Getting a grip on sexual chaos

BY BRYAN KUTNER

A friend turned to me the other night and said, affectionately, "Bry, you can't be bi. You've gotta be gay."

A few weeks ago, while I was eating Chinese food in Machine City, the meandering conversation turned to dating. Another friend said, "Oh, I forgot that you're bi--So are you still that or are you gay? Has anything changed?"

At a party, my friend Julie overheard a gay friend defending a fellow partier who isn't attracted to men to some of the more presumptuous company. He attested that being "effeminate" and going to Co-op Dances isn't a license to assume what someone's sexuality is.

It all leaves me wondering what is.

I'm starting to get a little tired of people questioning the way I live my life and the way I feel. Tired of their "all knowing" statements. "Are you really bisexual? I've never met any bisexual men. I just don't believe they exist," I was asked, once while looking for a living room chair at the Salvation Army.

Do "mono"-sexuals have to think about their identity every day? Do they have to listen to critical, disbelieving questions about their sexuality while eating in Machine City, while they shop for furniture at the Salvation Army, while they relax at a party on Lynwood?

I sometimes enjoy the inquiry. I don't really take offense when the questions come from friends or those who are more sensitive. But it has taken a long time to develop that nonchalance.

And I still have conversations with myself about it. I soliloquize about all the angry things I've forgotten or been unable to say in real life: "If it makes you comfortable to think of me in a certain way, go ahead and think about me the way you want. It is out of my hands anyway. But I refuse to make myself think that I am something I am not. And I refuse to let how you're thinking impinge on all the work I've struggled to do, learning to think for myself."

It certainly doesn't bother me who knows this. And it doesn't bother me at all that my "one-liner" (apparently I've
been referenced as "Bisexual Bryan") is a tell-all about my
sexual preference. Maybe it's just my most salient feature. But
it does bother me that people listen to me and then forget they shouldn't necessarily interpret everything I do based only on
my sexual preference. I just try to correct what most people take for granted.

I guess, after all, what people know doesn't bother me. What people think they know or have the right to find out, however, does bother me. That's why I'm not "out" to my brothers and sister. I just haven't had the energy, in their presence, to crawl into the protective mind and body suit I had to wear when I told my parents three years ago. Hooked question marks, depending on the inquirer and the situation, can be awfully jabbing in the side. And it takes time for me to withstand the injury.

Every so often, the gaze of inquiry does get to me, and I find myself looking at
my outward self, trying to figure out if everyone else is right and I'm the one
who's erred. I tally my sexual experiences, I think about who turned my head in
Commons, I wonder whether I'll just grow out of it.

I say to myself, "Maybe I am gay. Or maybe I am straight and waiting for the right moment to come out? Or maybe I really
am bisexual. Maybe I am confused? My God, what if I am something else?"

Sometimes I tend to forget and can just lead my life with the comfort of not having to worry about labels, about being "different." And then I remember--sometimes when I see someone attractive, sometimes just on my own. But what I try to remember is that it's okay for me just to be myself.

And it's also okay for me to answer questions. But please don't assume that because you have your sexuality figured out for yourself, you have the right to figure it out for somebody else.

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