Arrested desire: A queer love story to-be

Editor’s note: In 2014, writer and filmmaker Paromita Vohra started the much loved online project Agents of Ishq, a space for “honest conversations about sex, love and desire for Indians, free from binaries”. These stories are now part of Love, Sex and India, an anthology collection of essays and poems. In this excerpt from an essay titled ‘More Than an Identity’, writer Debasmita Das offers a poignant and important account of her struggle with queerness, not as an identity but as a label that erases the desire that underpins it. This excerpt from Love, Sex and India: The Agents of Ishq Anthology has been published with permission from Westland Books.

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It is little-known among those in my circle that I serially crushed on boys (one per year) up to eighth grade. Maybe it’s because after the last boy, I realised I was queer. And when you’re queer, your story always begins from the moment you knew you were gay. From the moment you identified yourself as something different. As someone whose ability to desire and love required a label to be explained to everyone else. What was my sexuality before I knew? I don’t know — and it seems no one is really curious. I knew I was queer at different points in my life with different degrees of clarity. In eighth grade, when my heart did a somersault instead of the usual dhadko-fying when my Woman-Crush-Wednesday friend I was obsessed with sent me a text saying, ‘I wish you were here,’ I was aware I was at 10 per cent KIWG (Knew I Was Gay). When I Googled ‘bisexual’ and thought, ‘Whoa, I can love love my friend?’ I was at 20 per cent (but in denial) KIWG. When in twelfth grade, a girl told me she was a lesbian and I, ahem, promptly fell for her—I peaked at a 90 per cent shit-ye-toh-real-ho-gaya KIWG.

Thing is, I knew about LGBT rights and considered myself an ally very early. Before I even knew I was queer, I knew the term, the movement for their rights, the language of identity politics. I was already a feminist, and when people called my best friend ‘corrupt’ (a word used generously in middle school) for having too many friends who were boys, I could call it ‘slut-shaming’. It was that time in my life when these words for experiences felt like they were liberating me. So when I finally knew I was gay, was I happy to have an identity that held some socio-political significance? A little, I guess. It did make me feel a bit like a krantikari. But soon I just got really, really confused.

Was I bisexual? But I hadn’t liked guys for years by then. Was I *gasp* a homoromantic heterosexual? I seemed to fall in love with women more than lust after them. Lesbian? But what about that dirty history of light-eyed boys I had crushes on? Who’d believe me if I said I was lesbian? This yo-yoing between labels stopped only when I realised I could call myself queer and leave it at that. And yet, the search for that perfect word never really stopped.

Many labels have knocked at my door ever since. Gender fluid. Asexual. Demisexual. Anorgasmic. Sensual-sexual (my invention). ‘Lesbian’ pays a monthly visit, I swear. And in moments of sheer terror, ‘Actually Straight (You’re Just Faking It)’ comes to say hi. For a year or so before I entered college, every second thought was about this, occupying my mental space much more than I’d expected. I thought I was obsessed. In that time somewhere in that relentless negotiation of determining who I was, I left behind my ability to fall in love or desire without the baggage of my queer identity. I pretend that the era of liking boys is irrelevant but perhaps it was the only time my sexuality was really just mine. Not a part of a larger discourse. Not different. Not relevant to anything or anyone but myself.

When I went to college, I was starting to know who I was. Although if I have to phrase it more honestly, I was starting to get better at explaining what I identified as. I started coming out to people and found solace in making queer art that further cemented me in people’s eyes as That Queer Person. My work really was my refuge. While I was falling in love with close friends who were straight, roommates, beautiful seniors (basically everyone, the emotional ho that I was), I’d try to find answers through my work. When I was confused about why I sucked at understanding romance or approaching it, I analysed my queerness to death, and I made an animation that explained how heterosexuals had unlimited media to guide them in their love life, but us queers had nothing to teach us. When I was heartbroken and no politics could explain it, I would draw, and dump it on my Instagram. I’m still mentioned in some articles as a queer Insta artist (I call myself gay Rupi Kaur in private).

My personal would always be political. So I made a portfolio out of it. I was building a reputation as That Queer Person, as That Queer Artist. Among my friends, I was That Relentlessly Gay Friend. In truth, just as a person, I had no clue how to navigate my love and sex life. I had placed all my value in making my identity useful—in changing the world, in articulating a politics, and I always prioritised it over (or perhaps even interchanged it with) my actual personal life. I was out and proud, but inside I found myself unexpectedly stumbling upon shame more and more. That shame, though, was not about being queer.

The better half of every ‘it gets better’ narrative starts with coming out. I had already done that. I already knew that liking, loving, desiring women was okay. But my personal life still felt ... deeply sad. Whenever I fell for someone, the impossibility of it all would fall like a great weight on me. I was afraid of falling in love, because every time the person was either straight or not interested in me. I taught myself to confess my feelings but only did it when I was already in too deep. I didn’t know how to flirt or test the waters with someone because I was at a stage where just the prospect of befriending a queer person itself would freak me out, forget expressing romantic or sexual interest in them. In college, we were surrounded by romancing and sex and hormones flying around. But I felt completely in the dark about how sexual interactions happened, let alone know how to engage in them myself.

I think I was never able to spot a queer person and just befriend them because somewhere I had convinced myself that if I was in a supportive environment, who was I to ask for more? I felt silly for wanting a community, wanting to seek out more queer people, for being single and utterly inexperienced in my personal life in spite of being in a liberal art school where, according to other Bangaloreans, ‘every second person is bisexual’. If there was a word for cruising for queer women, I would have sucked at it. Whenever I went to queer events, the utter confidence with which people oozed sexuality or openly flirted with each other only served to reinforce my insecurities because I just didn’t know how to get there. I was ashamed of struggling with my sexuality long after having done the entire ‘I’m out and proud’ thing. I guess what I didn’t realise was that more than anything else, I was struggling with being sexual, not homosexual. This may not be different from anyone else, but for a queer person, when that struggle is reduced to ‘coming out’ or ‘being accepted’, and personal goalposts are all about resisting prejudice, it leaves out a big part of ‘love learning’—of learning to love, to desire, and having a love and sex life.

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Debasmita is a queer Mumbai-based researcher, designer and illustrator who has worked in the sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) field for over five years. Currently pursuing an MA in women’s studies from TISS, she is interested in queer history, feminist research and communication for social change through storytelling, digital media and art. She wrote this essay while working at Agents of Ishq

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This excerpt from Love, Sex and India: The Agents of Ishq Anthology has been published with permission from Westland Books.