bisexual

Public Service Reminder: Sexual Orientation is Internal

Kate Sloan

I’ve been engaging in a lot of conversations lately about various aspects of queer sexuality – what else is new? – and it occurred to me that a lot of people hold a huge misconception about sexual orientation.

Many people think you can tell a person’s sexual orientation from how they look, move, or speak. This could not be further from the truth.

In fact, you can never actually know someone’s sexual orientation unless they tell it to you in no uncertain terms. It’s just not something that can be definitively read. Doesn’t matter how good you think your “gaydar” is, or how much you think you know the “signs” – there’s literally no way to know for sure how someone identifies, unless they tell you themselves.

This extends to gender identity and trans* status, too. I’ve heard all too many people claim they’ve “never met a trans person,” but the thing is, they don’t know that. There aren’t any foolproof, telltale signs. Thinking you know whether someone is trans is as ignorant as thinking you know someone’s STI status just by looking at them – you don’t. There’s no way you could.

As a queer femme in a relationship with a dude, I get misread all the time. I understand perfectly well why it happens – I “look straight” (i.e. girly and not particularly “alternative” in any way), and I’m often holding hands with a member of the opposite sex. But that doesn’t make it any less frustrating. I recall the time I got booed at a Pride event for kissing my boyfriend, and how hurtful that was. That person assumed I was straight. They don’t know me and they don’t know what’s in my heart, but they thought they did, and that hurts.

But the thing is, practically everyone does it. I did it myself, the other day. A guy I volunteer with, who I’d always assumed was gay because he’d been telling me about the man he was seeing, suddenly mentioned that he doesn’t identify as gay. I still don’t know how he does identify, but it was a great reminder that we all need to stop making so many assumptions and just have the courage to ask if we’re curious. It’s been my experience, in queer and trans* communities, that asking someone “What do you identify as?” or “What pronouns do you use?” or “What kind of person are you usually attracted to?” is not frowned upon, but instead, almost always welcomed. People love to talk about themselves, especially if asked in a respectful, genuinely interested way.

How do you identify? Where do you lie on the Kinsey scale? Do you ever get misread for an identity that doesn’t fit you? How do you deal with that?

Story Time: My First Girlfriend

Kate Sloan

There’s nothing quite like being freshly out of the closet.

Once the smoke has cleared and you’re no longer dealing with a daily onslaught of reactions to your announcement, you can see the enormous horizons in front of you. You can see all the people who you now have permission to date and to fuck. And it’s a freeing, though incredibly terrifying, feeling.

I came out as bi when I was fifteen, after I realized that a raver chick who’d been flirting with me was actually pretty attractive. Not just in an “Oh hey, I like her outfit” kind of way, but in an “I wouldn’t mind if she pinned me against a wall and kissed me til my lips bruise” kind of way.

The raver girl got a boyfriend just before school let out for the summer. I remember being crushed when, on the last day of ninth grade, I stood by the front doors and watched her walk out, hand in hand with her new man (or should I say, boy). I had this sense that she was the only girl in possession of the key to my bisexuality, and I’d have to give up on girls forever now. It was silly, but it was how I felt.

But when we got back to school after the summer of my first Pride, I noticed a new girl. A charming, awkward, witty, intelligent girl who loved Edward Albee and potato latkes. Her gender presentation veered toward androgyny, and she proudly self-identified with the word “dyke,” but she was nowhere near butch. To this day, I still have a thing for girls who are boyish as hell but still very much girls (which I realize is hard to conceptualize and visualize – it’s more of a “vibe” thing, I suppose).

She wrote to me online to tell me she liked something I’d written, some story I’d read aloud in the English class we’d shared in the previous school year. We sent messages back and forth after that, rarely encountering each other at school but encountering each other multiple times a day in our online haunts. We talked about books and films and strange societal phenomena.

I remember standing at the sinks in the girls’ bathroom with my best friend at the time, and telling her, “I think I have a crush on that girl I’ve been talking to.” My friend said, “You should ask her out!” Like it was so simple. Like I was that brave. Like I was ready to take on my first relationship, period, let alone my first queer relationship.

It took me an entire month to build up a sense that The Girl actually liked me, in some way beyond just admiring my writing and my taste in horror flicks. But she did. I was almost certain of it. The way she looked up at me demurely when I walked by her group of friends at lunch, the way she snuck out of detention just to talk to me for a few short minutes, the way she kept mentioning her gayness and my biness as if to confirm the compatibility of the two. It seemed almost like an invitation.

Once, on the subway, I leaned forward to hug her just as the train was pulling into my stop, and it suddenly jerked, causing me to fall right into her. Body contact. Words caught somewhere in my esophagus. I gasped and giggled and rushed off the train, euphoric.

So it was finally time to do something about it.

I wrote her a letter, though “assembled” would probably be a better word, since it was actually just an annotated collection of excerpts from my journal. The excerpts explained that I really, really liked her, that I wanted to be with her and thought she was wonderful and thought about kissing her. Mushy crap that I figured she would like.

After shoving the letter nervously into her hands at the very end of a party, I said goodbye and rushed home. I didn’t want to be anywhere near her when she read that thing. I wanted to be far enough away that she could completely ignore me if she wanted to.

But she didn’t want to. My phone rang shortly after I arrived home.

“Hello?”
“Hi.” It was her.
“Hi.” I felt like I’d been dunked in ice.
“Hi. So… we should date.”

And so began the most gutwrenching and romantically titillating few weeks of my life thus far.

To be continued…?

Readers: Have any romantic stories from your youth to share? Did your first boyfriend/girlfriend live up to your expectations of relationships? How have you grown since then?

Things I Learned From My Friend With Benefits

Kate Sloan

When I was fifteen years old, I came out as bisexual. A lot of shit went down – I came out on Facebook, I got hit on by random queer schoolmates who came out of the woodwork, I had my first girlfriend (NBD, we only dated for a month), I attended my first Pride Parade… but maybe the most interesting thing that happened was that my female friend fell in love with me.

She was actually in love with me before we really became friends. She watched from afar, using social media and secondhand gossip as her telescope – and then we started talking, and then we became close. And then, eventually, we began a sexual relationship that would last a year and a half.

I’m not going to lie to you: it was weird. She loved me; I had no feelings for her beyond a friendly fondness. She worshipped my body; I thought she was kinda cute. She put her heart and soul into making love to me; I enjoyed our regular fucks. There’s a lot about that relationship that makes me feel kind of shitty in retrospect, but all the same, I’m very glad it happened, because it taught me most of what I know about the practical applications of sex.

1. Communication is hard. I grew up listening to Sex is Fun and Open Source Sex, so I knew how important it is to communicate with your sexual partner… but I guess I never realized how embarrassing and vulnerable it can be, until I actually had to do it. Even knowing that my partner was deadset on me and wouldn’t leave no matter what I said or did, it was still difficult for me to form basic sentences like “Could you lick a little harder?” Now, I have a lot more respect and understanding for people who get nervous about asking for what they want. There’s still no excuse for not stepping up to that responsibility, but I get it: it’s tough.

2. I love cunnilingus. Really, I do. It’s perfect and beautiful. It’s intimate and hot. It’s smooth and wet and tangy. It can be about dominance or submission or neither or both. I used to watch cunnilingus porn exclusively, thinking maybe my obsession would get diluted a little when I started having Real-Life Sex, and it did, a bit, but not really.

3. Sexual equality doesn’t always appear equal. This girl, she loved giving head. She could literally orgasm just from going down on me. She was way more of a giver than a receiver – and as I’m more on the receiver side of the spectrum, this worked for us. But at the same time, our friends viewed our connection from the outside and worried that we weren’t practicing equality. I see why they would wonder about that, but what they didn’t understand was that sexual equality isn’t about making sure each person gets the exact same treatment – it means making sure that each person gets exactly the same amount of what they really want. And we had that.

4. I love my body. If there’s one thing that can quell adolescent body image problems, it’s an adamant lover. Having someone obsess over the parts of you that you hate the most is indescribably wonderful. I frequently suffered spells of emotion when my lady-lover would say things like, “Please don’t talk about losing weight. You’re perfect the way you are.” Sometimes I think I’d still be insecure today, if not for that fateful tryst.

5. Friends-with-benefits situations can work… if handled properly. We always talked about our feelings. We always confessed if we were feeling jealous or smothered or neglected. We always told each other “where we were at,” even when that was scary or potentially hurtful. And we made our decisions accordingly, like when to take a break from each other, when to spend more time together, who to tell about us and who to keep in the dark. As a result, we both felt heard and respected, even if that sometimes meant getting our feelings bruised a little. I think that’s why we lasted so long.

6. Lesbian sex is great. Yup, the rumours are true – girly bodies, brought together in sexual union, are hot. But the thing is, good sex is good sex, regardless of gender. I learned that later, when I dated a guy. If your partner is enthusiastic, communicative, adventurous, and kind, the sex will be good, no matter who has what anatomy.

I learned so much from my teenage FWB. How to talk about sex, how to negotiate boundaries, how to enjoy my body with someone else’s. So even though our relationship ended on a sour note, I wouldn’t take it back – it formed the basis of all the awesome sex I’m having nowadays and will have for the rest of my days.

Getting Over Penis Terror: A Triumphant Tale

Kate Sloan

Once upon a time, I was a little queer girl who had never touched a penis.

Admittedly, I had never touched anyone else’s pussy either. But I’d previously been in a sexual relationship with another girl for a year and a half, and I’d been skilfully managing my own pussy for almost two decades, so there was no intimidation there.

Single but desperately ready to mingle, it dawned on me that a huge part of my issue was my fear of penises. It dominated the shadowy back room of my brain, threatening to burst through and cause major anxiety. I’d think about a cute guy, fantasize about kissing him, maybe contemplate his tongue on my clit, but as soon as his dick became part of my visualization, I felt sick and confused.

Not to get all hippie-dippy on you, but I am certain that the universe sensed my penile apprehension, and that that’s why my romantic life was such a disaster during that time. I longed for my (safe, reliable, non-terrifying) female ex, and wrote her pathetic love songs, which freaked her the fuck out. I dated a guy who was entirely wrong for me and ended up dumping me so he could fuck four other girls at a party. I spent all my time wishing for a boyfriend while unconvincingly sidestepping what I knew was the real issue.

Men wrote to me on OkCupid, men of two different varieties: those who propositioned me for casual sex, and those who seemed genuinely sweet and interested in dating me. The former, I ignored, or occasionally wrote rude replies to; the latter category of men, however, were more difficult. I strung them along, convincing both them and myself that we would eventually meet, even just for coffee, but as soon as that possibility became real, I panicked and ended all contact. All because of that looming, impending penis that gnawed at my composure.

That didn’t change when I first started going out with Jeremy*, but I did like him more than I’d liked anyone in a long while. We went on cute dates to tea shops and bookstores, and while I giggled and gallivanted with him, I secretly dreaded the moment his pants would inevitably come off.

I let him touch me – over the shirt, under the bra, over the skirt, under the panties. I let him do all sorts of nice things to me, all of which he (thank god) loved doing. Sometimes I would be overcome with guilt that I hadn’t reciprocated his sensual touch yet, and I would burst into tears while lying with my head on his chest. He’d hold me and tell me it was okay, I could go as slow as I wanted, and he’d be willing to wait forever for me. But I didn’t want him to have to wait forever.

It was a combination of attraction, mild cajoling, and plain courage that finally got me to touch his penis for the first time. He said, “You don’t even have to do anything to it. You can just put your hand on it.” So I did.

It wasn’t so bad. Soft and sensitive, just like my girly bits. Lightning didn’t strike me dead; I didn’t faint from terror. It was just… fine.

After a couple minutes of gentle, idle touching, I withdrew my hand and he let me watch him jerk off. I snuggled up to him and cast my gaze on the way his hand worked his foreskin up and over the head of his cock, again and again, alternately concealing and revealing that moist, pink surface. That night, I wrote in my journal, It was actually kind of gorgeous.

*Name changed to protect the cocks and egos of the innocent.