But I worried that my experience with John, my first boyfriend, wasn’t real at all, because it wasn’t like the one I’d had with Eleanor. When I started attending a queer youth group at a church basement in Evanston, and sharing about my feelings of attraction and desire, it made sense to identify as bisexual. I did mention that the daughter of a family friend was bisexual, and that I was “also like her.” This was a strange new queer world to mom, and I felt like I needed to seek another support group aside from just my immediate family and one gay boy bestie at high school. My mom had no idea about any of my sexual adventures and I didn’t tell her that day. I’d been fooling around with Eleanor since about age 13. But I felt like she must have known that something was going on with my best friend, Eleanor.
She knew about John Turner, my boyfriend from our summer family vacation. We were driving around downtown Evanston, a suburb just north of Chicago, in a navy blue Ford station wagon.
