*two distorted bags of oranges on a lilac background with lines*

Do you remember the first time you went to a gay bar?

Did the slick of the beer-wet floor seem to be the dazzle of a new world? Did you meet a guide, or were you brought by one? Did you slay a dragon to be there--an age limit overcome by a fake I.D., or your own fear drowned out by the speaker's boom?

Whether you knew it then or not, you were having a page moment. It could have been the start of your queer apprenticeship. Fabulous queens, craggy bouncers, and new friends helped you into your skin.

Or you retreated from the glorious dark of that space, back into a more certain life for a while. Then you tried again.

Regardless of our path to ourselves, we have all had page moments. Queer life is full of them.

I'm not talking about coming out, although that may be one for you. I'm talking about coming into your own. I'm talking about seeing your path unfold before you, and co-creating your life.

Whatever your queer ass is making with the page, there are a couple of steps that could be going into it. I'll talk about these here:

1. Becoming Familiar with the World

2. Helping as a Gateway to Understanding

3. Learning From Tradition

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Becoming Familiar with the World

My first page moment wasn't coming into queer community, because I was born here. (Happy millionth pride, fellow queerspawn!)

My first page moment was coming into my kind of queerness. This had A LOT to do with The Butchies.

You see, my parents were chic black 90s lesbians. Things were simple with them, or so it seemed. My mother wore shirts with venus signs holding hands and daisy dukes on floats at Jersey Pride. Her partner was debonair and stoic.

When it became obvious that I would not grow up to be a woman, she decided I must be...whatever she was. There's no PC, academic way to talk about whatever gender she was at that time so I'll omit it here.

Needless to say, I was not that. I did not want shiny shoes, or high femme partners, or to snap together a model of the family Ford Explorer. I did not want to trade WNBA basketball cards so that I "understood the draft." I definitely didn't want to "roll out" the finger I jammed trying out for JV2 (JV*2*!!) basketball at her behest.

I wanted to be my own kind of queer.

Enter The Butchies (who the title of this post references.) And Team Dresh. And Tribe 8.

Their music was so noisy it made my parents confused but it unconfused me.

It made me familiar with the world I wanted.

Not like, white butches or whatever, no shade. But it busted the idea that because I was queer I had to be queer like them. Like my parents. Like the lesbians at our gay black church.

It made me feel that it was possible for me to be queer and femme and trans and punk at the same time. It was an alternate possibility model.

Whenever the page shows up, it does so with an alternate possibility model. Somebody who acts as a mirror for you to rearrange your life.

That work, and Valencia, and Juicy Mother, and Nobody Passes made me feel like I didn't have to grow up to be someone else. I could grow up to be myself.

That's what a page moment does. It helps you witness that a wider world exists, and reminds you that you're part of it. It also shows you that there's work to do.

Helping as a Gateway to Understanding

Which led to my second page moment, where I actually came into those WHITE AS FUCK spaces! It fuckin' SUCKED!

My friend and guide on my "queer not gay" journey, took me to the requisite zine fair. It was the first time in my life I had been the only person who wasn't white.

We went to Jersey pride after my mom went back in the closet and worked a booth under two older white lesbians.

I was wearing a Hothead Paisan crop top that I'd cropped myself and (actual) y2k flared jeans. The over-fifty lesbian I was working for started hitting on me--talking about my body and how popular she thought I'd be in college. It was disgusting.

The potential for exploitation and harm inherent in page moments isn't talked about enough. This is the danger of mentorship, apprenticeship, being taught. Not everyone wants to teach for the right reason.

Through helping out in spaces with the ethos of the music I listened to, I understood that not every queer space was a good space.

Often these harms are the end of a page moment, an end to innocence. The page is about innocence and inexperience. It's about openness and vulnerability regardless of which suit it calls home.

Harm and disappointment move us from page back to the start, or from page to knight as well as positive experiences do.

Learning From Tradition

The final queer page moment of my late adolescence, early adulthood was starting college.

This is the case for many people, but for me college was a time where I reconnected with, well, the things my parents liked. I reread E. Lynn Harris'Invisible Life. I read The Uses of the Erotic and love/conjure blues which were more academic than my parents taste, but were a part of my tradition.

I didn't grow up in a house with a ton of books, but black authors wrote the ones we owned.

My vowed to reorient my work around people who looked and loved as I did. This simple commitment helped me understand myself in new ways.

Such self-discovery is the work of the pages. The allow us to reevaluate, reimagine, redo.

Having page moments throughout our lives is like going to a life change orientation. It allows us to take stock of where we're at and ponder what's next.

It tells us we don't have to be an expert.

The pages meet us at the door to our latest challenge. They gift us the mix of humility, courage, and foolishness we need to proceed.