Spark Notes is a recurring series about the lightbulb moments in sexual development.

One month into my senior year of college, after a breakup with a long-term boyfriend, I asked my roommates for a favor. They were all some flavor of queer, and I had an inkling that I might be, too. I begged them to devise a kind of lesson plan for me, a semester of personal exploration to help me figure out what I wanted and who I was.

In a way that I consider endemic to college hookups, my queer tastes at age 21 were less informed by any innate sense of attraction than by whoever was around and down. By that point, I had been with a handful of women, all of them slight and pretty. Each time had been soft, sweet, and gentle, leaving me with the sense that I’d had a sexy slumber party with a friend r

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