Written by Barrett Yueh (2022)

Here is what I remember about the first girl I had a crush on: her name was Margot, she was 17, and she played the oboe. She had carpal tunnel syndrome in her right hand — so bad that she had to use a neck strap to relieve the weight of her instrument on her wrist — and when she played you could see just how much pressure was building up in her head because the veins in her temple would bulge out and her face would turn purple. When she found out I was a freshman, her jaw dropped and she said something like ohmygodyou’reinsanelygoodthere’snowayyou’rejustafreshman. We sat across from each other in wind ensemble, on opposite ends of the first row, and next to each other in orchestra, right in the center of the stage. I still remember how much trouble she had with four bars we played in sequence with each other in our woodwind quintet — and the thirty-minute practice session we had during lunch without the other three — the giant two-in-one case she had to carry her English horn and oboe together, her beaded sandals, her strawberry blonde hair in a sloppy ponytail even when we were about to play a concert. 

I didn’t know that the way I felt about her at the time was a crush. I knew I liked boys: my crush on Colin (whose last name I will redact to spare us both the embarrassment) in kindergarten, Jordan-the-graduating-senior in my mom’s studio when I was eight, a horrific two-year long infatuation with a male classmate of mine in middle school. I liked boys, so I couldn’t like girls — not in that way. There was no reason for me to believe that the insane, euphoric way I felt when Margot smiled at me was anything other than feeling praised and respected by a student older than me.

I was so oblivious to queerness — both my own and that of the world around me. (A good example would be that I read Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe and concluded by the end that they were just really good friends.) I was halfway through my freshman year of high school when the word “bisexual” was introduced to my vocabulary. I can remember my knee-jerk no I’m not reaction, the feeling of my heart plummeting into my stomach, the way I guiltily thought about Margot right away like some game of word association. Bisexuality felt dirty; it was so much easier to take comfort in the little safety blanket of compulsory heterosexuality I had wrapped myself up in. None of my early friendships with other girls in elementary school stood out to me as crushes. I had never felt that I was “a little bit different.” Having a word for the way I felt about Margot felt bad. Suddenly, I hated her.

Then I met Hailey. She was a year younger than me, lived in New York, and had known for years that she was a lesbian. If you’ve ever wondered if people actually have those weird Internet friendship-slash-romance arcs, I can confidently say yes, and — though the amount of circa 2015 Tumblr energy it has it makes me cringe — I consider the relationship we had just as genuine as any other. We met as teenagers on an online forum for fans of a book series, where everyone saw us as one unit: the two members of the forum who had actually seen each other’s faces, knew each other’s real names, and had each other’s phone numbers. (We even managed to sneakily meet up — unbeknownst to our parents — for 15 minutes when we were in the same part of California one summer.) We texted each other constantly, drew little doodles for each other during class, and talked about each other non-stop to our friends at school. Sure, we were never able to date, thanks to the 2500-mile distance, but everyone saw us as one: girlfriends, not Hailey and Barrett but Hailey-Barrett. 

I bring up Hailey, embarrassing though the Tumblr energy is, because I really, truly loved her as much as a 15 year-old can love someone. Even now, I listen to Taylor Swift’s I Know Places and feel like a closeted teenager again, this insane thrill of our parents don’t know why I’m so happy but it’s you, you’re the reason why. At the time, I hadn’t even thought about the fact that my relationship with her was contrary to my perception of myself as heterosexual, but since then I have always thought of every subsequent relationship since then in relation to the one I had with Hailey. How could I be afraid of the word bisexual when it was part of such an emotionally significant relationship in my life? 

I think about Margot and Hailey more often than I’d like to admit. It makes sense that I think of Hailey whenever I meet someone from upstate New York, whenever I hear Do I Wanna Know or Riptide and I can close my eyes and pretend I’m listening to the playlist she made me on the bus, whenever I see the shirt in my closet that she said she liked. She was my proverbial first love; of course I think of her. Margot, I think, is the slightly odd one in this equation, because I knew her for two weeks and haven’t spoken to her since. I still feel that thrill in my chest when I see photos of her: same strawberry blonde hair — though a bit tamer — same wicked smile, same giant vein popping in her temple when she plays. She doesn’t know how I hated her for making me feel afraid of myself, nor does she know how happy my first relationship with a girl made me. I owe her nothing and yet I owe her everything. 

And so, to take a page out of Aristotle and Dante — the first queer content I ever consumed without even knowing it was queer — how could I have ever been ashamed of loving Margot Schultz?