Bisexuality: Evolving from Shame to Shine
Boys I’ve known, secrets I’ve kept, mistakes I’ve made
When I came Out as bi during the rise of the pandemic, I felt like I finally had some perspective on old feelings and new struggles. But it took talk therapy to help me find the pattern, and to understand the cause.
I can now confidently say that I’ve been bisexual since puberty. Like other boys, I was in the throes of heady crushes on girls in middle school, even if I didn’t have the courage to do more than walk with them to class. I’d shot up like a weed over one summer, shedding my pudgy face and middle for a stretched-out physique, deepening voice, and limbs that grew faster than my coordination. I was tall, and cute in a gangly sort of way, like a newborn giraffe wobbling around. Whatever physical and social graces I lacked, I tried to cover for by being funny and the class clown. It was easier to be part of a social circle if that circle was already laughing. I was also privately becoming very aware of boys’ bodies, especially others freshly stretched-out by hormones. I remember being particularly aware of the way arm veins bulged out on certain guys, and envying them. I would catch myself watching the bounce of their Adam’s apples as they spoke, and checking my own in the mirror. Those were just the visible signs. I was very aware of other, more intimate changes and how focused my brain was on them. I was given a book that explained, with numerous thrilling illustrations, just exactly what was happening biologically. I practically wore out some pages from thumbing to them. In the peak of this period of hyper-awareness, a new boy started at school.
He was, frankly, adorable. All the girls thought so. A school year behind me, freckled across the bridge of his nose and cheeks. Permanently tousle-haired, with long soft eyelashes. Quick to smile with a good laugh. He joined our small-town Boy Scout troop, and it was all I could do to try and not pay attention to him during the meetings. To not wonder if he was going on the next camping trip, and to not secretly wish that he would ask to share a tent. I remember doing my best to play it sort-of cool around him. I didn’t understand why I couldn’t relax and be my usual giraffe self. I struggled to appear normal, and I didn’t know why I had to. Under no circumstance did I want him to know how much I was aware of him. Those freckles really were something.
Feelings like this came and went, and as I moved out of early puberty and into full-onset hormonal hell, those feelings became stronger. I cultivated the class-clown act, found friends who were smart and kind and funny and decent enough to laugh at my jokes. I carried a tremendous crush on one girl throughout middle- and high schools, and felt blissfully normal. Maybe I felt close to some male friends as well, but I could easily imagine it wasn’t the same thing, not really. I watched as they went through dating angst, breakups and make-ups, comforting them when a relationship was over and celebrating when a new one began. I wasn’t dating at all on my own then. Navigating that emotional space seemed so complex, and I just didn’t know how. But I knew my friends were great, and date-worthy. Their charms were obvious to everyone, right?
Now move ahead to college, when I developed a crush on a close male friend. In a moment of uninhibited boozy truth-telling, I said as much to him, enough that I wished I’d un-said the words immediately. I imagined I could feel the discomfort radiating from him. Now I wasn’t being funny or jokey, and it backfired, tremendously. We kept our distance from one another for the rest of that year and for the rest of our college career. I dated a couple of girls later, fell madly in love with one who would years later become my wife. Maybe now I could be blissfully normal? I wasn’t. It happened again, years later, in almost the same circumstances, and coincidentally on an actual camping trip. I confessed feelings, then wished to take the words back and hoped for the ground to swallow me whole. I began distancing myself at once from the shame I felt, and from how I imagined he was revolted at my confession. I cut off all contact.
Today, we’d say I’d “caught feelings” for my friends and that I’d “ghosted” them immediately after. In truth, I behaved badly about it, out of that same sense that something was wrong with me, and that I couldn’t be trusted with honesty. What I experienced was grand and more out-of-control, like a freight train of emotions in my chest. It had happened again, and I hated myself for it. And yet, a few months later, that freight train roared through with someone else, despite my self-loathing. This time the guy embraced my advance, and we had a brief, romantic, exploratory relationship. I insisted that I was straight the entire time, but inwardly I didn’t know what I was.
For decades since, I was afraid of being truly seen, of my inmost feelings and my past being exposed. I papered over them with jokes and being straight-presenting. The memories of my own confessions and of me projecting my homophobia onto the other person made me too afraid to talk to anyone about this. Not my partner, nor my friends. I spiraled, packing away the shame and blocking off the past. It’s taken therapy to get new perspective on those moments. I now see a young man who was coming to terms with his queer identity, without guidance or good information, wandering in the dark, and not sure what would make him happy.
One of the key factors in my eventual Bi Awakening was, not surprisingly, me again catching feelings for a friend. This was far more recent, and well past any point where hormones or freckles could be blamed. What started as a friendship grew to be an infatuation in my mind, and sometimes I would imagine myself baring it all, hoping for some scenario that would grant me the strength to confess without shame, and my friend the ability to hear the confession without repulsion. Burned from my past, I kept my secrets. Yet, holding those feelings within me, and holding the feelings for my wife and family, and looking at them both, side by side, made me realize the sameness of the experiences. I realized I was bi, and what’s more: I’d been bi the entire time.
These days, I’m moving from self-shaming to self-shining. I hid my truth away for years upon years. I fretted that someone would know about my past, my attractions, and that the knowledge would be used against me. I wanted so hard to “pick a side,” trying to weigh which choice was correct: friends or family? Past or present? Gay or straight? I’m relieved that the answer is neither and both. Only after coming out did I hear the label “demisexual” and learned how well it applies to me. It was revelatory to discover that other people must also forge an emotional bond before feeling a sexual drive. Hearing the stories of others trying to lasso their own freight trains (with about as much success) is also oddly encouraging. None of us are perfect, and the worth of being “normal” is a matter of debate.
I’m still working through my regrets. That’s going to take more sessions to undo. But I’m trying to shift those regrets from being about the feelings I had to how I coped with them. The feelings, then and now, are valid. My behavior was too, though awkward and gangling and dancing around the fear of my identity. I can’t change the past. I can’t take back the words that I said or heal the people that I hurt, including myself. What I can work to do now is shine, and try to be a figurative light to illuminate the way for others. My own journey feels like it was aimless and wandering for so long. Right now, it makes me happy to know that someone else could bypass their own painful times of regret and doubt and spark their own light, spreading out for others to follow.
Visible Bi+ is a space for members of the Bi+/MSpec community to share their voices. We’re striving to increase authentic visibility and dispel the many misconceptions which fuel biphobia and bi-erasure. Join us and SHARE YOUR STORY!
