I’m Finally Reading the LGBTQ+ Books I Denied Myself as a Teen

Do they count as banned books if the censorship was self-imposed?

Graphic by author.

Never look too long at lingerie ads. Keep your cool when another girl lightly brushes your arm. Speak about romance in vague terms like whomever I love and my future spouse. Ignore flyers urging you to join the high school GSA. And, above all, avoid lingering in the LGBTQ+ section of the library.

These are a few of the rules I gave myself at age ten, when I first saw Megan Fox lean over that car in Transformers (2007) and realized I was bisexual. Director Michael Bay probably had young boys who like cars in mind when he filmed that scene, but he cast a big net and I was caught in it like a helpless, sapphic dolphin.

What would’ve happened to me if I did look…crumble to a pillar of salt?

Unfortunately, I grew up in suburban southeast Texas and thus quickly decided coming out was a problem for an older version of me. My self-imposed straight-passing guidelines were a defense mechanism. It would be 12 years before I “officially” came out, and in the interim, I dreaded the thought of some nosy librarian or family member catching on based on the books I checked out and buried my nose in…