Happy Bisexuality Day 2022, we love you.
— Autostraddle
Why 15? Because at 15, for the first time, I was on a roll when it came to my bisexuality — in the sense that I was finally out there, expressing my desires in a way where lips connected with lips, where other people accurately termed me as bisexual, where as my sexuality boiled to the top it met with the heaving weight of the atmospheric pressure of my school trying to tamp it back down. My bisexuality was a resistance and a freedom and a liability. It was such a defining part of my life that I still cling to the word, to its shifting meaning, to all it can be and all the defiance it stands for. I love bisexuals and bisexual culture. I love to stand in defiance of being called greedy. As I said in high school, I LOVED to be greedy — because of course I wanted it all, all the love, all the experience, all of it. Who doesn’t? If you don’t, aren’t you denying yourself a little?
So, this one’s for my chaotic bisexuals of any age, even those of us in our 30’s laughing fondly about our youths and/or our early out days because there wasn’t a place to do that at the time (heyyy). Happy Bisexual Visibility Day, my loves!!!
15 of the most chaotically bisexual things I did as a bisexual 15-year-old:
- Argued on AIM with my girlfriend’s boyfriend about who loved her more.
- Also made out with my girlfriend’s boyfriend (at her urging, but also I wanted to).
- Made out with my girlfriend’s other sometimes hookup boy (in front of her, again, at her urging, in the shadows of the auditorium) after she made him and her boyfriend make out. Gotta complete the circle.
- Got caught making out with my girlfriend by our orchestra teacher who said, and I quote, “You two look like you ate a canary!” Which, sir, what the fuck.
- Wore all black and also dyed all my clothes that were not black using dye I got from the grocery store.
- Got caught making out with my girlfriend in the woods by our coach who (in retrospect was clearly gay) turned right around on her heel, walked the other way, and never said a damn thing. (My “girlfriend” was team captain and no, we were not openly together.)
- Studied Latin and laughed my ass off at the clearly gay character in our Ecce Romani books, Uncle Titus. He wore pink shoes and was ultimately stabbed to death in a storyline where we had to learn the Latin for…stabbing?
- Welcomed my friend sitting in my lap during free periods / before / after school who would also let me kiss her neck while insisting she was straight, inviting absolute chaos from passers by.
- Practiced witchcraft regularly.
- Literally wore a super cheesy vampire choker from Hot Topic so often.
- Forged new connections with my newly divorced parents once they finally got space to themselves, but especially got along with my deeply traumatized father and spent many nights eating pizza with him and my sister and various History and Discovery Channel documentaries about cryptids.
- Listened to a lot of Warren Zevon?
- Wrote short stories! I even read short stories, too.
- Hung out on new age forums [the pre-reddit era!]. Shit was really weird there! Not gonna lie!
- “Cheated” on my new secret boyfriend (because we didn’t want to hurt the one other boy ex’s feelings because they were best friends and there was some overlap) with my (ex?) girlfriend I’d never really broken up with (therefore also technically cheating on her?) (but also she had her own boyfriend so why couldn’t I have one?).
Anyway, then she slapped me full-on, in the face, in front of my whole math class.
