One thing that really just pleases me so much about the lesbian!CJ headcanon is just that while it obviously could just be a beautiful AU concept that’s fun and angsty and wonderful to entertain, it can ALSO fit right into canon without actual major adjustments of any kind and it changes nothing about the actual canon events but everything about her experience of them and that is just such an incredibly interesting thing to explore to me.
(Disclaimer I am in no way saying that she IS a lesbian or that her canon relationships with men ARE the result of comp-het. I’m not saying it’s impossible she really fell in love with them, or even that it’s more likely that she didn’t than that she did. I’m just saying it’s ALSO possible that a lesbian!CJ headcanon fits right into canon within her canon relationships and that is fun for me to think about.)
But CJ is a fascinating character in that so much of what we see her do in the show when it comes to her job and her personal life is prioritise that job over relationships, while insisting that what she’s after is normalcy, that what she already is is normal. Flip-flopping a little in specific relationships (notably Ben, going from ignoring all his calls to ‘you know what this is fine actually, I’m all in’ and scaring him off anyway, but also Danny) and dedicating so much of her life to a job that’s all about appearances and expectations and the anticipation and management of them. Her job is to know what the press and the public will and will not accept, and to make the President, the administration, and absolutely also herself, presented as something that they will.
Add to this that this woman is canonically Catholic from a relatively small town, and attended Berkeley during the mid 80s (which is right across the bay from San Francisco, one of the major cities when we talk about the AIDS epidemic).
She is an absolutely perfect character when it comes to a solid comp-het experience. There are women today who will not realise they are lesbians until the day they turn sixty and something finally falls into place, there are women today who are married to men and have 2.5 kids and have yet to come to terms with being lesbians. CJ and the way she’s shown in most of her on-screen relationships and flirtations with men could seriously be such a good example case of a woman who’s not gonna realise she’s gay until she’s got the wedding ring on. And that’s heartbreaking. And that’s so much fun from a character and fic perspective.
Because there’s Danny, who’s charming and sweet and sexist in the way all her guy friends are and who gives her a fish and is so damn genuine about it. And he’s a perfect, just perfect man, for a lesbian who’s not ready to know she’s a lesbian. Just perfect. One of the things he tells her is him literally pointing out that he might not look that conventionally attractive at first glance, but she should keep in mind that he’s very good looking. He could not make it easier for her to justify being confused about the way she is or isn’t into him because he says it himself, he’s attractive in a way people don’t always notice.
Everyone around her keeps warning her that obviously Danny’s into her and obviously she’s into him and obviously she shouldn’t get too close and what easier way is there to believe she’s really into this man than for everyone she knows to tell her that she is and shouldn’t be? He’s practically assigned to her as the perfect boyfriend she can’t have and that is just Perfection for a comp-het scenario. She wants him, surely, and she doesn’t have to think about that too much and she doesn’t have to ask herself if she really does or if she really wants to date him or if she just enjoys being chased and she doesn’t have to overcomplicate it because it can’t happen anyway and she knows that. It’s just so perfect.
There’s Ben, who she didn’t date for long but apparently did live with for a while. She describes their relationship pattern as the kind of thing where they’ll meet and flirt and like it and think that means they can have something real just to get really frustrated with each other in a few months, break it off, and maybe start it over again a few years later. Knowing that CJ can have that kind of pattern with men where she can enjoy the early stages and that chase and the rush of it (which can so very easily be attributed to her desire to be seen as a normal person; I can’t stress enough how much of being normal can be wrapped up in “this man wants me, that’s a good sign, look at me accepting that”), but finds a way to ruin it just a few months later cause actually a long-term thing is not something she can manage.
When he shows back up, she likes talking about him with Carol more than she does talking to him. She only calls him back when she’s confronted John fucking Hoynes of all people and, again, needs that sense of normalcy and comfort that a good guy wanting her does bring. When she decides this is something she should try, it’s after so much talk with Carol and she goes from not being very interested to dousing herself in perfume and kissing him and saying she’s all in when he actually gave no real indication that that’s what was happening cause she’s not really thinking about this in any logical way beyond her own experience in this dynamic.
Simon… oh Simon. Always doomed to be CJ’s ‘what if’ and really, that’s no different for a lesbian!CJ. It’s not. She liked that kiss. She liked the safety he provided. She liked that he made her feel feminine. (Again, something that is so easily and readily tied to her desire to be Normal. So easily tied to her insecurities about her height and her position as a woman in a man’s world and a man’s job and the way that makes her stand out when she’s scared to stand out in the wrong (queer) way. It fits so very easily into the intensely complicated experience of lesbianism and gender. It’s beautiful.) it was a good kiss. And he may always be the man who makes her wonder if she has the right to call herself a lesbian after all if she’s never gonna know if maybe, just maybe, he could have been the One guy for her.
CJ ends the show so tired and so Done with the work she’s given eight years of her life for. She ends it by going back to California with a man that is simply presented as The Choice for her with no real explanation as to why besides the fact that he wants her and he’s comfortable. It’s a safe choice when she hasn’t felt safe in years. When she suggests they’ve only been together a month that’s brushed off by Danny and Toby alike and she doesn’t really fight it because why would she. Sure, a month, but he’s apparently wanted her for eight years and people have been telling her he’s so good for her for eight years so, surely. Why not.
It’s a safe choice and it’s a stable choice and it’s impulsive and if this wasn’t a lesbian!CJ headcanon it’d still be a serious toss-up on whether or not it becomes the happily ever after it has every possibility of being or whether it ends in a divorce. But if she’s a lesbian, the fact that she moves with him after a month and gets married and gets pregnant with his child like a year at most after. It’s… it’s safety. It’s the expected choice. She’s done with work and she has no excuses left and this is What You Do as a woman who knows how to be a woman.
And she’s a lesbian and it doesn’t change anything about the canonical timeline of events except it changes everything about her actual experience of them because now there’s gonna be a point in time where she is going to have to start wondering why it is that she has the Perfect and the Stable and the Comfortable choices and the comfortable man and the comfortable life and has done everything Right and is so goddamn unsatisfied and lonely and confused all the same. And it’s simply going to hit so much harder when she does come to that realisation as it would have in any kind of lesbian AU for CJ.
And I just simply love it. Lesbian!CJ works so well in any kind of AU or canon divergent concept, of course it does, but it works just as well right inside the entire canon timeline she already has and that is just a heartbreaking story in really the simplest of ways. And I love it.