Ingrained in the Membrane

Everybody’s good at something.

Some people can read music. (What are you, some kind of fucking genius?  You’re scaring me.  You can read dots. )

Some people can talk to you and really listen.  Really listen, as if you’re the most interesting and important person in the room.

Some people know, intuitively, which flavors will mingle nicely together in a stir-fry.

Some people can make whimsical handbags out of license plates and sell them in upscale, “quirky” women’s boutiques for more than $70. 

Everybody’s got a talent!

Me too.

I can wake up instantly.
Like, instantly.

As in, "I was in deep REM sleep at 3 a.m. and having a sex dream about Tina Fey and Queen Latifah in prison but now there’s a fire alarm in my hotel and I am suddenly outside, fully dressed, with all my stuff, including my toothbrush, nightstand book, and fucking travel candle and NO idea how it happened.”

In less than 2 minutes.

It’s like being in the military.

On days off, I can easily sleep ‘till one or two o’clock and still bitch about having to meet someone for a late brunch.

But if I set an alarm…

I’m out of bed like a gunshot. I sit straight up, gasp, and explode out of bed.  It’s terrifying. You should have seen this shit the other weekend, when I was in Hawaii during the tsunami warning.  The hotel PA system would blast sirens and tell everyone to “remain calm,” while CNN shrieked about a “mammoth wave capable of mass destruction.”  My hotel was right on the beach. 

This extraordinary talent probably stems, like all things worthy, from being a Mormon.

All Mormon children, aged 14-18, attend an early morning, before-school seminary class.  
Monday thru Friday.
For all four years of high school.

This is to indoctrinate you using sleep deprivation, further lowering your resistance to Mormon culture, scripture, and lessons as you get closer to college-going/decision-making age.
I am not bitter.

My seminary class began promptly at 6 a.m.

What’s that?
Doesn’t sound so early, eh?

What if you factor in being a self-conscious teenage girl with acne, braces, and Very Complicated Bangs?

What if you only have two Abercrombie sweaters and both of them are in the wash? 

What then, huh?

You’re looking at stress-hives and a 4:15 a.m. wake-up call.
For four solid years.

Eventually you’re wide-awake at 3:57 in the morning on a Wednesday, eyes on the clock, just daring that fucker to ring.

Anyway!

Can you train yourself to be gay?

Don't send me hate mail - I'm just throwing the question out there.

I was thinking about a woman who wrote to me here at effingdykes@gmail.com to tell me her Coming Out story.

Her letter was extremely short.  She said she was a lesbian because her best friend would make her look at nudie magazines whenever her parents weren’t home, which was a lot, apparently.
She says it “trained” her to be gay.

Cool.

Not the best friend’s behavior, obviously, but the idea that you could train yourself to be gay, just through repetitive exposure to naked ladies.

I must try this repetitive-exposure thing and see if I can train myself to enjoy BDSM. Mostly I just find myself tied up, giggling like a 13-year-old girl reading Tiger Beat.   Omigod, are you going to flog me?

Not only do I find my letter-writer's logic shaky at best, but I also think that kind of thinking is dangerous to queers. 

First of all, our society sells us everything using mostly-naked female bodies.  Using our friend's argument - wouldn't all women be lesbians by now?  We've been repeatedly exposed to naked women all our lives. 

I mean, have you looked in a Cosmo magazine lately?

And second of all: 

Hasn’t the Christian right been working this angle for years? The whole “Homosexuality-is-natural-but-you-can-train-yourself-not-to-act-on-your-impulses-and-lead-a-pure-life-with-Jesus'-help” thing?

You know, Train Yourself To Be Straight!

Obviously this doesn't work.  Look at that faggot Ted Haggard.

I can prove it doesn't work. 

Just like that. 

BOoM!  Problem solved.

...'Cause I seem to have been exposed, repetitively, to heterosexuals all my life.

I guess some lessons just don’t take.

My parting questions are these: 

*What (if any) outside factors influenced our gayness?
 

*How much of our lives is habit?

*How much did we take away from the training of our childhood? Is there something so ingrained that it's unchangeable? 

                                       and finally,

 

*Why, every now and again, do I still wake up at 4:15 a.m., heart pounding, even though Seminary was a decade ago?