I Explored Bisexuality Because My First Sexual Experience Was With a Female

I learned sexual identity is not binary, but on a spectrum

“I want to kiss you,” Tess said as we sat on the couch together one afternoon at my parents’ house. It was summer, and we were thirteen years old. My parents weren’t home. I’d never kissed anyone before—not even a boy. I was a very young thirteen. I hadn’t even gotten my period yet. Tess was mature for her age. She was wild, boy-crazy, and had already “developed.” She had breasts by nine and her period by ten. She was petite and blond and, no, her story doesn’t end pretty. How could it? Her father was abusive and abandoned the family. Her mother got cancer when we were in high school. By the eleventh grade, Tess had a boyfriend who was twenty-seven. And yes, she got pregnant (but miscarried). She herself had been breech born, and this was said to be the reason why she did so poorly in school. She suffered from oxygen deprivation during the birth, maybe had some kind of brain damage. I only knew this because her mother had told my mother, who then told me. I don’t know. All I know is that Tess pursued a friendship with me, and always seemed to adore me.

I was shy and she was extroverted. Looking back, Tess probably wanted me as a friend because I was so meek and insecure. I went along with anything she said — like kissing her when she asked me to.

It was weird to be kissed by my best friend. I didn’t necessarily like it. I didn’t know what I wanted at that age. I didn’t know if I’d even like kissing a boy. I went along with kissing Tess because Tess wanted it.

I had problems at home myself. My parents were still married, but my father was severely depressed, and I just wanted someone to love me. I wanted to be validated, and here was this beautiful, impulsive girl, who was so much braver than I was, wanting to kiss me. I let her.

Soon, our clothes were off, and we’d moved to my bedroom, where she wanted to give me oral sex. I assented because she wanted it. When she asked for me to do it to her, I did. It was my first time for everything — my first time kissing someone and my first time being naked with someone else, and my first time touching genitalia and having mine touched, and my first time licking and being licked. What did it mean? What did it mean that I was doing this with a girl?

I didn’t know what bisexual was at that age. I don’t even think I knew what lesbian was. This was the eighties and the suburbs. No one was out at my high school. At this point, I wasn’t even in high school; I was still in junior high. And Tess was my best friend.

After we finished, she put back on her clothes and rode home on her Schwinn. We never spoke about it again. She never brought it up and neither did I, and we went along as things had been before. She lost her virginity to a boy a few months later. I would lose mine just shy of my sixteenth birthday.

By age seventeen, Tess was dating a twenty-seven-year-old man, who didn’t go to our high school. I decided to drop her as my friend. I needed to start studying harder. It had dawned on me that I’d have to start applying to colleges soon. I had to keep up my grades. Tess didn’t. She wasn’t going to college. She was in the remedial track.

Then the adult who Tess was dating got her pregnant. She had a miscarriage, and I lost track of her. The last thing I heard was that she’d started waitressing at a Baker’s Square.

I went off to college, but I never forgot Tess. She was my first time for everything—and she was a girl. Did this mean I was bi? I’d since had a boyfriend and was really only interested in men.

But still, I’d had that experience with her. I felt confused. What was I sexually?

I look back now and realize that I had that experience with Tess primarily because she wanted it. In a way, I felt violated by her. I was too young to be doing anything sexual with anyone. Still, the experience left its mark on me. It made me curious about bisexuality.

I spent years wondering about my sexual identity. In college, I continued to explore. By my junior year of college, I had another friend like Tess—unstable, unruly, uninhibited. Dana was smart though. She was always finding ways to fondle me in public. She loved to make out with me at parties and bars. I think she only did it to attract men. I loved it though. I liked the attention. It also felt rebellious. This was the early nineties before people were as free as we are today to express a non-mainstream sexual identity.

I do understand that I’m coming from a place of straight privilege. To kiss a girl in public felt rebellious, but it wasn’t, at least not for me. I could do it without consequences. My family hadn’t turned their back on me because of my sexuality nor did I have to contend with any other social consequences beyond that of shocking a bunch of straight college students.

But the experience still left me perplexed. Maybe I was bi.

I graduated college and met more girls. I met beautiful lesbians out at clubs, who wanted to date me. And so I went through a lesbian phase. Again, I realize that I am writing from a place of privilege, one of having the freedom to explore, instead of having to fight for my right to exist as a sexual minority. But again, this is my story.

I began dating a gorgeous, alcoholic heiress. We tried to have sex but mostly it was just us lying in bed naked together, both of us waiting for the other person to lead. Neither of us was willing to do it. So we just lay there, embracing, neither of us making a move. I wondered if maybe I wasn’t really into this girl thing. I tried to move on, to just date men, but the urge didn’t go away. I continued to fantasize about sex with women. When I did watch porn, I’d watch lesbian porn.

I had more experiences with women. Sure, I typically slept with men. I only wanted to have romantic relationships with men. I ultimately married a man. But still every so once in a while, I’d end up with a woman.

So am I straight or bi? I’m less straight than a lot of women, but more straight than a female who is openly bisexual. So what’s up? How should I define myself?

I’ve come to understand that human sexuality is on a spectrum. While some people are wholly on one side of the spectrum or the other, so many of us are in between. But it’s those in-between spaces that are so confusing. They’re confusing because we expect people to take a side, to assume a non-flexible identity. You’re either gay, straight, or bi. But what about if you’re something in between?

By allowing myself to inhabit those gray areas between gay and straight, bi and not bi, I’m comfortable letting other people do so, too. I no longer demand that people choose a single sexual identity because I’m comfortable with my own fluidity.

We can’t squeeze our sexual identities into neat, little boxes. People can inhabit boxes if they want to—or no box at all. Only through openness and understanding of the various ways we all uniquely express our sexuality can we create a society with less judgment and more compassion.