Am I Gay?

choi

Katie Heaney, Am I Gay? Perhaps This Fun Quiz Will Tell Me. A woman seeks answers online, where quizzes deliver whatever ;abe; she wants. New York Times, Mar 4, 2018 (in the Modern Love column of SundayStyles section).
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/ ... online-quizzes.html

Quote:

(a) "Lydia and I met thanks to a quiz, the multiple-choice OkCupid personality assessment, which asks for your thoughts on matters like 'Would a nuclear Holocaust be exciting?' (that's a 'no' from me) and then matches you with those you’re least likely to hate.

"Our first date was for drinks on a Monday night after a workday I had spent trying not to throw up from anxiety. It would be my first-ever date with a woman, made approximately 10 days after I came out to friends as 'not straight, but I'll get back to you on exactly how much' at the age of 28.

"I had sent Lydia the first message, asking to read the gay Harry Potter fanfic she had mentioned in her profile. She asked me out shortly afterward. I was excited to meet her * * *

"Until then, I had assumed I was straight; I was just really, really bad at it. I’d never had a boyfriend or even slept with a man, and I didn't particularly like going on dates with men or hanging out with them, but I thought that was normal — all of my friends constantly complained about the guys they were dating.

"I knew I was doing something wrong [with male or guy friends] but didn't know what. Sometimes I asked my friends for help. * * * [and in some other times turned to] the multiple-choice quiz. [for the latter] My habit started in middle school

(b) "In retrospect, maybe I should have known who I was the first time I went looking for a quiz called 'Am I gay?' But I didn't.

(c) "I remember knowing what the answer would be before finishing every [sexual orientation] quiz; it was always exactly what I wanted it to be. If I took a quiz seeking reassurance I was straight, I would get it. If I took a quiz wanting to be told I was gay or bisexual, that would be the conclusion. But no result ever felt true enough for me to stop taking quizzes.

"Eventually, I gave up [on those quizzes]. And I figured that if I were anything but straight — anything but 'normal' — I would have known when I was much younger.

(d) "I moved to New York, where I dated one man for a few weeks before he dumped me, and then repeated that scenario with another man. I attributed my dating failures to generic incompatibility and the inestimable shortcomings of the male sex. I vented to my therapist, and dumped my therapist, and then got my new therapist all caught up.

(e) "For years I had convinced myself that my failure to obtain a boyfriend was mathematical — too few parties attended, too few men befriended, too little time dedicated to Tinder. I assumed there was a right way to do things and I had yet to master it.

"It was my good, second therapist who helped me realize that my nonexistent love life was not a quantitative issue but a qualitative one.

" 'What do you feel when you imagine going on a first date with a man?' she said.

" 'Dread, mostly,' I said. 'But that's normal, right?'

"As it turns out, it really isn’t. Nervousness, yes, but not dread.

My comment:
(a) Katie Heaney   
https://www.katieheaney.com/
(b) In quotation (a), fanfic is short for fan fiction (n)
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fan%20fiction

(c) "Each Valentine's Day in high school, our first-period teachers would pass out Scantron forms for a service called CompuDate, which promised to match each hormonal teenager with her most compatible classmate of the opposite sex"
(i) The "first-period teacher" means the teacher in the "first-period" of a school day, which may have "second period," "third period" etc. Each period last about the same time, like 50 minutes. Before the "first period," students gather in their respective homeroom (lasting some twenty minutes), where "a teacher records attendance and makes announcement" (but does not teach).
(ii) In high schools, students moves around to different classrooms, where a teacher specializing in a certain subject stays but students pf different classes rotate in.

(d) "dumped my therapist, and then got my new therapist all caught up"
(i) be/get caught up in sth: "to become involved in a situation, often without wanting to"
https://dictionary.cambridge.org ... et-caught-up-in-sth
(ii) be/get caught (up) in something: "to become unexpectedly involved in an unpleasant or annoying situation example gives are a storm, traffic a clash between protesters and the police]"
https://www.macmillandictionary. ... ght-up-in-something

(e) I have read a lot about this, and fail to comprehend why some people will know their sexual orientation later or late in life (such as Kris Jenner).