queerly yours

This is an uncomfortable topic, but something that has been on my mind for some time. So I thought I'd throw it out there for consideration.

For some time now, I have not considered myself heterosexual. I informed J. of this fact several months back, somewhat precipitously, with no forewarning. I thought he'd take it okay, and he did. He's asked me to explain why I feel this way and how that feeling manifests, but he doesn't seem to feel threatened. He knows our love is solid. He seems willing to accept me with all my odd, occasionally queer little quirks. He even accepts it totally free of the leering about ménage à trois that seems endemic to the species. Miraculous.

It's hard for me to figure out exactly what this means, and if it really has to mean anything at all. It's even hard for me to explain how I came to realize this basic truth about myself. I got married at 19. I had my first child at 20 and my second at 22. J. is the only person with whom I've had a committed sexual relationship. I plan to spend my life with him. But it remains true that if certain circumstances had been different, I probably would have at least tried to be with a woman at some point in my life. What circumstances would have to be different? If I hadn't married so young. If I hadn't been a Mormon. If I hadn't been married or Mormon when I became a sexual person. If I'd identified and removed internal bigotry against homosexuality before getting married or becoming a Mormon or becoming a sexual person. In short, if I'd lived an entirely different life.

I wonder if these boundaries aren't simply looser between women, because we're allowed to experience a depth of closeness that is usually forbidden for men (lest they become gay!). We're allowed to touch, to share a bed, to experience intense intimacy. From my many discussions of this issue with other women, I find that almost everyone has experienced a closeness with women that transcends simple friendship. Many women I know sort of wish they could be gay, because they have all of their other needs fulfilled by women, and men are so confusing and bastardly. It would be so much simpler, these women say, if the sexual part worked somehow, but most of them have never tried, and those who have simply cannot maintain those relationships. It might be easier, privately, to be a lesbian, but it's pretty damn hard to be a public homosexual.

Over the years, I've come to believe that there is no such thing as a sexual binary. Sure, some people might be 100% "gay" or 100% "straight," but I think most people fall somewhere on a continuum. I think it's more natural for people to run somewhere in the middle, but we are almost always prevented from expressing desires that are socially unacceptable, so, just as children become rigidly engendered to their sex through socialization, we become rigidly heterosexual. I can't identify myself as heterosexual or homosexual because neither of these terms describes me entirely. I've never touched or kissed a woman in passion. I probably never will. But when I think about the possibility of losing J. in some way, through death or divorce, I can't see myself ever being with a man again. And I believe that, had I never met J., had I left the church on my own, had I eradicated that bigotry, I probably would have ended up with women. It's not because I hate men, though I suspect that I'll never meet anyone even remotely as awesome as the one I married. It's because I prefer women. This is a theory and not a practice.

I don't feel any lack in my marriage. I don't wish I was with a woman, or fantasize about women, or feel constrained or resentful because I'm with a man. My attraction to women is irrelevant to this partnership because I'm with a person, not a set of genitals. But it's still something I'm struggling to integrate. I don't know what to do with this information. It's nebulous and ambiguous and confusing and maybe even embarrassing, that I would feel this unbudging truth and not have any idea where it came from or what purpose it holds for me, or if I'm even allowed to have it, when I have no intimate experience (so to speak) with its consequences, and no desire to seek it.

I suppose this brings up the question of "choice" that conservatives love to throw around like broken glass. I am choosing to be with a man although I know I am more attracted to women. I have friends who consider themselves lesbians, or who were lesbians in the past, who now live with men. Doesn't this mean that homosexuals can choose to be straight? Or at least to give it the ol' college try? I believe that the continuum is the answer to this question. Some people might be able to choose to be straight, but others probably can't. I think it's a fair question to ask a rigidly "straight" person if s/he could choose. I think that most of us believe our attractions are innate. I think most of us are right.

I don't think I've chosen to be attracted to women. I think I'm simply accepting something that has been true about me all along. I suppose that I am choosing not to act on that attraction. But I don't think that "not acting" or "choosing otherwise" are necessarily the right answers for everyone. Why should the default be heterosexuality? The default should be a positive, loving, beautiful relationship. The default should be happiness. Full stop.

Maybe, deep inside, we're all a little bit queer. But then again, maybe queer is as queer does? What do you think?