My First

“Ms. Santiago, can you tell us who your first love was and why? As someone who is a New York Times best seller and a queer women, the people want to know.” The news reporter asked waiting to hear as she was literally on the edge of her seat ready to fall on the carpet if she didn’t answer quickly enough.

Regina had been on a book tour for her latest novel, Caramelized Honey for the last two weeks and NYC was her last stop. She reminisced on the car ride over what it felt like to be here in her early 20s, in love and in such an impressionable time of her life.

For someone who wrote queer romance novels for a living, she never wrote about her own stories. She used romance to curate and create sappy queer moments between lovable and goofy characters that didn’t resemble an ounce of trauma.

She had always dodged this question because in reality her experiences were personal and affected her deeply. She took a deep breath and then let the story leave her lips like the words had been trapped behind a cage waiting for the right moment to escape.

_

I was 20, I had just completed my sophomore year and landed my first internship of my college career in upstate New York. On my first day, I walked through the doors to the non-profit and the girl that changed everything for me stood in her fishnet tights underneath her denim shorts, Che Guervera t-shirt, and MAC ruby woo red lipstick. I wanted to know who she was and I wanted to know immediately.

I grew up in a conservative area with Mexican parents who also had conservative ideas. The schools I went to didn’t allow for safe spaces for queer kids and I learned that I had to get myself through high school because college was my ticket out. When you’re living your life that you can’t choose, you desperately want to leave to start another one. You leave to let go of the suffocation, of the surveillance, of the person you’re pretending to be. Leaving allows you to create a new life and leave your old one behind. And leaving did just that for me. It led me to her and it changed the course of my life forever.

It was the way we could banter with others in the room and still feel like it was just the two of us. Women loving women will say you either want to be her or be with her. I was in the stage of wanting to be her so I could be with her. I wanted to emulate her wardrobe. I desperately would go into my room after my internship and google all of these things that she would mention about music and feminism.

I had never been with a girl before. My sexual experiences before that had never met the definition of enjoyable. Sex was always questionable and full of unsaid words and moments that I wish I had never had to experience. I suppressed my sexuality up until I met her. I’ll never forget my sexual awakening at 12 years old of watching Kristin Keurk in Smallville strip down to her crimson bra and underwear, silver hoops and jump into a pool. That was the definitive moment that my brain registered that there wasn’t anyway in hell that I wasn’t attracted to women.

During that summer, we would work at our internship and then we would hangout for hours. We would get drunk and go to the diner and we would fling newspapers in the streets. We would go to the 20 dollar all you can eat sushi place. We would eat fried plantains and sip on lavender lemonade. We watched Mosquita y Mari together and that’s when I knew that my feelings were deeper than I had imagined.

What they don’t tell queer folks who don’t have accepting families and live in areas where they can’t be themselves is that they miss out on crucial teenage experiences. The awkward coming of age experiences of dating, having your first kiss, feeling like you have someone on your team. Like it’s the both of you against the world. We get robbed of these experiences and then have to play catch up. I was 20 at the time and queer folks know know that’s early.

I ended up staying with her until the end of the summer. I still hadn’t told her how I felt about her and I was about to be on the other side of the world studying abroad in less than two weeks.

Days before I had to leave to go home, she asked if I wanted to do a party favor and of course, I would do anything for this girl that I was madly in love with. She asked where I wanted to sleep that night and all I wanted to do was sleep with her. I wanted to know what it would feel like to be beside her and inside her simultaneously. As soon as my body hit her bed I knew I had to make the next move. I didn’t know how to so I just got closer to her and waited for her to signal whether or not she wanted me.

My first time with a women was under a full moon that night. I had been desperately searching for this connection, this feeling that went beyond sexuality. I felt like my questions had been answered. The kissing, the caressing, the orgasms. It all felt like answers. It felt like a key to the door. A door that was finally opening into a lifetime of discovery, of more answers, of potential and future lovers. Of unlocking queerness, dichotomies of attraction, of opening possibilities that no longer meant forced heterosexuality.

We fell asleep and then woke up in the morning and for the next 48 hours felt like I was in constant euphoria. I was engrossed by her and by what this meant for me. As we were getting ready to go eat, she walked in with her purple hair, a black maxi dress and a scarf wrapped around her neck to cover the hickies I gave her. I knew in that moment that I didn’t want to let her go. I didn’t want to study abroad, I didn’t want to leave, I wanted to be her girlfriend and stay with her as long as I could.

We went to get pizza and in the moments of eating and ignoring the fact that we had just fucked for hours, we didn’t address anything. We enjoyed the simple moment of being in each other’s company experiencing our first love together. I eventually had to go home but she offered to drive me home. We packed up my stuff and drove the five hours to my parents house.

She asked me to be her girlfriend because I was leaving the country for 4 months to study abroad in India. Everything was moving fast and I couldn’t catch my breath to recognize the significance that these moments and realizations had on me. I was gay, I was depressed, I–

—

“Ms. Santiago, are you okay?” the concerned reporter asked. Carmen hadn’t realized she had zoned out.

“Forgive me, the moments after that summer are fragmented memories that are blurry and hazy. That’s enough for right now. One day I’ll be able to speak about my experiences out loud or maybe you’ll read them.” The crowd had a slight awkward, tense laugh.

“I will say this, that summer changed me forever. I had that young in love romance love I had desperately been longing for and I realized I was gay. I know, a shocker. I don’t want to romanticize what that summer was for me but it began a chapter in my life I never knew would be written in my real life. I never knew that queer relationships existed let alone ones that were abusive. I’ve healed since then. That relationship forced me to look inward and recognize my past trauma that stemmed back to childhood. I read and I made art. I went to extensive therapy. I relied heavily on staying at home and working retail. I felt behind in life and could barely navigate simple tasks. It was hell climbing myself out of what felt like a never ending vortex of trauma and pain. I want queer folks to know that you’re not alone. That you and I deserve love despite what we’ve been told about who we are and our various and vast experiences of what it’s like to be queer and of color. I want us to have our happily ever after too.”