Restarting this blog has been a balm to my soul, especially these days when, you know…<gestures wildly at everything>. When the chips are really, truly down in my life, there are only three things for it: Aaron Neville singing Ave Maria on repeat, cookies dunked in liquor (e.g., Oreos and whiskey – don’t knock it ’til you’ve tried it), and getting words out of my brain and onto a page.

It’s also given me the opportunity to reconnect with a few longtime readers. If you’re new here, first, welcome. Second, I’m…not new to blogging. I started in 2003-ish on LiveJournal; my handle was clothes_slut, and I’m only mildly embarrassed by that now. In 2008, I used several of my LiveJournal entries as writing samples, and I got my first freelance writing job. By then, my LiveJournal had a decent readership, and I decided to make the leap to a “real” website. Thus, BachelorGirl.net stumbled into the world on stiletto heels in 2009. Throughout my 22 (!) years of writing, I’ve been incredibly blessed and lucky to have a few dozen or so ride-or-die readers who will gamely and loyally read whatever I write. It would be deeply insufficient to say I treasure them; those down-ass mofos have saved me from myself countless times.

OG homies from the clothes_slut Peanut Gallery, y’all are real ones.

When I came out as a lesbian at 45, I’d bet about 50 percent of them reacted with their jaws unhinging and dropping to the floor, and the other 50 were like, called it. Coming out in middle age is wild. Examining and deconstructing a lifetime of compulsory heteronormativity (say that three times fast, Trumpettes), internalized misogyny, and patriarchy in your mid-forties is…hilarious. And heartbreaking. And infuriating. And validating. I mean, realizing how many men I dated who I really just wanted to be friends with – not to put too fine a point on it – blew my fucking mind.

Like a lot of lesbians, I literally thought every straight man and woman on Earth were attracted to women. Of course everyone wants to sleep with women! They’re beautiful and sexy and soft and they smell good. A lesbian is a woman who wants to marry another woman, I thought. And I was not about to do that, because I was terrified – rightly, as it happens – that my family and many of my friends would have nothing more to do with me.

In case you’re wondering, and I certainly would be, the most blasé reactions were from my ex-husband and children. I have no idea how he felt, but, to me, he expressed complete indifference. The kids never cared and still don’t.

Does that mean it had no effect on my divorce? Actually, I don’t think it did. My custody battle, on the other hand, was another matter. Without getting into the nitty-gritty details, we chose to undergo a custody evaluation. Ours was not court-ordered, although they often are. This is not necessarily part of every custody case, but it involves, at minimum, both parents and all children (in our case, also our respective partners) meeting with a licensed mental health professional or clinical social worker (ours was a licensed therapist) in order to, essentially, determine what custody situation would be in the best interest of the children.

Ours was problematic – on both sides – in a number of ways, not the least of which was the therapist turned out to be a religious, Conservative bigot (Charlotte and I discovered she donated to MAGA politicians and religious organizations). Although we felt our appointment with her went smoothly – we tried to be as prepared as possible and brought a tabbed binder of evidence with us – she excoriated Charlotte and me for such grave and definitely-custody-related transgressions as being too serious, too politically engaged, too prepared, and too focused on life going forward (rather than…my ex-husband’s then-girlfriend. Yes, I’m serious). It was as shocking as it was scathing, in addition to being an utter waste of time and money. Like many older people in Louisiana, our custody evaluator happened to be vulnerable to grifters and con artists and terrified of gay and transgender people.

So no, it hasn’t been the easiest life transition to navigate, but coming out was easily in the top two best things I’ve ever done for myself. (The first was have an abortion in my early 20s.)

[Let me just interject here real quick and say if you feel some type of way about that, please see yourself out before I put you in a coma. One in four women has had an abortion; you know several women who’ve had abortions, they just don’t trust you enough to tell you. Abortion is healthcare, healthcare is a human right, Black Lives Matter, Stonewall was a riot, ACAB, all religions are fairytales, science never lies, gender is a spectrum, and you’re not going to change a goddamn thing, least of all my mind, by pitching a Southern Baptist hissy-fit in my comments. Not only will no one except me see your brilliant zingers – I must approve comments before they’re published, because this ain’t my first rodeo – I will block you expeditiously. And now back to our regularly-scheduled programming.]

Every hurdle has been more than worth it to live authentically. And the desire to live authentically is what brought me back to New Orleans – it sure wasn’t the real estate prices – what drives me to pursue a publishing career even though I’m shit-scared, and, truthfully, gave me the courage to keep going every day after my ex-husband left me. I’m not sure anyone truly believes this story, but I swear it’s true – the night my ex-husband told me he wanted a divorce, as he sat there enumerating all the reasons I was a substandard wife and mother, I stopped listening because I thought

I’m never going to be with another man as long as I live.

There are a lot of different ways you can interpret that, and I meant all of them.

One of the most interesting aspects of coming out when and how I did has been a few messages in the last year from women asking how, exactly, one might determine if one is or is not a lesbian.

Well, ma’am, DMing a lesbian to ask if you’re a lesbian isn’t a sure-fire indication you’re gay, but, as signs go, it’s a pretty good one.

Seriously, though, we ALL know a lot more sapphics than we think we do. Y’all, I went through life for more than 40 years really, truly, honestly believing that every woman would, of course, prefer to have sex with women, but that’s just not an option for all of us.

Let us all just sit with THAT one a moment.

What I’m saying is it’s not always obvious. I had sex with men and sometimes enjoyed it, but that didn’t make me straight. Let me put it in food terms: You go through life thinking all Italian cuisine consists of Domino’s Pizza. Some of their pizza combinations are delicious, and some are disgusting, but, overall, it’s a pretty decent place to grab dinner. Then you travel to Italy and have authentic, expertly-made lasagna with pasta from scratch, locally-made cheeses, and sun-dried tomato sauce. Experiencing real Italian food doesn’t somehow suddenly make Domino’s Pizza disgusting, it just means you finally understand what people are talking about when they go on and on about how phenomenal Italian food is.

You deserve the genuine article. Don’t settle for Domino’s.