Why am I so weird with women?

I rail against bisexual erasure even as I subtly participate in it.

From my 2014 music video for my original song, “Soul on Fire.” Pictured: Myself and Kaleena Sue Morgan. Photo credit: Manuela Rana.

Warning: This is going to be the lamest opening anecdote I’ve ever written.

I’m fourteen and my best friend Morgan is sleeping beside me in bed, her back turned to me, her bare shoulder smooth and beautiful in the moonlight. I’ve been awake for an hour, maybe more, turned on and restless, wishing I could kiss that shoulder, wondering what would happened if I told her I wanted to, wondering if by some miracle she might actually be into it, but way too afraid to ask.

That’s it. I told you it was lame. I’m a sad trembling teenager lusting after her bestie and doing fuck-all about it, and this illustrates how I’ve been with women my entire life. Timid. Scared. Afraid to ruin the friendship. Unsure if what is developing is friendship or something else, and too anxious to find out. I have a lady-loving sex queen inside me screaming for an outlet and I’m too chickenshit to tell a single woman I like her.

Sigh.

I’m eighteen and I meet a dancer named Loree. She’s an out lesbian and friends have set us up. She has close-cropped ginger hair and a swagger that cuts through my timidity. Lucky me. I’m intensely attracted to her and almost paralyzed with anxiety that I won’t know what to do if we do anything more than kiss.

We go on a date and end up in my bed. Not a ton happens beyond some heavy making out—I’m a nervous mess and moving very slowly—but she sleeps over. She seems to understand how new this is for me. There’s a laughing light in her eyes in response to my awkwardness. I think maybe we’ll go on a second date. I want to, very much.

When we wake up the next morning, the news is playing clips of something impossible: commercial airplanes flying into the Twin Towers, over and over again, the buildings collapsing in agonizing slow motion.

Loree leaves my apartment and I never see her again.

Embarrassing truth: I had just come off of several years of cult-strength Jesus-freak Christianity, and a (large) part of my narcissistic teenage brain wondered if 9/11 was God punishing me for kissing a girl and liking it.

I liked it so much.

I didn’t kiss another girl for years.

I’m 21 and breaking up with my first boyfriend. He left me with scars. He was a punk rocker with anger management issues. He hated showering, underwear, and my singing voice, and he enjoyed slapping me across the face during sex without warning. He yelled at me—“Stop your fucking sobbing!”—when I cried. I did not enjoy any of this. Dating him for a year left me with a strong distaste for anything remotely phallic, and for men in general.

Like many early 20-something women, I’d had a lot of truly unsatisfying sexual encounters with men by that point. All of my limited experiences thus far had left me convinced that the reason I couldn’t seem to enjoy sex was because I was having it with men.

I’d known I was attracted to women since childhood. I’d been openly bisexual since I was fourteen. It dawned on me: I must be gay. I felt so much hope! I chopped off all my hair—something I’d only not done because men seem to prefer long hair—fuck men!—and started wearing Doc Martens and trousers. I stopped trying so hard to be pretty—fuck pretty! I came out to all of my friends and family as a lesbian.

“I can’t say I’m surprised,” my dad said with dry resignation. “I’ve always suspected your mother was a lesbian.”

“You’re not a lesbian, honey,” my mom insisted. “You love men as much as I do. Don’t you just love the smell of testosterone?”

(Before you ask, yes, I’m in therapy.)

While I was identifying as gay, I dated my first and only girlfriend. I’m using that term lightly. We called each other girlfriends, but the whole deal only lasted about six weeks. Mostly my fault.

Kelly was a tall, green-eyed blonde I attended conservatory with in Boston. I had already dropped out of college twice and had taken a three-year break, so I was a 23-year-old sophomore when I met her. She was only 19, and for reasons I will never understand, she pursued me relentlessly. I thought she was way out of my league. The age gap bothered me, too. Four years isn’t much when you’re older, but the space between 23 and 19 felt like a massive gulf.

For months, I laughed off her advances and suggestive comments, trying to focus on school and not get into shenanigans with classmates…but you can only say no to a gorgeous woman so many times, am I right? I mean, I have a pulse.

We got serious fast. The I-love-yous started flowing within a few days of our first date. The sex was outstanding. I had never had sex with a woman before, and all my fears of not knowing what to do proved to be wholly unfounded. I knew exactly what to do. I had the same equipment. It was the most natural, easy sex I’d ever had in my life.

I had never felt so confident. I had never felt such strong desire. We would skip class to fuck in her studio apartment in the middle of the afternoon. I would spend hours working on her. I couldn’t get enough. I had never felt so sexy, or so sexually powerful.

Three weeks into our blossoming relationship, I went to a party and she stayed home. I made out with another girl in the bathroom. I was on a high with my new active lesbianism, but it was just silly fun. I told Kelly the next morning, not wanting her to hear it from someone else and think I was keeping things from her. I didn’t think it would be a big deal. We hadn’t had the exclusivity talk, after all. We could have it now, if she wanted.

But she did not take the news well. She had found out that her high school best friend—and ex-girlfriend—had been found dead that same night. An overdose, a true tragedy. While I was making out with some other girl in a bathroom, her world was shattering. The combination was too much for this fragile new love. We struggled on for a few weeks more, and then she broke up with me.

The intensity of my heartbreak shocked me. It was such a short relationship, but I felt unmoored when it ended.

After that, women scared me. I found myself acting like a selfish jerk every time I tried to date a woman. I put this insane pressure on myself to be perfect for them, to never hurt someone like I hurt Kelly, and then I’d unfairly resent them for it. Women made my bullshit come out. Women were hard.

A few months after Kelly and I split, my desire for men returned. And men…men were so much easier. I didn’t become such an asshole with men, because throughout my 20s and 30s, they were usually playing that role. I could be perpetually annoyed with and strung out over the failings of men, and never lose hold of my identity as a Good Girl (and probably a Victim, too, if I’m being honest).

I suspect there are some nasty elements of patriarchal thinking baked into how I approach relationships with men and women, and I haven’t yet been able to parse them or figure out how to escape their clutches. Other than a short-lived fling here and there, I haven’t dated a woman since Kelly, and now that I’m older, wiser, and have dealt with lots of my baggage in therapy, I deeply want to…but I’m just as nervous and afraid to show interest as I was in high school.

I’ve been bisexual for as long as I can remember, well before I knew the word, or even what sex was. I’ve had strong crushes on people across the gender spectrum. I’ve never had a “type.”

But for the most part, I’ve dated men, because it’s easier. I’m protected by the shield of heteronormativity when I date men. With women, things are confusing. I’m forced to come to terms with all of that ingrained programming in ways that are deeply uncomfortable. Like, for example, why do I suddenly feel the need to “be the man” when I date a feminine woman? That’s insane. What does that even mean? I hate that I have that impulse! I want to express interest and break through these blocks, but showing my cards feels risky.

Last year, a friend asked me if I was really bisexual, seeing as how she’s never seen me date a woman. I was a little hurt. Part of me wanted to rant about bisexual erasure and argue that just because I’m not actively fucking women doesn’t mean I’m not bi. I got a little high on my righteous anger for a hot minute.

But another part of me curled up into a grimy little shame-ball, because not only do I not make moves when I’m attracted to women, I usually don’t even talk about these crushes to my friends. Why? Because the crushes are often on my friends. I rail against bisexual erasure even as I subtly participate in it by censuring myself.

I’ve had dozens of epic, unrequited crushes on straight girls and women in monogamous relationships (with men) who might be weirded out to find out that I spent all those late night hangs aching to kiss them. Maybe one or two of them wanted to kiss me, too, but I’ll never know, will I? Will I?! No.

Because somebody is too much of a scrote to make a move.

I have desired women in silence my entire life, and now I’m 41, and I’m still doing it. There’s a woman I have a massive crush on right now that I’m keeping heavily under wraps, and people, I have had ample opportunity to tell her how I feel. I set up this one date night with her that was perfect for a confession of crushy non-platonic feelings, and I said nothing.  It’s downright embarrassing at this point.

With men, I can be straightforward. I can take the lead if I’m feeling like it. I have pursued men, and I can take rejection. I’m an actor; my life is full of rejection! So why am I so weird with women?

Am I alone in this? Are you a bisexual woman who can relate? Tell me about it in the comments. Help me feel less pathetic, I beg you. Give me all the juicy details. Thank you in advance, you beautiful sugar cookies.

I want to end this piece with a bold proclamation that I’m going to turn my fortunes around, and tell that woman I’m secretly crushing on how I feel. I want to be all like, this is the beginning of a new, braver chapter for this starved little bisexual! But I don’t know if that’s true. Maybe it’s too late for me.

Or maybe, as my friend Lila loves to remind me, it’s never too late.

Stay tuned, kittens…