Every queer person has a coming out story. It’s something that heterosexual people will never have to worry about – no one ever asks someone straight “When did you know you were straight?” It’s just one of those things.
Some of these stories are tumultuous and filled with tears, drama and occasionally leaving the house. Some are quieter. Mine is (surprisingly for my life) on side of the spectrum, but the path to it was a long and storied one…but I digress. As is my wont, I am getting slightly ahead of myself.
I first knew I was bisexual at 11. I didn’t even have a word for it. All I knew was that when I looking at my (very handsome) math teacher, I felt slightly the same way I felt when I looked at the pretty girls in his class who were trying to flirt with him. Perhaps a little different…but not that much so.
Perhaps “knew” is too strong a word…after all, I didn’t know what a bisexual was. I just thought my teacher was…cute? Or at least attractive. While I hit puberty early, I didn’t really have terms for a lot of what I was feeling.
That notion just disappeared into the background of my life. In high school, I was in a school race with a childhood friend of mine. I was fast…but he was faster. We were neck to neck to the finish line, and ever so slowly he began to pull away into victory, inching past me one second at a time (yes, just like in the movies)
I can remember my thoughts at that exact moment.
“Smug bastard!” followed by “Hmm. He’s kinda cute.”
Another incident that was filed away in the locker room of memory. It’s crystal clear 25+ years after the fact that…yeah, I wasn’t straight, but at those precise moments, I didn’t have the vocabulary.
I mention this point a lot because humans need words to be able to form ideas. While it’s true we can think without then, most thoughts appear with a linguistic component. Sex education in Singapore, taught that only heterosexual people existed. Gay? Lesbian? What’s that?
So I learned about human sexuality from that great bastion of human knowledge…the Internet. And I had my hands full with sorting out what was true and what wasn’t.
A watershed moment was when I messaged one of my favorite fanfic authors, wanting to know where all this yaoi and slash fiction was coming from. She reacted with hostility, defending her right to write it and spitting vitriol at homophobes. I answered openly “I just really want to understand” – utilizing a technique that I still use to this day…being as unjudgmental and open as I possibly can.
She explained that it was just there. There were gay people. Often, fandoms liked to write about them. More things to learn.
I didn’t know it then, but back in my early Internet exploration of human sexuality (generally through the lens of anime and manga) I was learning things that would still be true many years later. Tolerance. Compassion. How it was like to be queer in societies that often didn’t accept it. This was the early Internet, so sites like “A Lesbian’s Guide to Anime” were helpful and explanatory.
Now you can Google “vampire lesbian manga” and get a bunch of hits…there were precious few lesbians back in Singapore in the 90s, let alone vampire ones.
Time marched on, and my latent tendencies were hidden…or were they?
I can remember it like yesterday. I was watching the bath scene (you know the one!) in Evangelion. Kaoru laid his hand on Shinji’s. Like a lightning bolt, the words flashed through my mind.
“I think I’m bisexual.”
I’m not sure precisely how many queer people realize their sexuality from anime/manga, but I’d wager it’s higher than I think. From my queries and research over the years, it’s generally during your teens, during the inevitable onrush of hormones, but I’ve known gay and trans folk who have known about themselves as early as four…but that’s a huge topic for another time.
What did I do with that revelation? Compartmentalize it and put it away, of course. My life at that time was filled with battling depression, family issues and a whole lot of other things that didn’t really leave room for any exploration of my burgeoning sexuality. (shameless plug – read my book for the whole story)
In another instance of life imitating art, as I searched through mixed media for meaning (story of my life!) Tim Drake of Batman fame actually has a coming out process similar to mine. (yes, I DO read American comics from time to time) He was just too busy to know or realize or come out. Like, you know, with fighting crime and saving lives. It just wasn’t the right time before.
Other assorted incidents would occur during my teenage years. Using Angel Sanctuary wallpaper and proudly declaring that “I don’t care about the genders of the people on it” (still don’t) Choosing male avatars in game because “they were cute” Watching hardcore animated pornography (Ai no Kusabi!) and instead of being “grossed out” commenting on its artistic director (to the sheer and utter delight of my first girlfriend)
In retrospect, kind of bleeding obvious, no? But I would and did at that time insist I was heterosexual. Maybe it was the consequence of living in a highly repressed society. Maybe it was everything that I was going through. Maybe it was the lack of actual, real life cute boys (not that many, if they were, they were in the closet) It was probably all those things – see Tim Drake above.
But the story continues.
I didn’t really deal with this much throughout my 20s and 30s. Once again, I was too busy with my complex life situation that involved abuse, mental illness etc. I continued to read voraciously about human sexuality, and all around me my friends from my high school came out one by one – some with pink shoelaces and dyed hair, and others in much quieter ways.
But me? Naah, I was just a straight ally.
I don’t deny there was some experimentation on myself in those years – in private of course. I tried to watch porn with two dudes and a lady. Did nothing for me (because the dudes weren’t cute, actually…) I looked at my beloved Kaoru/Shinji doujinshi, waiting for a response. Nothing.
I’ve always believed in empirical testing for all things, from science to God. So…this must obviously mean I’m straight, right? Well…sometimes it’s not so simple. As I’m fond of saying, human sexuality is very complex and impacted by a variety of factors. It CAN be simple (heterosexual man marries heterosexual woman, they have heterosexual kids – still the norm!) but it often isn’t.
Not having the mindspace to really dig deeper, I left things there. There were bigger fish to fry, and everything that I’ve written down here so clearly hadn’t even begun to coalescence in my younger mind.
The next biggest turning point was my entry into the kink scene. In some ways, it can be said that BDSM communities are the inverse of regular society – heterosexuality is no longer the norm! There’s poly! Even marriages are often open, without adding things like swinging to the mix….but once again, another topic that’s too large to do justice in in one article.
Besides, you want to know about how I came out for real, right? J
The sheer acceptance and inclusivity helped greatly. I already knew a lot of queer people (about half my friends identify as some form of LGBT+2S) and the anime and gaming communities I frequently were full of them (ballpark estimate about…half or so?) but the kink scene…well, people wear their sexualities on their sleeves there. It’s sort of that kind of place.
That, coupled with the fact that I did have a resolve to (finally!) explore my sexuality at that point, probably caused some internal reworking of gears. I shifted my identification to bicurious for a while…but the writing was on the wall, as it had been years (decades?) before.
There were other incidents in my 30s which shed light on things. I had a sudden hospitalization (for which I still don’t know the cause for today) and noticed that the male nurse who was assigned to me had well…a certain way of moving? You can’t put these things into words sometimes. My gaydar is pretty good, so I just asked.
“Can I ask you a personal question?”
“Yes.” He replied with a smile.
“Are you gay?”
“I don’t know.” He said, blinking. But then he proceeded to sit at my bedside and after some light conversation, stroke my face and tell me how beautiful my eyelashes wear.
Dude…no straight man does that. Ever.
His comments notwithstanding, I didn’t reciprocate his gesture (he was cute, but not that cute) But I noted that I felt…comfortable. I didn’t want to be intimate. I didn’t experience arousal. I was just ok.
There was no precise moment that I decided to come out. There were no teary confrontations with my parents. My mom actually figured it out before I told her in the most mundane of ways – I don’t watch TV, but she does, so to hang out with her I sometimes subject myself to that torture.
My eyes move around the screen. She’s no dummy and notices. Do the math.
It was in and around COVID that I actually came out. (because the best time to come out is when everyone else is staying in!) I didn’t make an official declaration, on social media or otherwise. I just told some friends, it was pretty organic. I didn’t feed a need to make a big deal of it.
It felt…natural. I had already gone through so many upheavals in my life that this didn’t feel major at all.
But in some ways…it was. I can remember the last few steps that I took to get there.
The first person you come to is yourself. And then God (if you believe in one) And then people. But you are the first door you walk through.
When it is late at night and the images flash through your mind and arousal heats your loins…which gender do you think of? The same? Another? Both? Any combination of all of them? (there more than two, after all…)
It’s a pretty bulletproof query I’ve used to good effect before – who do you masturbate to? I’m a big fan of research, surveys and polite ways to ask a question…but sometimes you just take the plunge and ask.
I passed my own acid test before I starting telling people…I successfully brought myself off while thinking of guys. So, yeah. Bisexual.
And in that space were the realization settles – truly sinks in, without jokes or equivocating and maybes – it does feel a little like coming home. (I’m sure most queer folk would agree!)
There have been many other such moments. Another homecoming was realizing that you are your best parent, and that your caregivers were simply flawed human beings – as are we all. And there have been (and will doubtless be) others. But I guess I treasure that little internal sacrament in its own way, even as can sometimes seem to pale in comparison to everything else that transpired in my life.
People reacted in all sorts of ways, but all positive. In general if I could sum it up, my queer friends (especially those in Singapore) were all “You’re so brave and strong!” whereas the answer for my straight friends was a resounding
“WELL IT’S ABOUT FUCKING TIME!”
My therapist just laughed and smiled. She’d probably known for years before, but ethically, they do have to wait for you to walk through the door on your own.
Nowadays, I’m pretty honest about my orientation. I don’t advertise it, but I don’t keep it hidden either. If someone asks or it comes up organically in conversation, I will disclose it. It’s working so far.
I’m still searching for the loves of my life (and still poly…that could be another piece all on its own) I still prefer girls to guys (80-20%) and still have the same preferences as I did when I was a teen. No beards, thank you. Androgynes yes please. I like girls who look a little like guys and guys who look a little like girls…but actually, naah. We all have preferences, but I’d like to leave them aside for the moment.
Let’s cast a wider net. Bodies are beautiful. People are beautiful. Trust is sexy…consent is sexy. We’re all human in the end, and we all deserve love, no matter what shape or form it might take.
So that’s my story at least….and it’s only one of many. I know adult lesbians who still aren’t out at 40+. I know elderly bisexuals who only came out at 66 when their kids came out. There are blog articles out there who talk about what a big deal is it and how you should prepare gifts for your queer friends who come out…a great sentiment, but nothing remotely like that ever happened to me.
There are those for whom it was a slow burn, others for whom they had a lightning bolt moment (like I did with Evangelion) Sometimes it was a kiss (first or otherwise) Sometimes…you get the picture.
Everyone’s coming out story is different, and I can only tell mine. I hope it’s entertained you in some way. It took me 28 years to fully get there but…here I am.
There’s a lot more I could say at this point about sexual fluidity and how even preferences and orientations can change over time but…perhaps those will be subject of other articles, or links and resources. For me at least, some things haven’t changed and I doubt they ever will – I still prefer girls to guys. I have a marked preference for queer folk. And I’m committed to sex positivity in all its radiant glory.
And there are times when I stroll down the street and my eyes shift from left to right and I smile because people -whoever they are – are just so beautiful and I remember what someone once said to me in San Francisco.
“Being queer is a gift from God.”