It’s been over 20 years so far, and, happily, I see no change in sight. I cannot even imagine finding another person I’d be more completely content to share my life with. Most of all, she’s honest, calm, patient, and rational. She is the most joyful, nurturing, and loving person I’ve ever met. She is the most extraordinary person I’ve ever met: of any gender. The second reason it took so long is my wife, and for all the very best reasons. Plus, I was definitely interested in women, so I couldn’t be gay, right? Life was super, super hard for gay people back then, and if you had those impulses you sure as hell didn’t act on them if you could manage not to. And, most importantly, none of the recent acceptance of homosexuality had even begun to surface in my world. HIV/AIDS was still very recent, very scary, and very much a “gay” disease. Calling someone a “fag” was virtually a daily insult among my peers.
In hindsight, it’s pretty clear I was always bisexual, but it took a very long time for me to put a concrete name to it.Īt least early on, it had a lot to do with where and when I grew up. I was 37 years old when I started to call myself bisexual.
