One of the benefits of dating your best friend is that you don’t have to guess about all the things they like in a relationship because they’ve already told you everything. My girlfriend and I spent hours upon hours in high school – back when we weren’t “my girlfriend and I” yet – shit-talking all the men in our lives and fantasizing about whoever we wished we had instead. We learned that I was a sucker for good smiles and that Leyah’s ideal partner would go to protests with her. So it’s no surprise to either of us that I get tears in my eyes when I see the corners of her mouth turn up, or that we marched through the streets of Los Angeles this summer hand in hand. Though we have lived up to and exceeded each other’s wildest dreams in those times and many others, there are a lot of ways in which our relationship has not been predictable or easy. Although we know each other like the backs of our hands, the truth is that we aren’t in those relationships we used to envision; ours is interracial and gay, and it has to make room for itself in the world.
I remember a conversation I had once with Leyah about PDA – she told me I had to still be friends with her even when she and her future partner reached annoying levels of affection in public. With this in mind, it was hard at first when she and I barely walked close enough to each other to hold hands sometimes. Our early-quarantine walks around my neighborhood often left me feeling a little sad after Leyah drove away. If we had spent any portion of the walk touching, it was filled with backward glances and worry. Anytime another person appeared around us, we would separate. On some level, I felt I understood the fear. It’s always nerve-wracking to stick out, I thought, and we did in my extremely old and white neighborhood. But still, maybe selfishly, I wanted us to be strong enough to defy their judgment. I couldn’t help but wonder if it was more than just discomfort. With the help of my anxiety, I soon became convinced that it was all about me. That I was simply too embarrassing to be seen with. I should have known this wasn’t the case in the first place – I mean, we’d been best friends for three years, so if she was ashamed to be seen with me, that would’ve presented a problem by now. But it took me the seven months we were dating to really realize how much bigger than me, and how completely impersonal, the situation was.
My girlfriend has plenty of white relatives in her family, almost everyone we know is liberal (supports the gays), and we live in Los Angeles, which is the US city with the second-highest queer population and has voted blue in every election since 1988. In summary, the fear that accompanies a public relationship isn’t one of physical safety, but rather emotional. We aren’t always, and shouldn’t have to be, prepared for too-tight hugs of well-meaning family members, labels and assumptions placed upon us, discourteous stares, at best, in an unfamiliar place, or harassment driving through our own streets. None of those things are impossible to live through, nor do they bring us physical harm, and we do not forget to reflect on the privileges we are lucky enough to have. But this was not the dream. No matter which way you spin it, no matter how hard we try to overcome these fears and rise above it all and live our lives proudly and boldly, there will always be people who hate us for existing. And that sucks. This world is a hard one to see dreams come true in.
Though we’re all working hard on it now more than ever before, my family has long been heavily disengaged from race and politics. We’re a typical white suburban Los Angeleno portrait, as were my grandparents on both sides. Everyone leans left, though, and I have a gay uncle, so don’t worry, we’re not a part of the problem! In this respect, and many others, the contrast between my family and Leyah’s is made clear: my grandma likes to watch Black-ish, the TV show Leyah’s dad created, while she falls asleep. Here’s another: I’m an only child, while Leyah has five siblings, and I sometimes fear what will happen when my parents die and I’m alone, and Leyah lays awake at night wondering if someone will mistake her little brothers for an armed suspect today. I could walk down my block in a bikini or in a unicorn onesie and I think my sweet old neighbors would just laugh and shake their heads, but I’m not sure what they would do if my girlfriend walked in front of their house in a hoodie after 6 pm.
I stopped going to church before we started dating, so I never had the chance to bring her along and hold her hand in front of everyone like I always said I would. I thought it would be terrifying, but freeing, to be able to show all of these people who thought they knew me that I didn’t fit into their narrative anymore. I wanted them to be forced to confront their own homophobia, to see that the darling of the church, the best altar-girl, was dating a woman. What they would think of that woman was something I hadn’t considered. I did not imagine what Leyah would feel like walking through a room filled with ancient Irish Catholics, what they might dare to say to her, or what they’d think only in the comfort of their own brains. And really, I can’t possibly imagine exactly what she would feel. Empathy can go a long way, but there are some things I don’t and will never understand. Even though I know that black queer women and white queer women are treated are portrayed incredibly differently in society, I will never know what it feels like to see it happening from her perspective. It’s not just in ideology that this becomes an issue, but in practice. I have to know, for example, that if I were to kiss my partner in the middle of Mount Vernon, the stakes would be much higher and much more dangerous for her than for me. I have to know where the people I care about stand on issues of intersectionality, of protecting black women, or I can’t have them in my life. And while I’ve just now, at the age of 18, started to be adequately aware of these things, I also keep in mind that Leyah has been conscious of them her whole life. Where I have to step outside of myself to see the world for what it is, my girlfriend cannot escape it, and I can’t protect her from that.
Sometimes we wish for invisibility. We wish to walk down the streets like men, to look like we belong, to be utterly unnoticed. I wish that we could walk arm in arm and that I could fix this fucked up world and the person I love most in it. For now, we have our drives through Los Angeles, down PCH, through the canyons and hills in the middle of the night, in a space no one can enter. For now, all I can do is be a hidden home, and work towards a life where we can all walk outside in the darkness.