Other People Explain My Sexuality to Me

My ex-girlfriend says
I’m not really gay.
I’m just into her.
Because she acts like a dude.

My ex-boyfriend says
I’m not really straight.
I’m just into him.
Because he fucks as good as a woman.

The father of my children says
I’ve always been gay.
That’s why we’re divorcing.
Not because he treats me like shit.

A guy I was sleeping with for a while says
he’s sorry he was so selfish.
I must not have liked being used like that.
Since I’m really gay.

My parents meet my girlfriend
who is beautiful and smart and makes me happy.
They say nothing.

An old friend says
I’m really into men
because I slept with
so many of them
after my first girlfriend
broke up with me
and I was sure
I would never get
another girl.
It seemed too miraculous,
too much to hope for:
two women in love.

My body says
yes
no
I want
I don’t want.

My life says
I’m nobody.
And that’s as queer as it gets.

*

Hannah Tennant-Moore is a queer novelist, essayist, critic, and emerging poet. Her novel Wreck and Order (Hogarth/Random House, 2016) was longlisted for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize and the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. She is a contributor to the New York Times Book Review; her writing also appears in The Sun, Tin House, The New Republic, Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, the Sho Poetry Journal, and Josephine Quarterly. She is at work on a poetry collection called The Virginity I Should’ve Lost, which deals with queer desire and the prison of nuclear family life.