I am a bisexual man. When I was growing up, I didn’t consciously find myself sexually attracted to guys. It really didn’t occur to me. In elementary school, I crushed on most of the girls my age and was interested in sex at a very early age. I distinctly remember when I was ten or eleven years old, walking with my friend, Tim, one afternoon and talking about oral sex. I didn’t call it “oral sex,” but that was what we were talking about. I mentioned that, based on my calculations, a man and a woman should be able to pleasure each other orally at the same time (in language appropriate for a kid, of course). Yes, I invented the 69. At least, I thought I had. I learned a few years later that someone else had, in fact, already thought of this. When I moved from California to Illinois at twelve years old, I had to start from scratch socially. I was surrounded by cute girls, puberty was kicking my ass, and though I made a few attempts to talk to the opposite sex, the results were generally disastrous and my self esteem took a nose dive. During those early years, I spent a lot of my alone time perfecting the art of beating off.
In my early adolescence I experimented a bit with self-pleasure. Rubbing against a pillow at just the right angle and pushing the my crotch against a hot tub jet were two of my favorites, but the first time I rubbed one out to completion, I was in my seventh grade pre-algebra class. You read that right. My assigned seat was in a back corner of the classroom and one day, during one of my regular sexual day-dreams, I took the pocket route to adjust my erection. Whatever I did felt damn good, so I kept doing it. I was as subtle as one can be whilst engaged in a solo tug session in a room full of people, but I accomplished my mission. Since I wasn’t far enough into puberty to ejaculate, I hadn’t made a mess, but orgasm was definitely achieved. A few months later, I could no longer engage in mess-free self stimulation and pre-algebra lost much of it's luster.
My best friend during junior high had a basement with a locked room in it. Eventually curiosity got the best of us and we broke in through an outside window, which was the easier route into the mysterious room. Our wildest expectations were not only met, but exceeded when we discovered his mom had an absolutely epic stash of pornography, all on good old VHS. The first one we popped in the VCR was called Cherry Busters, and included a double penetration in a later scene, which, in this case, was a woman being penetrated both anally and vaginally at the same time by two different penises. At twelve years old I didn’t even know that was possible and just like that, my young eyes were wide open. Although my friend and I never did the simultaneous jerk off thing, we watched a metric ton of porno over the next year or so. It was the best I could do with the hand I was dealt, pun lightly intended.
My social status changed for the better during my freshman year of high school, and girls suddenly became an option. I immediately started working it aggressively and managed to lose my virginity at the tender age of fourteen. I also got my first blow about an hour later, but I digress. The friend I had watched all the porn with and I had pretty much stopped hanging out by this time, and I had two new best friends, Earl and Pierre. The three of us became pretty notorious in our little scene for our sexual curiosity and openness. We had a lot of sexual partners in common and were very open about the topic of sex. We started a band and that led to even more crazy sexual situations. Unsurprisingly, being in a band doesn't suck when trying to entice the ladies, and I majorly made up for the dry spell that was my junior high years.
During my last semester of high school, my step-mom kicked me out of the house and I ended up living with my girlfriend, Janet, and her mother. I got a job working the night shift at 24 Hour video rental store, which boasted a large selection of adult titles and I took full advantage of their employee rental policy. Janet and I became fans, specifically of the early Seymore Butts catalog, and a lot of our sexual experiences were inspired by what we watched in those videos. Around the same time, we decided to open our relationship. We started off slow, having sex while a couple that we were friends with had sex next to us. Eventually, that led to our first foursome. Not long before, Janet had expressed some interest in being with another girl and during the threesomes and foursomes we had, she was able to experiment a little. While she didn’t call herself bisexual at that point, it was what it was. I was completely comfortable with it, and encouraged her to explore as much as she wanted, but had not really thought about being with a guy myself. The only thing that made me question my sexuality was a reoccurring dream I had where I engaged in some oral sex with another guy. Once awake, I could never remember what the guy looked like, and just I chalked it up to porn overload, only bringing it up on occasion in mixed company for comedic purpose.
About a year later, when I was nineteen years old, Janet and I found ourselves living in Newport Beach, California. She had recently met a girl at her work and they became fast friends. Within a month, Chrissy had moved in with us and had become a part of our relationship. It was the first time Janet had been with another girl one-on-one, and it was at this point that she became comfortable referring to herself as bisexual. This was back in 1996, before the internet was something everyone had available to them. But I do remember coming across the word polyamory while browsing the internet at the library. There was not a lot of literature available on the subject, or at least not a lot available to me, but I did read enough to know it was likely that this new word could be applied to the relationship I was in at the time. And, believe me, I felt like I was the luckiest guy on Earth.
While in Newport Beach, I was working as a bag-boy for a local grocery store. There was a Starbucks in the strip mall right next to where I worked, and one of the guys who worked there used to come into my store regularly to buy his cigarettes. He reminded me of a young Henry Rollins, tough looking and stand-offish. He was in good shape, had lots of tattoos, and had these really nicely sculpted mutton chops. One sleeve had a space theme, with stars and planets, spaceships and aliens. Something about the guy really drew me in. Not coincidentally, the first time I pointed him out to Janet was when I spotted him a few rows in front of us during a Rollins spoken word show at UC Fullerton. As a fellow fan, I assume he was emulating Rollins' look a bit. Anyway, for weeks, when I’d see him come into the grocery store I’d make it a point to bag his purchase. I really didn’t think much about the why of it – I just thought he looked cool and wondered what he was like as a person, you know? Sometimes I’d see him with a very attractive girl, which I assumed was his girlfriend, and I thought about trying to get to know them; possibly organize a fivesome with my girlfriends. I’d think about what that experience would be like, and that’s when it hit me. I was sexually attracted to him. I didn’t imagine taking him up my ass or anything that dramatic, but I definitely wanted to be with him physically, maybe as much as I wanted to be with his girlfriend. It was a very strange realization for me.
I didn’t say anything about this new perspective to my girlfriend for a few days. The more I thought about it, the more clear it became. I thought about that reoccurring dream I used to have, where I traded oral sex with a guy. Maybe it was due to the new found acceptance of my possible bisexuality, but the dream started to feel more like a memory. The more I went over it in my mind, details became clearer and, almost overnight, I realized that it had actually happened. I don't know if it was boredom that led to us experimenting with each other, but it was a fact – my best friend in junior high and I had actually stopped being friends because of the awkwardness of what had happened. Remember earlier when I said my friend and I had never done the simultaneous jerk off thing? Yeah, it was even gnarlier that that. All at once, I realized I had engaged in a homosexual 69. I had sucked a cock!
