By Robyn Walters
Okay. Okay. I’ll admit it. I was a heterosexual guy. Only attracted to women. Not to men. No. Never. Period. End of argument. Was like that for 61 years. Let’s say 48 years because I didn’t pay attention to sex at all until I was 13 or so.
That is quite a gap, 13 to 61. I hadn’t really wondered why bisexuality hadn’t risen to the surface. I now look back at 61 with 15 more years of experience.
If one has never acted on that part of one’s identity, then I suppose it could be a case of insufficient, what? Drive? Desire? Libido? Opportunity? What if one isn’t even sure which direction is the bisexual direction?
A cisgendered woman has several possibilities of sexual orientation: heterosexual, homosexual, asexual, bisexual, pansexual. A transsexual woman faces more degrees of freedom. If she was a heterosexual male and remains attracted solely to women, she has become a lesbian. If she becomes exclusively attracted to men, she is once again heterosexual. If she was straight as a man and is now attracted to both men and women, she is suddenly bisexual. Such was my journey. In a male body, my attraction was only to women. The thought of sexual contact with a male was anathema and evoked feelings of panic. Once I began my transition, however, with its regimen of antiandrogens (testosterone blockers) and estrogen, I began to view men differently. Any thoughts of sexual contact were still troublesome and remained off limits. It would still have been a physically gay sexual encounter, and I wasn’t gay.
What was so magic about the age of 61? Sudden enlightenment? Release of repressed desires? No, it was much simpler and took the form of two magic pills. That was the year that I gave in to the realization that I wasn’t a man and never had been despite fathering four children. That was the year I began cross-hormone therapy. One pill was an antiandrogen that blocked testosterone; the other was estrogen, true magic and much, much better than chocolate.
Suddenly, men – some, anyway, became increasingly attractive, but the idea of sex with men was still off the table.
About $20,000 of sex reassignment surgery resolved that mind problem and hormone problem, and I found myself married again. This time to a man, a very special man. My man, my husband, is a transman, and we are coming up on our 14th anniversary. Female to male surgery is not yet as advanced as male to female surgery. My thirteen-year-old renovation remains untested.
Surprise. My old attraction to women didn’t disappear, and a well-turned female still turns my head and makes my heart and other body areas go pitty pat. All to no avail, of course, because I am married and have always been a faithful serial monogamist. No hanky panky outside of the marriage vows. Mental, maybe, and dreams, of course. (Even at 76, one has the occasional dream about sex.)
So this old gal became bisexual by chance, and by choice has never acted on it. My marriage, my love for my husband, is too important to me to trade for experiences I can only imagine.
A non-practicing bisexual. That’s my label. At least until much earlier in my next life in which I hope to be born into the right body (female) and into a liberated family.
Robyn is a transwoman who had her surgery 13 years ago on her 63rd birthday. Becoming a non-practicing bisexual was an unexpected part of her journey. She and her author husband live in Hawaii. Her husband has written, and she has edited, seven published LGBT coming-of-age books so far.