"iwouldtotallydateyouifyouwereaboy"

September-October 2020

I can recall numerous adolescent sleepovers in which I innocently shared the night with a girl friend of mine, and thought to myself that I would totally date them if they were a boy. Looking back, it’s blatantly obvious that I had numerous crushes, and was even in love with, these girls. In this soundscape, I revisit and perform the sounds of these sleepovers in my college dorm room, a place in which I consciously cultivate queer community and express my identity confidently. Layered in with sounds I created with objects that I now associate with expressing my queerness, my intent is to reclaim the sleepovers of my younger days and recognize them for what they were: spaces of naive exploration and innocent discovery. While I honor these events, I also grieve a childhood in which I could not express my attraction freely. Both celebratory and sorrowful, my hope is that “iwouldtotallydateyouifyouwereaboy” speaks to the adolescent experiences of other queer women, thus helping them attach a sense of solidarity to previous memories that may have felt quite isolating.