By Aubrey F. Burghardt
I may have only come out two years ago, but I’ve known myself forever. I knew that I didn’t care how love manifested in my life, just that it would be abundant and diverse.
My parents attended Texas Christian University (TCU) in Fort Worth, Texas, and I spent a large portion of my childhood near the campus. Situated on winding roads with crunching leaves, the campus was conveniently located near the home of my grandmother, who took care of me after school.
The campus provided me with a world of wonder. I was always a fan of the dining hall’s TCU-imprinted waffles, mesmerized by the idea that you could stamp tradition into a waffle the size of your face. My father and I would devour them one-by-one. I was also a regular participant in the campus’ annual Easter Egg Hunt, weaving through a mass of children dressed in pastel hats and puffy dresses in search for the golden egg. My mom always made sure I worked hard, with incessant independence, to find the winning egg every year. (Though, I recently found out I was creatively nudged by my competitive father to take certain paths). Regardless, these southern traditions always resurface when I’m back home visiting in the springtime.
Yet, the biggest connection to my childhood is a staple that was always featured prominently on our kitchen counter: sweet tea so saccharine you almost wouldn’t believe my mother was Yankee-born. The thick, viscous pour contained more sugar than her recently-found southern drawl, her mouth now forming round vowels that she once clipped. I truly believe we used half the bag of sugar, coating our traditional southern lives with the sweetness to overpower any bitter sip.
This sweetness translates into my embodiment of southern comfort and southern hospitality. Southern comfort manifests in my love of throwing dinner parties, ones where everyone is welcome and the more the merrier. Southern hospitality is in my genetics, passed down to me by my dad, who spent his early career managing Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse—a job that moved us back and forth from Houston to Fort Worth until seventh grade, when we finally settled in Houston. I delight in catering to others if it brings happiness. These southern traits and culture are my foundation—you can move all you want, change your address, and experience various cultures, but where you plant your roots is where your flowers bloom. It also dictates how your flowers bloom.
I bloomed. I bloomed into a bellowing and fierce woman. I bloomed to pride myself in my abilities and capacities for love, my deep roots securing my faith in good southern morals. I bloomed to fear stagnation and to slightly recoil at the possibility of facing rejection or disappointment as a result of revealing too much of myself.
Nevertheless, I spent my formative years eagerly exploring the pockets of the world where I could experience new things, tastes, and people. I collected these souvenir identities and laid them like trinkets on a windowsill, recounting the tales of how I picked them all up.
My bisexuality, however, is not a souvenir identity. It’s not just a subset or an extension of my perceived sexuality, nor an afterthought when family and friends assumed me to be heterosexual. My bisexuality eventually came rushing to the surface—a flood. My sexual orientation frothed and refused to stay contained, despite me trying to pardon it, to keep it quiet and in tune with the southern values that so often stifle anything that is different. Instead, my sexuality burst from its spout, coating everything I love. It was only then that I realized I can be both. I can be both bisexual and southern. I can love both genders. This explosion was a sticky reminder that I am equally effervescent and buoyant, that this extra identity layer adds a tangible and unexpected depth, one that I never imagined I would wear.
I am a bisexual. I am an intersectional and radical feminist. I am a second–generation American. I am Aubrey Faye, a proud embodier of two southern names. My identities overlap, are brought to boil, and reduced to form a potent amalgamation of who I am. And it all boils down to tea.
But am I sweet or am I unsweet? Am I the heavy pour of comfort and tradition? Or am I the bite and chill of a heavily steeping brew, the curling stains of brown in a once–clear cup? And again, I wonder, do I need to simplify myself to just one? Why can’t I choose unsweet tea as well? There is one trick my mom taught me when making her classic recipe—sometimes, if the tea’s overly sweet, you can brew another pot of unsweet and cut it to your taste. Identity is that way, too. You can be an amalgamation. You have choices. Fluidity. The perfect sip for you. The perfect sip for me.
