Why should I have to call myself anything? I’d ask defensively, when it came up. Part of why I didn’t call myself queer or bi back then, I think, was a well-intentioned rejection of labels in favor of liberation.
There wasn’t a lot of introspection going on. I had crushes on female celebrities more often than male, but I just understood it to be an objective fact that women are more pleasing to look at.
I was in a punk scene where making out with friends and strangers on the sweaty sidelines of shows was just a normal part of a Saturday night (or Tuesday afternoon) sometimes I made out with guys, sometimes I made out with girls, and I didn’t think too much about it either way. When I was younger, I somehow managed to avoid calling myself anything. I’ve never considered myself straight, but I didn’t actively start identifying as queer, either, until after I was married. As a queer woman married to a man, trying to find space for my queer identity and desire sometimes feels a lot like that scene-like something I want is so close, but always just out of reach. This show about two mutually destructive women whose obsession with each other puts them both in danger hits closer to home for me than any other depiction of queer desire I’ve seen on screen. “No” I thought, but didn’t say, “that’s exactly what it’s like.” He felt like the motif was being worn thin. This was the latest in several near misses between the two-Eve had been tracking Villanelle for the whole season, but kept barely missing her. “Ok, this is getting a little old,” my husband said, sitting on the couch next to me. I held my breath as I watched, wondering if the two would finally meet again or remain just out of each other’s reach.
The camera zooms in on each woman’s face-both full of desire, anticipation, fear. There’s a scene midway through season two of Killing Eve, where the two leads stand on either side of the same door, each aware of the other’s presence-Villanelle can see Eve through the peephole, Eve can only sense that Villanelle is close. This is Fallen Women, a monthly column by Lilly Dancyger on women coded as villains in pop culture, the power in their badness, and how they shaped fans for good.
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