This Bi Awareness Week, we look at how attraction to different genders feels when you are bisexual
BY YASMIN VINCE, IMAGE BY GETTY IMAGES
The first time I formally labelled myself as bisexual was on a form I filled out when I was 20 years-old. I stared at the little tick box for half an hour, before deciding I am what I am and I may as well own it. I’d known I was attracted to every gender for years. But committing to a specific label was scary.
Sexuality is so complex that one eight letter word didn’t feel like enough. The longest word in the English language (which comes in at a whopping 45 letters) wouldn’t be enough. Ultimately, it came down to which label had felt the closest to right. Long before my crushes graduated from the cast of Buffy The Vampire Slayer to real people, bisexual was that label because my body physically felt different depending on who I was attracted to.
The first person I was attracted to was a woman. Whenever I was around her, it felt like there were magnets inside us, buried between my butterfly-ridden stomach and hers. I couldn’t help it, I was inextricably drawn to her. It was the same with every woman I’ve been attracted to. Unfortunately, when it progresses to a relationship, our particular magnets seem to attract disaster too, but that, at least, has been the same for men as well.
With the male population, attraction has always felt electric, like Jamie Foxx’s Electro in THe Amazing Spider Man 2. Once he’s transformed into the supervillain, lightning crackles around his body, like all his synapses are firing outwards through skin. That is exactly how I feel around an attractive man. With my first boyfriend, part of me was scared that if I held his hand, lightning would actually appear in the sky. It didn’t, but that would have been appropriate given our ending, in which being dumped for not getting into Oxbridge resulted in screaming that could rival thunder in volume.
Then there have been some where their gender never crossed my mind. They weren’t male or female, they were them. Blood would rush to my head and it would feel like my brain was floating. Was I going to faint? Why did I feel so weightless? And what was that drumming in my ears? I have yet to find out if this gets better with time as each instance has left me frozen to the spot. I couldn’t even move my lungs to breathe. One time, a friend literally had to carry me out of the club, because the lady standing stick straight in the middle of the room was starting to scare people.
Framing my sexuality this way, as a series of differing laws of attraction, has really helped me feel comfortable with the term bisexual. Of course, it’s all liable to change. As I grow through my twenties, everything can change. Anything could happen, but for now, bisexual is who I am and I’m going to own it.
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Bisexuality is a challenging place to be, mentally, spiritually and I would have to say physically too. For as much as I like women, I like men too (maybe not as much) but that’s what makes individuals with SSA interesting.