- I grew up extremely religious and followed a strict life path.
- When I was 32, I suddenly realized I was queer; I hadn't known that was an option for me.
- Now I'm happily living a queer life and teaching my kids to be more open.
"Have you ever considered that you may be queer?"
My friend Crys asked me that question when we were watching "Magic Mike." I'd taken my glasses off so I wouldn't have to see the male exotic dancers in the movie.
I stared back at my friend, mouth agape and brain swimming.
You'd think this was something I'd considered before as a 32-year-old person. I mean, I read lesbian erotica, listened to Indigo Girls and Melissa Etheridge, had crushes on girls, and closed my eyes whenever I had sex with a man. The burlesque persona I'd created earlier that year, Paige Rustles, was a queer book lover and mirrored the person I wanted to be. I'd even joked in high school that I was a nonpracticing lesbian, and more than one ex of mine had questioned my sexuality.
But the idea that I could be queer had never occurred to me.
It's quite humorous to think about in retrospect. All the signs were there — the biggest being my lack of attraction to most cis men. But given my upbringing, being queer never even seemed like an option.
I followed the path that was laid out in my childhood
I grew up in a conservative household and attended an evangelical Protestant church, and in adulthood I converted to Mormonism. Both my family and my belief system promoted a very traditional life trajectory: go to college, find a husband, get married, and have children.
That's what I was "supposed" to do, and that's what I did. The week I graduated from college I began dating my high-school friend. We were married a year later, and two summers after that I delivered my first baby.
That entire time I experienced same-sex attractions. I was so immersed in the preordained path that I assumed these attractions were something all women experienced but they didn't make me queer.
"Late in life" queers come out at an older age for myriad reasons, such as a lack of family support or internalized feelings about their identity. For me, the only option was the one that had been laid out for me since I was tiny, and straying from that wasn't a possibility.
When I joined the burlesque community, I found a part of myself I didn't know I was missing
I got the first inkling that maybe I wasn't actually straight when I began burlesque classes. There's a strong overlap between burlesque and queer communities. Through these classes I was spending time with queers for the first time.
There, I was free to experiment with my sexuality and gender in a way that felt safe and exciting. At home, I was Angie, a single mom and a straight Mormon with a boyfriend.
On stage, my alter ego, Paige, could experiment with what it meant to be a queer, sexually confident woman. The stage was the first place I was able to even begin to think about what it'd be like to experience a different life path — but I still didn't think it was "me."
It wasn't until Crys asked me if I might be queer that my sexuality truly hit me. They — and my other friends there that night — explained to me that, no, it wasn't standard to close your eyes during sex to avoid having to look at your partner's genitalia, and that, no, it wasn't necessarily typical to want to watch only lesbian porn while claiming to be straight.
I think about what my life would've looked like if I'd realized these things about myself earlier
I wonder what it would've been like if I'd had more queers around me to see the potential of a different life path.
I'm so happy for both my teens, who've been able to grow up seeing a wide range of genders and sexualities. My older teen is cisgender and straight, and my younger teen realized at 6 that they're nonbinary. They also came out a few years ago as pansexual.
I'm filled with gratitude for where I am now compared with where I was a decade ago: stunned on my couch, realizing for the first time my true sexuality. I lived most of my life not knowing that being queer was even an option. But then I realized I could live as my authentic self, and I've never felt happier.