I don’t think people, including me, realized how serious I was about my queerness—this wasn’t an experiment or whimsy—until I met Jen. Jen was The. Big. Dyke. On. Campus. She was a senior, super intelligent, opinionated, as out as you could be. She was well known because she was a big-time activist, very outspoken about things like sex, sadomasochism, and lesbian porn. Her curly brown hair was cut short and framed a cute, pale, freckled face; she appeared taller than she actually was. She went to class dressed in men’s shirts and ties. Jen was a butch dyke, brazen in her gender and style, and I was drawn to her like Oh. My. God. She was frantically finishing her sociology thesis, so the first time we kissed was on the steps of Olin Library, a tall, imposing brick behemoth of a building with giant white columns. She was a brilliant flirt, so self-assured, so deliberate and generous with her words, so powerful at casting a spell on me. My desire for her was so intense that it felt like I would explode and shatter into tiny bits of flesh at her feet. And I would be happy in pieces there. She was the fiercest lesbian I knew. And she was my girlfriend.
There was no slow burn or ambivalence. I jumped in. Love notes, gifts, inside jokes, and mixtapes. We became intensely close very quickly. She was everything to me. The fire between us fed me on multiple levels—our love was sexual, emotional, intellectual, and political.
Jessie and I had mostly engaged in a lot of humping and grinding, which was very pleasurable, but I knew I had to up my game with a big-time lesbian. When Jen and I had sex for the first time, I went down on her and tried valiantly to figure out how to eat pussy after I’d only done it once, with a woman I knew who looked like Sadie. Jen was a skilled communicator when it came to sex, something she’d eventually teach me.
“That feels good, baby, but more pressure on my clit,” she moaned. I made a mental note.
“More clit,” she repeated softly. I could hear Cheryl Lynn’s “Got to Be Real” playing on her stereo.
When I got back to my room, I searched my bookshelf and found what I was looking for: the 1984 edition of The New Our Bodies, Ourselves. Went straight to the index. Clitoris, pages 168, 169–72, 188, 190, 205, 207, 208, 273. Yup, it was important. Then I read: “Learning about the clitoris increased sexual enjoyment for countless women and freed many of us from years of thinking we were ‘frigid.’ Our ability to give ourselves orgasms and to show our lovers how to please us has been one of the cornerstones of a new self-respect and autonomy, and has therefore been politically as well as personally important for women.” That was the day I learned the word clitoris. I already knew what and where my clitoral glans was: the spot on my vulva that gave me an orgasm when I masturbated and, much less frequently, when someone else rubbed it during sex. Penis-in- vagina intercourse doesn’t stimulate the clitoris directly. But now it had a name. More clit. Jen wanted more clitoral stimulation. That made a lot of sense. I read the rest of the pages, studied the anatomy diagram diligently. I carefully reviewed how I got myself off. That wasn’t necessarily what Jen’s clit wanted, but it was a start. I vowed to learn how to master the clit.
Jen read On Our Backs and Susie Sexpert’s Lesbian Sex World to me at bedtime. (She was even in charge of bringing Susie Bright to speak on campus that spring.) We were so connected, so engaged in the relationship. Every single day, there was something new to learn, share, and discover. Jen was the first girl I ever lived with (for a summer). I had my first taste of what now is my all-time favorite food at the hands of Jen: sushi. We used latex gloves and dental dams, something that had been drilled into us and that queers in my generation took very seriously. We tested for STIs, and I took my first HIV test with her at the student health center. Jen was the first woman to f*** me with a dildo. The first person to f*** me in the ass.
The first time she f***ed my ass with her fingers, I went into outer space. I felt pressure at the opening, then her finger sliding into my tight space. It wasn’t the same as fingers in my pussy. The pleasure was more concentrated. We are f***ing the patriarchy now for sure. Nice girls did not have anal sex! She was gentle, used lube and a latex glove, talked to me. I realize this is not a typical first experience with anal penetration, so I consider myself very lucky. I was enthralled. The feeling was so intense I almost didn’t know how to react. My body did. When I added clitoral stimulation to the mix, it was transcendent, the best, most explosive orgasm I’d ever had. Seriously. I wanted to do it again. I wanted more fingers. I wanted to do it to her. I had no idea how getting f***ed in the ass would change the course of my life. Six years later, I’d write an entire book about it. She stoked the fire first.
I vaguely knew what BDSM was (back then, we called it S/M), and I was curious, but Jen made it very real. Jen topped me for the first time, I bottomed to her for the first time, and we switched. My first safeword was elephant because when I looked up from her bed, there was a tall poster with a black-and-white elephant on it. Jen was the first person to tie me up. The first person to spank me. We watched gay porn together. She was the first girl I ever f***ed with a strap-on. She was the first girl I ever stripped for. Jen was the first girl I ever bought a tie for. Jen brought me to buy my first pair of Doc Martens. She was so articulate about her desires and her politics, so sex positive that I could tell her anything. She was my lover, my mentor, my dyke teacher, and so much of who I am today came from her. More than a decade later, I would coin a term for myself: a breakthrough lover is a person who takes you places you’ve never been before, including places you thought you’d never go. Once you experience sex with them, your desire and pleasure are forever changed. More possibilities open up. Jen was my first breakthrough lover.
Before Jen, I was confused about my desires and confined by traditional gender roles, normative ideas about love and sex, and slut-shaming narratives. Women were swimming in them all the time, and they seeped in. I knew there was more. I was never miserable with the boys I’d been with; physically, they were fun, although I couldn’t connect with most of them on an intellectual or emotional level, and I definitely didn’t come the way I came with Jen. While I had sex with a lot of different guys, I never tried new things, experimented, or voiced my fantasies. Embracing my new dyke identity gave me my sexual liberation.
My mom met Jen for the first time over brunch when we also broke the news that I was going to Los Angeles with her when she graduated that year. My mother stopped eating her BLT. She rolled her eyes, which is one of her favorite things to say.
“Hmm. Jen, I can see that you are ready to start your career in the entertainment industry. Tristan, Jen has a reason to go. You are running away from home.” And run I did. Out, proud, and into the streets.
That was the summer I fully became a queer dyke. We lived with Jen’s cousin in his apartment around the corner from Canter’s Delicatessen. We quickly became immersed in queer culture, and I felt like I’d come home, found my people and myself. We marched proudly at the San Francisco and LA Gay Pride Parades. Jen took me to my first queer wedding. The femme, Nicole, was a Wesleyan grad in her early twenties. She was fully made up and dressed in a vintage ivory lace dress with matching pumps. She would have made the perfect Bride Magazine model, except for the way she carried herself. She was neither blushing nor modest; she was proud and autonomous. She married Tony, a working-class butch with close-cropped hair that was slicked back on top. Tony wore a crisp tuxedo shirt, black leather chaps over black Levis, and a leather bowtie. Nicole composed pages and pages of the most beautiful love poetry to read to Tony through tears of devotion. When she finished, Tony looked deep into her eyes and told Nicole, in about thirty unrehearsed simple words, how much she meant to her. They exchanged rings. Queer love not only was possible but could take my breath away.
We joined Queer Nation LA because that’s what you did when you were a fed-up queer in 1991. The Los Angeles Times called it “the militant gay rights group,” and it was dedicated to radical direct action, much like act up (there was a lot of overlap between the two). The meetings were a revelation. People of all walks of life organized in response to George Bush’s refusal to acknowledge the aids crisis, the lack of government money and resources for people living with aids, conservative Christian antigay rhetoric, police and street violence against queer people. We organized for civil rights, health care, safety on the streets, authentic representation, sexual freedom, and visibility. One of the most active members, a Latina woman with dyed jet-black hair and red lipstick named Judy, took us under her wing and introduced us around. A woman of color named Keiko was only sixteen but so sure of herself and unafraid. She’d already been arrested once. I thought, This queer high school girl is kicking ass and taking names. Richard was a tall, round white gay man who was different from many of the men I had met in P-town; he was more interested in planning protests than going to tea dances. Wayne was one of the unofficial leaders of the group who often wore a T-shirt with the word homo in all caps.
I was no longer in an awkward padded chair-desk combo listening to a professor lecture about racism, sexism, heteronormativity, homophobia, sex phobia, and classism. I was learning from people doing the work on the ground to combat oppressive systems and injustice. Their vision and practice were intersectional long before I heard or grasped the meaning of the word. During late nights, between bites of cheap veggie burgers at Astro Burger in West Hollywood, they talked about things that were new to baby-dyke Tristan: the playfulness and politics of gender, disability justice, sex workers’ rights. Together we protested homophobic churches. We protested a photo lab at the Beverly Center that wouldn’t develop pictures of same-sex couples kissing. I marched down LA streets in my Doc Martens, hand in hand with pierced and tattooed perverts in protest.
Jen and I became friends with many of the activists, including a group of radical faeries who lived in a vegan collective. One of them, a skinny guy named Cory, had a shaved head, a pierced septum, a genderqueer wardrobe, and an overwhelming amount of charisma. He boldly identified as an HIV-positive fed-up queer, ready to put his body on the line for real social change. I had a crush—I loved his rage and his spirit, both of which had no bounds. One night, he, Keiko, Jen, and I stayed very late at Kinko’s on Highland Boulevard to make Queer Nation’s signature stickers: we photocopied hundreds of sheets of fluorescent crack-and- peel paper, then cut them with the industrial-sized paper cutters.
F*** Your Gender.
We’re Here, We’re Queer, Get Used to It.
Suck My Lesbian Cock.
Queer Anytime, Anywhere.
Assimilate My Fist.
One of Queer Nation’s trademarks was to reclaim—and flaunt—negative terms hurled at us as insults with snark and wit. Cory was copying the zine he made with Wayne, Infected Faggot, which had a bright yellow cover. In the first issue, they wrote, “Dedicated to keeping the realities of faggots living with aids and HIV disease in your face until the plague is over.” As volunteers for the Propaganda Sub Group, Jen and I had a crowning achievement that summer: we helped design and create a safer-sex T-shirt. One side read, CLITLICKER: I’LL BE DAMMED. The other, BUTTF***ER: TOTAL CONDOM NATION. I still have mine.
Excerpted with permission from A Part of the Heart Can’t Be Eaten: A Memoir, out September 2023 from Duke University Press.
A Part of the Heart Can’t Be Eaten: A Memoir is available from Amazon and Bookshop.