Q: Longtime Savage Love fanboy with a bit of a conundrum—and it’s your fault! I’m a bi man in my 30s. To use Charles M. Blow’s word, my bisexuality is “lopsided.” This means that I fall in love with women exclusively, but I love to have sex with men occasionally. My current girlfriend not only approves, she likes to join in. We have a great kinky sex life, and at times we invite a hot bi dude to join us. You keep saying that to counter bisexual erasure, it is the duty of every bisexual to come out of the closet. If I were a “proper” bisexual, i.e., romantically interested in men also, that would be no problem—my family and work and social circles are extremely liberal. However, your advice to us kinksters and people in open relationships is that we probably shouldn’t come out to our parents or colleagues, since when it comes to sex, it’s advisable to operate on a need-to-know basis. While I agree with this completely—my mother doesn’t need to know my girlfriend pegs me—the rule keeps me in the closet as well. Since I’m only sexually interested in men, wouldn’t I be revealing facts about my sex life if I came out as bi? I also wouldn’t want to mislead gay men into thinking that I’m available for romantic relationships with them. So which rule is more important: the duty to come out as a bisexual or the advice to operate on a need-to-know basis when it comes to your sex life? —Bisexual Leaning Out Warily
Finally, BLOW, most gay men are aware that bi guys usually aren’t romantically interested in other men. And that’s fine—so long as hetero-romantic bi guys don’t mislead us, most gay men are down to fuck. (And gay men who won’t date homo-romantic or bi-romantic men? You guys are missing out. My friend Eric was a hot, hung, adventurous catch. Congrats, Christian!) And since you’re partnered and presumed to be monogamous, you’re also presumed to be unavailable. But if you’re worried a gay friend might hire a hit man to off your girlfriend so he can have a shot at your heart, come out to him as hetero-romantic at the same time you come out to him as bi.
- A person can love more than one parent, more than one child, more than one sibling, and more than one romantic partner. Telling people they can feel romantic love for only one person at a time isn’t just stupid, it’s harmful. Let’s say Bill is partnered with Ted, and Bill believes romantic attraction/love is a one-at-a-time phenomenon because that’s what he was told. Now let’s say Bill develops a crush on Sandra. If Bill doesn’t question the one-at-a-time bullshit he was taught to believe about romantic love, Bill is highly likely to think, “Well, I must not be in love with Ted anymore, otherwise I couldn’t feel this way about Sandra,” and then he may dump tried-and-true Ted for shiny-and-new Sandra.
