You know, most of my friends consider me “gay from the womb.” I’d have to agree with them. The old saying ‘women need men like fish need bicycles’ would be accurate for me. I’ve got to be the oldest person in America who has never been with a man in the biblical sense, and I like it that way. Thank you. And here’s the answer to the next obvious question: No. I do not need to have been with a man in the biblical sense first to find out if I’m gay.

I do not want to give the impression that I don’t like men, however. There’s more to men than sex. I’ve always had a lot of male friends — in fact, more male friends than women over the years.

However, there were many tell-tale signs that I was a lesbian from a very young age. Oh, yes, I believe that these things can be deduced if you look for the right signs. Here were some of mine:

- I cannot remember how old I was, but I know my dad was still alive so I had to be younger than nine. I got a lifelike doll for Christmas. It was like the giant Barbies that were flooding the stores when my daughter, Thalia, was about five or six. I was one of the first kids to have it in my neighborhood. However, by the end of the day, the damned thing was buck naked and being shot off my rocking horse with a dart gun. A sure sign.

- Playing “doctor” is a normal thing, but I was playing doctor with all the little girls in the neighborhood. Another sure sign.

- The only guy I ever ‘dated’ (it was a dance, by the way) while in grammar school was a big fag, and I was comfortable with the fact that this particular relationship was going nowhere. I suspect the same was true for him.

- I did go to the high school prom…with a gay guy. It was a blast. We made our little appearance at the prom, then headed for a gay bar. I’m not sure how we even got into a gay bar, but I do know that my escort was older than us (I was only seventeen). I suspect he got us in. Can’t argue with that tell-tale sign, can you?

Of course, when I was very young I really didn’t know what to call it. I did, however, know that something was different about me. Oh, like, instead of coveting other girls’ guys, I was coveting the guys’ girls. See how that works? That’s different. And I ‘m not going to say that I never ‘worried’ about it. I did. It’s tough to be different, a fact not lost on my own daughter even today. While she’s not a lesbian that I know of (she may be someday, who knows?), she is also not anything like the other girls her age.

However, by the time I was onto my next educational adventure (an all-girls school) I was over all that worry. There’s not much you can do but go with the flow. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: It isn’t a lifestyle, people. It’s what it is.