My earliest memory of being attracted to women was when I was seven or eight, when I began to have fantasies about asking my teacher (a very pretty young woman) to marry me. I say "fantasies," but I should clarify that they were totally non-sexual; "day dreams" might be a better term. I was confused and embarrassed by these thoughts. I was a sheltered kid. My classmates would snicker at the word "gay," and I had absolutely no idea what they thought was funny, because I didn't know that being gay was even a thing.

A few years later, as I headed into puberty, I started having sexual thoughts about attractive female classmates and female celebrities and I developed a (retrospectively highly embarrassing) painful crush on a friend of mine. At this point, I was aware of homosexuality, and I started to suspect that maybe the word applied to me, although it took me several more years to really come to terms with that. I dated a couple of boys in high school, hated every second of it, and fortunately never went past second base. Despite suffering through some more embarrassing crushes, I didn't actually find a girlfriend until the summer after high school.