Woody Allen once said that the good thing about being bisexual is that it doubles your chance of a date on a Saturday night..

That has not been my experience….

 

Perhaps if I had not been so afraid of the jeering, taunting, hate that hung like a rancid poncho over their shoulders – muscles tensed, fists bunched, ready to grind the blood from my nostrils…

Perhaps then I might have taken Heather Garvie’s hand after I had discovered the softness of the freckles on her pale 12 year old skin, and after she had fluttered her hands like butterflies across the wings that were my shoulder-blades and after our lips had found the sweetness of their mates, as we explored our sex and that roller coaster plunge that our stomachs took, ironically in my bedroom…closet, we might have walked hand in hand to the mall to share an Orange Julius and giggle as we watched the older girls flirt and the older boys try to sneak into the liquor store.

 

Perhaps if I had not been so afraid of my father’s caustic homophobic, misogynistic jibes that burrowed their way into my brain like…what was it…oh yes, the earwig in that episode of Night Gallery…

Perhaps I might have found a dark corner in the back of the campus pub, the smell of stale tobacco and beer cocooning me as I run my tongue across Lisa’s teeth, slide my hand under her black baby doll tee and fill my palm with her tight , round tits – rubbing her nipples along my lifeline.

 

Perhaps if I had not been so afraid of sitting alone in my apartment, echoes of my anguish filling my brain, terror that I would discover that what I had been fed about myself was gospel, raise my hand, swear on my mother’s life, truth…

Perhaps I might not have married the man that hit me harder with his spite and venom and vowels and consonants than he ever did with his hands.

 

Perhaps if I had not been so afraid that what the world had taught me…that bringing home a girlfriend would forever damage my daughter’s psyche…

Perhaps then she would not have had to come out to me first, before I, moments later, came out to her.

 

Perhaps, if I had not been so afraid…just afraid…I might not have waited until I was 40 to come out at all.

 

But then, I am standing here on this stage tonight, telling you my truths…so perhaps I am not so afraid, after all.