A Question
by Anya Sczerzenie

Can I really say I’m bi if I’ve never dated a girl? If the only kiss I’ve ever had was wind-whipped high-school hetero, us sixteen and leaning against snow-capped trees with his lips on mine—a kiss with the boy who always thought something was “up” with me, thought that I wasn’t all straight before I even knew it myself?

Am I bi if I don’t “look gay” and no one ever looks sideways at me on the street, if I never clip my hair short or wear converse like the queer girls that now sometimes grace my screen, if no one “suspects” me—as if it’s something to hide?

Am I bi if every girl I’ve ever liked was straight, or unattainable, or uninterested, if I can’t seem to flirt with girls, if I’m petrified by their gorgeous smiles and intimidating strikes of winged eyeliner? If I knocked over a broom trying to talk to the beautiful new hire at my high-school job and if I’ve forgotten my order in front of girls at cash registers and if I fell in love with my friend and never told her?

Am I bisexual if as some men like to claim, All women are bisexual? Or if, We’re all a little bi? Am I bi if people knock the “B” out of the acronym, am I bi if, as they say, it’s simply indecision or greed? If I really don’t know what I want?

Am I bi if I wear a white dress and marry a man, have children, live a life as straight as an arrow in a nuclear family?

And am I bi if even then I still sit up questioning at 2am, wondering what it must be like to kiss a girl’s soft lips, until even this thought fades into the background of my divided mind, until I only know that in this binary I can’t be one or the other…

Am I still bi then?