No Offense: A Memoir in Essays, by Jackie Domenus (ELJ Editions; February 2025) is the kind of memoir I believed had gone out of fashion — and had been informed as a lot by a literary agent who shall stay anonymous.

No Offense is a coming-out memoir that particulars the numerous twists and turns Jackie experiences as they not solely grapple with their very own genuine identities, first as a lesbian, then as a nonbinary particular person, but additionally as they battle to assert and share these identities.

Once I first started studying works from authors residing on the rainbow again within the Nineteen Eighties and Nineteen Nineties, the coming-out memoir and coming-out as a trope in fiction weren’t solely widespread, they have been vital. Our liberation as queer individuals had solely simply begun, and folks, myself included, yearned for guideposts, for examples, that we might emulate, significantly when the problem of popping out occurred in the course of the early years of the hiv/aids pandemic.

Quick ahead three, 4 many years, and a few individuals in publishing recommend that the subsequent wave of coming-out tales should exceed that foundational trope. That the studying public desires queer authors to transcend the coming-out moments to one thing extra. Popping out and, they describe this new style. Certainly, there are queer memoirists who ship on that and. Jeremy Atherton Lin. Melissa Febos. Edgar Gomez. Greg Mania. George M. Johnson. Neel Patel. Manuel Betancourt. Amongst many others.

And but, it was Mark Twain who quipped that “historical past doesn’t repeat itself, however it typically rhymes,” which is why I’m grateful that Jackie reminds us that the coming-out memoir is neither useless nor pointless.

The Nineteen Eighties have been profoundly homophobic, a backlash, I’ve heard it stated, to the queer progress made within the previous many years. However bigotry doesn’t want excuses to reassert itself, and when aids made its presence identified in North America in 1981, haters seized on the scare to bedeck their rhetoric as soon as extra with a bit of faith. aids was “God’s punishment,” the product of the “sin” of homosexuality, when that selfsame sin wasn’t triggering tornadoes or hurricanes.

And though Ronald Reagan, Pat Robertson, Jimmy Swaggart, and Jesse Helms is perhaps (gratefully) useless, Jackie painfully reminds us, in opposition to the backdrop of current cruelty and bigotry, of the panic queer individuals knew, the panic I knew, too, in a collection of essays that journey, primarily chronologically, from Jackie’s childhood to their twenties.

The primary essay, “Tomboy,” ricochets by means of totally different childhood vignettes, offering a pointillistic portrait, made all of the extra vivid with using the current tense, of Jackie’s understanding of their self, contrasted in opposition to how ladies are perceived by society, a notion Jackie calls consideration to as they write, “this sense of inferiority will solely grow to be extra acquainted — after they stroll down metropolis streets and are whistled at like canine or after they begin their first full-time job and surprise why they earn lower than their male counterparts who do the very same work.”

“Tomboy” additionally reminds the queer reader of these moments of denial we assemble as we understand — after which push again in opposition to — our genuine sexuality. “My Myspace bio reads one thing like ‘Sure I skateboard. No, not all ladies who skateboard are lesbians.’” One vignette, one paragraph later, and Jackie writes, “I’m twenty years previous and realizing most ladies who skateboard are in truth queer — together with me.”

The second essay, “Of Canine and Males,” makes use of much more lyric approach (the narrative is interwoven with footnoted descriptions of the Michael Vick dogfighting case in addition to the origin of the phrase, a canine is man’s finest good friend) to not solely painting a younger Jackie’s poignant relationship with Fortunate, their childhood canine, but additionally with their father, an impatient and gruff man who, in the intervening time Fortunate must be put down, collapses into grief as he hugs his youngster. This heart-rending second of disappointment takes the reader past grief, nonetheless, and illuminates an vital awakening for Jackie and a very good refutation of the gender binary for all readers: “What a aid it was to know that tenderness might coexist with the boyishness within me. What a aid that I didn’t should be one factor or the opposite.”

One of the vital charming facets of No Offense is Jackie’s resolution to reimagine the media that queer kids typically recode to create larger resonance with our lives. A superb instance comes in the course of the third essay, “Discovered Conduct,” the place Jackie re-envisions Mary Poppins as authentically queer:

“She’d float on down, her umbrella boasting the colours of the rainbow, sporting an influence swimsuit and clunky Doc Martens. She’d take one take a look at that pathetic Mr. Banks and throw her head again in a match of laughter. She’d nonetheless be neat, exact, a hell of a singer. She’d nonetheless make associates with Bert, the chimney sweep. However ultimately, she’d entice Mrs. Banks to go away her depressing husband and the 2 of them would fly away, the kids hanging on to her boot straps with massive, shiny smiles throughout their faces.”

I keep in mind my re-imaginings as a toddler, picturing Ponch and Jon from tv’s CHiPs, for instance, as a loving couple as a substitute of mere coworkers, and deeply agree with Jackie’s conclusion inside that essay, “maybe I might need identified myself.”

There are different moments of queer recognition. In “Sexually Energetic,” an essay powerfully centered — utilizing the current tense for larger influence — on Jackie’s expertise with a homophobic nurse in a gynecologist’s workplace, Jackie describes the second they share information of their first relationship, one with one other girl, with their coworkers. As is so typically the case, the heterosexuals to whom queer individuals come out deal with the revelation as an invite to ask about much more private particulars. I’ve but to ask any of my straight associates for particulars of their intercourse lives, but Jackie is requested, as was I, “…which one in all you is the man?”

Jackie returns the reader to the gynecologist’s workplace within the subsequent part of this essay and as soon as once more drops a reality bomb for queer individuals confronted with the recursive want to teach individuals away from heteronormativity: “You’re eager about how drained you might be of throwing your self out of the closet time and again for full strangers.” Amen, Jackie. When individuals say that life for queer individuals will get higher, the tedium inside this want for repeated revelation just isn’t a part of that equation.

And but, Jackie returns to the query of popping out, this time as a queer particular person, on the finish of the essay, A Closet, A Field, A House, with magnificence and inspirational self-acceptance:

“For me, queer felt like a heat blanket — one to neatly unfold over all the reasons I’d all the time felt I owed individuals. Queer was a roof over my head when it appeared the world wouldn’t cease storming round me and I wanted shelter. Queer was a spot I might be surrounded by consolation and love. For me, queer was a house.”

I learn No Offense as a PDF, and I’m tempted to share screenshots. Jackie’s writing prompted web page after web page of highlighted sentences and circled paragraphs. As a reader, I used to be shouting my affirmations and applauding Jackie’s totally different journeys, and as a lot as I wish to share far more of Jackie’s intelligence and self-kindness from every of the seventeen essays inside No Offense with everybody, let me as a substitute skip forward to the ultimate essay, the ultimate coming-out second.

That final essay, “The Physique You Hold,” is, as Jackie tells the reader, one which advanced. It started life early in Jackie’s relationship with their associate, Kaitlin, as an exploration of what Jackie describes because the “central narrative” of the connection, Kaitlin’s consuming dysfunction, anorexia.

The evolution, the reader learns, begins as Jackie additionally realizes {that a} self-hatred of the physique is one thing they share with Kaitlin. However this revelation just isn’t quick. Jackie fastidiously particulars the impacts of Kaitlin’s anorexia on the early years of the connection: the fights, Kaitlin’s near-constant must train, and her near-constant guilt over her meals selections. After a number of pages, the ah-ha second arrives: “I didn’t have time to consider my physique throughout these early years.” “I uncared for myself and ignored my physique and wrote as a substitute about Kaitlin’s….”

The essay’s first model arrived as a weblog submit for Consuming Dysfunction Consciousness month, after Demi Lovato’s 2018 documentary, Merely Difficult, by which Demi discusses her consuming issues. It’s then one other Demi Lovato second, when the performer got here out as pansexual on an episode of Joe Rogan’s podcast in March of 2021, after which as nonbinary, two months later, on Instagram.

Demi’s consuming dysfunction revelations had a big influence on Kaitlin’s restoration; that rocky restoration pushed the connection Kaitlin and Jackie shared to the breaking level, a separation that included the sale of the home they shared. And though Jackie reassures the reader that they and Kaitlin did reconcile, Jackie has yet one more discovery ready, one which lastly linked them with their physique.

Jackie’s first true second of gender euphoria, that second of happiness you expertise when exterior facets of your self eventually align along with your inside perceptions, arrives after they resolve to bear a drastic haircut, one which begins a transition from lengthy hair to a a lot greater, tighter look. This tonsorial awakening connects Jackie together with her different experiences of gender dysphoria, these moments of disgrace, remorse, or unhappiness when our exterior appearances do not align with our inside perceptions, and lead Jackie, and the reader, to an excellent, affirming conclusion: “…my physique has continued on, malleable and robust and enduring of change. Its resilience leaves me in awe.”

I might need a vested curiosity within the sharing of coming-out tales like Jackie’s — I’m additionally writing one — however in contrast to my anonymous literary agent, I firmly consider that there can by no means be sufficient of them. Queer individuals come dwelling to themselves in myriad methods, and what an honor it was for me to share in Jackie’s journey.