By Lara Zielinsky
My first attractions weren’t towards boys, but I didn’t question it. I just thought most kids kept their sexual imaginings private. The first people I fooled around with during my sexual awakening were girls. I’m not really sure why I didn’t question it, because I didn’t exactly grow up in a time period or environment where same-sex relationships were visible. I was just always more interested in the female characters of TV shows I watched, and often felt disappointed when they took up with guys on screen, like somehow that meant they were “off limits” to my imaginings. The first time this didn’t happen to me was watching Remington Steele.
My nights were filled with dreams of being with both characters, and during the day I wrote fanfiction that included intimate scenes and shared them with my friends (pre-internet—this is important). This was when I finally caught on to the idea that some girls weren’t interested in seeing (or imagining) naked women like I was. My friends were visibly uncomfortable reading some of these stories. I started writing only M/F stories, and only talked with other girls about being with guys, hiding my other inclinations.
I had my first boyfriend in high school and was sort of pleased when he graduated two years ahead of me and our relationship transitioned to long distance, then became infrequent, then just ended. In college, the final pieces of the puzzle of my attractions showed up. Without parents or my childhood community around me, I first dated a girl, then a guy, and then a girl. No organized group/identity labeling, though. In my final year of college, I met my now-spouse and settled down.
Years into our marriage, he asked something about my last relationship before we met. My use of she/her pronouns to describe the person raised his eyebrows. Yeah, I admitted, I’m bisexual. I had discovered this label in my new online community: Xena fandom. I was conversing regularly with people who identified as lesbian or bisexual. I spent the next few years probably like every other “baby gay,” seeking community anywhere and everywhere. Thank goodness for the internet. All the pieces of me had finally come together.
Lara Zielinsky is a published author of sapphic fiction and works as a fiction editor. She lives with her spouse of 32 years in Florida in the U.S.