I still remember holding my breath in front of the TV, the volume dialled down to a whisper so no one else in the house would hear. Two men leaned in on Melrose Place — Matt Fielding and his date — the tension so obvious even my teenage brain knew what was coming. Finally, proof that queerness wasn’t just in my head, that it could exist on screen. And then… the scene cut away. A pan to the window. A fade to black. Later I’d read that Fox made the show literally edit out the kiss before it aired, the audience left with a shot of curtains billowing instead of the thing we’d been waiting for.
That was how queerness arrived for me: edited, blurred, smuggled in through subtext. Willow and Tara on Buffy were girlfriends long before they were allowed to kiss, their first on-screen “I love you” disguised by clever blocking, the camera spinning away at the crucial second. Jack McPhee on Dawson’s Creek got his big romantic kiss once, in the final episode, like a consolation prize for six seasons of waiting. And then there was Smallville. Clark and Lex staring at each other like they were one brooding monologue away from ripping their clothes off, chemistry so undeniable the fandom thrived on it, yet always written off as “you’re imagining it.”
When you’re young and queer, you learn to live on crumbs. A glance. A pause. A shoulder squeeze shot like a love scene. Those scraps became whole narratives in my head. I convinced myself subtlety was romance, that silence was intimacy, that a cut-away was as good as a kiss. And because I was watching in secret, perched too close to the screen, thumb hovering over the remote in case someone walked in. The secrecy felt natural. TV wasn’t just showing me queerness; it was training me in how to hide it.
Learning Subtext as Survival
Looking back, I think that’s why so many of us got so fluent in subtext. Not just in media, but in life. TV taught us to catch the wink, to hold onto a coded line, to treat “almost” as enough. We became experts in reading between the cuts because we had to. Our lives ran on the same rules: don’t say it out loud, don’t be too obvious, don’t let anyone catch you looking too long.
This was the era of “just friends” and “very close roommates.” Of the Gay Best Friend who never got his own storyline. Of the queer-coded villain who got all the style but never the kiss. We took what we were given, and built meaning in the gaps. But it came at a cost. Because when every love story you see is silenced or sidelined, you start to believe your own deserves the same treatment.
When the Camera Finally Stayed
And then something shifted. Glee gave Kurt and Blaine their first hallway kiss. Pretty Little Liars let Emily have girlfriends without disguising them as “study buddies.” Euphoria handed us chaotic, messy, painful, real queer love. And Heartstopper arrived like an antidote. Soft, simple, loud in its tenderness.
For the first time, the camera didn’t flinch. It didn’t cut away. It stayed with us. And honestly? At first it felt almost too much. After years of half-visibility, seeing ourselves fully on screen was disorienting. Like walking into sunlight after living underground.
But it mattered. Because those kisses weren’t just representation — they were repair. They told us our stories didn’t have to be whispered, edited, or hidden in subtext. That we could be clumsy and messy and public. That we could take up space.
Why It Still Matters
Sometimes I think about that younger version of me, sitting in the dark, volume low, heart pounding over a kiss that never came. I think about the silence that stretched longer than it should have, and how I learned to fill it with imagination, longing, code. And then I think about now, where queer teens can scroll TikTok and see a hundred messy, glorious kisses before breakfast.
Representation isn’t perfect. Shows still cancel queer arcs, still bait us with subtext, still bury our gays. But the difference now is that the kisses exist. They’re on screen, uncut, undeniable. The camera finally stays.
And maybe that’s the thing: almost was never enough. It mattered because it taught us how to see. But it matters more that now, finally, we don’t have to look away.
Follow @glitchesinthegaydar for queer pop culture, digital nostalgia, and the occasional emotional jump scare.
