I am fascinated by people who easily make new friends.  I low-key think that people who can walk into a house party full of strangers and leave an hour later having learned everyone’s names, and astrological signs AND invited them all out for drinks that weekend possess the closest thing that average, real life humans will get to actual super powers.  Meanwhile when I walk into a room full of strangers, what happens an hour later depends: I may hover by the snack table, nurse my watered down liquor, and talk to no one before quietly skittering out the door when no one is looking—like a timid little a cockroach (that sentence took a self-deprecating turn).  In a more successful outing, however, I will eventually find someone in the room who just has this vibe or aura or something that draws me out of my little introverted shell. I may still skitter away at the end of the night like a cockroach, but this time I skitter like a cockroach with a new friend!  Finding the one special vibe/aura/something person in a room has always been a challenge for me, but it did become significantly less challenging after I came out of the closet and began openly identifying as a Queer Black Girl. Allow me to explain…

Up until age ten I went through this phase where I liked talking to groups of four or five girls all at once (though that was likely because I was a queer little ten-year-old who loved it when other girls showered me with attention), but any trace of extroversion I may have had up and vanished in my teens and never reappeared.  I am introverted and reserved and weird and making friends is stupid hard for me.

One thing that I think contributed to my developing a difficulty making friends as a teenager was that I grew up as a minority mostly around other white kids.  It was not unusual for me to be in a classroom, birthday party, or some other social situation where I was the only Black kid in the room.  During childhood, especially those dreaded teenage years, being different can be the death knell of one’s social life.  I could never gain entry into the fortress-like cliques of my blond-haired peers.  When these same girls occasionally acknowledged my presence by asking me probing questions that were basically racial stereotypes with question marks at the end, I felt insecure and withdrew into myself. 

Those years were rough and I’m glad they are long over, but during that period I did have some wonderful friendships.  When girls began cliquing off, I learned to scan the room for other girls who were similarly cliqued out and I would try to befriend them. This was how I made friends from my early teen years through college, and even how I make friends now in my twenties—to any readers who are not yet 20-somethings, cliques exist in adulthood too (sorry, some of us never outgrow immaturity).

Looking back I have noticed one huge similarity between most of the friends I had during my teen years.  In college, nearly all of them eventually came out as queer.  I was extremely closeted, and clueless, about my queerness until I was a 20-year-old junior in college.  It is such a wild coincidence that the friends I had during the years when it was hardest to make friends were queer all along.  And I was queer all along.  We were all queer all along together! 

I have this theory that our shared clandestine queerness was this thing we had in common that made it so easy for us to bond.  It sort of made us kindred spirits, even though we had no idea of this one thing we had in common.

I was 20-years-old when I realized with a jolt, “Hey, I would totally date my friend, Jennifer, and it would be the best thing ever!” Soon after my queer epiphany, I started attending my university’s bi-weekly discussion group for QTPOCs (queer and trans people of color).  I cannot describe how easy it was to make friends within that group, nor how seamlessly I felt I fit into that space.  It was the first time since childhood that I felt completely comfortable approaching every individual in the room.  I anticipated no rejection, and received none in return.

Today most of my friends are queer and QTPOC, though I have also have a few straight friends who are just as near and dear to my heart.  I live near a LGBT POC organization that has multiple social events each month.  It is my favorite space in the city to enjoy good food, good company, and good conversation.  I have built a network of friends there that is still growing.

I am still introverted and reserved and weird and making friends is still stupid hard for me, but being open about my queer identity and finding QTPOC spaces has made making friends significantly less stupid hard.