Greedy: Notes from a Bisexual Who Wants Too Much

by Jen Winston

When you look at someone through rose-colored glasses, all the red flags just look like flags. —BOJACK HORSEMAN Season 2 Episode 10

Sure, bisexuality means said queer truth can still encompass men, but let’s be real: If you keep hooking up with dudes, no one will believe you’re queer (least of all yourself).

Is bisexuality queer? In your head you know it is—another few years and you’ll realize you’re just as entitled to Chromatica Oreos as twinks are. But in your heart, you can’t deny that bisexuality has never felt queer enough. It’s never felt queer enough to talk about. It’s never felt queer enough to take up space. It’s never felt queer enough to lead you to community, or to show you who you are.

Bi culture is everything. Which means bi culture is nothing. As annoying as this logic loop might be, it reflects exactly what it’s like to be bisexual: to be told simultaneously that you are asking for too much and that you don’t exist.

Coming out never seemed worth it. I was attracted to men, so why ruffle feathers when I could just… not?

Exactly

Coming out doesn’t promise to heal everything, but it does promise community. After revealing your true self, you’re supposed to be rewarded with a support system—fellow queers who can do your makeup, administer your stick-and-pokes, and hold you accountable for misquoting Notes on Camp. But that support system doesn’t just magically appear—you have to seek it out. And if you’re bi, it can be very hard to find.

Unlike Oktoberfest or Fox News, biphobia is not exclusively a straight thing—plenty of it comes from gay and lesbian communities too. One study found that in queer online forums about bisexuality, bi people were more likely to encounter biphobic comments than messages of support. Another study said that only 8 percent of bi people reported feeling included within the LGBTQ+ community, despite the letter B being so prominently featured in the acronym.XI According to a them article from 2020, even queer activism overlooks us—“sexually fluid people tend to get lost in the conversation; there are fewer [LGBTQ+] organizations that specifically exist to advocate for the needs of people who are attracted to more than one gender.”

My dad’s favorite college story to tell involves the one (1) time he blacked out while drinking beer. His friend dragged him home from a party on the MIT campus while he drunkenly shouted, “Give me any matrix and I’ll invert it!”

Now thirty minutes later, Jen’s car remains parked on the quiet suburban street, engine on and the Killers’ Hot Fuss playing at low volume. Both Jen and Sloane indicate strong unironic attachment to this album, though its queer undertones go over their heads. (Observation Team would like to point out the gender-fluid themes in “Somebody Told Me” and the bisexual rage in “Andy, You’re a Star.”) Jen seems to process the evening like a breakup; says her chest feels like it might cave in. Yet it is not a breakup. She and Sloane are just friends. (Observation Team notes background noise: “It was only a kiss.”)

After a few minutes of dancing, Heidi mouthed the words “find you later” and vanished. (Years later, Heidi told me she’d taken Molly that ended up making her nauseous. She also told me that in her memory of the night, she’d been the uncertain one—apparently I’d seemed in control, as if I’d done this kind of thing before. Consider this your reminder: Memoir consists of recounted experiences, but by its nature, memory is unreliable. That means maybe—in someone else’s story—you actually know what you’re doing.)

As I watched one video of a son joyously dancing with his mother around their kitchen, a Portuguese word came to mind: saudade—feeling melancholy and nostalgic for something you love, but also feeling grateful for having experienced that love at all. The cycle was pain and beauty and pain again. Though these people had managed to free themselves in their minds, their bodies were still under attack. I’d thought nightclubs were the places where everyone was supposed to be their freest—I’d even thought LGBTQ+ safe spaces were hardly needed anymore, as being queer was more widely accepted than ever before. I’d been ignorant. Privileged. Very much both.

I now know that no sexuality requires proof, and that you don’t have to hook up with anyone of any gender for your identity to be legit. I also know that bad hookups don’t always have a deeper meaning or implication about your sexuality—they can even happen with someone you love. Many factors can influence your level of enjoyment (e.g., the person you’re hooking up with, whether that person puts on music, the extent to which that music is Dave Matthews Band because it “reminds them of their first kiss”).

Yet another fact I learned from bi activist Shiri Eisner. Their book is called Bi: Notes for a Bisexual Revolution—do yourself a favor and read it already.

IN 2013, FIVE years before several men accuse Kevin Spacey of sexual assault, millions of Americans binge Netflix’s House of Cards. A particular moment sticks with me, wherein Spacey speaks directly to the camera and quotes Oscar Wilde: “Everything in the world is about sex, except sex. Sex is about power.” Spacey isn’t speaking as himself but as the (murderous bisexual) character of Frank Underwood—it’s as if to say, “I’m not a creepy old man, but I play one on TV.”

When the news broke that comedian Louis C.K. had dangled his dick in the faces of multiple women, Eden and I headed straight for the gray office couches, a spot where we could hide from the four horsemen of the apocalypse (aka our four male creative directors, one of which saw #MeToo as an opportunity to win a Webby). “Listen,” Eden said once we were safely alone, “I hate the prison system. I don’t think it works. I think it’s racist and punishes you for being poor.” “Right,” I agreed. I’d never considered this before, but it made sense. “I’m not even sure what justice looks like,” she continued, “but I know prison is not it. And all that said, I don’t know what to do with these men! If I’m being honest, I want to lock them up. I want to send them to an island where we never have to see them or think about them or look at them again. I want them to suffer FOREVER.” Her cheeks grew red and blotchy—I’d never seen her this worked up before. I too hated these men—they were despicable abusers; their actions had effectively ruined the lives of multiple human beings. But for some reason, I couldn’t bring myself to wish them off to an island or to pray that they’d disappear. Of course, it wasn’t my job to decide what these men deserved—their punishment should’ve been determined by those they’d hurt. But as it was, the only real punishment the justice system offered was jail, and for the first time I considered how unproductive that seemed. Prison left so many questions unanswered:...

And, of course, Audre Lorde: WE HAVE BEEN RAISED TO FEAR THE “YES” WITHIN OURSELVES.

Look up Audre Lorde's works.

IV. Wanna hear some bullshit? In 2015, one third of Pornhub’s gay male porn views came from women. And yet bisexual men still experience stigma, largely perpetuated by women—a 2019 study in the Journal of Bisexuality found that straight women rated bi men as less sexually and romantically attractive than straight men. Sigh.

But if, to paraphrase Audre Lorde, none of us is free until all of us are, then a revolution that centers Black trans power might wind up freeing me—and all of us—just the same.

These days when I don’t feel “queer enough,” I try to remember that queerness isn’t a box to check—it isn’t even tied to a goal. Queerness exists as a vehicle—an engine that stokes our curious brains, conjuring new ideas for what tomorrow could become. Queerness has the power to launch us into Muñoz’s “collective futurity,” a world where community remains fundamental to everything we do. If we can shed the weight of individualism, we can achieve so much more than assimilation. We can soar past “equality” until that concept is far behind us, just a tiny blinking star.

She stared out the window, watching couples walk past and considered that maybe she did want a relationship. It was hard to admit—the idea itself seemed patriarchal and embarrassing. But the Speechwriter’s singing toddler DMs had shown her she was ready to become a domestic housewife (or at least a feral one).

Red Sparrow

For example: My love language is Words of Affirmation, and I feel most cared for when my partner showers me with compliments.VII But instead of voicing that to my boyfriends (which would’ve set both of us up for success), I simply contorted my personality into something I thought they *might* compliment: an amalgamation of their interests, passions, and visions of “the perfect girl.” I listened to Bill Simmons’s podcast. I took a Skillshare course on cryptocurrency. I left my own calendar for dead in an effort to center their volatile schedules, once bailing on a friend’s birthday because Ian was in town and wanted to watch Westworld. (He fell asleep halfway through.) Why was I so willing to discard myself? You guessed it: because I wanted True Love, and I didn’t care if that love was fake as fuck. It’s hard to admit but I clung to the hope that one of these dudes would give me jewelry, chocolate, or—best case—a proposal. I didn’t have a Pinterest board (not a public one, anyway) but that didn’t stop me from fantasizing. (The ceremony begins at sunset in a Neukölln courtyard—I step out in a red jumpsuit wearing a graphic Euphoria eye, and the crowd goes wild.)