Recently read about a married guy who’s recently come out to his wife as gay. Gay for as long as she’s known him, apparently, and it sounds like it’s been a really difficult thing for them both. Big effects on how they feel about themselves, how they feel about each other, what happens to their marriage, what they should do next. His latest post talks about deciding to basically “ignore it” – that the rest of his life (husband, father, etc.) means more to him than being gay and doing “the gay things”. As he put it, “I can’t let a selfish desire destroy the lives of those I care most about. I can think of countless negatives and bad things that would happen if I choose to live my life gay. I can’t think of one good or positive thing that would happen if I choose to live my life as a gay man.”
I guess I kinda feel the same way about being “maybe bi”: Even if I am (more about that in a bit), it’s not going to change the fact that I want a wife and kids and everything more than I’d ever want a boyfriend. (”Ever”? That’s a pretty strong word… But I already know the greatest guy in the world and if I don’t even want for sure to be his boyfriend – then the rest of you gay/bi dudes have no hope at all. 
)
Am I bi? There’s really only two things that make me wonder – the connection I feel with my best bud-slash-practically-brother, and the fact that, occasionally, I get more turned on by watching certain types of gay porn than I usually do watching straight porn. (Corbin Fisher, if you must know.)
The connection half of it, I attribute to the fact that we share a brain and hang out more evenings together than separately. Anything that’s happened physically (why be anonymously coy? there’s been a fair bit) has been by way of experimentation (for both of us); if he weren’t gay or hadn’t started it, I don’t think I would’ve tried anything. (I admit to a small amount of curiosity about a couple specific things.)
The porn – well, fact is, straight porn tends to feel a little artificial to me. I like attractive young real people enjoying each other. The straight stuff I’ve seen/downloaded usually seems scripted and faked. It’s a little harder for a guy to fake an orgasm. And even the “fakest” looking guy doesn’t have heavy makeup and hair extensions on to look “slutty”. For the record, the best stuff on the CF site is the straight “tag team” stuff. Or, okay, yeah, some of the bi stuff.
So on the “pro” side for identifying as bi — We’ve got
- A close, ambiguously defined relationship with a gay guy which usually gets treated as friendship; and
- the fact that I don’t require mammary glands to be aroused by good-looking people enjoying realistic sex. (In the pictures, I mean. I’ve never had any desire for mammary glands of my own.)
On the “con” side, there’s –
- I want a long-term relationship with a woman; I don’t believe I’d be content with the same thing with a man. (Even leaving aside the problem of kids and what my family would say.)
- It will be a monogamous one – I completely reject the idea of sneaking around on her to have it off with random strangers in bathrooms. It’s not safe, it’s not honest, and it’s icky. So wanting both – or at least, having both – is never going to be an option. (I even reject the idea of sneaking around on her to have it off with my bud. Although if I could ever persuade the two of them to join me in the same bed – well now.)
- If I were really bi – wouldn’t the idea appeal more of having sex with more guys? Not to say that gay/bi guys are automatically promiscuous, but the fact that I’d go to bed with precisely 1 guy (out of 3 billion) on the planet surely makes him anomalously awesome.
So overall…. I guess the “not” side wins out, at least by the numbers.
