i’d love to hear about harry’s upbringing in the changer and the changed. what was high school and uni harry like? was she ever with women then, or was she always too afraid (not really the right word, sorry) about her family’s thoughts, finding out, etc.?
OK THIS ASK IS A MONTH OLD, I’M SO SORRY
I saw it and wanted to take time with it and then forgot to answer it and then...I worried it was too late as more time passed? But with the ask I just got today I decided to go back and answer this one too. I’ll put it behind a cut in case I ramble.
Before I do, here’s a link to my BB fic, The Changer and the Changed. If you haven’t read it, I promise it’s worth it. (I know I’m biased but...it’s true).
OK, so Harry kissed her best friend Carol when they were young-- around age 11 or so --as “practice.” It was Carol’s idea, Harry very much one of the girls who “just didn’t get it” when all her friends got excited about boys and kissing and dating. It was awkward and somehow both too wet and too dry at once, but it also made Harry feel a weird twist in her stomach almost like nervous butterflies, and when they pulled apart and Carol wrinkled her nose and said it wasn’t good Harry agreed quickly and tamped down anything that was starting to rise up. (Carol, incidentally, would marry right out of high school and have three kids and only kiss other women twice more, both times when she was very drunk and could say she didn’t remember it happening even though she very much did).
High school Harry was a Good Girl. She read a lot and went along with how her mother wanted her to dress, and that made it easier for her to escape a lot of awkward dates that she didn’t really want to go on. She did end up on a few, though. It was easy enough to get out of a lot of physical stuff with boys, but she did do some kissing just to see what it was like. It always felt like she was watching a film of someone else kissing a boy when she would do it, though, and that was uncomfortable and strange, so she didn’t do much more than that.
She had huge crushes on girls, but never acknowledged them as such. She was bookish and nerdy and always writing or reading, always ready to gush about her favorite poet or female writer, and when she found girls like her it was a lot like Anne Shirley meeting Diana Barry. Kindred spirits, bosom friends, etc. She didn’t think about the girls she loved sexually so much as deeply romantically, though.
At least not until college. She didn’t meet her roommate Bobbi until her sophomore year, after having spent her first year at Bryn Mawr being the same quiet bookworm she had been in high school. Bobbi being assigned as her roommate that second year made all the difference. She was short, with a smart bob haircut and just a little makeup but not too much (when they met at least-- as they got older and she got deeper into feminism she stopped wearing makeup). She wore whatever she wanted, including going braless in spite of having pretty big boobs, and she figured out that Harry was gay before Harry did (in part because yes, Harry sometimes spaced out while looking at Bobbi’s bobbies, and honestly she couldn’t help but feel tenderness because that’s some BIG LESBIAN ENERGY).
When Harry finally realized (midway through her junior year), Bobbi pulled her into a hug and said in her rather thick Long Island accent “it took ya long enough.” But Harry was scared to even tell Bobbi about her feelings. It was terrifying to her when she woke up from sex dreams about women or when she tried dating men and felt a disgusted when they’d move in to kiss her. But she knew she could trust Bobbi, and she wasn’t wrong.
She tried to find out how to date women, but it scared her, frankly. Bobbi seemed to know who was a lesbian just by looking at them, but Harry felt like she couldn’t trust herself. And the last thing she wanted was to make another woman uncomfortable or put herself in a position where the wrong person might know about her sexuality. She did meet one woman who she very much wanted to kiss and who was gay, and she mooned after her for a full two weeks before approaching her at a party and asking if she might want to kiss. The woman’s refusal was gentle but still left a bruise on Harry’s heart, and she didn’t really take the same kind of risk again.
What made her feel safe with Louis was the way that Louis seemed to meet every action that Harry took with her own. The difference was palpable. And the confidence that having her love returned gave her is what eventually helped Harry be able to embrace herself and stop questioning whether or not she could be okay as a lesbian.
Hopefully you’re still around, nonny, and enjoy this insight into younger Harry.
