My mom is absolutely convinced that homosexuality is genetic. The evidence being that I have a gay great-uncle (my grandfather’s brother) on my dad’s side and a lesbian cousin on her side so distant we’ve never met. Whenever she brings this up, I roll my eyes and remind her that every family has a gay cousin. I myself fill the role of gay cousin to generations of Crowleys and Schmaltzes, none of whom have exhibited the queer phenotype.

Uncle John was a police officer in Boston, Irish, red-faced, fat. When I think of him I picture an iconic Boston cop in an old cartoon. In an old photo album, he escorts visiting dignitaries and Shirley Temple. He left my father a small inheritance that payed for me to go to all-girls private school, which, while it certainly didn’t turn me gay, certainly helped my queer self blossom earlier and more happily than I might have otherwise. So there was a very fortunate queer legacy at work, but I’m not sure genetics were involved.

When I came out, my mom told me about the aforementioned lesbian cousin, a truck driver who never comes to family functions. “She’s kind of manly and she swears a lot and no one likes her.” Um, ok.

I guess my mom didn’t realize that my 13 year old self was hungry for any scrap of information about lesbians. What they looked like, what they did, how they found each other. There were dozens of semi-closeted lesbians and bisexuals at my high school, but none of them were the role model I was looking for. I wondered if I would eventually want to cut my hair and wear carpenter pants instead of hippy skirts. Would I develop biceps and strong, broad hands instead of my delicate, slender ones? Would the love of another woman give me a sexy, gravelly voice and a solid stance? Maybe there was some kind of magic that happened once you actually kissed a girl that made you butch. Maybe I would become more like my mythical cousin, the truck driver.

There was such an aura of mystery around queers, especially ones my own age, when I was a little baby thirteen year old just coming out. Of course I didn’t believe there was some sort of magical transformation involved, but I wondered why I felt so different from the people I also felt closest too. It took a long time for me to understand gender enough that it started to make some sense.

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