Coming of Age in Queer Time

Words by Seren Ashmore (he/him)

Coming-of-age stories are usually found in adolescence—in the front seats of L-plated cars, the strangled coughs of first cigarettes, in shrinking PE uniforms, itchy ball gowns, and timid forehead kisses between sweat and pimples. They emerge parallel to the body’s development. Puberty unfolds in sync, alongside a checklist set of milestones guaranteed to accomplish ‘growing up’. Very rarely do we see coming of age stick around once 21st birthday candles are blown out. By then, we’re meant to have already blossomed into maturity, the past left as an inelegant memory.

Why, then, does seeing my high school peers getting married or falling pregnant feel uncanny and inconceivable? Why do I see old classmates on real estate billboards and behind company name badges, while I’m searching for new excuses to enrol for another year of student loans? Why can my younger brother grow a better beard than me, and why is my flatmate still waiting for his voice to drop? 

Why do my early 20s feel like the beginning of my coming of age story, when everyone else is watching the credits roll?

Time is phenomenological—it exists only through our conscious experience of it. Whether a moment feels ‘long’, ‘short’, ‘fast’, ‘slow’, ‘late’, or ‘early’ relies on the context. The 60 seconds before a loved one leaves ‘flies by’ too quickly, but the 60 seconds before being burned alive (I’m assuming) feels agonisingly long.

The way we comprehend and make sense of time is socially determined—capitalism interrupts and prescribes a work-life rhythm to our 24hr cycle. The five-day workweek, two-day weekend, and breakfast, lunch, and dinner in between are considered ‘common sense’. Everything from clocks, calendars, time zones, age-based laws, the concept of generations, and expected age milestones keep us in check—conducting us into a synchronised hive, puppeteered to maximise productivity. 

Cis-heteronormativity works smoothly alongside this system. Reproduction fills the labour pool, domestic partnership serves the privatisation of property, and passivity protects the scheme itself.

Despite the name, age is not inherent to coming of age. Though the genre is saturated with themes tied to teenagehood, a coming of age narrative is simply one that centres a character’s journey of self-discovery. Coming of age isn’t about age, it’s about coming into your true self. Unscripted by the cis-heteronormativity that structures traditional temporality, the queer experience of ‘coming of self’ often doesn't often fit into the expected timeline.

Queer theorist Jack Halberstam claims that queerness “has the potential to open up new narratives and alternative relations to time and space”—a phenomenon he calls ‘queer time’. 

To be queer means to bend, to twist and diverge from the line of normativity. Queer time often delays, or entirely bypasses, traditional milestones of adulthood, like getting married or having children. By nature, queerness opposes the logics of reproduction and lineage, of inheritance and legacy, resisting traditional life paths that loop generationally. Queer time disrupts ‘the adult/youth binary’, rejecting the idea that particular experiences have an expiry date. 

Queer individuals often experience time-warping phenomena that fractures their linear timeline. A 60-year-old just discovering their queer identity could feel ‘younger’ than an experienced queer 20-year-old. Queer kids are forced to move out of home before they’re ready, making decisions between safety and authenticity, and necessitating their accelerated maturation. Puberty blockers can halt the speed at which the body is developing, and transition can make someone feel like a teenager again as they re-experience puberty. The liminal time spent in the closet, or waiting for family members to adjust to one’s queerness after coming out, can feel like time lost. 

I stopped growing at age 12, and started again at 17. Once ostensibly settled into my adult height, the stop-start record-scratch of my second puberty awoke my dormant bones and stretched another few centimetres from them. My voice began to break in Year 13, alongside the Year 9 boys I was peer supporting. Halfway between fulfilling my mother’s shape and anticipating assuming my father’s, I floated in the limbo of queer time.

The experience of ‘coming out’ ruptures the concept of time once again. The road forward bends backwards to accommodate the roots erupting in either direction, splitting off from where one’s life was heading and expected to head. Time folds in and onto itself as the existence of the queer child is born at this intersection, from the ashes of where one’s ‘straight’ life lies. Queerness of the past is only able to be recognised in retrospect, once it is known in the present.

Looking back at photos I took of myself from before I knew my transness, I find my iPhone-4-self doused in chiaroscuro—greyed out like an unselectable video game character you haven’t unlocked yet. My self was something yet-to-be. The silhouette I inhabited literally foreshadowed who I was to become.

I didn’t give a fuck about anything before I knew I was trans. Something about not being in the right body, or personhood, meant nothing was real, and I didn’t care if it was. Unable to comprehend a future for myself, it didn’t matter if I embarrassed myself, or bleached off all my hair, or said something I shouldn’t—I was living off borrowed time, and I didn’t anticipate having to deal with the repercussions.

Theorists have attempted to design a framework to outline a ‘coming of queerness’. Various milestones have been proposed, such as the iconic falling-in-love-with-your-straight-best-friend moment, or trialling out a new name on your private Tumblr. But no two queer experiences are alike. Scattered inconsistency between individuals shows queer coming of identity’s refusal to be homogeneous or organised. This defiance of conformity itself is, ironically, the most common denominator between experiences of queerness. It is in the limitless manifestations of queerness that I find its most stable characterisation. The subversion of cis-heteronormativity is the only true requirement built into its definition.

While anti-queer rhetoric wants to convince us that queerness is a new concept, queer communities throughout history have been developing their own rites of passage since the beginning of time. Branching over a diaspora of place and time, there are an infinite number of ways to come of age as a queer person. In ancient Greek paederastic relationships, a boy was no longer considered an eromenos once the physical signs of maturation began to show—a notion of maturity based entirely on physical puberty. Pre-colonial Māori culture largely accepted takatāpui identity, but this was threatened when settlers introduced Western religion and queerphobia. In response to the oppression of ancient Māoritanga, contemporary tikanga often intentionally reclaims mana takatāpui, making the discovery of takatāpui identity a spiritual and cultural passage. 

Coming out has been used throughout history as a radical, grassroots political strategy to prove queer existence and its normalcy. The process of coming out mirrors how coming of age is traditionally expected to go—a separation (often accompanied by symbolic rituals like cutting hair; a cutting away the former self) before transition (a period of questioning, the act of coming out, or a literal gender transition), and then re-entering with a ‘new’ identity. Directly tied to histories of activism and survival, coming out is a uniquely queer ritual of coming of identity, and arguably the most recognisable rite of passage in queer culture today.

Queer rites of passage can happen at any age of a person’s life. I have friends who have known they’re queer since childhood, and friends who have just figured it out this year. Self-discovery is a significant experience of growth and maturation, but for queer people, it’s often illogical to refer to it as ‘coming of age’. Reconceptualising the notion of ‘coming of age’ as  ‘coming of identity’ instead allows space for all journeys of self-discovery, unbound by age.

While others have had their whole lives to bond, I feel like I’ve only just been introduced to myself. Embracing queer time has freed me from the fear that time is running out, and that I should know myself more by now. I still have no idea if I want to have kids, get married, or ever finally leave academia. It’s okay to not have it all sorted out, and it’s okay to never sort it out. I almost don’t want to.

Time doesn’t have to bind us. In hidden corners and fleeting moments, in words between friends and breath between lovers, cis-heteronormative assumptions cease to exist and time is infused with a sense of infinity. Queer time liberates us from the burden of regret and expectation. It gives us permission to continue to come of age for our entire lives.