Four girlfriends were out to dinner, laughing about life, when one of them disclosed that she had recently started dating a woman.
“What?!” the others exclaimed. “Why?!”
“Because I’m gay!” she said boldly.
This was news to the others, who had long known her to like BBM—big black men.
“What?! Have you, like, actually had sex with a woman?” They twittered with a mix of surprise and interest (and in at least one girl’s case, envy).
“Yes!” she said with an eyeroll, waiting for them to catch up.
The surrounding girlfriends said things like, “Oh really!” and, “Oh, wow!” and, “But wasn’t it weird to eat pussy for the first time?”
To this she replied, “Wasn’t it weird the first time you sucked a dick?”
She had a point. I never forgot this conversation, because it was the first time it occurred to me that it might be possible for me, too.
When Jack and I opened our marriage, it was the first time in my life that my lifestyle didn’t match social norms. I had always felt like a free spirit on the inside. I was drawn to art and expression and sought freedom as one of my highest values. But when it came to my personal life, I gravitated to safety. I stuck to vanilla. I insulated myself with heterosexuals and let everyone believe that was me, regardless of the mild dissonance I felt as a result.
This should have been all the evidence I needed that I had internalized homophobia. If I was “cool with gay people,” which I genuinely thought I was, then why would it have felt so shameful to admit that I was bi-curious? What bad thing did I imagine would happen if I expressed my curiosity?
I was afraid I would be shunned. Female friends would think I wanted to have sex with them. Men would fetishize my attraction to women. The silent majority would think I was different from them…not “normal.” I may have grown older but on some level I was still the same adolescent, striving to pass.
So I never let those thoughts leak from my fantasies into the light of examination. I figured it was an urge that would remain unexplored, because I was too ashamed by it. I think I believed that my attraction to women was not a matter of sexual orientation but a result of my hypersexuality. Naturally it followed that once I got myself tamped down, set quietly back in the box, it would go away.
It’s very possible I still have some things to unpack here. But what I realize now that I didn’t know then is how a grown adult can still feel uncertain about their sexuality, and how they want to express it. And many of us, locked into stable relationships, will continue to exist and wonder without ever doing anything about it.
Maybe that’s okay with you; there are all kinds of things people wonder about and never act on.
Or maybe, like Jack, you’ll decide to answer the call of your sacred desire and take the initiative to explore.
Or maybe you’ll get lucky, like I did, and an opportunity will land, quite literally, in your lap.
When we met spontaneously to go bowling on a Sunday afternoon in late January, a week after my birthday, none of us had the slightest inkling where the night was headed. It was me & Jack, Jess & Bobby, and our kids—their two and our one.
We decided after bowling to go back to our house and order Thai food, stopping on the way for the beer and wine we’d drink after the first round of cocktails. We arrived home, fed the kids, ate the Thai food, and had some more drinks. Suddenly it was nearly 11PM. None of us was sober. We discussed our options and decided they should spend the night.
Once we got the kids settled into their improvised beds, Jessa and I rejoined the men, who were mixing another round in the kitchen. We talked about online dating. We laughed about online dating. We turned up the music. Soon Jess and I were interpretive dancing on the kitchen floor while the men stood talking at the other end of the room. We were more stupid than sultry, more sloppy than skillful, but we were having fun, slowly working our way around the corner into the dining room.
Jess crawled toward me like Baby in the Lover Boy scene of Dirty Dancing. I laughed. She looked feral and feline in her indigo sweater. No bra, which was typical, and always drove me crazy because it made me want to touch her.
Before I saw it coming she went for my face, locking her lips on mine, pushing me to the floor with one hand on my sternum, moving to straddle me as she did. It was not unwelcome, but it was a surprise. Before it fully registered in my mind, we were making out, the men still laughing and talking in the kitchen.
The first thing I reached for, finally: her breasts.
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