Saturday, 04.15.2017 - 10:23 am.
My friend JC in my home country met up with my friend M (not the one here). I mentioned them in here frequently, years ago. They're both my friends since my last days at the university back home. JC and I had a steamy, short-lived and ultimately heartbreaking fling, but we managed to continue being good friends after a period of awkwardness. He even came to see me here in the UK while visiting his brother last year.
As for M, in retrospective, I had a huge crush on her. She's the one in that memory of mine from around 2009-2010, in which I am horribly jealous of her for being with Joe (another guy I had an excruciating crush on), and I am horribly jealous of Joe for being with her. That's the moment: I am massively attracted to the boy and to the girl.
All this preamble is just to say that JC and M, who lives in a neighboring country to my own, met up for Easter vacation along with other friends and went to the beach. They're just friends (though, given the context, who'd be surprised if something else happen/happened?). M sent me a recorded message from JC's phone while they were at the beach. She asked me to send a message back regarding some joke they were making. I wrote back to JC saying I couldn't record a reply because I get too nervous and start laughing. "Does M make you nervous?", he asked. I asked if that was too obvious back then.
JC replied something implying that M had that effect on a lot of people. Which is true, she wins hearts easily. And I felt devastated. Just...invalidated. "So wait, I'm not bi?", I asked myself. I looked back on the four girl friends, maybe five, that have been like a magnet to me and all of them had that kind of reputation: they were so easy to fall in love with. And M here, someone else told me last week how she was always so busy because she had that pulling effect on everyone. "Wait, so I'm just sugestionable?".
I felt like crying all day. I felt invisible, invalid. It doesn't feel right, saying I'm straight. But once again I was reminded that I had nothing in record to show for how I feel toward women other than "well, I've had crushes on women who manage to have everyone having a crush on them". Wait, I asked, am I that cheap?
I've only come out to Andrew, my sister, my friend Virginia and, unfortunately, to the PhD student colleague who's a disgusting human being (he was quite the opposite of that when I told him, though, we were in the middle of one of the few friendly-not-turned-sour conversations we've had, him being gay, me being bi. But since we're in this break from the subject, this week I witnessed another one of his miserable rants, a bunch of nonsense about planes and the environment just to say that the doctor who was removed from the United flight and was knocked unconscious deserved it. Later on, Andrew and I realized: he is a sociopath. I don't meant it like an insult. He's naturally incapable of empathy and clocks in thousands of questions and words per minute just to try to erase yours). Ugh, I lost the main idea. Let me start over.
After JC's comment, I spent all day tearfully running around in my head. Am I not bi? Am I just a stupid person? I had no one to talk to about this, I was desperate for someone to discuss this with. I felt so lonely and isolated. And I was sure, I was sure that I am bi, but that "you and everyone else" comment had a lot of weight on me. I always thought it was "me and everyone else", really: "Aren't all heterosexuals attracted to both sexes?"
What I meant to say by mentioning the names above is that neither of them questioned me when I came out to them. They believed me, they didn't ask any more questions. And why would I make it up? Let alone now that I'm married. Why would I feel the fucking need to tell that I am bi? I wish I could do it, I wish I could make it part of the visible part of me*. I am already constrained because my dad follows me online and he and my mom would not fucking understand and they, out of the goodness of their hearts, can be assholes about it. They brought up their cancer/chemo appointments when I got my last tattoo.
*It is shown through one of my Simeon comic strip characters. Most of them turned out to be pretty queer, really. I'm happy for them.
In my desperation, I looked for online forums and websites for bi people. Coincidentally, I found a couple of stories about bi women married to men, them coming out once they got married and feeling erased. I felt better. I still felt alone and invisible but I felt reassured, I was not the only one going through something like this.
My nephew turned 21 yesterday and he came out to Andrew and I. I already knew because my sister had told me he'd come out to her, but she told me in confidence. It was cool that my nephew trusted Andrew and I (and his mom!) to tell us. I told him I was too, and then I think I got too excited and showed him an article about being bi on The Big Issue, but, you know, yay for him. He was relieved to tell other people in the family besides his mom. I'm glad I'd come out to Andrew before, so I could tell my nephew I was bi too and he could feel reassured.
I found out a short article yesterday about "bi people being greedy", and someone was saying, hell, yes, I'm greedy, I want all the boys and all the girls. And I said, hell, yes, I do too! I can't have neither due to my marital status but I get little crushes everyday on people in the street, men and women. Hell, even among my colleagues in the program, I have a list of men and women that at least make me feel warm inside when I see them. I got like that with boys since I was a pre-teen, I think there was a longer route for girls, hence at first I would only fall for those I already knew, but it's there. It's fucking there. Here, in me.
All this amounts to the idea that perhaps I should come out to JC, too.
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