As I get to know more people in the community and we share coming out stories there is a degree of shame that comes up for me as a late bloomer. I have been called “a newbie” by some Queer friends which is baffling to me. Does that infer that this is some “choice” I have made later in life? My Queer story is complicated and far reaching. When I was a teen and I told my mother I thought I “like” liked a girl, I was not long after picked up from school by an older friend I looked up to and brought to a meeting where my mother was waiting with her prayer circle to cast demons of homosexuality from me. That same mother trained me to believe that my value as a woman was calibrated by my willingness and ability to be desired by powerful men. I sought men in relationships to feel safe and complete. I stayed faithful in a decades long hetero marriage because I am loyal and I adored my husband and still do. When I began to allow myself the freedom to see beyond that union and developed feelings for and relationships with women, it felt like I was truly loving for the first time. And at this time, masculinity holds very little desire for me. In keeping with the theme of being a late dyke, I am a day late with my #lesbiandayofvisibility post. I suppose because there is a part of me that feels like an interloper. A pansexual identified divorcée plunging headlong into the chapter marked “femme for femme”. But I will say this. If being Queer is about solidarity and community, stretching back beyond 25 years to canvassing the streets for AIDS charities, picking up the slack for friends dying alone when their families abandoned them, extending my family circle to my gay fans above all others and being Queer not being about who you fuck, then I have been and, and always will be, Queer as fuck.