Here’s how I got my first real job.
I saw a woman speak at an event. She impressed me. I sent her a letter telling her I thought she was impressive, that I wanted to work for her, and enclosed my resume.
Some time passed, and she didn’t respond. I sent her a second letter. It said, basically, I suspect you might have missed my first letter, a copy of which I enclose along with my resume, but I saw you and was impressed by you and would like to come work for you.
Like the first, that letter generated no response.
My third letter was intemperate. I don’t know that I would (I know that I wouldn’t) send it in my current, semi-evolved, state, but at the time, just twenty or so years old, I wrote it. It said:
I’m insulted. I’ve written you twice, and you haven’t bothered to respond. I told you I was impressed by you. I told you I wanted to work for you. The least you could have said was “Thank you.” I still think you’re making a mistake, that I would be a good employee, but at a minimum, you owe me a response.
The person – my future boss! – to whom I wrote this absurd letter was impressed. She picked up the phone and called me, brought me in for an interview, and hired me on the spot.
For the next year, I worked with her and three other women in a small office. I was a good employee, did my work faithfully and well, and nine months in, I realized that I really needed to come out as straight.
The three women with whom I was working had concluded that I was a good employee. I did my work faithfully and well. These three women – two lesbians and a seemingly asexual woman – had concluded, for a variety of reasons, and without any protest or strong evidence to the contrary (other than my girlfriend, who called the office three times a day) that I was gay.
In case you haven’t figured it out by now, I’m not.
Fast forward some thirty-five years. No one mistakes me for being gay. People are surprised when I tell them I think I often read as gay. I’m still not used to the fact that I read conclusively, undeniably, as straight.
I think of myself as somewhat effeminate. I think of myself as reading as, at a minimum, of ambiguous sexuality. Clearly, I’m wrong, but this is how I think of myself—in the same way that I imagine I have a long mane of curly dark hair, something I haven’t had for thirty years.
It always surprises me when people react to me as decisively masculine. Not because I don’t feel decisively masculine. I guess I do. Or maybe I just confessed that I don’t.
My masculinity is a zone of conflict for me. A zone of ambivalence. A zone of uncertainty.
In many ways, I am masculine. I’m strong. I’m confident. Often a little too certain of my opinions. I speak in groups. I don’t refrain.
But as I said, I’m always just a little surprised when my masculinity dominates people’s experience of me. And at this late date, I guess I have to admit—it does.