Yesterday, while at New York City’s preeminent queer beach*, I got into a conversation with my friends and beach companions about people who come out “late” — which in this case meant in their thirties or forties.
My friends (two gay men) and I were, shall we say, early bloomers. One had realized he was gay at the age of five; the other recalled fantasizing about men by age thirteen. And me, well — I’ve told the story countless times, but the important thing is, I came out as bi when I was fourteen.
So for all of us, the idea of going literal decades without knowing one was queer seemed baffling.
Except.
While I was having this conversation, a crucial point about my story dawned on me: it wasn’t so much that I knew that I was queer. I only came out because someone else told me I was queer. Had I not been accosted by a woman who spotted a sapphist within me, would I actually have realized my queerness as a young teen? I’d like to think I would have figured it out by college, but it remains hard for me to know.
Which is, I think, one of the particular struggles of being bisexual. In a monosexist world, there is no real incentive to ask if you are bi. If you have strong hetero attractions — or even if you have strong homo ones — it is easier to simply accept that that is who you are.
When I think about it this way, it is honestly shocking to me that anyone ever comes out as bisexual, truly. It requires so much confidence, so much strength of character, to actually be able to break out of the homo/hetero binary; to accept that, yes, you can be attracted to multiple genders, you don’t have to choose.
Indeed, it’s not even just coming out young that’s surprising; it’s coming out at all that somehow astounds. Many of us could remain happily straight or gay, you know? Many of us do find one partner of one gender and stay with them for life, with no compromising of our bisexuality.
And yet. We do figure it out. We do come out. There are countless reasons why — as many reasons as there are bisexuals, I’d wager — and they’re all kind of miraculous, if you ask me; all a sign of how passionate we are to be ourselves in a society that insists that we should be anything but.
[NB: Bizarre to me that The Advocate seems to find it weird that Jason Mraz didn’t come out as bi until 16 years after he became famous, like… does The Advocate not know about biphobia, wait, scratch that question, I know the answer.]
There’s something beautiful to me about that, honestly, a small joy that I am embracing belayed, a little over a week after the end of Pride. Every aspect of our culture tells us to not know who we are, and yet we discover it — we become it — any way. There is a beauty in that. There is a beauty in us.
I hope you can take time to appreciate it today.
* Jacob Riis
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