Hello and Good Bi

I am bisexual.

It should come as no surprise to my friends and family. I have always known this from the earliest age. I have never understood how anyone could NOT be bisexual. To dismiss out of hand (if you'll pardon the pun) half the people on Earth, defies human curiosity, openness to new experiences, and opportunities for profound intimacy. And not only half the people on Earth, but the half that the other half of the people on Earth, find sexually desirable.

Human sexuality is a very complex topic. As sports figure, Tony Parker said, "Well, actually, I'm a bisexual lesbian in a man's body... but it's more complicated than that."

This puts me in mind of a joke where a bisexual and a heterosexual are sitting in a bar and the straight guy is railing against gays.

The bisexual says, "Let me ask you this. Do you like watching porn?"

The straight guy says, "Fuck ya, I love watching porn."

The bisexual asks, "Do you like watching guys screwing chicks?"

The straight guy responds, "Ya, I love watching guys screwing chicks."

The bisexual says, "Do you like watching chicks get screwed with tiny, little, limp weenies?"

The straight guy says, "No, I like watching chicks get screwed by huge, hard, throbbing cocks."

The bisexual just spreads his arms apart and the heterosexual says, "Oh," then adds thoughtfully, "I never thought of it like that."

Sigmund Freud, the founding father of psychoanalysis, based his theories of sexual ideation, and sexual symbolism in the interpretation of dreams, in terms of innate bisexuality.

Bisexuality was practiced in ancient Greece and was a normal way of life in Roman society.

Ancient Greeks did not associate sexual relations with binary labels, as modern Western society does. Men who had male lovers were not identified as homosexual, and may have had wives or other female lovers. Ancient Greek religious texts, reflecting cultural practices, incorporated bisexual themes. Bisexuality appeared widely in Greek literature and drama.

It was expected and socially acceptable for a freeborn Roman man to perform sex with both female and male partners, as long as he took the penetrative role. Both women and young men were considered normal objects of desire. In fact, Julius Caesar was referred to as, "Every woman's husband and every man's wife."

However, bisexuality can be hard on your self-esteem, because you run the risk of being rejected by two sexes instead of one.

It has always been my contention that the two most compelling parts of human anatomy are a woman's buttocks and a man's penis.

Lovingly referred to as butt, backside, behind, rear end, heine, derrière, badonkadonk, booty, bum, buns, caboose, can, fanny, trunk, keister, patootie, rump, tuchus, tushy, apple bottom, gluteus maximus, tail, or sweet cheeks, nothing turns a man's (or woman's) head like a sexy ass (which is just about all of them). Famed in song and story, the smooth, round, soft, huggable, peach-shaped globes cry out to have puckered lips repeatedly and passionately placed upon them.

Dick, cock, wiener, pecker, boner, hard on, thing, piece, member, tool, hose, package, unit, shaft, junk, doinker, prick, chubbie, pud, schlong, wanker, dong, popsicle, sausage, corn dog, pickle, banana, kielbasa, salami, wand, staff, rod, love muscle, heat seeking missile, jack hammer, joystick, little solider, skin flute, male organ, Mr. Happy, Long Dong Silver, johnson, master of ceremonies, pocket rocket, bald-headed snake, helmeted warrior, stiffy, weenie, whang, willie, woody, and Ole One Eye.

But no matter what you call it, there's something about an erect penis that makes you want to reach out and touch it, stroke it, take it hungrily into your mouth, feel it deep inside of you. A hard cock arouses a primal sense of dominance and submission, an anticipation of pain intertwined with pleasure, which is the essence of sex. In fact, the more you submit, the more pleasurable the act becomes.

Most of my earliest sexual experiences were with my male friends. Before we had any clear concept of male-female intercourse or even of ejaculation, we would go into my bedroom or my friend's basement and engage in mutual touching and oral exploration, but alas, without climax. These encounters left me frustrated, although I didn't understand why.

The Kinsey Report, "Sexual Behavior in the Human Male" found that a "considerable portion, perhaps the major portion, of the male population, has at least some homosexual experience between adolescence and old age. In addition, about 60 per cent of pre-adolescent boys engage in homosexual activities, and there is an additional group of adult males who avoid overt contacts but who are quite aware of their potentialities for reacting to other males."

When asked this same question, another researcher jokingly said, "I can't get a straight answer."

Like most boys, I was introduced to the joy of sex by Rosie Palm. Locked in my bedroom, I had the barest idea of what to expect. I remember touching myself, and how good it felt. Images of girls and boys from my class flitted before my mind's eye. As the sensations built and built in intensity, I became alarmed. I wondered if I better stop, but instinct kicked in until the pulsing release left my knees weak and my legs shaking. Over the years, my sexual fantasies were pretty much divided equally between males and females, depending on who I had a crush on at the time.

My freshman year of high school, I attended a private, all-male seminary. In hindsight, if you'll pardon the expression, the dorms must have been rife with illicit sex. An upper classman seduced me, although he didn't have to work very hard at it. He liked having his penis nibbled and gently bitten, and I loved not having to be so careful with my teeth.

One of the guys on my floor smuggled in a book called The Sensuous Man, that explained in explicit detail, all the ways a man could please a woman. He also brought in its companion book, The Sensuous Woman, that explained in explicit detail, all the ways a woman could please a man. I devoured both, but much more strongly identified with the latter, and was eager to put into practice what I had learned.

While all this was going on, I would tag along with some of the guys who sneaked out after dark. We made our way to our school's sister academy, a short distance away. The girls would watch out for us and unlock a first floor window so we could get in. Although I was very awkward and shy, I enjoyed making out with the girls my friends set me up with, and even getting to second base.

My second year of high school, I transferred back into the Chicago public school system. One day, I was in study hall and somehow wound up sitting near my worst enemy. He had bullied and threatened me throughout grade school. I don't recall exactly what we were saying to each other, but I know I said something about how with his long hair, I couldn't tell if he was a boy or a girl, to which he replied, "You can stick your hand down my pants. If I have a cunt you can fuck it. If I have a dick you can suck it."

As much as I hated this kid, an almost irresistible urge came over me to reach down and take him up on his offer in front of the entire auditorium.

Another very difficult thing for me to get through was swim class. For some ungodly reason, we had to swim nude. What saved me was that I was very nearsighted without my glasses, and everyone got out of the pool shriveled up.

I clearly remember thinking all through my childhood that I had been born the wrong sex. I even thought of myself as Stephanie instead of Stephen. I watched the other boys and girls interacting in the hallways, and I vowed to myself that if I had been born a girl, I'd be the biggest slut in the school. But as I entered my mid-teen years, and especially after I started getting high, and being socially accepted, I embraced my masculinity, and the desire to be in a woman's body fell away. When I became a young adult, and dated both sexes, knowing that I could please a man as well as a woman, made me feel even stronger in my sexuality.

By now you've either "unfriended" me, jumped in the shower (with your tablet or smartphone) to wash yourself clean, or are running up and down the street yelling, "TMI!, TMI!"

And you're probably asking, 'What's the point in me talking about this?'

The point is that in the face of continued (and in many places growing) biphobia, it is important to me personally and to the larger community to increase awareness about bisexuality. As one bisexual advocate said,  “The world needs more out bi people so that bisexuals can find support and community, just like gay people have when they come out.”

Bisexuals may be the last segment of our society willing to come out of the closet; at once shunned by the heterosexual community as being gay and the homosexual community as being straight.

Fortunately support is available. In 2010, AMBI, a bisexual social group in Los Angeles was organized. An AMBI founder remarked, “All kinds of people show up to our events. There are older bi folks, kids who say they ‘don’t need any labels,’ transgender people — because many trans people also identify as bi. At our events, people can be themselves.”

Another bisexual advocate said, "We’re misunderstood. We’re ignored. We’re mocked. Even within the gay community."

Gay distrust of bisexuals has a long history. The first officially recognized gay organization, the Society for Human Rights, founded in Chicago in 1924, tried to exclude them. In the 1990's, groups like BiNet USA (a national bisexual advocacy group) began successfully lobbying reluctant gay groups to add the “B” to their names. Bisexual men were (incorrectly) blamed for spreading H.I.V. to women, thereby giving gays a bad name.

A bisexual advocacy spokesman recently said that he hoped the gay and lesbian community would “step up and support bisexual people. I really wish everyone could experience how extraordinary it is to be able to fall in love with people regardless of their gender. I once told a straight friend who couldn’t really understand my bisexuality, ‘Hey, just because you’re incapable of finding the beauty in both genders, don’t hold your deficiencies against me. You have a handicap, I don’t.’ But, somehow, I’m seen as the strange one, the one who doesn’t fit into our obsession with everything being black or white, straight or gay.”

That lack of support and community has health implications. A leading researcher on bisexuality and health at Indiana University, found that compared with their exclusively homosexual and heterosexual counterparts, bisexuals have reported higher rates of depression, anxiety, substance use, victimization by violence, suicidal ideation and sexual-health concerns. “Put simply,” he said, “it’s not easy to be bisexual.”

Bisexuality also has positive benefits on society as a whole. A psychologist who specializes in sexual identity issues said, "There’s substantially less homophobia and biphobia among young people than adults, and if you scroll through the photos of young straight-identified men on Facebook, you’d think that many of them were bisexual. Guys are just much more physically demonstrative with each other, much more playful and affectionate, than they were a decade or two ago.”

Another misconception is that bisexuals just want to have sex with everyone; have our cake and eat it too. (Actually we do, but that's our secret.)

Several studies comparing bisexuals with hetero- and homosexuals have produced some startling findings.

Bisexuals have higher rates of sexual activity, sexual fantasy and erotic interest. Bisexual men have more sexual activity with women than do heterosexual men. Bisexual men masturbate more but have fewer unhappy marriages than heterosexuals.

Bisexual women have more orgasms per week and describe them as stronger than those of heterosexual women and lesbians. Marriages with a bisexual female are happier than heterosexual unions, observe less instance of hidden infidelity, and end in divorce less frequently. Bisexual women sexually mature earlier, masturbate and enjoy masturbation more and tend to be more experienced in different types of heterosexual contact.

Bisexuality can also lead to some unusual situations. A longtime bisexual activist tells this story - "As a young man, I identified as gay and even worked for a gay magazine, but I surprised myself by falling in love with a woman. So I had to sneak around with my girlfriend, lest I start a scandal at the office.”

And even this is not inclusive enough for people who consider themselves to be pansexual. Pansexuality does not refer to the love of non-stick cook ware. Go Ask Alice at goaskalice.columbia.edu explains that "over the years, pansexual has come to mean that a person is capable of falling in love with and/or having a sexual attraction to a person regardless of where they stand on the gender/sexuality spectrum. This is different from bisexuality, because "bi" implies only two genders (men and women)."

Pansexuality is a term that arose in the early 1900's to describe a way of thinking — especially prominent in certain psychoanalytic circles — that sexual instinct plays a part in all human thoughts and activities, being the most important, or even the only source of real energy in our lives.

So, in fact, in the time it took me to get this far in my writing, I have redefined my sexual identity to that of pansexual. 

Having said all this, it might seem strange to say, but even after all these years, I think my wife is cute as a button. When we are making out, my favorite thing is to rub noses. Not little Eskimo kisses, but passionately rubbing our noses side to side and up and down. I still see the beautiful, young woman I fell in love with. She looks amazing to me when I sneak peeks at her profile while she's driving.

It is important to me that she leave the house each morning knowing that her man thinks she's the cat's meow, and that a sway of her hips can still give me palpitations.

She is the love of my life, best friend, soulmate, twin flame, partner in crime, Abigail to my John Adams.

Neither of us were virgins when we began falling in love, but neither of us had ever experienced the Big O, with a capital B, until the first time we had sex that left me gasping for air and my wife screaming into her pillow.

I also like the old joke where a wife asks her husband if he thinks about other women, and the husband replies, "Don't be silly, honey, the day I married you I lost all interest in women."

When two people get married, they take a vow to forsake ALL others, and being bisexual is not a free ride to cheat with a man any more than with a woman. I love my marriage. I love my wife. I love being faithful. I have no regrets. My choice was right for me. Early on in our relationship, I assured my wife that she didn't have to worry that she wouldn't be able to satisfy my needs.

Besides, just because you're on a diet, doesn't mean you can't look in the bakery shop window.

I am an incorrigible flirt. I flirt openly with my lady friends, young and old, married and single, straight and otherwise. My written and spoken words contain symbolism, double-entendres, puns, and innuendo. I also flirt with my male friends, but they are big enough (no symbolism, double-entendres, puns, or innuendo intended) to accept it without embarrassment or prejudice.

I embrace my inner feminine. Michelle Alva in Rebelle Society states, "When you balance the feminine and masculine aspects within yourself, regardless if you are male or female, you get to experience your whole and complete human being that is strong, wise, loving and creative and, at the same time, nurturing and gentle."

Lately, in all my writings, I seem to keep coming back to one theme, a theme that ties them all together, and this one is no exception. That theme is love. 

Then there was the scientist in Antarctica who had sex with a male and a female colleague. He was bipolar....