands. I always see that everywhere I go. Every time I see that, I be thinkin like, man, I wish Ciara could show all them type of affections like that. I know you told me that you don’t like really kissin that much, but at least try holdin my hand or somethin. And I’m just curious about why you don’t like kissin or showing me no affection like what most females do with their boyfriends?”

While he asked me those question, I was silent. My legs were shaking.

“Why?” he asked.

“Why what?” I asked feeling very heated and mad inside but was trying to control my anger.

“Why don’t you like kissin me? Cause you said you never liked kissin me or any other guys before you met me. At least, why you don’t like kissin me? Did you go through something to not like kissin guys? I mean, is it my teeth? Or do my breathe stinks? Or am I not a good kisser?” he asked tryin to make me laugh, but I was still angry. I had my arms folded and did not want to answer his question.

“I don’t know. I just don’t like kissin,” I informed him.

“But why? It has to be a reason why you don’t like kissin?” he asked. He kept badgering me with those questions and trying to break me to tell him the truth.

“I just think it’s nasty,” I said.

“Nasty? Naw, it has to be a reason. You had to go through something in the past to why you don’t like kissin, cause that’s weird,” he said. I was thinking that maybe I should just tell him the truth but I was also thinking that if I told him, he would leave me and find some other woman. I really did not want to be with a woman in the future. I know I like the feeling of being with a woman, but it would not seem natural for my future, especially in having my own children. If he did leave me, I would have to accept it and move on and keep praying that Bernie would accept me. So I wanted to confront him about everything.

“I have to tell you something,” I said.

“What? Tell me,” he said.

“I have to tell you why I don’t like kissin you or any other guys I dealt with in the past,” I said.

“Tell me,” he said looking very curious.

“Okay imma give you a hint, when you had read some of my artworks like my homosapien comic book, was you thinking or being curious about that?” I asked.

“What I was curious about-- that-- why that comic book was all about dudes talkin about smashin females,” he said

“That didn’t give you an idea of how I am?” I asked.

“Naw, I just thought it was boyish,” he said.

“What about my walk and how I act boyish? Do that tell you anything about me of why act that way? Or how all of my artworks are predominantly males either talking about females or having sex with them?” I asked

“Naw, I don’t, I just thought it was boyish. Can you stop beating around the bush and just tell me why?” he asked.

“Okay, the reason for all of that what I just asked you about my artwork content, and how I walk and talk and me being so distant from you and not showing you no affection, is that I was going through something,” I informed him.

“Things like what?”

“I was feeling very miserable,” I said. “I been having feelings for the same sex and I been doing some things behind your back. I went to a strip club with a friend and did sexual things to women there. The feelings I have been miserable for me to handle.”

Bernie looked sad and still, and did not say anything for a while. He just listened to what I was confessing.

“I’ve been having these feelings ever since I was a little girl. I’ve been praying very hard for my feelings to go away, but it didn’t. My feelings kept coming back and there is nothing I can do about it. Honestly being with the same sex is not for me. I always still dreamed when I was little and growing up wanting to have kids in my 30s with a man I can marry and build a future with, that would still accept me and guide me through life, and that even though how I feel about the same sex. I wouldn’t break his heart. I can’t change the way I feel about women, that’s me. I’m going to feel this way tell the day I die. I hate to say that, but it’s the truth. It’s like me having a learning disability and that I get disability checks. I’m gonna always have a disability and nobody can’t change that. And it’s like my brother being diagnosed with autism. He can’t change that. He’s going to be autistic for the rest of his life, till death, and I still love him and care for him. If I have kids one day and if I find out they are disabled, autistic, deformed, or if they are gay or bisexual, I would still love all my kids no matter what are or how they feel about the same sex. I would tell them to do whatever it takes to make them happy.”

“Yeah, that’s right. So you just woke up one morning and started liking the same sex?” he said not understanding my feelings.

“It’s hard to explain. You wouldn’t know unless you felt the way I feel about the same sex,” I said.

“You right, I don’t cause I’m not gay. Wow why you didn’t tell me this when we first met?” he said.

“Cause I thought if I would have told you, you wouldn’t want to be with me,” I said.

“You right, I wouldn’t. Like man, this is so weird that every girl that I would meet in the past was either gay or bisexual. I didn’t tell you cause I thought it would have been unnecessary. None of them was straight, and I always wanted to be with a straight woman that I wouldn’t have to worry about her looking at some man or some woman. It would just be me and her going to someplace far and don’t have to worry about that.”

“And man, all of em were homosexuals? None of ‘em were straight?” I asked.

“Yeah all of them were pretty much. It was always something with them in why they didn’t want to hang ouwithinnmaking excuses or they are withttheirirlfriends or boyfriends or with they babies they had to take care of. Just excuses. You were the only girl that really stood by me this long since we dated over a year now. I haven’t been with a girl this long. And I never met a girl that actually told me any of her secrets like you did.”

“Wow. How did you feel at first when I just told you this?” I asked

“I’m shocked that you told me that you are gay and that up that up upon how you walk and talk,” he said.

“Yeah I thought you went have an outburst and wouldn’t accept me and being disrespectful of my sexuality,” I said.

“Naw, but at first I thought I was just wasting my time with you cause I thought you were talking to some other guy. I would have been very disappointed if it would be that type of situation but it led to this unexpectedly, and it makes sense to me that you explained yourself of coming out to me. If you would have blurted out,’ awe I’m gay’ and just left it like that, then I would've really thought I was wasting my time, and I would ask you why you with me if you are gay. But when you said you wanna do the right thing of having children in the future with a man than a woman, that changed my perspective,” he said.

“Yeah you right,” I said.

“I don’t like it that you have these feelings for the same sex and that it will never change, but I still want our relationship to work out, and I do wanna build a future with you and have kids with you. I accept you, as long as you stick by me and do the right thing and don’t let your feelings control you. I think our relationship should go forward. I know you stuck by me for this long and you never stood me up or played any mind games. You always stuck to your words. I believe your words and I see you trying to do what’s right,” Bernie said.

“Yeah I do too, and I appreciate all of that,” I said.

After that long conversation, I and Bernie had stayed up all night until 6:00 am made me feel relieved. When I had closed my laptop, I had got out of the chair and smiled stretching. I thought to myself that was very unexpected because I thought that would be the end of our relationship and never would communicate with each other again. I felt good going to bed and that I could be able to sleep since we had that talk.

Although we had talked, we did not break up. However, currently, we are doing well in our ongoing relationship still wanting to build a future of getting married and having children. Bernie still believes in me and guiding me through the way and accepting me and is not judgemental on how I feel about the same sex or about my beliefs in gay rights and accepting other people and who they are. Bernie is also guiding me and we both are attending church frequently.?