I Read TATU Fanfiction, and It Didn’t Say Anything About Them Not Really Being Lesbians

I’ve read at least a dozen times about the mystical thing that tends to happens to girls’ confidence once they reach puberty—you know, that it completely disappears, and all those little girls who proudly proclaimed they could indeed become president and didn’t give a flying fuck how many Twinkies they ate suddenly become very concerned with vital issues—you know, being acceptable to their male peers. Now, before everyone starts jumping out of their seats yelling a variation of, “I didn’t do that! I know girls who did, though”, let me just add this: You probably did. You may not have realized it. You may not have even wanted to. It may not have even been that noticeable. The fact is, we all most likely compromised or inconvenienced (to keep things simple) ourselves to fit into the heterosexist paradigm for at least a few seconds at some point during adolescence, and I’m sure a lot of people haven’t stopped yet, if they even notice. My foray into this strange and awful world didn’t last very long. I wasn’t very good at it, and I didn’t really want to be. As arrogant as it may sound, I have no doubt I could have forced myself into the role expected of me and done exceptionally well there. 

I knew how to do it. I still know how to do it.  I just didn’t know why I should bother then, and I still don’t really know. There’s a difference between fitting in just enough to get by and partaking in any of the mind games which, based on my observations, are part of socializing. Anyway, I’m rather introverted, and so being socially isolated was, for the most part, not a problem, and when you combine that with thoughts about whether or not the fabric of daily life is just a series of agreed upon fictions, you get a middle school girl who doesn’t socialize and doesn’t really care to. 

Of course, that was simply unacceptable. 

To say our culture has a troubled relationship with adolescent girls is more than an understatement. I’m not going to go into a detailed discussion about it, but it’s clear we don’t know what to do with them. They’re not children, and they’re not grown women. They have the minds of children in a lot of ways, but they’re incredibly sexualized at every turn. Sure, there’s a lot of confusion about how to handle teenage boys as well, but I don’t know of a male equivalent for that disturbingly misused word “Lolita.”

You see, when I started making that wondrous transition from child to young adult everything in my life changed instantly. Suddenly it mattered that I didn’t obsessively tape glossy photos of pouting guys to my walls. It mattered that I didn’t get invited to the “cool” gatherings hosted by my classmates. It mattered that I Google’d the word “lesbian” and forgot to erase the browser history. 

Okay, that one I could have understood the adults in my life freaking out over a little had I actually been stupid enough to do it. Fortunately, I only did my research at school, on the computer in the back, and always erased the browser history. 

None of these things mattered to me, but rather, they mattered to the adults in my life. My mother is baffled by me now, so I’m not that surprised she was baffled by me then. Charismatic and extroverted, she was always the most popular person in the room. Everyone knew her, and everyone loved her, even the people she chased with a hammer just the day before. I’m sure that made me seem even stranger than I really am, but for all the “Why don’t you have a boyfriend?” and “What do you mean you weren’t invited?” she at least never found fault with my intelligence level. On the other hand, there was her husband, who, for reasons I’m still puzzling over, hated me from age 11, which, surprise, surprise, was the age puberty began. It was a lot of fun too. I was developing the body of a fertility goddess at a time when my female classmates wore padded bras over flat chests and hoped no-one called them on it, and you bet your shapely, Sheela-Na-Gig ass it was noticed. 

A current of tension had always run through our relationship, but it was nothing to the animosity that suddenly began simmering beneath the surface of our interactions. At the time I didn’t understand where any of it came from. I ignored the tension between us because it didn’t demand attention, and a part of me just didn’t want to think about it. It was easier to think about the nature of reality instead. 

You’re probably wondering where in the fuck I’m going with this, but don’t worry. We’re staying out of Dorothy Allison-Land today, though this post has quickly become far heavier than I originally intended. Someday I will destroy everything within me but the icy core of cynicism. 

 I digress. 

As this post evolved in my head I realized a certain amount of backstory was needed to round it out. Earlier this week I played Pretty on the Inside a few times in preparation for the second post in my Courtney Love series (obviously not this post), and it quickly became clear something wasn’t right. Something was missing. I heard the songs. I enjoyed them, but no connection was made. Is that a cause for panic? No, but it’s disconcerting given the role the first two Hole albums played in helping me learn to articulate my anger. 

The problem, I later realized, was actually rather absurd. Simply put, I can only connect to music if I’m completely alone. There can be no chance anyone else can hear it. I enjoy it just fine in the company of others, and I enjoy it when it plays in the background while I do daily tasks. I just don’t feel the same things I do when I’m alone in a room listening through headphones.

See? Absurd. 

There’s a story, though, which I think explains things somewhat. I always thought my preference for listening to music privately was the result of growing up in tiny, crowded spaces where everyone could just about always hear what you were saying and see what you were doing. Even during the few brief times I had a room to myself someone had a problem with the door being closed. The concept of introversion or even the basic need for private time was, apparently, just not something anyone around me was acquainted with, and I either ignored the horrible sense of intrusion or closed the door anyway, consequences be damned.

During the height of the pubescent turmoil I had two favorite bands: Evanescence and TATU. Yes, I realize that’s funny. At least I never got caught up in the boy band crazy of the late 90s, but then again, I’m not sure what appeal they would have had for a girl who tried to imagine what Prince Cornelius from Thumbelina would have looked like as a woman. So, it shouldn’t be too difficult to understand the appeal of the studio fabricated duo from Russia. It also didn’t hurt that one of them had red hair. Evanescence, on the other hand, allowed me to indulge my unhappiness without thinking about it. They were just melodramatic enough. My comfort book at this point was Wuthering Heights, after all. 

When I bought the first Evanescence album my mother stared at it for so long I wondered if she wasn’t trying to change the cover to a less offending photo using only the power of her mind. 

 Finally, she said, “Why don’t you ever listen to people who are pretty?” I found this somewhat ironic given how much she discouraged my love for the Spice Girls a few years earlier. Sure, they had a tendency to dress rather, shall we say, provocatively, especially for a band so obviously marketed to very young girls, but you can’t say they weren’t pretty. In fact, that was part of their appeal for me. Even at eight I wanted to be as attractive as they were. “Looks aren’t everything,” I replied. “It’s the music I want.” Secretly, though, I thought Any Lee was fucking gorgeous, and there’s no other way to describe it. I didn’t want to be her; I just wanted to be near her. 

 That little exchange mostly ended the discussion. When I got the TATU album my mother wasn’t around, so it took a few weeks for her to question the content of my new acquisition. That exchange carried a level of awkwardness I don’t know how to describe properly. If you haven’t seen the liner notes for the American 

 release of 200 Km/H in the Wrong Lane, well, you’re missing some great softcore porn for men.

 This is the best version I could find. 

  I could do a whole post just about the way these two were marketed during that brief period when people actually had a vague idea who they were. To be honest, it’s a little disturbing if you think about it, but at the time I didn’t see it that way. Burgeoning feminist sensibility be damned.  I wanted to see girls kissing other girls, and if they wanted to sing angsty songs about it, well, that was even better. I was unaware of the controversy surrounding them, the suspicions that their “relationship” was a publicity stunt, so it was easy to sit in the back of computer class, hide my headphones with my hair, and watch the “All the Things She Said” video over and over without a second thought. 

The only problem was, I inherited my father’s need to talk about things. It’s horrible. I’m like Anne Sexton without the talent. I also think I was just angry and tired of waiting for things to boil over on their own. I wanted something, anything, to happen. So, I started talking. Had I been honest with myself I would have realized the people I was telling things to couldn’t be trusted.

 I really wasn’t prepared for just how fast everything changed. I didn’t have control over the situation or even an idea of what to expect next. All I could do was my best imitation of an immovable object meeting an unstoppable force. Perhaps it would have made things easier if I’d toned down my eccentricities, made more of an effort to be the bubbly, conventionally pretty girl everyone wanted me to be, but I really don’t think it would have helped. For a while, I was sure I not only created the entire situation but could have diffused it if I’d just been less of a stubborn little bitch. Now, I’m not so sure. Something happened when I stopped being a child, and I don’t know if anything I did could have changed it. There’s nothing a woman can do to make her boyfriend stop hitting her, but odds are she’ll tell herself there is, at least until she can admit the truth. It was the same sort of situation. 

What does all of this have to do with my compulsion to use headphones? Well, my mother’s husband had a habit of taking my things. I don’t mean as a punishment. That would have required actually telling me. He preferred to take things while I was gone and pretend to know nothing about anything being missing while I frantically tore my room apart. It started small and eventually I found myself listening as my diary from sixth grade was read aloud by a divorce lawyer. There was a point when I didn’t know what to expect each time I walked into my room. The only incident I ever told my mother about was when I found my CDs missing. It was like a switch was flipped. I didn’t care if I got another talk from my mother about how better things would be if I would just start liking boys or stop wearing so much black. Taking the photos off the wall and leaving the tape used to hold them up behind was one things, but fucking taking my CDs was another. I didn’t care how trite the lyrics are, how painfully overwrought, how disgustingly marketed the acts were, those two albums and Emily Brontë made me happy damn it. 

That’s when I started only listening to things with headphones, even if it was just me in the house. Before when I spent time alone at home I played whatever I wanted as loud as I wanted, but after that I only played music when someone else wanted to. I made a copy of the TATU album, left it unlabeled, and gave the original to one of my few friends to hold onto for a while. Eventually, she got the honor of hiding my VHS copy of But I’m a Cheerleader, helpfully stolen from Blockbuster and given to me in the eighth grade by the first guy I pretended to date.