Runner-Up
Emily Craft
Growing up in a Christian church, I was taught that sex outside of marriage was dirty and immoral. However, within marriage, sex was a gift and something to be cherished. Talks about sexual orientation went similarly, except there was no scenario in which homosexuality might be celebrated or cherished. It was ungodly and inappropriate in all cases. My teachers used to show us demonstrations to ward off the immoral thoughts we all knew we had but would never admit to. They would glue green and pink pool noodles together and then rip them apart, and in that boisterous pastor voice, they’d shout at us, “Can’t you see what sex does to you? You take pieces of each other with you,” pointing to the bits of green stuck to the pink noodle and the bits of pink on the green noodle. I never understood the point. Maybe I wanted all the bits and pieces of other people. Pieces of their soul that still clung to my heart even after we’d given up on each other to try with someone new.
But you don’t have to have sex with someone for pieces of them to penetrate your heart like tiny shards of glass, digging deeper and deeper with every heartbeat. Of course, I wouldn’t realize that until after I met her.
At a sleepover in eighth grade, we got onto the topic of who was the cutest boy in school. I didn’t have a preference. The boys at school had yet to remember to put on deodorant every morning, and their idea of flirting was still pulling a girl’s hair and running away. I couldn’t bring myself to tell my friends about the girl from English class. The girl who smelled like Love Spell from Victoria’s Secret. The girl who drew doodles of teddy bears on my worksheets when I wasn’t looking. The girl who would hold my hand on our way to class and let me walk her to the bus at the end of each day, the way best friends do. She was nearly a foot shorter than me, and when she would look up at me, her dark brown eyes would ask me the same question: Do you like me the way I like you? I wanted the answer to be No, I don’t. But the answer was No, I can’t. I wasn’t gay.
She spent the night at my house a few times during the course of our eighth grade year, the way young girls looking for connection do, but there’s one particular night that stands out in my memory. My mom and I picked her up from the most recent foster home she had been placed in, where she had only been living for a few months at the time. I remember us sitting on my bed laughing until our ribs were sore and we struggled to breathe. What we were laughing about, I’m not sure, and I don’t think it necessarily mattered. She held her hand over her mouth to hide the wideness of her smile. I wanted anything but for her to hide. I hoped she would laugh until she began to cry or even throw up. Anything to get her to remember the tall, shy girl from eighth grade English. She told me about her family. How most of the siblings she had contact with were foster siblings. That both of her parents were in prison. She punished herself the way young girls do when they don’t understand why bad things happen, with a strictly water diet and something sharp to the places that could easily be covered by sleeves or pants. I didn’t want her to go home. I hoped I could have her stay with me until she was better. I could protect her that way. The way best friends do, right? Her brown eyes drew me in as she spoke. For the first time in my life I looked at someone and felt the overwhelming urge to grab their face and kiss them. I hadn’t kissed anyone before. But best friends don’t do that, so I didn’t. I would ask God over and over again why I felt this way about her. I came up with excuses, telling myself, I don’t want to be with her, I want to be her. Claiming it was envy, not homosexuality. One was easily forgiven. The other required conversion camp.
A little further into my eighth grade year, I got into honor band, which meant going to San Jose, California to perform music with other kids from all over the state. I knew one person, a girl from another school in my hometown named Leila. She and a girl from my band had dated once and had since broken up. Thinking about them together made my stomach churn. Back then I confused it for uncomfortableness. I remember feeling that what they were doing was wrong. I look back now, still a little confused, but older and in college, and I know now my stomach didn’t twist and contort because I was uncomfortable with them being gay. It twisted and contorted because I saw something in them that was reflected in myself. I resented them for having the confidence to be open about it. But how could eighth grade me have known that? I wasn’t gay.
Since Leila was the only girl I knew on the trip, she agreed to room with me. I thought she was kind to take the scared, introverted girl under her wing. We were the same age, but she had always seemed so much older than me. She knew how to do eyeliner and how to make a scarf look fashionable in 2015. And she knew who she liked. I fell for her confidence and her ability to unapologetically proclaim to everyone that she knew who she was. She was one of two girls I knew at the time who were openly gay. I was drawn to her, knowing that a girl that I liked could possibly like me back.
On day two with Leila in San Jose, I lay in bed while she began her morning routine two hours before we had anywhere to be. I watched as she walked over to the mirror and paused in front of it. She stared at herself for a moment, scanning her features almost as though she had forgotten a part of her morning that she couldn’t quite pinpoint. Then she reached up and delicately grasped her cheeks between her thumb and pointer finger and gave them a light pinch. Just hard enough so that a pink tint warmed her skin right below her cheek bones. She continued to admire herself in the mirror until the pink disappeared. It’s been almost seven years and I still can’t figure out why she did this. She knew it wouldn’t last. She knew no one would see her. Yet she stood there, admiring the rosy coloring. But I don’t need to know why she did it to understand that in that moment, as I lay in that hotel bed, watching her smile at her reflection, she was the most beautiful girl I had ever seen.
On day three in San Jose, a boy named Simon joined our group and we became a trio. He talked to me more though and insisted on sitting next to me at every meal. One night in the hotel room, Leila asked me if I liked Simon, to which I replied with a definite “no.” I had liked other boys, but when it came to Simon or Leila, I wanted her. But, I could never admit that to myself at the time because that meant failing everyone who saw me as a good Christian girl. I wasn’t gay.
“But can’t you see the way he looks at you?” She sounded surprised. “He looks at you like the whole world stops while you speak.”
I hadn’t noticed. But I knew the look she was talking about. I knew that look because it was the same one I’d give her, waiting for her to pinch her cheeks again the way she did in our room. I told her I didn’t know what she meant. When the trip was over, I would go from seeing Leila every day to once a month when we’d pass by each other at band festivals, sharing nothing more than a quick hello. Nothing would come of our weekend spent in San Jose other than memories of rosy cheeks and missed chances. In a way I was grateful that I didn’t see her more often. If I had, then my feelings for her would only have gotten stronger until I would have been forced to face how I felt.
As a junior in high school I would admit for the first time out loud to my brother-in-law that I was attracted to women. It was a car ride to the movie theater for our regular brother-sister outing. He comforted me as I cried and trembled in his arms once we reached the theater parking lot. There’s a specific verse that Christians use to discourage homosexuality, Leviticus 20:13, which states, “If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall surely be put to death; their blood is upon them.” Later translations of this verse, as my brother explained, imply something completely other than homosexuality, rather claiming the correct interpretation being man shall not lie with boy, meaning pedophilia. After our little moment behind the sketchy $3 movie theater, I had a better understanding that God would love me and accept me regardless of my love interests, though this issue wouldn’t be solved in one therapy session with my brother. I found the confidence, however, to tell my school friends that I was finally willing to be honest with myself and say that I was bisexual. Of course they weren’t surprised; they knew before I did, but they were proud of me nonetheless.
I wasn’t sure that my family would feel the same. My take on homosexuality and religion was new and liberal, but my parents and grandparents preferred more traditional and conservative translations of the Bible.
My mom had always praised me for the things I had done well. My grades never slipped below an A, I was the star soloist for my high school band, I sang for my church worship team, and she was proud. But when I tried to hint with my newfound confidence that maybe, one day, I wouldn’t bring home a boy and it would be a girl instead, her face sank. The image of her face in her palm, shaking her head and telling me, “This isn’t how we raised you,” will never leave me. She would tell me, “Emily, you don’t play for that team,” “Emily, you don’t swing that way.” And especially, “Emily, you’re not gay.” So I wasn’t, for her. Instead, I tried to focus on my attraction to boys and ignored anything else, even after coming out to my friends at school. My mom would try to play her comments off as a joke, assuming I also wasn’t being serious, but I knew she wasn’t kidding and she would much prefer that I date boys.
Years would pass and I would never get to tell Leila how beautiful I thought she was. I was sitting in a restaurant with my family, chatting about going off to college and who I would meet. Mostly, the types of boys they all thought I would bring home. My brother, who I had spoken to about my inquisitions about women in confidence, thinking he knew how to keep a secret, had the bright idea to propose to the table, “I hope she brings home a girl.”
“If she brings home a girl, I’ll kick her out,” said my father, who had had one drink too many. The table went silent.
I drove my drunk parents home that night, not saying a word until provoked. My father finally asked me why I was mad at him. I shook my head, refusing to give in to his trap. Finally my mom blurted out, “It’s because she’s gay, Bryan, and she doesn’t want you to hate her for being gay.” I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t want to admit that she was right. I didn’t want him to hate me for being gay. The rest of the car ride was carried out in insufferable silence. That night my mom trapped me in my room and asked me over and over again if I was gay. I told her no every time, pacing my room, determined not to let her see me cry or else my cover would be blown. “You know I will still love you even if you’re gay, right?” she asked.
“I know.” But I didn’t. I didn’t know that she would still love me. I didn’t know that she wouldn’t resent me for the rest of her life and that every time she would look at me she wouldn’t have to dig deep within herself to be convinced that she still loved me. Her words were not reason enough for me to be honest with her. I’m still not sure why she asked when she seemed to already know the answer. Still, I denied the accusations because no matter what I said, I knew it would be invalidated. She didn’t believe me when the answer was no and yet she refused to believe me when the answer was yes. I held on to the grudge from that night for weeks, months even. Even now, I have to be honest with myself and say the events of that night still make me angry.
It was the night before I left for my sophomore year of college when the brown-eyed girl who used to draw teddy bears on my papers asked me if I wanted to see her before I left. I hadn’t spoken to her much after we stopped having classes together sophomore year of high school. Then COVID hit, and I no longer saw her at school at all. We still knew the same people, and it had somehow gotten around to her that I was now openly bisexual. She made jokes, asking why we weren’t dating, while she helped me pack up the important parts of my room into a duffel bag. She made me nervous, and I simply laughed off her comments. By now I had much more experience flirting with boys than I did with girls. I knew she liked art, though, so I shyly gave her a drawing of a fairy I had recently done. She had changed her appearance quite a bit since the last time I saw her in school. She wore dark makeup and fishnets under her shorts and dyed her hair red. She was happy. I had changed, too. My hair was purple and I had some new piercings. Our appearances didn’t really matter though; we were still the same shy girls we had been in middle school, flirting through doodles.
When it was time to go, I walked her to her car to say goodbye. We stood facing each other, her back against her car and her brown eyes staring up at me. I thought about my parents and how they would respond if I ever brought her home for Thanksgiving dinner. How they might react to us dating. I didn’t care anymore. I cared about her more than I did about my family’s approval, which surprised me. So for the first time in five years I answered her eyes honestly, leaning down because she was still a foot shorter than me, and with my hands cupping her cheeks, trembling ever so slightly, I kissed her. She felt so fragile beneath my taller frame. I wanted to protect her from our families that disapproved of what we were doing. I wanted her to feel comfort knowing that I had finally made up my mind. But the guilt that had been instilled in me since Sunday school had never gone away. I don’t think it ever will. It’s one of those things that sits in the back of your mind, like the scars from your childhood. You learn to live with them, ignore them, but they never go away.
The brown-eyed girl would ghost me later that year once I went back to school. I’d never know why. People come and go throughout our lifetimes, but nothing could have prepared me for her sudden absence. Pieces of her still stick into my heart like broken glass. Pool noodles once glued together, now ripped apart.
Emily Craft is a junior at Rocky Mountain College and is in the process of receiving a bachelor’s degree in both psychology and sociology. She also enjoys various forms of writing and art and is pursuing a minor in writing. In her free time, Emily can often be found cuddling with her cat, painting, or journaling.
The Rocky Mountain Review 