A rose bi any other name might be straight (radio edited version)

*A warning to readers.  This post contains sexual content and violence, though never at the same time.  While explicit language is avoided, it describes a specific instance of domestic violence and discusses the effects of child abuse.  The existence of consensual adult sex is mentioned and specific acts are evoked or implied in some cases.*

I recently was talking to someone who threw out the term "bi lady" when referring to me.

Let's set aside "lady" right off the bat - my mother used to despair of my distaste for that word. To me it evokes someone mature and delicate, who can carry off a decent impression of what women are expected to be.

I certainly read as a straight girl and I guess I'm achieving some state of maturity, reluctantly, in my 40s.  But I only just learned this year how to use hair product; dressing up is fun but it feels like I'm in drag; and I've been told by more than one person that I walk like a man.  "Actually," said one, when asked for clarification, "it's more like a duck." 

As for "bi", this is a label I alternately struggled with and embraced for a decade, before finally not really needing it anymore.  I think when you finally reach a state of self acceptance, the definition you've been dancing with melts into "I am a human."

I grew up pretty uneventfully as a straight girl.  I crushed on boys from K-12, and dated guys from age 16 - 26.  I had sex with my first serious boyfriend after 8 months of dating; I was 17.  He was a virgin, and a repressed Catholic boy, so it was sweet and awkward and perfect.  I became a serial monogamist, average relationship 2-4 years, time between relationships anywhere between minus 5 days to 6 months.

One summer in my 20s, during one of those fun economic dips where lots of actual adult people lost jobs and houses, but which affected me mainly because nobody had full time well paid work for college kids, one of my four barely-above-minimum-wage jobs was a 10h a week gig at a restaurant. 

I became friends with a group of 3 other women - 2 servers and another busser like me.  We had breaks together, during which we laughed until we cried.  I came away from our meetings high, buzzing. 

The other busperson, let's call her A, lived four blocks from me, which in sprawling Canadian suburbia is like meeting someone in the grocery store and discovering that they live in your bathroom and you just never noticed.

Over coffee one day, A confessed to me that she was a lesbian.  I was the second person she had ever told and she was terrified.  I had never met a gay person before, at least not to my knowledge. 

Of course, logic dictates that in two decades I had most certainly met dozens of queers already, probably hundreds, and the burnished gold tags, "fag", "dyke", or "tranny" simply hadn't been properly affixed to their lapels that day.

If this seems unbelievable, it may help to know that I was a serious, studious honors student and so were all my closest friends.  I wasn't rebelling or exploring the world or talking about much of anything outside of academics; I was single-mindedly pursuing the highest score on every test set before me. I didn't even drink much until grad school in my late 20s.  So I was still pretty sheltered.

So when A confided in me, I was shocked and thrilled.  I felt special for having been trusted with this revelation and protective of A, who was in no way comfortable with her stated identity.

The first person she had told was her mother, a tall, stocky outspoken social activist who wrote petitions for international women's rights, demonstrated for worker's rights and was very fond of the underdog.  Bizarrely, this passion for justice in the world was accompanied by a tyranical need for control over her own family.

When A's mother heard this news, she screamed, "no," over and over; she kicked and hit my friend, throwing her against the wall, treatment that I gathered was not unprecedented although this particular trigger was unique. 

The reality of homophobia, both internal and external, is that family matters.  It's a lot like rape, or any other violence perpetrated against the "weak".

Media, news and social education efforts related to  violence - when I was growing up at least - all focused on stranger danger.  Women pursued by anonymous figures in parking lots; children lured into cars with candy; femmy men beaten outside of discoteques by bands of roving thugs.

I think this external focus is still pretty mainstream.  We want to believe that violation is separate from "normal" society, it's outside of us, lurking in the shadows, when in fact most women are raped by an acquaintance, most child abuse happens in the home, most queer people initially face judgement or outright rejection by parents, siblings and peers, and it is at least as scarring as anything that could be perpetrated on you by a stranger. 

It's so confusing to be hurt by someone you need; the anger you feel is polluted by fear and guilt and shame and grief and there is no place to run to for support.  Daily you are confronted with your abuser.  Daily you think about killing them.  Daily you long for their gentleness and nurturing.  If only you get it right today, they'll finally love you without hurting you.

This person is not always a man, contrary to the women-are-nurturing, men-are-violent stereotypes.  Tangentially, the dykes-are-raped-women theory is a handy way to dismiss an entire inconvenient group as simply victims of all that stranger danger but it just ain't that simple, world, sorry.

But I digress, and I'm sorry because my how-I-turned-queer story is largely upbeat and a little hot so I will return to the regularly scheduled coming out.

So there was another woman in the group, B, who was tall, blonde and butch - (not the term I would have used at the time since I had never heard it) - and I was crushing hard on her - (not the term I would have used at the time since I had no idea I was attracted to women) -

so: I just really really really looked forward to seeing her.  all day long.  every single day.

B invited me to go shopping after work with her "roommate" S, a short blonde butchier version of B.  We drove to the mall, me seated in the back of their sweet little convertible while they discussed the day's purchase (blender and clothing) and their future plans - S was planning to enter the police academy and B was trying to find a career that was more stable and better paid than waiting tables.

I remember thinking that I had never met roommates who were so close.

A couple of weeks later they had me over for dinner.  I learned that A had also confided in them, which, they said, made sense since they were the only other lesbians A knew (picture me trying to hide that I was choking on my water).

Then they mentioned D, the fourth member of our merry band of restauranteurs.  She was in the middle of a divorce.  She had two kids.  She was going back to dating women.   Thankfully for my fragile ego and perceived coolness factor, they misinterpreted my second bout of water inhalation, and explained that she wasn't gay, just bi.

Oh right.  Of course.  That explains everything.

(WTF.)

I had never heard this term before.  I knew homosexuals existed and had no problem with it apart from being too sheltered to recognize them without a "hey I'm gay" handshake. I had certainly never questioned my own sexuality, because I liked men.

The rest of the conversation was similar to my coffee date with A. They congratulated me for being open minded and welcomed me into the ranks of their straight allies and I was So Happy to be able to offer something important to this gorgeous muscular funny woman (and her girlfriend).

And then a few months later I woke up early one morning and thought, "OHHHHHHHHH.  WAIT."

I never told B that I was bi.  First of all I would have had to hand back my straight ally status, which was still warm from the oven and was the most significant bond we had.

Second I just didn't trust it.  Was I really bi?  Was I just imagining it?  Was I merely saying it to get attention?  Certainly I enjoyed the reaction it got from men.  Besides, I had never dated a woman.  Frankly the women I was drawn to - beautiful, funny, outspoken -  intimidated me. 

I knew how to be passive and seductive and attract men.  I had NO IDEA how to approach women.  Or what to do with them.  I had learned how to operate the machinery on a guy, which came as naturally as breathing and was a pretty easy lesson -

(- as an aside, I will draw this further parallel: men are like cars; once you've driven one, you're pretty much skilled enough to drive them all.  Women are like motorcycles - the center of gravity, seating position, acceleration and responsiveness, clutch distance, brake sensitivity, all varies so much that if you take out a sporty bike after only driving cruisers your whole life, most likely you're going to die in a fiery crash..... BUT I DIGRESS SOME MORE)

- but I wasn't all that comfortable with my own anatomy.  So what to do with all these warm fuzzy feelings when I looked at naked ladies...   (now THERE is a good use of the word lady.)

Even from a young age I had far more fantasies about women than men although I suspect this has a little to do with social constructs about what the genders are for: women are passive and accomodating, men are active and aggressive, women receive sexual attention, men actually experience pleasure...  without even reflecting on it at all, I identified with male sexuality.

I am not a very private person unless I try really, really hard, and my peers were science and math geeks ie frighteningly smart, unconventional, socially awkward, mildly autistic and utterly without judgement or mainstream expectations.

So pretty much all my friends knew I was bi by the time I was 24 even though I STILL hadn't actually even so much as kissed a woman.

My attempt at flaunting gender stereotypes extended to buying a motorcycle, riding around in skimpy dresses and confusing people at gas stations by taking off my helmet and allowing my long dark hair to cascade out.

Then I dated this guy, let's call him M. 

Within a week of dating he confided that he thought he was bi - he loved women but he fantasized all the time about being with men. 

What happened next reminds me of one of the many similarities I can draw between sex and dancing.  Traditionally in partner dance there is a lead and a follow.  Typically the leader is the man, the follow a woman, a convention I obeyed when I started dancing.

Only a few months into dancing, I realized I wanted to teach and since you have to be able to demo both roles, I had to learn how to lead.  Which is how I discovered that I love leading in dance just as much as I like to follow. 

Beginning dancers tend to stick to one role and are often quite freaked out by the notion of switching.  But if you spend any time in the dance world you will notice that really good leads do not find it emasculating to follow other good leads or switch roles with women; they recognize it makes them better dancers.

Really good follows already have picked up some of the skills needed to lead, and have some basic interest in leading if only to show their non-dancing friends how it's done and convince yet more people to drink the kool-aid.

And there are some folks who just want to do the unconventional role all the time.  Women who prefer to lead; men who prefer to follow.

And so it is with sex.  Though that is a far more taboo switch.  I had become pretty bored with straight sex, and if I hadn't met M, might eventually have concluded that I wasn't bi at all but actually a lesbian.  Instead I discovered that what was missing wasn't some specific anatomy.  It was the freedom to play well outside of the missionary position and my role as a passive sperm recipient.

In the meantime I met a woman who was in the middle of a nasty divorce and custody battle over her two year old daughter; her ex-seminarian Catholic husband had cheated on her with his secretary and she had joined a woman's group to cope with her anger and grief, which dug up all sorts of stuff about childhood neglect.  I was in the same group to deal with my issues around intimacy with women.

Though she identified as straight, and never wavered in that label, when I drove her home one night, she declared she was drawn to me.

What happened between us was mostly a lot of nots

we did not have sex in any officially recognized way
we did not fall in love

we did not kiss

But she craved touch and I love touching people.  One night she asked me to brush her hair.  Her reaction was blissful.  I stroked her head.  She swooned.  I stroked her arms.  Her ribs.  Her thighs.  We both conceived of all this semi-erotic contact as "spiritual healing".  I was like an unlicensed massage therapist freed from any culturally imposed limits on what appropriate touching might consist of.

One night we went dancing with her straight friends at a local cowboy bar.  We danced together, not even close, more like girlhood friends holding hands and being silly. But I'm from such a conservative city and that was such a hick part of town that the energy we were sharing made the other patrons visibly uncomfortable and her friends made some passive aggressive comment about her being inappropriate.

Afterwards, she was feeling rebellious rather than cowed so we went home, got a little drunk and I took off her shirt, skipped first base, went straight to second.
 

Yup.  Totally bi.  I could have happily occupied that base all night but I got shy and went to bed - in a separate room - completely frustrated and scared to go any further in case she didn't like it.

Now, years later, I am certain she would have let me do just about anything to her.  Oh, to have a time machine...   Her reaction to what did happen was so sweet, taking it any further most likely would have just about stopped my heart.

Then I left for grad school in another country.  Left my boyfriend and my friend-with-massage-benefits and my platonic friends and family and moved to a city where I didn't know anyone.

And started dating girls for reals.