It Should Have Been Obvious
- Katie McHugh
- Mar 12
- 12 min read
If you know me, you’ve probably heard me mention Netflix’s Arcane at least once, in obsessive, manic passing. But what I don’t usually tell people is how this show changed my life—genuinely, in the most literal meaning of the phrase. Because the show is masterful. Few works of fiction have managed to accomplish such nuanced world-building and emotional depth. And yet, although I am blown away by Arcane in its entirety, there is one specific scene that I keep returning to, over and over again, like a homecoming:
Two young women are curled atop a king-sized bed—imagine Yin Yang symbols: head-to-toe, toe-to-head—divulging secrets. One of them, Vi, is telling a story. Her eyes are squeezed shut, remembering, and she speaks in a language a child might use, because in so many ways she is a child, vulnerable and afraid, rambling in the hopes that someone might listen.
And to her surprise, someone does.
The other, Caitlin, lies there in comfortable silence. Her gaze is fixated on something ahead of her—on Vi, perhaps, but you get the feeling she is looking further, like she’s delving into the past. Then her eyes shift, and she blinks. She reaches outward, carving through space to graze Vi’s cheek. A moment passes. Her hand brushes and lingers and begins to pull away, but it doesn’t get very far.
Vi leans into Caitlin’s touch as if all the secrets of the world are contained there. Her eyelids flutter, and when she finally looks up, it’s hard to believe how much raw feeling is exposed on her face. Now, she is done speaking. Or rather, she is speaking with her eyes, and what she has to say is all admiration and intimacy and warmth.
And you, the audience, do not belong there. This sight is not meant for you, but you are witnessing it anyway. You are watching two women discover one another in a pocket of the universe where no one else exists. You cannot say anything against them. You can only perceive the softness, which has no proper purpose or name, aside from maybe femininity, and you begin to realize, slowly and naturally, like the sun emerging from an eclipse, that no love between a man and a woman has ever been as sacred as this…
The first time I kissed a girl, it was all smiles.
It was smiles from the moment she approached me in that tacky, dime-a-dozen Dublin bar—the one named after the poet. No, not that poet. The other poet. Yeah, that’s the one—startling me with her garbled words and pearl-white teeth.
She’s pretty, was my immediate thought. And half a second later: She’s drunk.
“I told them I thought you were beautiful,” she said, gesturing to the couple at the end of the bar. They waved politely and looked away. “I was all like, I’m gonna talk to her. I’mgonnadoit. And they were like, You really shouldn’t do that.”
“And yet, here you are. Are those your friends?”
She took a swig of Guinness. “Not five minutes ago.”
“Oh,” I said, swirling my own glass of chardonnay. “Then I guess we’re both alone.”
Actually, I wasn’t alone. Not in Ireland, at least. My father, uncle, and grandmother were collapsing into food comas only four blocks away, bellies full of shepherd's pie and mashed potatoes and copious servings of beef stew. I myself had ordered cod, and as I’d handed my menu to the waiter, I understood that while we might’ve been one family, we were on two entirely separate vacations.
“You?” the girl said. “You’re alone? But you’re so beautiful. I mean, you’re so stunning. You’re the most stunning person here!”
I would have argued with her, but there wasn’t much competition. Around us, the pub was preparing to close. The bartender sealed the lips of liquor bottles with saran wrap. The members of the live Irish band cased their fiddles and stowed their bagpipes away. Only the drunkards, oblivious to the glaring social cues, stayed—so I knew no one had noticed my spit take when the girl declared: “We should make out.”
“What?”
“I know, it’s crazy. My gay roommate back home tells me I’m straight. You’re the straightest person I know, she says. Straight as a ruler. And I have to believe her, right? Because she’s gay, and she’s telling me I’m straight.”
“Right,” I said.
“But I just feel this connection with you. This soul thing. And I think, what are the odds that we’re at this bar in Dublin together? And then I think, what does it matter if I’m straight? You’re stunning. And you’re alone. And I’m alone. And it just feels like the universe wants us to make out.” She downed what remained of her Guinness. Her tongue flicked against the cloudy rim of the glass.
“What about you?” she asked after she’d finished. “Are you straight?”
“I…”
I don’t know, is what I’d meant to say, but I realized, as one can only ever realize in the heat of the moment, in the terrifying midst of the thing, that it wasn’t what I wanted to say. I was straight. Or rather, I had always been straight. My adult life had been a revolving door of heterosexual relationships, one after another, and I had never thought—had never even known it was a possibility—to experience something else.
I studied the girl again. I liked her smudged makeup. I liked her sparkly acrylic nails. I liked how her hair fell in loose curls around her shoulders like so many ferns unfurling. She tripped as I stared at her. Maybe it was the uneven heel of her boot, or maybe it was nothing. The girl was bleary-eyed. She had a wet, pink mouth. She stumbled right into me, placed her palms on either side of my thighs, and pinned me with a look that I had used on so many men before her and would use on so many men after her—a look that told me she knew exactly what she was doing.
“I’m bisexual,” I answered.
I’ve returned to that scene from Arcane so many times that it has burned into my memory. I can predict the cadence of Vi’s movements. I can trace the curvature of Caitlin’s spine. In some respects, this scene has become a crucial part of me. Even on the ten-thousandth rewatch, I feel as though I’m experiencing it for the very first time, standing in the feeble blue light of the television, unable to tear myself away.
In hindsight, it all seems so obvious. I have spent my entire life inhabiting this scene. I have channeled it in every fit of girlish laughter, every stroke of my hand against my friends’ hair. Countless memories of sleepovers where we did not sleep, of girl-bodies caressing in the dark, where we confessed our sins and tried our best to make light of them, until suddenly, somewhere between a chuckle and a yawn, we faltered; and just like that, we were weeping uncontrollably, melting like ice sculptures in one another’s arms; sometimes we’d weep because we were young and hideous and our arms were streaked with slash marks, other times we’d weep because our parents beat us with lacross sticks and told us, in actions as well as words, that they didn’t love us anymore; ultimately, we wept because we felt that we had been wronged by the world, because there was so much goodness inside of us and so much meanness everywhere else, and because we knew for certain that if we didn’t have each other, or worse, if there had been a boy in the room, we would’ve crumbled into nothing; for these reasons and so many more, we cried; we cried until we physically couldn’t cry anymore, until the silence within us became so eternal that it warded off the dark, and the indescribable pain of being girls seemed a bit easier to bear; then, once all that had passed, we giggled; we shook our heads and kicked our feet like the children we were but didn’t believe we were; we wiggled the grief right out of us, the giddiness, too; we wiggled ourselves exhausted, only faintly awake; and in those few dreamlike seconds before we drifted into sleep, our bed might’ve been the entire universe; we weren’t bothered by old wounds or or fresh wounds or broken families; we weren’t worried about the women we would someday become, those weary twenty-two-year-olds who might (or might not) look back and remember this moment as the masoleum of all hope and desire; no, we simply laid there and looked each other, peering past the nighttime, peeling back curtains of shadow, looking down to our very souls; even now, I can hear the pounding in my chest as it was back then; I can feel the terrible yearning, which could not be described as platonic or romantic or even sexual; in all honesty, I cannot find a word to do it justice; I can only tell you that this story, although lacking the language to declare itself, is neverending; just like Athena and Pallas, or Jane and Hellen, or Vi and Caitlin; when all else fails, there will continue to be girls in beds, touching and crying, laughing and looking, seeing and being seen.
Later on in Dublin, I decided that kissing a girl was a lot like having a secret. Hushed tones, furtive glances, giggles. We knew something the rest of the world didn’t. And we passed this secret back and forth, shaping it in the heat of our happy mouths, as we kissed in her hotel lobby, and in the elevator, and in the stairwell beneath the judgemental lens of security cameras.
We were caught only once, by a small group of men who dressed and carried themselves as boys, with moth-eaten basketball shorts and slouched postures and the like. They were startled, I think, to have found us there. Their wide, glossy eyes resembled pearl onions in the fluorescent stairwell light. It should’ve been obvious what we were up to. Kiss-bitten lips. Bodies wrapped up in one another like tendrils of vine. But the boys stared blankly at us, not comprehending. It wasn’t until one of their gazes slipped toward my navel that I remembered how her roving hands had wandered under my shirt and dove beneath my waistline. At that moment, I saw myself through the boy’s eyes, half-naked and breathless, pressed against a wall while another girl’s thumbs rubbed lazy circles into my sides.
Realization hit the boys all at once. Their jaws slackened. They paled as if struck by a fever. And then, one by one, they began to smile. Guileless, shit-eating grins that grew almost as eagerly as the tents in their pants.
“Nice,” one of them mumbled.
I wrapped my arms around myself , nudging the girl’s hands away. Understanding arrived a bit late for her, having to shovel its way through her drunken stupor, but it arrived all the same, and I was grateful when she pulled my shirt down from where it had gotten stuck around my neck. She even smoothed out the wrinkles.
She spun to face the boys. Her chin tilted proudly upward. “Need something?”
The boys shook their heads.
“We were going to find something to eat,” one of them explained.
“Pizza,” offered another, “We’ll just be on our way.”
“Good,” the girl said.
But they continued to stand there, their Adam’s apples bobbing. I didn’t think they had it in them to move. Leaving would have contradicted what they knew to be true: that the world did not turn—and two women did not kiss—without the presence of men to witness it.
They got the hint eventually. Or maybe they simply grew tired of waiting for a show that would never start. I’m not sure. All I knew was that, for one reason or another, the promise of pizza now seemed more tempting than the thought of two girls making out. The boys swaggered past us, descending down the stairwell, and for a while, their voices continued to echo, their cravings of alla vodka and pepperoni interspersed with questions like: so do you think they’re gonna fuck?
The girl sighed when they were finally gone. She was smaller now, more relaxed, and it suddenly occurred to me that she’d been protecting me. Even though I had spent the entire night thus far trying to occupy the masculine role, twirling her across dance floors, taking her by the wrist to guide her home. I hadn’t even noticed when our roles had reversed.
“Come here,” I said.
She drifted toward me, and I didn’t even have to tell her what I wanted. Our palms met. Our fingertips pressed together, nails clacking together softly. Suddenly, it was as if I was standing before a reflection of myself. Her hands were the exact same size as my own, give or take a millimeter on her middle finger, and I realized then that there were no roles between us. There was no mating ritual, no demoralizing yield of power as there always was with men. When I moved, she moved with me. We mimicked one another, mirrored one another, protected one another.
“Stay,” she told me.
So I did.
When I first decided to create this blog post, I struggled to articulate anything at all. I wanted to write something full-bellied and inspired. I wanted to write something that would resonate, that would capture all of the reasons why this topic is so fucking important to me. Nevertheless, when I actually tried to write the damn thing, my mind went blank. I had so many ideas and feelings, but I couldn’t find the words.
This may seem heretical coming from a writer, but I believe certain subjects are so intensely personal that they cannot be expressed in language. The same applies to art: no impressionist sunset can ever render the slow, transitional power of a setting sun. Artists may try, and certainly, their finished products are breathtaking, but the art itself will never have breath. This is the impossible expectation that doomed my first draft. I’d wanted to lasso the sun and smear it across the paper. And yet, when I appeared before that horizon with my blank canvas and a chest full of paint, I realized that any attempt to recreate the scene would be nothing more than a pretty imitation.
Writing this has made me understand how closely tied joy and fear can be. On the one hand, I have never felt so secure in myself—so complete. On the other hand, I have never felt so vulnerable and afraid.
I want to make it clear that I am not afraid of rejection. I am scared of not being seen. I am scared that people will erase my sexuality. That they will excuse it as naivete or boredom, and, in doing so, fail to appreciate it as my most precious thing.
I've heard a lot of people, especially from older generations, ask why sexuality needs to be discussed at all. It doesn’t affect your family dynamics or change your personality, they say, so why not keep it private? In a way, these people are right. Sexuality is personal and intimate. It’s hidden. But therein lies the reason that it should be shared.
For instance, the word Queer has always existed inside me. If you haven’t gathered that yet from this blog post, then I have failed my mission miserably. In the previous pages, I described myself as bisexual, and I think that’s correct. At least, that’s the closest possible word to describe this feeling I have, of loving both genders for such wildly different reasons. But before there was bisexuality, there was Queerness—a kind of attraction that existed long before I even knew what it was. It’s not something I could have run away from, even if I’d tried, because it was etched into my soul. I’ve always liked girls, but the world I grew up in didn’t give me the space to recognize it.
People often accuse queer individuals of forcing their queerness onto the world, but I accuse the world of forcing straightness onto me. I accuse my preschool teachers of only reading stories about princesses falling for princes. I accuse my cousins of teaching me how to make Ken and Barbie kiss. I accuse my parents of referring to my boy best friend as my boyfriend when I was in the first grade. I accuse my grandparents of telling me what qualities to look for in a husband. I accuse my pediatrician of teaching me the basics of male-female sex, and never mentioning anything else.
I could go on, but the point is evident: years of queerness were taken from me simply because no one could envision any life for me that didn’t involve a man. And yet, I don’t feel any remorse. I only make these arguments to help you understand that, by telling you that I like girls as well as boys, I am not asking you to imagine hot, steamy girl-on-girl sex. I am simply asking you to imagine a world in which, sure, I might have a husband. You might see us walking our dog down the street someday, wedding rings glinting on our joined hands. But, just as likely, you might also see me walking with a wife.
I think the preconception that queer people are overtly erotic is also discredited in this way. Sexuality is not inherently sexual; if anything, it’s virginal. When I was a child and had a crush on a girl, sex never once crossed my mind. It was always deeper than that. It was about loving and, perhaps more importantly, being allowed to love.
It matters who we love. To quote John Steinbeck: “I am certain that underneath their topmost layers of frailty men want to be good and want to be loved.” Loving is an intrinsic part of the human experience. Some might say it is the only substantial part of the human experience. And while it is possible to love without validation, it’s certainly a hell of a lot more lonely.
I’m not sure if this blog post conveyed everything I wanted it to. I don’t know if it's a beautiful sunset, or just some vague orange-y shape scribbled on paper. But that’s not the point. My only hope is that you can recognize my love for what it is—this bright and joyous thing that has room enough for everyone—and, maybe, if you’re feeling generous, you can find it within yourself to be happy for me.
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