Coming Out

After I had my first lesbian experience at age 15, I was petrified that I might be a lesbian. I’d spent the subsequent couple of days agonizing over the fact that I might be gay – I didn’t want that. I didn’t really sense that there was anything wrong with being that way, just that you’d end up being harassed and taunted by everyone else.  I’d seen it happen to other people.

Over time, as I learned more about those aspects of sexuality (and I was doing a lot of research), I became comfortable enough in my own skin to embrace what I understood as my bisexuality, at least internally. I sure wasn’t about to announce it to the world, though. Not then. Even though I didn’t really care about what others thought of me, I still knew that there was a stigma attached to being something other than straight.  A dichotomy, much.

At that particular point in time, I didn’t realize it is terribly common for teenagers to question their sexual orientation as they progress through adolescence.  I would give anything to go back to my days as a freshman armed with that knowledge. I often wonder what good I could’ve done at my school had I understood just how pervasive those feelings are, and been able to channel my experience into something positive that might have helped others deal with it. Would I have felt comfortable being out as a bisexual in high school? I think I would have, though I don’t know if I would’ve been a force for change. I was not really a change agent in high school.

I was one of my school’s Alpha females, though, and therefore relatively immune to the slut-bashing and back-stabbing that afflicted many other girls. Not that some people didn’t refer to me as a slut, of course.  I mean, what girl has gone through high school without being called a slut by someone?  But as an opinion leader and one of the more popular and gregarious females, the slut term would not have alienated me from friends and others like it would a girl who was not in such a position and/or didn’t spend a lot of time in the social circles that permeated the hallways. Had I been out, would things have been different?  I’ve wondered that on many occasions.

I do think that, had I (or anyone else) been out, it might have elevated the discourse about the subject of differentiated sexual orientations in my school. Today, I would relish such a role. I cannot honestly say that I would have then, given my mindset at that time of my life, however.  To this day, my old high school does not have a Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA) organization. I guess as a Bible Belt school that probably should not surprise me, but it does.  Well, actually, it saddens me more than anything else.

After my public kiss with Nikki, rumblings circulated about “us.”   And though we spent a lot of time together in school and out, it never reached the crescendo of a full-blown rumor. I suppose there were simply too many others to focus on at the time (my graduating class alone was about 350 people, with almost 1,600 in all four grades). There were people who were rumored to be gay or lesbian, but it wasn’t a subject that was discussed, except when someone was taunted or harassed. I have to believe the presence and availability of a GSA would’ve helped some people on both sides of the spectrum deal with that in a much more mature manner.

Regardless, I have expended quite a bit of thought about what could’ve been. A waste of time, perhaps, but I am trying to takes steps now to help those who might be in just such a position today, and that is one area I intend to focus much more of my time on once I’ve completed my degree.

My own coming out story is not terribly painful, certainly nothing like many have faced. Not long after my encounter with Nikki I confided in my sister – we had always been very close and shared just about everything with each other. Though I didn’t know it at the time, she, too, was going through a similar questioning process.  She also later came to grips with her bisexuality, though hers would manifest itself in a much different way.  She was very accepting, and I’d expected no less.

My infatuation with female-female sex led to my “coming out” with a vengeance to some of my friends.  My close friend Kelsey was the first beneficiary of that by way of my seduction of her, and through her and Nikki, on to a handful of other girls at school.¹  By the time I graduated from high school, I had been responsible for providing ten other girls with their first lesbian sexual experiences. Some of them I know considered themselves bisexual, and one went on to proclaim herself a lesbian the last I’d heard. None of them came out publicly in high school, though. It was a secret shared among and between those of us involved.  Nowadays, it’s almost a status symbol to be seen as bisexual in school, even if you aren’t.  Not then.

Coming out to my parents was another story, however, and it turned out different than I ever imagined it would.

Nikki and I had remained close friends in the years following our sexual encounter on that New Year’s Eve. It was not uncommon at all for us to come home and jump in the bed and spend the afternoon enjoying each other until about time for my parents to get home. It wasn’t something we did every day or even every week, but we indulged relatively frequently when we weren’t in relationships with other people. We were best friends, and as best I could sense, we never outwardly showed any differently than any other pair of good friends.  Girls have that luxury, in fact.  It’s seen as “normal” for girls to be all close and friendly with one another – it doesn’t attract anyone’s attention (unless someone knows what they’re looking for).

In May of 2004, my parents were out of town on a business trip, and Nikki spent the weekend over at my house. As usual, we spent the entire time laying out sunning ourselves and swimming in our pool. On that particular Saturday, we’d had sex in just about every conceivable position, on every piece of furniture, and in every way imaginable. To this day, it still ranks as the day on which I’ve had the most non-self induced orgasms (seven, to be exact). At one point, as we lay next to each other, Nikki asked me if I thought we might be soulmates. As I stared into her eyes, I thought to myself that is the perfect explanation of how I feel about the closest friend I’d ever had – just….perfect.

Though I’d had sex with a number of girls, I’d never given any serious thought to dating one or becoming involved in a romantic relationship with one – it just never crossed my mind. And neither of us had ever brought it up. With this question, though, Nikki had pushed us into uncharted territory, however. Our relationship had that intensely deep, honest, emotional, connected, rhythmic pulse that exemplified what I’d felt a perfect relationship between two lovers should have.

In that moment, I knew that Nikki and I shared a unique bond – one that I wanted to pursue as a part of a legitimate, public couple. It literally just clicked.  Nikki agreed.  Since we were graduating from high school, being publicly seen as a couple would not be an issue.  Not there anyway.  Our parents might be another story, however, and that presented our greatest obstacle. If we weren’t going to hide our relationship it was going to be necessary to come out to them.  We knew it had to be done, but neither of us was looking forward to it.

We elected to tell my parents first, and decided that we’d do it over dinner sometime that week after they’d gotten back. As that day approached, I rehearsed over and over in my mind how I wanted to break the news to them. I conferred with friends, both “real” ones and some online about how to do it. Anyone who has ever made the decision to come out to his/her family knows that angst that you endure as you try to decide how to tell them, when to tell them, how they will react, etc. I was perhaps more nervous about this than just about anything else I’d done up to that point.

I asked my mom if I could invite Nikki to dinner with us, and she said of course. Nikki spent almost as much time at our house as I did at that point, and she pretty much had a standing invitation to participate in anything we did as a family. She’d become like a third daughter to my mom. I don’t know if she picked up on the oddity of me asking if it’d be acceptable for Nikki to come to dinner this time or not.

As we sat down to eat (low-fat lasagna, salad, and garlic bread – yummy!), I knew I was nervous and I could sense that Nik was anxious as well.  It was quite palpable, in fact.  We spent the first half of the meal with our usual inane banter about all kinds of random shit; a typical family meal.  Nikki kept glancing over at me with eye wanting to know when I was going to pull the trigger.

Finally, I worked up the courage to just spit it out. “Mom, Dad, I need to tell you guys something important.”  They stopped mid-chew and looked up at me.  “As you know, Nikki and I have been very good friends for a number of years. I think you ought to know that it has progressed to more than just….friends. She is, like, a real girlfriend to me, like a boyfriend would be.” As they absorbed and decoded that information, I added, “I like both boys and girls; I’m…bisexual.”

Deafening silence.  My parents looked at each other for a few seconds, and my mother stated, “You know, I think we just kind of assumed that you two were that close for a while now.”  My dad continued chewing his food as if nothing had happened.

As I processed what my mother had just said, it occurred to me that she was telling me that they had known (or at least believed) that I was bisexual for at least some period of time.   After some additional conversation, my mother finally told me that she had just assumed for the past few months (since my previous boyfriend had moved) that Nikki and I were a couple, since we’d spent so much time together.

I was relieved and shocked at the same time. Relieved because, obviously if they thought we were a couple and hadn’t voiced any issues with it, they must’ve felt comfortable with it to some extent. Shocked because they’d never even hinted that they thought we were together that way. We had not acted any differently than any other pair of best friends insofar as I could tell.  And as much as I pride myself on being able to read others, I had to wonder what kind of signs we’d been giving off that allowed them to detect what was going on. Of course, in reality, we weren’t an official couple until that past weekend, so whatever those signs were, they were misread to a certain extent. At that point Nikki was already working as a dancer, so we even wondered aloud to ourselves later if they had picked up on that. We decided that they hadn’t though. Hopefully. Heh.

Throughout the evening’s “conversation,” my father never really uttered a word on the subject. And to this day I’ve never discussed my bisexuality with him directly. I honestly don’t know if he’s totally comfortable with it or not. My mother allowed that they’d had conversations with Nikki’s parents about us being so close to one another. As it would turn out, when we went to talk with them later that evening, they, too, had suspected for some time that our friendship was more than platonic. Fortunately for us, they also appeared to be as accepting of Nikki’s bisexuality as my parents appeared to be. Nikki and I have each had conversations at length with our respective mothers about it, and both have been extremely supportive in every way possible. I sometimes get very emotional thinking about that. It could just as easily been the other way around.  A close male friend of ours was literally thrown out of his house when he came out to his parents.  His father didn’t take it well at all.

After dinner that night, Nikki and I went out back and embraced for several minutes, crying with each other, and relishing the fact that we could now be a real couple.   We didn’t have to hide our feelings for each other any longer in our own space, our own homes. I can’t begin to tell you how incredibly intense and freeing that was. In the end, all of the anxiety we went through debating about whether to tell them, how to tell them, how they’d react, etc., proved to be for naught. And, thus far, we have yet to encounter anyone who knows about us who’s has expressed any sense of disgust or disapproval about it. Not that it would matter – our relationship exists for us, not anyone else. A big “fuck you” to the politicians and others who’d deny us the right to marry into that relationship if we wished to go that route, though. Someday, soon perhaps, that will change.

I lament the fact that coming out, generally speaking, is much easier for girls than it is for guys. I think we all know why it is like this, and I won’t go into that in this post. But, suffice it to say, that is a double standard that we could use a lot less of (along with many others). Coming out is rarely easy, but doing so in my case was a freeing experience. I wish that were the case for everyone.

Anyway, these days, I don’t hide my orientation from anyone.  I don’t broadcast it, generally speaking, but if the subject comes up I’m not averse to telling someone I enjoy people for who they are and not which set of genitals or which chromosome they’ve been provided with.  I wish that were seen as the norm rather than the exception.

1. This is not the same Kelsey that works here at the apartment complex I live in [↩]

1. A Story for National Coming Out Day Today, October 11, is National Coming Out DayW – a...
2. Role Reversal Sometimes, it’s just more fun to lie there and be...
3. My First Time Many people have asked what my first experience with another...
4. Sexual Fluidity in Females I spent the better part of today recuperating from my...
5. The Day After Following the party, as I lay in bed that night,...

 Email This  Print This

Tagged as: Alexa, bisexuality, high school, human sexuality, lesbian, Nikki