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ChrissyDecember 02, 2009 This little puzzle piece popped into my head this morning while Travvy and I were walking home along Pine Hill. I recognized it as a bit of To Be Rather Than to Seem that hadn't appeared on my (ever lengthening) list of possible subjects. Where the hell has all this stuff been hiding? Chrissy was the athletic star of the sixth grade. Running bases, playing dodgeball, shooting baskets, or swinging across the monkeybars, she caught the eye and held it. She was wiry, tough, and intense. Her brown hair was cut short enough that it never got in her way, a forerunner of the 'do that skater Dorothy Hamill made famous in the mid-1970s. I didn't embarrass myself in gym, but I didn't stand out either. Academics were my forte, and words my milieu. Chrissy could silence other kids with a look; I couldn't do it without words. I wasn't wiry, and though my hair was brown, it didn't look like Chrissy's: mine was cursed with curls when short, and frizz when it got longer. (I was in my mid-forties before I fully accepted that I was never going to have the long, thick, wavy hair of my dreams.) Chrissy and I moved in different circles. She barely noticed my existence unless she got stuck with me on her team. I noticed her. I wanted to be like her and look like her, only with long hair. Was this a crush? I already had a couple of serious crushes under my belt, and this didn't feel like either one. Both the long-haired, freckle-faced, horseback-riding bugler at summer camp and the camp counselor who wasn't the least bit athletic but had a wise wit and a wicked sense of humor were several years older than I, and around both I had to watch myself lest I become too obvious a pest. I didn't want to follow Chrissy around; I didn't want her to notice me. Hindsight skews experiences like these. Just about every lesbian I know recalls crushes on schoolmates, teachers, and camp counselors and believes they were portentous. Trouble is, most heterosexual women had them too; they just tell the stories differently. I admired Chrissy and fantasized being like her: athletic, no-nonsense, a center of attention. But I devoted zero effort to developing my own athletic prowess, or even to hanging around the athletes. In genderqueer lingo -- which accepts a clearly delineated male-female binary that feminism as I understand and live it aims to undermine -- the butch in Chrissy was probably calling to my inner femme. Nah. The popular, effortlessly excellent athlete in Chrissy was more likely calling to the Suzan, Susan, or Sue (I didn't reconcile myself to Susanna till I was out of high school) who put up a good show but was always afraid that she would be found wanting if she strayed too far from her facility with words.
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