I wasn’t the same woman after it happened, after I slept with a bisexual poly woman who wanted me just as much as I wanted her.

She was so incredibly soft. Her body slipped over me like a silk sheet as we rocked together, to waves only we felt.

I swam under her. I was melting, falling, dying, shivering from the warmth.

“Can I please?” she asked, directing her gaze downward. And I could hear the desire in her voice.

“Yes,” I said, half-gasped, without hesitation.

She dove. And I flew.

*

I felt…wanted. But it was more than that.

For the first time in years, I felt delicious.

There was a high school girlfriend, ages ago. But that ended so badly. And enough time has passed that I worry I’ve imagined it.

I’m sure it doesn’t help that my poly dating experiences have yielded a lot of women that identify as queer, bisexual, or pansexual and like to present that way to attract men, but when the cards are down, they’re not actually interested in having sex with other women. They used to call themselves “bicurious,” but that’s falling out of fashion.

When I found polyamory 8 years ago, I became close to a lot more self-identifying bisexual women than I ever knew before (really, most of the women I’ve had sex with up until recently considered themselves straight) and had many more female friends who identify as bisexual.

Many of them discovered bisexual fantasies through exposure to girl on girl porn and the encouragement of their male partners, who find these latent desires profoundly arousing.

Of course, everyone has to start somewhere. But when they speak of their bisexuality, they are lighthearted and optimistic, and I don’t detect the weight of experience, the sum of years, the reality that all interaction is work, all meaning has some sort of cost. You can almost see the tonal shift when they switch: Committed to men, curious about women.

I envy them to a certain extent. Female bisexuality has been fetishized extensively as of late, and it’s now standard for straight girls to make out to attract males, an act unthinkable in the years of my early and late adolescence. Performative female bisexuality for the male gaze.

Consequently, the polyamorous dating scene is flooded with a lot of theoretical bis, girls who like to kiss other girls but are repulsed by lesbian sex.

The trouble is that you can’t call them out on it. First, you could be wrong. After all, repulsion and anxiety can resemble one another. If they’ve never slept with a woman, it could be first-time jitters, a virgin’s stage fright. And even if you’re right, using the language of bi erasure feels wrong. One of the biggest myths about bisexual people is that we don’t actually exist.

The overabundance of essentially straight (often heterosexually partnered) queer and bisexual-identifying women isn’t just a time waster. Oh no, it’s far more insidious than that. Date enough of them and you start to worry there’s something wrong with you.

While they insist they’re bisexual and super into women, they avoid your pussy like it’s on fire and they’re doused in gasoline.

This bait-and-switch pattern is reinforced by straight men. It’s currently in vogue for straight men to claim they love to give oral pleasure to women. Without prompting, they bring up the topic of going down on a woman, praising the act, often saying, “It’s one of my favorite things to do.”

And then an awkward 30 seconds of jerky tongue convulsions later, scattered across my vulva, none of them actually making contact with my clitoris, a dismount, some transparent lie like, “My jaw is tired,” or “That’s just making me too horny, let’s fuck.” Uh huh. Likely story.

All roads lead to the same place: There’s something wrong with my pussy. You got down there and decided it was a crime scene.

But not her. And we devoured one another.

She fucked me back to life.