Its "QueerArt Wednesday" on Be Your Own Queero and I'm the featured artist!
http://beyrownqueero.com/

Current Mood: chipper

I knew I was different before I understood the concept of bisexuality. I knew what gay and lesbian was. I didn't know until my 20's what being bisexual was. I know the exact moment when I realized I wasn't like everyone else. It hit me one day. I was in 10th grade and prior to 10th grade, everything seemed great. I had okay grades, I liked school, I danced, I was a gymnast, I was on the pom-pom squad, I sang, I was an artist, I had made a bunch of new friends in high school - ones that were not obsessed with being popular, or looking a certain way, they liked fashion and culture, but it didn't rule their lives. They had depth. They were real, honest people. We'd laugh telling jokes, doing silly things, but talking about the serious things in life as well, and we were inseparable. We'd sit together at lunch, we'd geek out together over pop culture or books - we were geeks, and devoted to each other. I seemed to have had everything going for me. Then in 10th grade I recall walking down the hallway to class and I realized that I felt miserable. It was like the color and life was sucked out of life, at that moment. Everything and everyone seemed so trivial and stupid: Look at those guys walking down the hallway laughing - what's so funny?.. or that couple making out - he's screwing around on her - nothing lasts... what's the point of going to class they're just going to read the textbook to us and I'm going to write a poem - I'll get a "B" on the exam without ever paying attention in class... Maybe it was maturity that suddenly hit me. But I also knew at that moment, right there in the then, 'new wing,' that I was different. And not in the way that, 'everyone is different and special.' No I was different. I wasn't like everyone else. That was all I knew. And I had to keep that in check. Sure I was slightly eccentric, but it was okay, I was an artist we're alloted "slightly eccentric." But I knew I was beyond "slightly eccentric."

I've since read over and over how gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgendered people have always felt "different." Sometimes it takes years for you to even know how you are different, but you just know. Unfortunately back then, "different" felt bad, like maybe I wasn't supposed to be that different. I had tried in the past to be like everyone else and I'm pretty sure they saw right through it.

Despite feeling different, I managed to have a plethora of boyfriends. Most of them bored me after a few months or days. My family thought I was especially picky in choosing a mate. I am picky. Bisexual doesn't make dating easier, now I just have more options. It does put a name on those feeling I'd had that didn't seem to have a name. My love of watching and looking at pictures of some of my favorite female musicians. Or feeling embarrassed about changing in front of other girls in dance and gym class. When I got to college, all the artsy lesbians thought I was one of them because I wore mens' and womens' clothing, simultaneously. I probably did look like a dyke. My standard attire usually consisted of a concert t-shirt, v-neck sweater, dickies, and men's airwalk sneakers. Dickies don't need ironing, nor do concert t-shirts. It wasn't because I was trying to portray to the world my queerness, I was just lazy and liked to avoid things like ironing. I still hate ironing.

My first year at UMASS this girl in figure drawing class would always flirt with me - she was so obvious, even I knew she was hitting on me. I was out of state and had no friends at school, so I just went with it, nothing ever came of it. Though at the time, I did wonder why I wasn't bothered by her flirting. I thought it was because I was comfortable with who I was. Which I suppose could've been the case... if by my third year at UMASS (at age 23), I hadn't developed a crush on one of my female classmates. I once tried to ask her a question about class and proceeded in making a stuttering, stumbling ass of myself. At first I tried to tell myself that my interest in her was aesthetic, like Anaïs Nin talks about in her interest in June Miller in her journals. Anaïs Nin and I had a lot in common, in that respect. Only it wasn't 1930, it was 2000. It was okay to have a romantic interest in women in 2000, the police won't arrest me for being gay. I didn't have to lie. It took almost a year before I could admit to myself and my own best friends that I liked men and women.

Someone once asked me how I would describe my experiences with life and sexuality and I said,"stumbling, bumbling, expanding, regressing, drifting and dreaming."

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