Welcome to Things I’ve Never Asked! This is a new A+ series in which we ask people we’re close to questions we genuinely don’t know the answers to! For this first one, I sat down with my girlfriend Kristen Arnett. Because we live together and especially because we started living together just two months before the pandemic made it so that we were truly together all the time, I thought I wouldn’t have enough questions to ask, but oh wow was I wrong! What I thought would be a short-ish interview turned into a two-hour conversation in which I learned so much I didn’t know about Kristen! In the first half, we talked about childhood, bodies, libraries, Barbies, porn, dial-up internet chat rooms, secret high school girlfriends, men’s cargo pants from Old Navy, and so much more! That first half of the conversation is below, and the second half — which covers our first date, our relationship, being a writer4writer couple, and top/bottom dynamics — will be published in the future on A+.
Kayla: So we were originally supposed to have this interview at a Hooters.
Kristen: Right.
Kayla: But it was too loud unfortunately. I don’t have that many questions written down, because it’s very hard to think of things that I’ve never asked you, because we’ve spent a lot of time together in the past couple years.
Kristen: (laughs) Yeah. Just trapped.
Kayla: So, a lot has been on the table. I’m going to start with some softballs.
Kristen: (laughs) Is this going to get really hard?
Kayla: No, I don’t think so! I wanted to start with — there were 12 years of your life where I was not alive.
Kristen: Yeah. An even dozen.
Kayla: An even dozen. And I realized that I don’t think I know the answer to this question, but what did you want to be when you grew up? Like when you were young, before anyone has an actual idea of who they are and what they want.
Kristen: I wanted to be a lyricist.
Kayla: See! I had no idea!
Kristen: I wanted to be the person who wrote the words for songs, even though I never did it.
Kayla: Like, not even in your journal or something?
Kristen: No!
Kayla: You were like, “I haven’t done it, but I could.”
Kristen: I just had an idea that I thought I would be good at it.
Kayla: That’s funny, because that is a writer. So you weren’t that far off.
Kristen: Well, I think a part of it too, is that I had friends who all wanted to be singers. Because I feel like that’s when kids are young, they have these ideas about being like, “I’m going to be a movie star.” I had a lot of friends who were like, “I’m going to be a famous singer.” And I was like, “What?” Because I never wanted to do that. Like I’m a good singer.
Kayla: And you’re a performer.
Kristen: But I don’t think I would’ve considered myself to be a performer at the time. I was pretty quiet. I think when I was young and like, the closeted part of me, I was very shy. I really gravitated towards people who were super outgoing and like, really flamboyant, and exciting and like, the kind of people who I feel like I am now. Like how I’m very outgoing, and the life of the party, and want to be talking to everybody, and the first person who’ll get up and do something at karaoke. The first person who will be trying to make a joke in a room full of people. That is not who I was then. And I feel like I really wanted to be around people like that. Because I was very impressed by that. Because I think another part of that too, is like my dad is very much like that. And I was very drawn to people who were like that. Everybody loves them. They’re so talented. And when you hear their name, you’re like “That guy, I love them.” But I had a lot of friends who were singers, and I was like, “I don’t want to sing, and I don’t want anybody looking at me. But I can be part of this, because I could like write the songs that people sing, and then I could be part of it.” It was a strange thing, too. My dream was attached to other people’s.
Kayla: To be a successful lyricist, you have to be attached to a successful singer.
Kristen: I also wanted to be a librarian, but that was before I really even knew what librarians did. That was like back when I was like, “Oh, and you’re like, in a library, I see these people.” You’re just around books all day. And then you sit and people leave you alone and you can read.
Kayla: That’s a common fantasy that people have about librarianship. But then you actually went on to become a librarian, which is interesting. How young were you when you had that dream?
Kristen: I was in elementary school. Everything I wanted to do had to do with books. A big fantasy I had was I wanted to like be able to spend the night in the downtown library in Orlando. I wanted to be left there and have a little tent and a Thermos of hot chocolate. And be able to read as many books as I wanted, like all night long in this giant library and have people leave me alone. Because in my house I didn’t have my own space to myself. There was literally no place I could go to be alone. And no one would ever let me read. People would bother me the whole time. And also I wasn’t allowed to read so many things. And I was like, “If I’m here, then I could do that.” And so I had this really idealized thing in my mind about what it would be like to be a librarian. Because I was like, “Look at all these books here. It’s quiet all the time. No one’s bothering you. You have space, and time, and unlimited access.” And so, my brain was like, “This is amazing.” And so it was like a fantasy idea.
Kayla: I had no idea that you thought that. I mean, I knew you felt that way about books, and libraries and stuff. But I didn’t know that you wanted to be a librarian that young.
Kristen: I did! I mean, I don’t think I understood what it was called. Because, I think when you’re young, you’re most familiar with media specialists at your school.
Kayla: Yes. Yes. I remember.
Kristen: Mine was Ms.Martin. Ms.Martin, thinking back about it now, is definitely gay.
Kayla: Mine looked like an anthropomorphized owl.
Kristen: Hot.
Kayla: (laughs) This did remind me. Am I misremembering this? Was your first kiss in a library?
Kristen: It was, yes. It was at the Winter Park public library.
Kayla: How old were you?
Kristen: I was in ninth grade.
Kayla: And it was with a boy, yeah?
Kristen: It was, yes.
Kayla: But you already had had gay thoughts before that, right?
Kristen: Yes.
Kayla: It was like, on the steps of the library?
Kristen: It was in the stairwell. And I was like, “I’m doing it.” And I remember afterwards feeling very excited. Not because the kiss was good. I feel like it was fine. But I remember being excited, like I had reached a milestone, and being like, “I did it, great job.” And I was mostly concerned with that because I felt like, I don’t know, like I was so out of touch… I think that’s like, I won’t even say that’s every queer kids experience. I think that’s probably every teenager’s experience, of feeling like “I’m being left behind or I don’t know what I’m doing, and I just want to get this one thing right. It feels really important.” You know, especially when it comes to bodies, or sex, or like romance, or intimacy or whatever the hell. So, to me, it was less important even who it was. Like, it literally could have been anybody, I think, and I would’ve been like, “Did it, checked it off the list.” I felt so weird about my own body, and how it was in like relation to other people that like, I don’t know. I just felt like it was never going to happen.
Kayla: Yeah. I definitely relate to that. I mean, technically my first kiss-kiss was with a girl, but it was just like, it was just a kiss. It was not like-
Kristen: Well, technically my first kiss was with my friend Bethany. Because we had made up that secret handshake, where we touched tongues together.
Kayla: That was a church friend, right?
Kristen: Yes. I was in first grade.
Kayla: But for me, my first kind of… I guess first make out, really. It was on top of a jungle gym, with this boy in 10th grade. And I remember thinking at the time as it was happening, “This is just like a movie,” which is so funny, because I was that disconnected from it in the moment. Not in the sense that it was bad, but it was a projection of the thing I wanted it to be. Which almost made it good. Okay, anyway. So you had had kind of gay thoughts before ninth grade.
Kristen: Yeah.
Kayla: When was the first time that you can remember thinking something sexual in a gay way?
Kristen: Oh, that’s really hard, because it’s one of those things where you don’t… I remember it as a feeling of discomfort. And it happened a few different times. Like, some of those times were any time I had to change clothes in a room with other girls, I felt deeply uncomfortable. And it wasn’t because I felt weird about them seeing my body, it was because I was like, “I can’t look at anybody.” I was like, “I’m uncomfortable” and I could not have told anybody why I felt uncomfortable. I think at the time, if I was forced to nail it down, I would say what I think I said for a long time, which is that like, “I’m uncomfortable with bodies. I’m uncomfortable with people.” For a long time, I was like… I think you did this, too. I was like, “I’m not a hugger. I don’t like hugging.”
Kayla: Yep. I did that.
Kristen: And a big part of that is, for myself, I can’t speak for anybody else, was being closeted. I was like, “I have such a disconnect with my body or how my body might react to somebody else’s.” There’s a few different things I can think of: I had immediate access to Barbies, and I loved looking at them. I loved brushing their hair and putting clothes on them. But it was just this kind of act, of like taking the clothes on and off of them, like the shape of their bodies. I would put my mouth on my Barbies. I drew a picture one time as a very young child for my mom, and my grandma. And it was supposed to be a family portrait. This is a deeply embarrassing story-
Kayla: No, I love this. Because I don’t know what you’re about to say.
Kristen: I had to have been like eight, or nine. Maybe… I think eight. I was very young. That’s another thing I thought I might be — I was like, “I’m going to be an artist.” But I was drawing women in our family, and it was definitely before my sister was born. So I was like, probably… Actually, it might have been seven, seven or eight. And I drew my grandma, me, and my mom. And I drew the three of us together in a picture. And I drew all of us with breasts. Voluptuous, gigantic breasts.
Kayla: (laughs) ALL of you had voluptuous breasts?
Kristen: With nipples, and like everything.
Kayla: Oh, with nipples. I was about to say, “Was it Barbie’s influence?” But Barbie doesn’t have nipples. Were you guys naked?
Kristen: I drew clothes. Like I shaded it in over top of it.
Kayla: So you could see the nipples.
Kristen: You could see whole titties.
Kayla: So nobody was wearing a bra.
Kristen: No. And also at the time I definitely would not have had any. I was seven or eight, so I definitely did not have any. But I was like, “I’m drawing the three of us women, in this family.” I gave it to my mom and she was like, “I can’t show this to anyone.” She was so mortified. She was like, “You drew…” I don’t even think she would say. But I remember I cried, and cried. And I was like, trying to erase the titties.
Kayla: Not erase the titties!
Kristen: But I couldn’t. Because I think I’d drawn it in pencil and gone over it with crayon. And so I was trying to draw back over it, but it was ruined. And my mom’s like, “No, it looks fine now I can give it to grandma.” And I’m like, “You can’t.” Because I felt like deeply ashamed about it afterwards. I was really young. For me, I was like, “I’m being an artist, and we have this under our clothes. So I’m going to draw this under our clothes.” But it embarrassed my mom. So then I was like, “Oh, this is embarrassing.”
Kayla: That’d be a formative moment.
Kristen: But also I was just like, obsessed with women’s bodies. To a point where I felt uncomfortable, because my interest didn’t feel normal to me. Because I couldn’t feel anybody else my own age, around like fourth or fifth grade, feeling this. That’s when you really are starting to do sleepovers, and people are starting to talk more. At least where I was with my age, like in the nineties. With talking about like boys, and things like that. And I remember feeling really confused. So probably the stuff that I felt like I probably knew I was queer, was maybe more like, moments of discomfort. Like, I’m having to change out of a swimsuit, and I feel like really weird, and I’m just turning to a wall. So I won’t accidentally see somebody, except I kind of want to look. And I think the discomfort for me, was the knowing that I wanted to see. It was literally not about anybody seeing my own body, but it was like, “I don’t want to ‘accidentally’ see somebody else. Because if they see me seeing them, they’re going to think I’m staring at them.” And they’re going to be like “You’re being weird.” And that felt so scary to me. And that feeling proceeded all the way through probably high school. Because like, if you’re doing performing arts stuff, you’re just like changing around each other all the time.
Kayla: Oh, I know.
Kristen: Just being girls and being at a sleepover or something. Everybody changes their clothes or does weird stuff. And I was always vibrating with tension and anxiety from those things. I know there’s plenty of people who slept in bed with their friends. I had a really hard time doing stuff like that. I just felt deeply uncomfortable all the time. Like my best friend in high school is probably the only person that like, sometimes we slept in a bed together. But like, even then, I’d always be like, “Let’s sleep in the living room.”
Kayla: Oh, that’s funny. I actually did that all the time. I was like, “Let’s do sleeping bags in the living room. Let’s sleep on the couch.”
Kristen: I was like, “I don’t want to sleep in a bed with you,” because I wouldn’t be able to sleep. My body would be so tense, because I’d be trying to hold myself against the wall, or trying not to touch them. I literally think that went on for me until like, I don’t know, for a long time. Like, it was just such a part of me being like, “I don’t want them to think anything. I don’t want this to like be misconstrued. I’m really, really scared that somebody would think that this is something.”
Kayla: While we’re on this kind of topic, of bodies, and like desire, and discomfort and stuff. When did you first seek out porn?
Kristen: I would say that it’s two very specific different things. One was, the age that I am, the way that cable used to work, is that you could go through cable. The way you could find porn was like, there were just channels that you didn’t get all the way. And so they’d be scrambled. And that’s why they say, like, scrambled porn. Like a scramble channel.
Kayla: Yeah. A term that I didn’t know at all. But I’ve heard you say that before.
Kristen: It’s a channel that you don’t have access to, but you can still kind of hear the audio, and it’s kind of black and white and squiggled out on the screen. But you can still see stuff that’s happening. And then you could hear things. Because it would be like sex you could hear, like women moaning, or like saying certain things. I would listen to it so low, and I would sit next to the television, and turn the volume really far down, and sit with my hand on the button, on the TV. So I could slap it off.
Kayla: How old are we talking?
Kristen: Beginning of high school. Because I didn’t masturbate until I was in high school. I mean, I never had space to myself, and I didn’t know what I was doing. But the other thing that comes to mind…The thing I think was the more like, complex thing for me that was that my first kind of porn was going on AOL chat rooms in my junior year of high school. I was going in women for women chat rooms and talking to women in those chat rooms. That was like the wild, wild west. I never said stuff to people, because first of all, I did not know what I was doing. But I literally would purposely go online, and go into a women for women chat room, and wait for somebody to… Because you’d put in your age, sex, location, kind of thing. And then somebody would message you, and they’d start talking to you. But really it was just somebody like, saying a bunch of sexual stuff they wanted to do to you. And I never said anything back usually, but I’d always be like, “Oh, what else?” And then act like I thought it was funny, like a joke, because I felt like that was the only way I could access it. Because I was like, “If I treat this as if it’s serious, then I’m taking it seriously. I don’t want to take it seriously.” But that was probably the other one. I think that was the most that I was engaging with like ‘erotica’ or anything, was that I knew I was going on those chats because I wanted to talk to people. And I know now in retrospect I was definitely just talking to cis men pretending to be women, for the most part. But it was very titillating to me. And I never tried to go in and do any of that stuff in like, women seeking men, or anything. The only computer that had internet was in my brother’s room. So if I was going online, I had to go on dialup to get on AOL. And it took like 15 minutes for the computer to even boot up online. And he couldn’t be in there with me. So I’d just be like, “Leave me alone. I’m going on the internet.” And he just couldn’t be in his room for hours. At any moment, somebody could come up behind you and be looking at whatever you’re doing and you can’t close out of stuff like you used to be.
Kayla: Do you think he knew what you were doing?
Kristen: I don’t think he wanted to know. Bless my brother. I think he probably had an idea, but it was like, “Do your own thing. I don’t care. I don’t want to know about it.” I went into a lot of chat rooms and talked to a lot of women and let them talk to me about sex, but I think that’s something that people of a time period did.
Kayla: I think that’s something that almost transcends age a little bit, because I did that. It looked different, it was not dial up, but I did AOL chat rooms. I experienced that. It wasn’t even explicitly sexual channels of women seeking women, or women seeking men, or anything like that. It was stuff that happened on the WB message boards or … I was in some literal political online community thing and people would send sexual messages in certain places.
Kristen: I think people find a way to add that kind of content to any place that they can on the internet.
Kayla: Okay. We’re in high school now. Something I have always found interesting — and we definitely have talked about, but there are certain details that I don’t know about — is the fact that you had a secret high school girlfriend, which I never had. I had secret college girlfriend sort of, but it was still different. A lot of that was like we literally dated almost online. You had a girl in high school, who went to your high school, who … you guys were secretly dating.
Kristen: Dating is maybe not the right word for it.
Kayla: Yeah, I assume you guys didn’t use that language at all ever.
Kristen: No.
Kayla: No. I totally understand that, but it’s still like you had someone where there were mutual feelings there, and also you guys did hook up. I never experienced that, and I’m always interested in that experience, cause it’s also really hard to be with someone, but not really be with them. How old were you when that started?
Kristen: I was a junior in high school. Maybe the summer before junior year high school. I was … God, that was a really long time ago. I look back and in retrospect, I have a lot of pity for myself, but also for the person I was with, because I know it was very hard for them also. It was the late 90s. We lived in Central Florida. I don’t think anybody who was even in a heterosexual relationship at that point was having a good time having a relationship in high school.
Kayla: Were there any openly gay people at your high school?
Kristen: Yes. There’s two people I can think of offhand. One was a guy who was a grade younger than me. I remember people not being kind to him, and then another person I remember was actually a person, a grade ahead of me, maybe two grades ahead of me. We follow each other on Twitter. Being out then was not like it would be now, or even it would’ve been 10 years ago, or even like it would’ve been when you were in high school. They would not have been like “I’m gay.” It was one of those things where you just knew that about a person, and I didn’t want anyone to know that about me.
There were times where I encountered other people who, in retrospect, like I know Kathy, who I’m still friends with. I feel like she and I knew about each other. She’s out as a lesbian now. And back then, I liked hanging out with Kathy but it also felt weird to me. I limited what it was. Cause it was like, “I’m not like you, I’m not like whatever this is.” I could see the thing in her that was the thing in me and I was like, “I don’t want that to be me.” But Kathy wasn’t out, but Kathy was gay. And I liked spending time with Kathy, but I purposely was like, “I’m not going to spend time with you.” We wore the same kind of clothes.
Kayla: Describe please.
Kristen: Men’s cargo pants from the Old Navy men’s sales section, some kind of beat up old t-shirt, probably some kind of … if it wasn’t a sneaker, it was some men’s-like shoe.
Kayla: So neither of you were hiding it well.
Kristen: No. I had hair under my chin and Kathy had the same haircut. I was like, “I don’t want to be around this.” But I think a lot of it was that it looked a lot like me, too much like me.
Even when I was first coming out, I think I gravitated towards extremely high femme women who I thought were straight acting or straight representing, because I was like, “This makes sense. This should be what I’m looking at or whatever.” Something that I think sometimes gets lost in the whole like, “Oh. We all crushed on straight girls at one point discourse” is I think some of us were maybe aspiring to be that. I would look at that stuff and see the ways I felt I was failing. Don’t get me wrong. I obviously love being with somebody femme. I obviously gravitate towards that, but it was a way in which at the time when I was very young, I was like, “This is what I should want.” Instead of actually having any nuance about the expanse of what queerness was. I was like, “Okay. Well, if I’m going to like this then I need to like this thing.”
I love femme women, but I felt like it was a different kind of thing where I felt like, “If I’m going to like this, which I shouldn’t, then this is what I have to like, because this is how I should be presenting myself.” And then those were the kind of women in high school that I would be around all the time. I would want to spend time with them because spending time with young women in high school is doing a lot of stuff where it’s like, “I’m not good at this, or I want to do this better like putting on a lot of makeup-”
Kayla: And you were never interested in that?
Kristen: I knew how to do that stuff because my family is very gendered that way. I feel like I wanted to like it more than I did. I just wasn’t good at it and I didn’t like how it looked on me. I didn’t look in a mirror and go, “Wow. You look really pretty, and I like how this looks.” I would put it on myself and feel like I was putting on a costume or something. I think I conflated the fact that I wasn’t good at presenting the kind of gender that I was I supposed to be presenting with the idea that I was poor. And I was like, if I had money, I would present gender in a much better way. I would have access to the makeup and tools and clothes that I need to look the way I need to look, and the reason it’s not happening is because I don’t have money. I really truly thought that. I was like, if I had money, my hair would look right, my face would look right, I would know what to wear, I would be right, and the reason I can’t do this is because I’m poor. I know now that’s not what the case is, but I would say with 100% certainty that I definitely was like, “This is the issue. The issue is I don’t have any money.” So because I don’t have any money and I don’t have access to this stuff, I can’t do gender the right way. Even though looking back, there’s plenty of people who were in the same position as me, including my own sister who did not have that struggle. But I think it was easier for me to be like that, because what am I going to say? “I’m bad at it because I’m bad at being a girl?”
The thing for me too is that there’re certain things I definitely did enjoy.I liked wearing heels, and I liked the way certain clothes would look on me, and I’ve always really liked long hair, and that stuff is still very confusing to me. It’s like, do I want it for myself or do I want to look at it? And sometimes it’s both, and sometimes it’s one or the other.
Kayla: The lens of class on how you saw yourself and how to access certain gender things makes me go back to — and I promise I’m also not going to fixate on your high school girlfriend — but it is something that’s so interesting to me. Your high school girlfriend was femme and also rich, right?
Kristen: Yes.
Kayla: That’s interesting to me that that was someone you were so drawn to.
Kristen: She was a person who had all these qualities that looking back, I really aspired to be that kind of person. She was very beautiful in this effortless way. She knew exactly how to put on makeup, her clothes always looked right. She bought everything she had from Goodwill or thrift stores. She didn’t like wearing any new thing. She had beautiful long hair that she would flip around nonchalantly, like be able to throw up in a little bun or do a braid. And it was like everything looked so easy. It was so easy for her to do femininity.
Kayla: And she was a singer.
Kristen: Yeah.
Kayla: To go back to your lyricist aspirations.
Kristen: Yeah, a very talented singer. Also she was a person who was very effervescent, had a ton of friends, was outgoing.
Kayla: That exact thing that you were drawn to even as a child.
Kristen: Just super outgoing and everyone loved her, but also very pretty and easy in her body. I remember being like … she didn’t ever have to try.
Kayla: Which is probably not true.
Kristen: No. But it’s me looking at it, the perception of it. I think that happens all the time.
Kayla: Not to bring Yellowjackets into it, but I think that’s what Shauna thinks of Jackie.
Kristen: Absolutely, because I don’t think any high school girl is actually not trying.
Kayla: Everybody’s trying really hard.
Kristen: So much of what our quote unquote relationship looked like was me being like, “I want to be around you cause I want to be how you are.” But I think that’s how we are with a lot of things when we’re teenagers.
Kayla: Again, I am always interested in people who dated — which not that exact word — but “dated” in high school because it was something I wanted so badly at the time.
Kristen: It was not amazing.
Kayla: No, I know.
Kristen: And I would say if anything, it made it harder for me to come out.
Kayla: It seemed like a formative experience in a bad way, on a lot of levels.
Kristen: It was a situation in which neither of us was really ready and neither of us were in a position where either of our families would have been okay with any part of that and it would’ve been strange.
Kayla: I do romanticize the experience of a secret high school girlfriend, because I feel it was something that I wish I had, but I also … anyone that I know has said, “No. It’s bad. It’s a bad time.”
Kristen: I think the secret part is the part that is not great because it is a way in which it’s like, I was never getting what I really wanted, but honestly, I didn’t know what I really wanted. It wasn’t like I was ever like, “I want you to be my public girlfriend.” I never would’ve said something like that. I think that’s why I like the language around calling her my secret girlfriend. I say that because I don’t really have the language to say whatever else that was. It was like … we were extremely close friends that spent a lot of time together and then occasionally stuff would happen between us, but that was not something we would ever talk about afterwards.
Kayla: I’m interested in these weird young queer experiences where there doesn’t really seem to be a lot of language for it. Did you ever tell anyone at the time?
Kristen: No.
Kayla: It was truly only the two of you knew.
Kristen: Yeah. I’m positive. And she was the one who ended stuff.
Kayla: That’s the other thing. You guys had a breakup, but again, that’s not the language.
Kristen: It was abrupt enough where it derailed my college plans. Our plan was to go room together in college. And I was like, “This isn’t happening anymore.” I chose a completely different college. Cause I was like, “I can’t be at the same place as you.”
Kayla: What did she say? What does that look like? A breakup that’s not really a breakup?
Kristen: She just … I don’t know. I think it was like, she wouldn’t spend time with me anymore. She stopped doing anything with me. It was very abrupt, and it was almost like there wasn’t a conversation about it, but it was very much like, “I don’t want to be around you anymore.” It was almost more of a friend breakup. I didn’t get access to her anymore. And I was like, this means every part of this is over, and I didn’t have any language for that. How do you have a conversation with anybody about that? I think friend breakups are really hard anyway, regardless of age. They’re very intimate.
Kayla: There’s not a conversation that’s had, but you’re like, something has shifted.
Kristen: I think it happened around a musical that was going on, which sounds gay.
Kayla: I think I knew that detail
Kristen: And then I had to go on and perform and I was like, “I can’t believe I have to go out here and do this stupid musical right now.”
After it was over, I was in a lot of mourning, but then I was like, I don’t really understand even what I’m in mourning for. It wasn’t like we ever had a conversation about wanting to be together.
Kayla: No, ultimately, I’m glad I didn’t have something like that, even though I do romanticize it in my head.
Kristen: I think you had your own versions of those things, honestly.
Kayla: You’re probably right.
And folks, just like that, I was finally convinced that secret high school girlfriends are indeed BAD and not FUN. So I finally shifted the interview to go beyond high school and delved into Kristen’s relationship with me, including how we met and what we’ve learned about ourselves during our time together. But you’ll have to stay tuned for part two, which will drop on A+ sometime in the future. For now, if you enjoyed part one, consider asking someone you know to join A+ or giving a gift to our fundraiser!
this was so good and interesting and i related to so much of what kristen saidddd
I love this! So honest and vulnerable 💜
This post made me become an A+ member. I too was a member of the secret-high-school-girlfriend-in-the-90s-club and it was the sexiest, most traumatic experience I never want to have again.
Welcome!!! (To A+, not the secret girlfriends club of which you were already a member!)
Ok this was amazing and I went through an entire spectrum of feelings while reading it!
well well well if it isn’t me deeply relating to kristen arnett and crying about it on a day ending in -y !!!!
Whoa, the whole bit about awkwardness of sleepovers even as a young child is reframing my memory of a sleepover in first or second grade that went exactly like that. We “slept” in my friend’s bed, which meant my friend slept as she normally did and I spent the entire night awake making sure I didn’t touch her. It was a twin bed so there was no extra room. I wound up across the foot of it, still nearly falling off because Must Not Touch. I’d never labeled that a queer memory before and I still don’t know whether I should. I just knew I Did Not Belong in that space.
Everything about this, plus everything about the comments. All the yes. Whoa.
But I think it was easier for me to be like that, because what am I going to say? “I’m bad at it because I’m bad at being a girl?” omg I felt that.