Getting Bi

At 18, I was sure of my sexuality. I was straight. And grumpy about it.

It wasn't that I had a problem with guys; I was as boy-crazy as the next teenager. But bisexuality made more sense to me in theory. I couldn't stand the thought that I could be missing out on potential partners for such an arbitrary reason as gender. It's not like I was trying to get pregnant.

Nonetheless, I had never had so much as a proto-crush on a woman in my life. Sure, I had found myself wondering “what if I'm attracted to her?” when I hugged my girlfriends - but always the same way I thought “what if I jumped?” on bridges or cliffs. Nothing to get hung up about.

Still, I figured that like everyone else, I'd undergone a fair amount of societal conditioning which could probably be counter-acted given the right surroundings. Luckily my boyfriend at the time was bi, and so I had a perfect excuse to go to the 1993 Pride Parade in DC. I painstakingly lettered a “you don't love a gender, you love a person” sign, picked a lavender T-shirt, and reassured my parents that I was going for Mark's sake to be supportive.

The march was great, but at no point did it inspire the pouring out of long-repressed feelings of gayness. Mostly Mark and I attracted attention for being an opposite-sex couple not clinging for dear identity onto a clearly-marked “straight allies” contingent. Responses ranged from gushy (We were starting to look like competition for Abba in the race to fill queer photo albums) to sarcastic (“Hey, is that legal?”). I came away with some photos of smooching boys in red sequined shorts and the requisite dog with freedom rings on its collar. And I wanted more than ever to belong to any group that could come up with the chant “We're bitchy, we're sun burnt, we want our rights now!” I just wasn't sure how I fit.

The next fall I went off to Queer Mecca - otherwise known as Oberlin College. I picked it for its environmental studies program. Really. But it was certainly more sustained contact with queer culture than a one-day march. At Oberlin, there are more different queer organizations than sports teams, and the major campus social event is the spring drag ball - even straight male Obies shave their legs for it. In other settings, I could be the risqué one just by admitting to being open to the possibility of someday considering the idea of maybe under the right circumstances not necessarily saying no to sleeping with a woman. In Oberlin it was as mundane as saying you wanted to save the world.

I hung out at queer bonfires (the people there actually sang), became a groupie of the Queerscendos acappella group, and immersed myself in the great dental dam debate. But on October 11, National Coming Out Day, I still found myself saying things like “uh, queer straight girl?” and “heteroflexible?” It was fairly accurate - I still had the angsty feeling of being a bi girl trapped in a body soaked with straight girl hormones. But all I got back was patient patronizing looks. If all the “bi-though-I'm-really-mostly-into-guys” Oberlin women had gotten together they could've taken over a couple of the largest dorms.

No, proximity just wasn't going to cut it. After careful thought, I figured there was only one way I could legitimately claim the bi label - if it were true. So began a period of intense investigation. I picked beautiful women - at least one per day - and stared at them for as long as I could get away with, trying to work up some feelings of lust. For good measure, I alternated between straight and queer beauty standards. (Bare midriffs counted for both.) If I had been male, my scholarly endeavors might well have gotten me smacked.

But it was to no avail. If you've ever tried to force yourself to fall for that really nice person who seems on paper like your very own personal ad come true, then you know about how much success I had. Not one of them kept my attention after I looked away.

Eventually I gave up. My love life didn't really need complicating further anyway. While the girl hunt wasn't working, I had managed to acquire two boyfriends.

By the summer after freshman year, my two guys had seriously burnt me out on relationships in general. To get my mind off them, I let myself get talked into going to the annual Stonewall march in New York City with a friend of a friend of a friend.

She was a redheaded, embarrassingly young dyke with a knowing smile, lots of curves, and not an inch of midriff showing. We enjoyed ourselves by telling obsessive Ani DiFranco fans than Ani was dating a guy, and groaned as a group of very earnest women tried to make a chant out of “Woman by nature, lesbian by Grace… and if you see Grace tell her I said hi.” At the end of the march, we collapsed under a tree in Central Park, and with none of the famous lesbian processing and negotiation, she kissed me. A long, intent, non-academic, lust-stirring kiss that more or less kept my attention - though it had significant competition from the surrounding parade of distractingly hot gay male chest.

Miriam Axel-Lute is a writer from Albany New York. She has been married to a very sexy woman for twelve years.

This essay first appeared on the now-defunct Reading Divas site.