The touch of another woman. I thought about it yesterday when my father presented the simple question to me at face value. It's a deep question although not meant to be.

"Dad, I'm gay."
"Why?"

I usually dismiss this question as if it's unexplainable, as if the facts represent themselves without need of reference. And then I thought about it. About how awkward it feels to hold a man in your arms, about the way a woman's hands feel when they caress your breasts. The kiss of a man is thick and unprepared. Thick and thin, I feel the term is fitting now.

"Have you ever kissed a woman?" I asked my father. The smallness of her tongue, the trained movements of her mouth. Woman's hands are soft and dry depending, it's not a bigger hand covering mine - it's my thin one covering hers. I can feel it now. Movements with my hands shaping alongside her face, thick hair laced in between my fingers. Her head on my chest, stroking each other from the side and around.

I brought up a song I sang once with my keyboard when my room was still downstairs years ago. "I've never sang a song about a man." It would be complex I think, to try and find lyrics and poetry to go along with the overbearing power a man brings in a relationship. Or at least my relationships. I thought about the poetry I read, the stories, the paintings. "I've never created something of meaning for a man." I protested to my father that you cannot buy flowers for a man, you cannot buy a man a dress and dance on black pavement through the summer. You can not easily pick up a man in your arms and place him on a swing set and push him until he's soaring through the sky. You cannot do that with a man. A mans touch is never as gentle as a woman's, it's never as cautious - it's never as planned. You can debate all of this, I added. But the fact remains the same, I have never been touched quite like I have by another woman.

My father asked me casually when I had decided that I was no longer attracted to men. I thought about this for a long while. I mean, I fell in love with a man once. I did. But it was not the same love that I've had for a woman. It was a controlled and simple love, it wasn't complex and flourishing. It was different, in the simplest terms. I remembered a specific encounter at this time with the first man I loved. He was sitting outside drawing my face sometime in the spring. I remember that exactly, his hands were thick and bulky. I went to go snuggle up to him when we got up and danced. He went to go spin. And failed.

"Men can't twirl, dad." There was no rhythm, and the awkwardness wasn't cute - it was awkward. If I had picked up a daisy and set it in his hair it wouldn't have been romantic. It would have been amusing, but not romantic. A man doesn't ramble for hours about nothing, and grasp to find a meaning that's not there. A man doesn't scream in excitement and gossip angrily for weeks for no apparent reason. A man doesn't laugh shyly with butterflies when wrapped up in my arms.

And I'm really sorry, dad. I really am. I just can't fall in love with a man.