Pretty in Pink

I can’t do anything about my current situation today, so I thought it might be fun to go back, to dig up the past a bit.

Movies have always been a large part of my life. I grew up with John Hughes version of life and love, the girl will get the guy and that life is messy but love makes it worth it all. I remember wishing that I was that girl, that my guy or girl would walk up to me in school and ask me out, that we would have a date and things would then get complicated. My best friend, who was secretly in love with me, would tell me how he or she felt and I would initially be freaked out and not wanting to lose the new love I had just found, pick wrongly, at first. Then I would realize that my best friend is the one I love, and at least in high school, we would be together, really together.

I never got that kind of life, a movie love. First I started out incorrectly; I’m not the girl in these movies. Also, I lived in a small southern town that would not condone this. I am the boy, even if I’m not. They may be able to handle gay, with a few beatings to show superiority. You know, keep them in their place. But not me, they would kill me, I would just be dead, dead, dead. No place for young girls in the wrong bodies. So, the movies were my escape, I could completely lose myself in a romantic comedy. 

When I first started dating, which took me a while in high school, I was hit with how awkward this was going to be. I could love her, be excited by her, but it was tainted by what I was. So there was no pure childish love that envelopes you and keeps you floating. Also, falling in love with my best friend was complicated, he was supposed to fall in love with me, not care what I was, who I was, just passionately love me. Instead, I pined for him and had to hide it entirely. Those movies didn’t prepare me for life at all, but they did help me get through some tough times.

I wanted to get away from my small town so badly. I didn’t have scholarships, my parents couldn’t afford college for me. So, it was the military for me, part of it was so that I could make my family proud (all the men had served in the military back four generations on both sides) and mostly so I could get away. Of course, that sort of back fired on me. Being male is all the rage in the military, they really like it if you aren’t different in any way, stand up straight, dress the same, don’t tuck the penis you didn’t ask for, shoot a gun, don’t wear panties. Also, there was a war I fought in. I shared the same space with cis men who denounce my kind now, but were weeping on my shoulder when our world was ending. I wept as well, but I’m not the duplicitous one in this story.

I got to see the world as a [not entirely] cis male. I got to live for 4 years as a [not entirely] cis male, trying to shrug off what I knew was an integral part of me. It never took. I dated women only, ignored my feelings for any men I might have liked, played it as straight as I could. It never took. I don’t know if I am really bisexual or pan or whatever, I believe that if you fall in love with someone, you love them, I don’t put a gender qualifier on it. Same with base sexual attraction, don’t care about gender at all, I’ve just been too afraid in life to try for a male sexual encounter, came close a few times but never fully went all the way. I don’t like beards on a man, I know that, kisses are too scratchy.

So, movies get me through life, romantic comedies mostly, romantic anything helps. In the Air Force it was “Top Gun” (yes I know it’s navy), a few years old but the movie had good staying power. And at the time I didn’t know Tom was bat-shit crazy.

In my later years, now-ish, my favourite is “Love, Actually” and why not, it has everything basically. Like in my youth, I am that girl standing in the doorway, while a guy who secretly loves me is quietly declaring his love for me.