Tender

Tender

Sunday, June 2, 2019

Pride

my own private rainbow (CAI219)

This being a "pride" weekend reminds me I'm bisexual. It's easy to forget, in this life I'm in. I had a "queer identity" once - I've embraced polyamory and open relationships, I've had sex with women and men and combinations thereof. I never considered myself "straight" until I entered a monogamous marriage with a man 15 years ago. It's interesting, how easy it is to just let everyone put your new identity in place - the middle-class, married lady. How easy it is to forget you ever occupied a marginal place, that your sexuality was part of your personhood and not just something that happened (however satisfyingly) twice a week. To not even notice how you take it for granted that you can just be loving together and everyone accepts it as normal.

Sexuality is not straight-forward (sic). What does it mean to be bisexual, or "demisexual" (as I learn there is a term that's a closer fit), when you're married in a hetero-normative way?

As one drunken acquaintance put it, what's the point of being "bisexual" and marrying a man? You might as well be hetero.

Others have told me I'm actually hetero but was experimenting, or that I'm actually gay and deluding myself. There have been many opinions.

So as I approach this "pride" weekend, I don't know where I fit. If I show up with my husband, do I turn into an ally instead of a community member? Do I still fit in not fitting, when all my outward appearances label me part of the norm?

Does it matter?

I guess it must, if I ask the question.  But should it? I don't know. I mean, where's my pride?