I Didn’t Know I Was Bi Until My 30s
Why did it take me so long to figure it out?
My first crush was an older boy in my church youth group who played Jesus in our tiny Passion play. I was thirteen and his sixteen seemed impossibly older and dignified. I don’t think he ever knew I gazed at him longingly from afar. But then, when Katy Perry’s music video for “Teenage Dream” dropped, I watched it once, and for days replayed in my head the scenes of Katy in her underwear, not understanding why.
I loved the playful subversiveness of Leigh Nash singing “There She Goes” in her sparkling crystalline voice. But I didn’t know that’s why I loved it. We played “Kiss Me” at every church youth event that year. Sixpence None the Richer was acceptable in Christian circles so I could listen to a girl singing about how she “just can’t contain this feeling” about another girl without any guilt.
When I played the Elder Scrolls RPGs, the in-game option of romancing and marrying an NPC fascinated me. And I immediately pursued a woman to marry (I was playing as a woman). I never even considered any of the marriageable male NPCs.
I’ve always loved stories of True Love™, like The Princess Bride, Beauty and the Beast, and Cinderella. For a little while, in my early teens, I lamented the fact that Charles was too old and William and Harry…
