A Bisexual Truth
The following views are that of my very own, derived from years of insurmountable sexual angst, ultimately leading to a life of many intimacies fulfilled. Like most, my journey to self realized sexuality was one of confusion, heartache, shame and a few occasionally beautiful instances resembling something like a breakthrough. I didn't grow up in a particularly strict household but I was, however, exposed to quite a few radical belief systems that did not look favorably upon those of the queer persuasion. For ten years I attended a private catholic school that taught me everything from pre-calculus to how to extinguish an impure thought with the power of prayer. Funny thing is I didn't see my youthful curiosities as "impure" or not in alignment with God's agenda because, to me, they were essentially harmless and made me feel good in the process. How could that be wrong? I thought it was unfair to encourage little boys to have heteronormative crushes, tease or pick on girls at recess for the sake of "he's only doing that because he likes you", yet send me off to sit by my lonesome during lunch because all my drawings of the future depicted me with a wife instead of a husband. At that age I didn't know queer from a cat turd in the sandbox so to repeatedly penalize my innocence without reasonable explanation was always a mystery to me. The only thing I was ever at fault for was having the audacity to imagine the world as a safe space for all human kind.
The decade I spent at The Shrine Of The Sacred Heart left me eager to rebel. This is not the part of the story where I tell you I shaved my head, ran away from home and married some non-binary beauty in Brazil. But I will tell you, I torched my gross plaid uniform, began my art-based scholastic career and met my first girlfriend during theater tech classes in high school. It was there behind those hallowed walls that I got my entire life, expressed myself to the fullest and began unlearning the shame and self hate I had grown so accustomed to. Somewhere between choosing colleges and moving into the dorms, my parents and I began an honest and healthy dialogue about my sexuality. I had the love and support of my family and they sent me off into the world to be the best representation of all my truths.
In college there was sex, lots and lots of sex anchored by the never ending demands of one of the top ranking art schools on the east coast. Between critiques, lectures and gallery openings I partook heavily in what was indeed my sexual revolution. I was a "gold star" lesbian to the fullest extent and had a strict rule against dating women who identified as bisexual. I thought of them as messy, greedy and unable to commit. That was only half true. It wasn't until I met a bisexual woman with all the sensitivities of an ideal friend and partner only she was married to a man and to my surprise happily committed to their monogamous union. She willfully explained "it just works for us". Her continued openness with me began the undoing of certain personal ideals I thought were set in stone. I realized I wasn't exclusively drawn to women because I hated men, I was drawn to women because women are fucking awesome.
After calling it quits on my first official long term relationship, I was emotionally exhausted and burnt out by classes. At the end of the semester I found myself heartbroken at a house party, drinking and dancing my pain away. The night mellowed out into the lull a few wasted artists singing sad songs around a piano so out of tune, it was charming. In the corner there was this guy, lets call him Bob, a tall lanky white boy with blue eyes and wild black hair. He looked up from tuning his guitar and asked me to stick around for a jam session. I'm not exactly sure why but I stayed. We sung right into the wee hours of the morning and in the harsh reality of day a handsome stranger with a knack for crafting handmade guitars out of found materials had me a little shook to say the least.
Months went by and I found myself running into Bob everywhere. Twice at a concert and again at another party on campus. He and his guitars began to grow on me in ways I wasn't exactly comfortable with. But I didn't immediately entertain the idea of being more than Bob's friend. I continued to nurse the hurt of my last failed relationship and became laser focussed on graduating with honors. My trusted friends at the time found it funny that I waited until my junior year of college to experiment with heterosexuality yet encouraged me to explore my options and to stop holding onto some ridiculous gold star status that began doing me more harm than good. However, the more honest I was about my desires, the more disgusted I became with myself in general. I was worried about becoming greedy oversexed and unable to commit. I was afraid of loosing my place within the culture that shaped me and then it dawned on me… My culture has subcultures and I am allowed to move freely among them. Needless to say I slept with Bob and lost my hetero-virginity sometime before my 22nd birthday. But I refuse to romanticize this occurrence. There were no plans to start a family, no visions of a rustic wedding in the woods. Bob was merely the penis that catapulted me into shaping my most realized sexual self.
I came to the conclusion that the ability to love and be loved greatly supersedes the parameters of gender and the gender binary. If you are lucky, your willingness to see past these learned boundaries will reward you with a greater understanding of our infinite capacity to relate and love as we were meant to. In the years following my enlightenment, I concentrated on applying these new truths to the way I viewed relationships in general, be it romantic or otherwise. I totally lost the need for labels. I had grown tired of being compartmentalized for the convenience of others and found freedom in making things as uncomplicated as possible.
Here I am in the wake of my thirties, madly in love with one person and even more myself now than I have ever been before. Being what folks casually label as bisexual did- not render me ran-through, greedy or unable to commit. My sexuality isn't cheapened nor bombarded by requests of threesomes and other cliche fantasies that are far from the norm. I didn't have to sacrifice my attraction to women in order to exclusively love my man either. He is able to be my future without having to manipulate my past. We didn't have to loose ourselves to find each other. My sensitivities haven't changed, instead they have greatly expanded in order to house all the beautiful things that keep blood pumping to this heart of mine. Love isn't linear, it bends and moves and mimics the form of many things. Don't miss out on yours by forcing it into a box that real cannot recognize.
