Lesbian is the rainbow above the word itself

When I use a word like Lesbian, there will always be somebody who just doesn't like it, that's all. Probably because when they hear it, they think it means I hate somebody. Like men. Or other women, that the word is kindof TERF’y. Or that I hate myself, by over-identifying with my biology or not identifying with it enough.

When this happens, I can’t blame them really. Because when I say the word LES-BI-AN, unfolding it out like a map, I’m desperately trying to show them something new but when I look down, I see I’m just showing them the map they've already seen before. The thing keeps changing on me.

It’s been hard to control, to pick up, to place down the way I mean it. It’s a huge cement block of a word. It’s so grammatical—Lesbian—like a lot of identity words.

What’s tragic about old Grammar is that he’s good at being precise in his associations; he draws tight boundaries between things. G is an old-school teacher slapping down a ruler. Of course, somebody is bound to be hurt, excluded.

I am a lesbian, they hear.

I love chromosomes and rules, they hear underneath that.

Ruler slap, ruler slap.

So, we walk away a bit more distant, I think.

But when I am alone, something magical occurs. I place my beloved cement LESBIAN down on the ground and blast it with a hose, making it erupt and explode in a prismatic rainbow through the spray. If you can believe it, I shrink myself right down and just float on in there. I simply leave old G in the dust, shoot him the middle finger as he’s telling me, "Get down from there!"

Here, where Lesbian is just for us, it’s so pretty. It’s moving around like a shimmering pearl, a soap bubble of love, and even desire for all kinds of bodies. Oh yes, all kinds. Oh yes, uniqueness, and the multitudes of self-expressions. I can sink down and relax in lust for the world—for hot coffee and sightseeing and books and thick blankets. There are computer memes and teasing. There are #lesbian posts, and I hit "save."

"I like women," I say, even though words are tiny compared to vision.

"I like women."

Are you picturing ladies? Nice ladies? Movie star ladies? Well, don’t.

Picture something primordial—an old fossil, a seashell, the bones of a woolly mammoth coming to life and breaking out of the museum, wires snapping and people screaming.

Much better. That’s what I like.

I am a lesbian, so I will be a filthy little scientist, bringing leaves inside the house and sneaking looks to the other table at the small hands and big hands and wrinkled hands and smooth and gnarled and arthritic and calloused and kind and tinkering and open-palmed ones. It’s all Sapphically erotic, I think. Like bubble bath or salty spray.

It may seem uncomfortably vague to speak like this, as in,"what kind of person is the sexy kind to you!?" but my answer is, "Yes," and that's simply what being lesbian is to me. Why would I muck this up by wheeling in old G to comment on the scene, to point and slap and finger-waggle? He'll take out his biology slideshow, flick through exhausted pictures of withered gonads. No, he can stay gone.

It's much better this way, up here in the mist.

Lesbian is as vague and spectral as just being. Light as air. And as beautiful as love is.

Lesbian is the rainbow above the word itself.

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