Life, Living and Loving: Mrs. Feve’s Memoir Project – Open

It’s the finale of Mrs. Feve’s memoir project and I like her sense of humor to use “open” to close the project. It’s actually been a couple of days between my seeing the email announcing this prompt and my writing my thoughts on it because I had to think about “open” and in many contexts while trying to link the word to a memoir-like moment in my life…

Which, for me, was realizing two things: I was not only bisexual but very bisexual… and I loved it. We talk about being open-minded or being open with others and those things are comparatively easy when matched up with being open with yourself… about yourself even when there just might be something about you that those around you, well, let’s just say that they’re not gonna pat you on the back – or ass – and tell you how amazing you are.

Before the moment I had to be open with myself, there were the moments I had my eyes opened to know, realize and maybe even confirm that sex was not only “da shit” but it was even more so when you could have it with both boys and girls and putting the question in my head of, “How can something that feels so good be so bad?” That in reference to males having sex with each other; the boy/girl thing was just an instant hit and understanding and the only question was, “When can I do this again?”

I didn’t know it had a name and until I discovered that it did, uh, I really didn’t care if it did or not; what I knew – what I was learning – was this sex with “everybody” thing was even better than the “Jimmy Jet” toy I got when I sent in the required number of boxtops (batteries not included). Knew it was wrong, wasn’t supposed to be even thinking about it and, like many of those around me, didn’t give a damn about it.

I had my eyes opened, ah, somewhat later down the road when doing a book report for school, I had to go to the public library for the book I was gonna report on. Somewhere along the line, I ran across a word I didn’t know the meaning of so, as we’d been taught, I went to the gigantic dictionary that sat at the front of the library and started flipping through pages… and in doing so, came across the word “bisexual.”

After reading the definition like three or four times, I blurted out, “So that’s what I’ve been doing!” My exclamation was loud enough to get heads turned in my direction and earned me a scalding look from the librarian at the desk. Upon the discovery of this word, my whole view of things just opened up before me and setting what would be a life-long task to know everything there was to know about bisexuality, not just in myself but in other as well.

Even to this end, it was eye-opening to be on this path and thinking that I was the only one who knew about sex like this… then having a “duh” moment to realize that I wasn’t and the evidence of that had, um, conveniently been overlooked but I understood it: I was too busy having way too much fun to have noticed what should have been obvious.

“I am bisexual.” After discovering the word, it took me a bit of time to be open with myself and say those three words, not because I was in denial about it but I now understood my sexual behavior. I was very much okay with it but my eyes and mind were now even more opened about the elephant in the room and one that not only people were seeing but were trying to “kill…” and literally so in some cases.

Homosexuals. Homos. Faggots. Queers. Sissies. Even bull dykes. Sitting down and reading the bible and learning of the religious prohibitions and the gruesome punishments being promised while now being open to really notice how so many people just hated anyone who wasn’t straight… and I was one of those people who wasn’t straight.

My eyes and mind were sitting wide open, not just about sex but about people. Us. Humans. How just downright nasty and even violent we can be toward each other and more so when you were different… from the color of your skin as well as a great many things that also included how you had sex and who you would have it with.

While I’d learn that a lot of people like me could have a hard time being open with themselves about being bisexual, the hardest thing for me to accept was the outright hatred towards anyone who wasn’t heterosexual and how many would be accused of and persecuted for being a homosexual when they really weren’t.

My mind was pried open to reveal how… totally ignorant – and dare I say scared shitless – we can be about something that, as I’d eventually learn, was just another aspect of human behavior. Being open with myself about this was, for me, pretty easy and, I think, more so when I was into it up to my pretty brown eyes before I knew the word existed.

Better late than never, huh? I went from feeling like I was the only one who was like this to, duh, realizing that I wasn’t… and then to wondering if I was the only one who understood this part of the sex thing. Eyes opened more to eventually learn that others did understand it… and I wish I could have closed my eyes and mind so that I wouldn’t have to be exposed to the hatred many others spewed toward anyone not heterosexual.

Today, bisexuals are up against it and just like homosexuals were and, as such, they worry about things that I didn’t have to contend with since, at the time of my “birth” as a bisexual, it was more of a joke than anything else, something that was somewhat dismissed out of hand: People seemed to know that there were other people who went both ways, batted for both teams and were switch-hitters… but no one took it seriously and for those who did, well, you were a gay faggot queer who should be put to death.

Bisexuality did more than to open my mind about sex and the evil that men do; it opened my mind and enabled me to see that, as Mr. Spock would famously say in a movie decades later, “There are always possibilities…” I could see the world in a different way, my view not being obstructed by dogma and unfounded opinions and in ways that allowed me to see solutions to things that were, more often as not, as outside of the box as I was sexually.

But, okay, yeah – I understood sex, my eyes opened to the natural beauty of it as well as all of its ugliness and an ugliness brought to the table by those who, it seemed, didn’t or couldn’t understand what sex was really about and how the mandatory boy/girl way wasn’t the only way to experience both physical and emotional comfort via sex. My eyes were even more opened when I realized – while giving a guy a blow job and, typical of me, all late and wrong – why women tend to behave the way the did when you wanted to get into their panties. The guy was, to me, going out of his way to make something I found to be pleasing into anything but. Then there were the guys who do or say anything that’ll get you naked so they could subject you to their lust.

I even had a guy tell me, “If you suck my dick, I promise not to cum in your mouth!” Yeah, right. He came in my mouth anyway but that was okay since, for one, I didn’t believe him in the first place and, for the other, that’s exactly what I wanted him to do. Same with those guys who’d say that they wanted to fuck… but they weren’t gonna stick it in… and then they did but, again, I knew they would… but, yes, indeed, my eyes were very wide open to the bullshit men put women through just so they could bust a nut in them.

And through it all, I saw the importance about always being open about this with myself or, as a late friend of mine used to say, “You can lie to anyone you want to… but there’s only so much lying you can do to yourself.” It had become obvious that this was the greater crime one could commit and one that, by comparison, made the “crime” of taboo sex look insignificant. I may or may not be of a mind to let a whole lot of people know that I’m one of those “freaky” bisexuals; they either don’t need to know or it’s none of their damned business.

But I don’t lie to myself about it and I saw, with open eyes, the value in this decades before bisexuals today find themselves struggling with being open with themselves and worry their asses off over what everyone else is going to think and say about them and just because they not only like opposite sex stuff – they like the same sex stuff, too.

I am bisexual. I’ve been this way for a very long time now… and my eyes are still open as is my mind… and I remain very, very open with myself about it. “Why would you want to suck a guy’s dick?” is a question I’ve been asked more times than I care to remember… and being open about it – and with myself about it – prompts me to respond with, “Because I can… and it feels good to do it. What… do you really believe that women are the only ones who like sucking dick? Really?”

Open your eyes. Open your mind. See the reality where it lives. I did… and I still do… because nothing else makes any damned sense at all.