Pride

All things considered, I had a fairly easy initial “coming out.” In my first year of college I declared my bisexuality, based on a secret crush I’d had on my friend Jen in my senior year of high school. She was a bit more rugged than your average suburban 17-year-old girl of the era and I liked that, but I didn’t know why. She could tell that I had a crush, swiftly got a boyfriend, and stopped hanging out with me, suddenly deciding that I was “weird”. (I saw her a decade or so later at the Pride parade with her wife.) In my John Hughes high school there were three queer people: A very well-adjusted, openly bisexual hippie girl, her bisexual, clinically depressed, introverted friend, and an always well-dressed, effeminate theatre geek named Jeffrey. If anyone else was queer, they weren’t saying and in 1989 suburban Minnesota, I don’t blame them.  

I didn’t do any exploration of my identity in college, as is stereotypically the way. I was much more interested in new friends, new experiences, and general feminist politics than in an identity that seemed to always involve Birkenstocks, rejection of any traditionally female norms, and worship of the divine feminine. I liked my tube dresses and long hair and I was attracted to men in general. I maintained my bisexual identity because on rare occasion I would see a woman I was attracted to, although I never acted on it. (Of note, I don’t recall seeing a single stone butch on campus in those years. Leslie Feinberg’s novel wasn’t published until my junior year, so it is possible that there really weren’t many at that time as the internet was fledgling and support for non-traditional gender expression was hard to come by. Additionally, we were coming out of a decade much more concentrated on the injustices of the AIDS epidemic than gender expression, so it wasn’t as visible.) 

After college I had many sexual and romantic relationships with cisgendered men, a few of them resulting in the inclusion of cisgendered women. None of the women piqued my interest alone and I had started to assume that my bisexuality was more of an “appreciation” of women than an “attraction.” In 1996 I started dating a man who identified as a “cross-dresser.” (He has since grown to embrace his feminine side as a part of his identity rather than simply a fetish.) This seemed logically to fit the narrative of my bisexuality and we married in 1997. It happened more frequently as time went on that he strongly preferred to crossdress during sex. I found that I strongly preferred that he didn’t. This resulted in a somewhat polyamourous relationship (an arrangement to which I was not unfamiliar) which allowed me to avoid sex with him nearly altogether.

In what would ultimately result in an ironic twist of fate for my crossdressing husband, he encouraged me to get a job at the local lesbian club (where we would go to watch the drag queen shows he was fond of). I had a go-go dancing background which led to an offer from the owner to run a lesbian dance night at the club. This evolved into my being deeply entrenched in the local gay scene, both professionally and personally, and eventually to having my first sexual experience with a butch woman. It was the best sex I’d ever had and I was hooked. I had found my identity as a femme lesbian who loved butch women. When my husband returned from tour in October of 1998, I left him to pursue life as an out and proud lesbian. 

Dykes Do Drag

One of the most beloved drag shows in Minnesota, DDD had a 20+ year run!

Being a lesbian became the largest part of my identity, both personally and professionally. Nearly all of my gigs were in some manner queer-associated and I was not shy about making queer issues my top and loudest priority. I made quite a name for myself (Specifically “Go-Go Pimp Tif,” as coined by a gogo dancer and champion of mine turned pro DJ, one Shannon Blowtorch) as an MC and show producer and was for a decade arguably one of the most recognizable queer faces in the city. Being queer, specifically lesbian, and proud was my identity and I was unprepared for that to change.

Before I was the Boom in the Room I was …

Gogo Pimp Tif! Much like David Bowie, I have reinvented my stage persona several times to fit my current adventures!

I’d gotten a bartending gig at a new queer club, based both on my service experience and on my reputation in the community, where my job quickly splintered into providing queer-based entertainment (Dildo Bingo, Queer Speed Dating, etc). It was in that club that I met a man who, to the surprise of all of the queer women in the club who assumed him to be a voyeur, was an entirely passing transmasculine person. I found myself attracted to him, despite the fact that he was not a butch lesbian. We started dating. His cisgendered appearance and decision to not be “out” as a trans person (except among his closest friends) caused a dissonance between who I had openly and loudly been up to this moment in and to the queer community, and who I suddenly became. He appeared as an ally to the community when we were in it, and when we weren’t we appeared like any heterosexual couple. My public identity as a lesbian and as a queer person, which I held as most important to my life, was lost. I couldn’t divulge his secret, and I had no way to show the queer community that I was still a part of it. I lived with an overwhelming sense of responsibility to the community to represent it as a lesbian and as a queer person and I felt that I was betraying the community and the image of lesbians and queer people to the world by being in this relationship. It felt as if I had abandoned them and I couldn’t tell them that I hadn’t. I wanted to scream to everyone that I was still a part of the community and still a strong representative for queerness and that the community was still the most important thing to me. I couldn’t, and it hurt that they would never know how important my representation of them was to me.     

It wasn’t only my public identity that was lost, my personal identity was also erased. I struggled with this loss of who I was as a queer person and with the formation of this new identity that included a very real attraction to a transmasculine person. It took a long time for me to accept the shift in my identity, but the more difficult part was the loss of community. It was painful to feel like I no longer belonged in a place that always felt like home to me. No one kicked me out, I just felt like I no longer belonged.    

As I moved out of that relationship, I tried on cisgendered men for a few years, just to see how they fit. After several different styles, I found a common thread in the fashions I preferred and a strapping, virile, muscular lightbulb switched on in my head: I was attracted to masculinity in all its forms. That was it. That was what I had been at a loss to identify. It made so much sense to me and I felt like the missing puzzle piece of my life clicked into place. I understood my identity so clearly for the first time.

Attention Everyone!

I have an announcement to make …

Androsexuality is the attraction to masculinity, regardless of a person’s gender identity or sexual orientation. We have a flag and everything. I’ve felt so painfully estranged from the queer community for so many years, and now I’m home.

TifDynamite🖤🤎❤️🧡💛💚💙💜💖