Sexuality Essay
"What the Heart Wants" by Olivia London
Every Tuesday I look forward to the “Science Times” section in The New York Times. As a former Humanities Major and massage school delinquent, it’s about all the science I can handle. This week’s paper featured an article about Northwestern University’s findings regarding human bisexuality: it exists! Never mind how much money was spent to figure out what anyone who has ever had a special friend of the same gender already knows: some men dig men and some women like to share more than just clothes and handbags with another female.
When I was twenty-two and living in Atlanta, I met a woman who looked like Jodie Foster, only more resolute and sans the actress’s ability to pull off wearing a dress. Laura had been in the army and was tougher than a ninja warrior. She was everything I wanted to be. She was so smart, it seemed there was nothing she couldn’t do. So, when she asked me to pack my bags and move with her to San Francisco, I sold everything I couldn’t stuff in the trunk of a car and said goodbye to all that fried okra.
We drove for five days, stopping in the Midwest to visit Laura’s sister Amy who, every few minutes, would assure us that gays were okay by her. “You know,” she confided to me and Laura as we were about to hit the road, “I had an English teacher I think was a lesbian. She didn’t wear makeup and she thought a woman could be president someday. She was very nice. Some lesbians are very nice.”
Good to know. In our naiveté, Laura and I assumed once we arrived in mecca, everyone would be glad to see us. We were young and in love. Wasn’t that just grand? So what if we had the same anatomy and looked like a butch/femme cliché. Love would conquer all bigots, including an obnoxious pop psychologist who referred to gays as biological faux pas.
To this day, I’m nonplussed by how much discrimination we faced. I lost a number of jobs once a boss or co-worker saw me riding on the back of my girlfriend’s motorcycle. I finally had to tell Laura not to pick me up from work anymore.
No one cares what your orientation is in food service, so I took a job waitressing at a comedy club. But even without makeup and a vociferous view that a woman could be president someday, I was still a girlie girl and male comics frequently asked me out. When I told them I had a girlfriend they thought I was playing hard to get or they looked at me like I was born on another planet. One comedian was nice, though. He said, “You’re a lesbian? Great! You can help me pick up chicks.”
Lots of chicks wanted to pick up Laura. She was an aspiring comic, too. Her jokes were a little too angry and once she had difficulty remembering her routine.
Our first big fight was over the issue of “outing.” I had published a poem in a lesbian magazine and my girlfriend wanted the whole world to know about it, including every single member of my family. At first I was touched by how proud she was to have a girlfriend with a byline but really, did my eight- year-old grandma need to get in on the act?
Most members of my family stopped talking to me when I moved to San Francisco. The ones who did call never failed to ask how I was getting along in Sin City. They never asked about Laura and phone calls typically ended with the admonition, "I’ll keep you in my prayers."
Dyke March, San Fancisco, 1999 by Phyllis Christopher, available at ObsessionArt.com
The disapproval didn’t end with family, bosses and co-workers. Random strangers took umbrage at the mere sight of our unabashed union.
Once, when walking hand in hand down Castro Street, a fat man whose left arm was either seriously sunburned or stained from beef jerky stopped his pickup truck to hurl an egg at us.
“Dykes!” he barked, before laughing uproariously at his own laconic witticism.
We stopped holding hands. Before long, we were just as closeted as we had been in the South and the strain began to destroy what brought us together in the first place. In the beginning, we balanced each other out with our disparate ingredients sifting into one bowl. By the end of our relationship, we saw ourselves through the prism of society’s gaze and that gaze was typically a wince.
Laura and I lasted about three years. That was the longest relationship I’ve ever had. I never dated a woman again and have no desire to be with another woman. I think what we had was special to our time and place, as young women who were both survivors of violent dysfunctional upbringings. I have no idea what she’s doing now or if she fulfilled her lifelong dream of writing for sitcoms. Right now, it’s my lot to pine for a married man. Normally I would feel guilty coveting someone in a committed relationship but this man is an icon and icons are fair game.
I have his picture taped to my wall. Every morning, I talk to him while I’m making my oatmeal. Throughout the day I mentally converse with my pash and at night I dream about him.
It’s not just that I find my beau ideal attractive. When I first saw this man’s face I immediately felt engulfed by a wave of good feeling; I suppose some would call it love at first sight. All I know is every time I see his face, every cynical, jaded notion I’ve ever had about men falls to the curb and I feel giddy as a schoolgirl. I feel like doing jumping jacks and cartwheels and yes, I’d perform these endeavors wearing a bunny costume if I thought it would make him happy. If I thought I had any chance of making him mine.
So what is it that makes a person bisexual? I don’t need to watch porn videos with censors taped to my genitals to know that I’m not turned on by porn but if Gina Gershon wanted to have coffee with me, I’d at least consider the invitation.
I sure won’t get any answers from the researches at Northwestern. Their study was conducted solely on men, be they bisexual, homosexual or heterosexual. Maybe there’s a lack of funding for women’s take on bisexuality. Heck, just stay home and rent the movie Bound. If you’re a woman who is aroused by the sex scenes, you might be bi. If, like me, those scenes turn you on but you’re too busy with work or school or making deadlines to even think about removing your clothes for anyone regardless of gender, you might just be a typical adult in thrall to our nation’s economic downturn.
A famous writer/actor/director once considered a paragon of sensitive maleness, created a stir by falling in love with a stepdaughter thirty-four years his junior. He justified his actions by saying, "The heart wants what it wants."
My heart has never yearned for a member of my own family or anyone under the age of legal consent. How strange to live in a society where that’s something to be grateful for. When I was young, my heart followed a woman to the Bay Area. Now, my heart belongs to a man in New York. What difference does it make? At the end of the day, if I want companionship, I reach for a book.
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Copyright January 2012, Olivia London
Published with permission from author on OystersandChocolate.com. Copying or reprinting this work in part or in whole without permission is illegal.