I’ve always felt attracted to both men and women, but usually not at the same time. One day it’s more dude-focused and then it’s back to women, but it always feels fluid. This has nothing to do with my ability to be in a committed relationship with one person. Actually, open or poly relationships have never worked for me, and I’ve mostly been in relationships with women.

I came out as bisexual to my mom at the age of 15. Back then, the terms homoromantic, one who dates mostly the same sex, an heteroromantic, one who dates mostly the opposite sex, weren’t around.

We were driving around downtown Evanston, a suburb just north of Chicago, in a navy blue Ford station wagon. She knew about John Turner, my boyfriend from our summer family vacation. But I felt like she must have known that something was going on with my best friend, Eleanor. I’d been fooling around with Eleanor since about age 13. My mom had no idea about any of my sexual adventures and I didn’t tell her that day. I did mention that the daughter of a family friend was bisexual, and that I was “also like her.” This was a strange new queer world to mom, and I felt like I needed to seek another support group aside from just my immediate family and one gay boy bestie at high school.

When I started attending a queer youth group at a church basement in Evanston, and sharing about my feelings of attraction and desire, it made sense to identify as bisexual. But I worried that my experience with John, my first boyfriend, wasn’t real at all, because it wasn’t like the one I’d had with Eleanor. Did that mean I was a lesbian, even though I really cared for John and liked the sexual experiences I’d had with him, and probably would have kept dating him if he lived nearby? I did end up meeting my first-ever girlfriend at that group, and have since mostly been in relationships with women.

But that early bisexual identity marker lingered for years, and I was reminded of it when I met Jason at a party in Chicago a few years ago.

Things with Kristin, my lover of nearly three years, were off again. She was living in Santa Fe, where she was doing a postdoc in neuroscience, and though I visited sometimes and admitted to myself that I was still deeply in love with her, this long-distance thing wasn’t quite working. Back in Chicago, I wasn’t interested in any other women. I felt really attracted to men again – like, I thought about sex with them when I masturbated – so why not make my fantasies a reality?

When I was talking with Jason, which involved looking at our phones and showing each other things and smiling a lot, my friend Marie interrupted and pulled me aside.

“So who’s that guy you’re talking to?” she asked.

“What? Oh, he seems nice. His name is Jason and he does web design or something,” I explained. “He’s also an artist.”

“I think he’s into you,” she whispered.

“Oh? What? Wait why do you think that!” I asked, in a shouting whisper.



“I mean, he’s giving you a lot of attention,” she said.

“We are having a conversation,” I remarked.

“Yeah, but like when a guy does that . . .” she said.

“Oh!” I exclaimed, as if finally getting something that I’d been blocking out of my purview for years, because I had been in this on-again, off-again thing with Kristin, who happened to be a woman, and I was really focused on her. She looked like a female version of Jim Gold, my elementary school dream boyfriend who played basketball and always had the latest Air Jordans, and she was also as athletic as he was.

Eventually I made my move, grabbing Jason’s hand and heading to the porch for a prolonged make-out session. I was grateful that Marie, another bisexual/queer-identified lady friend of mine who’d previously been married to a man but was now happily partnered with a masculine-of-center woman, had pulled me aside to have this girl-talk conversation. In talking with her, I felt like I could express my attraction to men without feeling judged. I wouldn’t have had the courage to keep talking with Jason if it weren’t for her. The truth was that I really didn’t want anyone at the party to think that I was bisexual, even though my actions were clearly indicating otherwise.

The term “bisexual” has always been pretty contested; there’s a stigma that bisexual women can’t ever be in a committed relationship, or that they just want to have sex all the time with everyone. Bisexual women are often identified by the sex of the partner that they’re with. I’ve had straight women friends of mine who tell me that they think I am straight and can I just get over this gay thing already, and lesbian friends throw me the stink eye and tell me that I really just need to admit that I’m gay.

Despite the potential for stigma, I decided to give it a chance with Jason. We went on a few more dates; we saw The Wolf of Wall Street, starring Leonardo DiCaprio (who I still think is hot), on a snowy dark night of Chicago winter. I hated the egregious masculinity of the movie, but Jason loved it. I was really into the fact that he was into it, and so to this day I still like that film. I took him to a queer performance art thing, and actually I hated it and he didn’t seem to mind it; later at dinner, we discussed Wolf.

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Eventually, Kristin came back to town, we slept together, I realized I still wasn’t over her and I called it off with Jason. In doing so, I also felt like I’d put an end to my potential “bisexual” identity. Kristin made me feel safe again in a lesbian identity even though I refused to be in a relationship with her. Soon I would move to Los Angeles, and she would not come with me.

Nowadays I let my stories tell themselves, and I don’t claim an identity unless people ask. I’ll mention a guy I dated if it comes up and is relevant, and then I’ll also say I’m dating a girl right now who I really really like, if they ask. I like the identifier “homoromantic bisexual,” which implies that I am bisexual but mostly am involved romantically with other women. But to say lesbian or straight/mono-sexual disqualifies the ever-expansive realms of desire, and both of those terms feel dishonest to me.

Usually it’s not an identity question, except when it comes to Mom and Dad. They are still hoping that I’ll let them know when I decide on an all-encompassing, single label, that I will pick a side, so that at least they can know something about my future that they feel is certain, not just a driveby memory of a suburban car ride.