Written by:
Michele Fisher
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this Issue of Curve:
Vol. 14#5
Riding a Bi-Cycle
By Michele Fisher
The other day, a distraught co-worker cornered me and told me she thought her teenage daughter might be a lesbian. She gave me the five-minute version of her daughter’s life story and finished by asking me if I thought her daughter was gay. From what I had heard, I said, her daughter didn’t sound gay.
I thought this would make my co-worker happy, but something was obviously still bothering her. She told me she wouldn’t mind if her daughter were a lesbian, but that she definitely didn’t want her to be bisexual. Uh-oh. I had to confess that I wasn’t sure her daughter wasn’t a bisexual; I was just pretty sure she wasn’t a lesbian. She became distraught all over again.
Bisexual has been a dirty word in the gay community for a long time. For people who pride themselves on being open-minded and forward-thinking, our attitudes about bisexuals are positively prudish. Over the years, homos have learned to keep their bigoted opinions to themselves — or at least to whisper rude comments about bisexuality only to those homos sitting in close proximity. Most Pride parades now include the word “bisexual” somewhere in the festivities, but it was rough going for a long time. Tempers flared, insults were hurled and the debate raged on eternally. Some homos thought the bis should have their own damned parade; several vowed to stay home on Pride rather than march with the ungay. Eventually, cooler, more moderate voices prevailed and bisexuals became a regular part of our Pride celebrations.
But word on the street is still that bisexuals are bad news. I guess I always knew about the bad rap that semi-queers get in the gay community, but I didn’t know that heterosexuals have the same beef. I asked my co-worker why she would be upset if her daughter were bisexual. She launched into some speech about the importance of “knowing who you are and what you are about.” I guess for her, it boils down to this: You have to like either boys or girls.
I’m not a mother, so I knew better than to start spouting off. But our conversation got me thinking. When I was a baby dyke, the concept of bisexuality scared the bejesus out of me. I was constantly getting my heart broken by chicks who had a thing for dicks (and not the store-bought kind, either). Every time I thought I had met my true love, she was getting back together with an old boyfriend or a new husband. I became as bitter as an aspirin. I vowed never to give my heart to a bi girl again. I began rigorously screening prospective dates for allegiance to the lesbian lifestyle. Within the first hour of the first date, I would inquire about a woman’s sexuality. If I heard any hemming or hawing, I hightailed it out of there. If a girl told me she was “experimenting” with her sexuality, I let her know that I was not the lab rat for her. If she told me anything other than that she was a lesbian, I skedaddled. I guess it worked. I got my heart broken many more times, but never again by a bisexual.
As you can imagine, I found that insulating myself from bisexual women was not nearly as rewarding as I thought it might be. Knowing a girl was dumping me for another girl didn’t make me feel any better at all — damn it. In time, I abandoned my bisexual filtering system and tried to focus on finding women who wouldn’t rob me or drive me to the nearest crack house. (As regular readers know, I wasn’t too successful at this, either.)
When I returned to work the next day, my co-worker gave me the latest installment of her drama. Her daughter had declared over supper that she might like to “try women.” Understandably, Mom came unhinged. Her daughter seemed to think that her mother was being irrational and judgmental, and went on to explain that many of her high-school gal pals had already “tried women.”
I knew my ears must have deceived me. Surely her daughter was just trying to shock her poor mother. But no — her mom swore that her daughter is not the provocative type; in fact, she is as rational as a teenager can be. My co-worker obviously needed some guidance, but I was too immersed in my own thoughts to be of much use to her. I couldn’t help thinking what a charmed adolescence I might have led if the girls in my school had wanted to give homosexuality a whirl. When I was a teenager, we gave beer bongs and Jell-O shots a whirl, but none of my girlfriends ever asked me to roll around with them in teenage rebellion. I think I mumbled something helpful about looking on the bright side because her daughter wasn’t pregnant.
When I went home that night, I was out of sorts. The idea of kids experimenting with their sexuality shouldn’t bother me, but it did. I realized I was offended that being gay had become some kind of youth fad. Sexuality isn’t a fashion statement. It isn’t something to be toyed with. I paid a high price for being queer, and not so some teeny-bopper could prance around in a crop top holding hands with her cheerleader pal, playing gay for a day.
Whoa! Suddenly I had one of those Grinch-on-Christmas-morning moments. I realized my thoughts were not charitable — or logical. Maybe sexuality was not so serious after all. Perhaps it was perfectly normal for young people to try on different sexualities to see how they fit. If teens today have an easier time than I did, I should be happy for them instead of envious.
Just about every dyke I know has slept with a boy at some point in her life. Even the really butch ones. (I would say especially the really butch ones, but I don’t want to get too much mad mail.) Point is, it didn’t kill us. It was all part of figuring out who we were. Sometimes you have to figure out what you aren’t first.
I realized I had been pondering bisexuality from a very personal, and therefore myopic, point of view. I felt sorry for the baby dyke who would fall madly for my co-worker’s daughter only to learn that her daughter was just going through a phase. But being a kid is getting your heart broken. A boy or a girl might break it, but most don’t make it to 20 without a torn ticker.
The next day, I woke up looking forward to giving my co-worker some much-needed comfort and perspective. When I saw her, I told her about my revelation. I explained that sexuality is a continuum, and there is a whole lot of room between gay and straight. The only way to figure out where one fits in the world is to try different things on for size. I assured her that her girl would most likely end up on one side of the fence or the other, but even if she didn’t, there was nothing wrong with loving both genders. Bisexuality is not a dirty word, or a dirty lifestyle. I felt good telling her this stuff, so I continued by revealing that people get mad about bisexuality for their own insecure reasons. Maybe, like me, they chose bad partners who used bisexuality as an excuse to hurt people. Bisexuals get a bad rap as indecisive and confused, but that’s wrong. They have made a choice, and their choice is to live honestly and love whom they are attracted to. Bisexuals aren’t any more or less likely to be assholes, louts or cheaters than heteros or homos.
I was pretty pleased with my new and improved way of looking at bisexuality. But my co-worker did not seem too impressed. As she gulped the last of her coffee, she casually informed me that her daughter confessed that she was just mad at her boyfriend and cooked up this bi scheme to get him to pay more attention to her.
Goddamned bisexuals.
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