On the side of the railway track, in a field, in an alley next to a club and on anonymous parking lots. Before I was twenty, and before I had even admitted to myself and the world that I was excited by men, I went to the most unsafe places to have sex with strangers. As a queer teenager, you don’t choose safety, you choose intimacy. [..]

While my peers started serious relationships and the class was devided into heterosexual couples, we watch and something eats away at us. What we feel isn’t what the straight teenagers feel. We don’t even get to feel rejection. That would require someone who is at the same stage of self acceptance.

If we meet anyone like us, the boundaries are never far away. Don’t kiss in public. Don’t hug. Don’t hold hands. Don’t show anything. Before we even know what our bodies are feeling, society is already telling us that we need to hide those feelings. Is it strange that we run away? [..]

And this takes us to that afternoon where no one is watching and we start searching for someone like un on our phone or computer. One conversation. A hundred connversations. Do you want to meet? Your hearts is racing. Your head is wondering if this is safe, but curiousity wins. A kiss, an embrace, a hand on your crotch. Every sensation is new. For a moment you feel like you are just the same as everyone else.

But what your straight friends do in their bedroom, you have to do in the cold next to a deserted road, with someone whose name you’ve forgotten. You know the stories. How there is danger everywhere. The fact that your mom thinks you are doing homework and your friends think you are at work just raises the tension. You choose this danger because for a moment you feel complete.

Queer teenagers choose danger every day. They too deserve lust and love, but they have learned since early childhood that there is no safe place for that in their everyday lives. There is no safe choice, because the world is unsafe. The only choice is an unsafe world with or without intimacy. I chose with. In secret and in shame. For a moment I felt like a real person just like everyone else. Enough to survive the loneliness and isolation of the rest of the day. Those fleeting moments of intimacy and a false sense of belonging were worth it, even is they could have been my last.