before bumble BY REBECCA SLAMAN

“Im gay lol”

It started with a drunk blog post I happened to scroll past one late Friday evening in August. Laying in bed, my eyes squinted at my friend’s name as the author of this post while my stomach became a hive of bees.

I thought back to all the times she snorted loudly at my jokes, all the moments of lingering eye contact, all the drunken cast parties where I wanted to kiss her. The knowing without explicitly knowing.

But there was no guidebook, no one to talk to, and certainly no role models. Danny Zuko and Sandy could provide no lessons for me to follow, nor could any summer romance that I knew of. The books I read with relationships like the one I wanted ended tragically.

With the phone shining bright on my sleepy face, I liked her post in an act of moral support, the first of my stumbling attempts to get close to her. Curiosity yearned for explanation as my mind turned back toward my own experience, the one thing I did know about. Did she have any elementary school teachers who now, looking back, she had admired a little too much? How did she figure it out? With whom? My deepest, most private feelings lept and fell when I thought this way. I could barely recognize them. To cope, I cloaked personal interest in more innocent mental questioning.

The next day I found myself next to her on the swings near our old elementary school. I tried to casually ask about her life. “Any personal revelations lately?” She playfully chastised me for my interest and told me nothing more. I knew I had at least gotten her to acknowledge our commonality.

“Would you stop?” she chided. Not knowing the rules of flirtation, I worried I had crossed a line. I stared at my feet, trying to suppress the yapping dog struggling against its leash inside of me. Brown wood chips underneath me became streaks under my stare. I concentrated hard on the woody smell. My desire to know her intimately battled the optics of the whole situation. Making a move on my very recently un-closeted friend would not help the predatory lesbian trope. But on the swings, back and forth the conversation went from me to her, casual as can be, innocent as the playground. All the while I pushed thoughts of self interest to the back of my mind, only for them to come bubbling back up when she smiled. She had been making wine in her attic.

She was a good student and daughter, and the mere threat of being in trouble prevented her from teenage rebellion. But her need for controlled illegal fun led us to drinking fermented shitty grape juice that afternoon. The sour smell was much more potent than the alcoholic content, but it didn’t really matter. The intoxication of that teenage summer was enough to drive us to distraction. The conversation had carried us from the swing set across town to her small room, surrounded by childhood drawings and awards.

I lay down on the soft bed among the clutter. It was not the most physically comfortable; my thighs were a little sticky from the heat. We were just there, chatting as we had been all afternoon. But whatever we were talking about was lightyears away from the subtext. An electric current buzzed in my stomach, aggravated by her presence. In the moment, I could not tell if she felt it too. She had to, right? Could I be making this up?

To an outside observer, it might have looked like two adolescent friends on the cusp of adulthood, pondering their futures. But to me, laying like a disjointed V on the bed, our legs hanging over the edge, it felt like we were adults in old movies where feet had to be touching the floor in bed to preserve decency and avoid suggestion.

Our foreheads were less than six inches away from each other. Occasionally, one of us would say something, and turn and look into each others’ eyes. The electricity of the eye contact was unbearable. I had to turn back to the ceiling, seized by the not knowing. I eventually left, my head buzzing, as it did for the next three days.

What followed was the warm and playful summer romance of my youth, one I look back on fondly. The shameless joy was tinged with bitter knowledge that it would inevitably end. Our mutual ignorance transformed into exploration. I had assumed it was mere naivety that led me down this path. A desire for closeness, the objective to see myself in her. Back in her house on that summer day, our faces eventually closed the gap, and I fell.