Trying to Come Out: My Story of Not Being Able to Escape the Closet

One of my earliest non-hetero memories was during a sleep-over at a friend’s house. I was most likely around 10 years old, and my female friend and I had just finished watching August Rush. In the film, it alludes to August’s parents having sex on a bench — how scandalous! — and I remember that scene staying with me throughout the night. When my friend and I were lying in bed, my mind drifted to the kisses I had seen on screen, and I remember briefly imagining what it would be like to kiss my friend like that. No, I had thought to myself, you can’t think about kissing your friend! You aren’t even dating!

At another sleep-over when I was 14 years old, two of my female friends went into a closet to “experiment” kissing each other — the one wanted to see if she was a lesbian, and it turned out she wasn’t — and I sat outside on the bed counting the minutes until they could exit with another friend, feeling jealousy that I wasn’t the friend picked to go test out my sexuality.

It was when I was in grade 6 that I became aware of homosexuality, and that it was an awful thing for someone to be. How dare someone act on their attraction to a member of the same sex!! As a child who had often felt pangs of attraction to the same sex, and had begun down the path of depression (very mild depression, at this point), this was the worst possible thing for a someone to have told me. Of course, I took the words and immediately attacked myself.

“I would never let myself be gay!” I would declare to my friends. “If I were gay I would send myself to rehab and fix it immediately!”

Every moment of attraction after that turned into one of immediate shame — not because I was attracted to my friend, but because my friend was of the same gender as me. So while I sat on the bed at 14 being jealous of my friends, I was also internally screaming at myself for allowing myself to have such sinful thoughts.

Eventually, I realized that homosexuality was not actually all that awful. So what if someone loves someone of the same gender? Love and let love be. I decided to be apathetic towards the LGBT community — their choices did not affect my life — and I also became apathetic towards what attraction I did have towards the same sex.

It was around the age of 13 that I developed raging crushes on the males my age, which convinced me that I was thoroughly heterosexual. I dated two boys in the end of junior high and the beginning of secondary school, and every celebrity crush I had was of the opposite sex. I dated a boy at the end of secondary school, too, and I lived my life comfortably as a heterosexual.

It was near the end of my secondary school career, however, that I discovered a new sexual orientation: bisexuality. This was mostly due to my ex-boyfriend coming out as bisexual. Now, I had heard of bisexuality before, but never had I really known what it was. Mostly bisexuality was in reference to girls who are more willing to do threesomes, and any character I had ever seen — who I realize now was bisexual — that displayed attraction to two genders often ended up being “confused” and their current partner was either the heterosexuality or homosexuality they had chosen to settle down with. It turns out, a person can be attracted to two whole genders at the same time while not having either attraction become “disqualified.”

In the past two years, I have found myself remembering many situations where I have found myself attracted to males and females. I get aroused by half naked women in movies and TV shows just as often as I do by half naked men. I can easily imagine, and enjoy the thought of, men and women doing sexual things to myself. If a girl went to kiss me, I would be as willing to reciprocate her advances as I would be if a boy did it.

But my latest problem in regards to being able to come out as bisexual is the simple fact that I find genitalia disgusting. Yes, you read that right. Penises and vaginas are disgusting to me. Vaginas are gross to me because I have one — not only do I find them unattractive, but I cannot fathom in the slightest as to why anyone would find them attractive in the first place. The same goes for penises, except I think they’re gross for slightly different reasons. I remember one time telling my bisexual ex that I thought I might too be bisexual, but as soon as I said I found vaginas gross, he immediately discredited me. “You can’t be a real bisexual if you don’t like vaginas.”

But then, would that also discredit me as any form of heterosexual? Can I be a true hetero if I think penises are nasty?

I suppose the only relevant factor in determining my sexuality is that I decided I am bisexual. Only I know what my attractions are, only I know how I feel towards my fellow human beings. And only I know what my sexual orientation truly is.