Got a question that would scandalize your group chat? That’s what this column is for. Go Ask Alex is an anonymous space for queer readers to ask the questions they’re afraid to ask anyone else — about sex, love, life, and everything in between. It’s judgment-free and completely anonymous.
Hey Alex,
I recently turned 40. On the way to that milestone in life, I made a real effort to become more genuine in how I live my life. I made career changes, lifestyle changes, and after such a long time, I started to realize that my hookups with women were perhaps more than flirty little party things that happened on the odd occasion. More likely, I'm bi.
I sat with that for a while. Why hadn't I said anything before? What held me back, and why would I do that when I have so many out-and-proud friends? Why can I be so open about everything else and yet this is like opening a can of beans with a blunt tin opener?
Bi invisibility is so real. Since talking more about my sexuality, I've had a number of other women tell me they are the same. Many of them have ended up in long-term relationships with men. So what was the need to say I'm bi?
And for myself, I'm torn between saying it and thinking, wtf, do I need to say anything? Because it feels so connected to my sex life (maybe because that's the only exploration I've really had of it), I don't feel it's any of my parents' business. I have told my siblings, and it's been no big deal at all. With friends, it's been a little different...
I built up this moment to tell my oldest friends after nearly 20 years of friendship, and while the overwhelming majority were all supportive, kind, and encouraging, one particular friend, one of the first I told, her immediate reaction was to laugh, make a joke of me, and say, "Is that because you're a fake lesbian now?" She did it in front of my oldest friends and had zero insight into the effect of that. "It's just a joke," she said.
I wanted some time to reflect on what she said, to process it, and then talk to her. She hated that, and a few days later, she went on a WhatsApp rampage in a group chat, telling everyone I'm a shit person and she can't understand me, and she would be removing me from her life, followed by a torrent of messages to me directly telling me I’m a bad friend and person.
Of course, she came crawling back, an awkward phone call, a plea to meet up. I cut her out. Her actions were cruel, unkind, and scarring.
A year later, she messages me to reconnect, and she is so blind to the damage her words caused and the emotional trench she pushed me back into.
Logically, I know I'm loved, accepted, and in the grand scheme of things, do I care what others think? At the same time, the words still hurt.
How can I move past that experience and get back to my goal of being more genuine in how I live my life?
xx
Hey friend,
I think we always care what people think, yeah? Such is life. And such is the purpose, really, of friendship: to have other minds we respect and listen to. Sometimes I am not the best gauge of my own life and choices, and I need a second opinion from someone I love and trust. In those times, I call on a friend. That is maybe the truest definition of a friend I know, someone whose opinion we are, by design, meant to care about. Which is what makes this story so hard to read. I’m so sorry.
Your letter shares a lot with the one I answered last week, from a gay man who lost all his decades-old work friendships after he retired and finally came out. Rejection like that is one of the cruelest things I can imagine living through, because make no mistake: we live for friends. Community, connections, people, these are why we choose one city over another, why we linger in a neighborhood, why we stay in a job instead of moving on, and why we go to certain bars and coffee shops and not others. Friendships are the richest stuff of life, the salve through its hardest parts and arguably a core reason for living. Life is about others.
But sometimes people reveal themselves to be bad friends. For the gentleman last week, I dropped the same well-worn but perfect Maya Angelou quote I'll give you: "When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time."
Your friend showed you who she is. Not someone who will safely support you through a very important chapter of your life. It is painful to make these discoveries about people, but they often accompany the work of self-discovery and coming out, and this is arguably the part of it we fear most. Coming out tends to test everyone you know, and the process nearly always involves a painful shedding of old connections to make room for new and better ones.
Here's what she should have said: "Wow, you did that all on your own. You asked yourself a question some people take a whole life to ask, and some never dare to. I'm so proud of you, and so grateful you felt safe telling me." And what a question it is: Does this new name, which comes with stigma and even the loss of friends, reflect me, and will claiming it make me happier?
This brings me to labels, and whether they are worth the trouble. Plenty of people think not. Increasingly, especially among the young and the lucky, self-identifying with a word can feel like needless friction, and in places where that feels true, maybe it is. But most of us are not so lucky, which is why labels still matter.
Here's why I'm still a big fan of them. As a teenager, I lived in a strict, ultraconservative, very religious home where "gay" was dangerous, a word that carried enormous risk and shame, even violence. So the fact that I found the courage to identify with it at 16, without knowing a single other out gay person, meant rejecting everything my parents and my church had taught me and putting all my faith in an untested idea: that somewhere out there were people like me, who would love and support me. My survival in those years hinged on believing they existed. Some part of me knew they were, and I was right.
I chose "gay" for them, knowing the choice would cost me most of my friends and my parents. It did; I speak to no friends from that time, and things with my parents never recovered. But I found my people, and now I’m one of them. I am part of the imagined family that closeted kids everywhere dream of being part of during the hardest years of their lives. As Harvey Milk said, "You gotta give 'em hope."
That is as true now as when he said it in the 1970s. Claiming that word, knowing the rejection that would follow, is the proudest thing I've done. The irony is that "gay" isn't even really accurate; like you, I'm probably bi, and "pansexual" is likely closer still. So I can argue the arbitrariness of these terms as well as anyone. If you're finding love and enjoying life, why staple a name to yourself and risk losing people like this (bad) friend? Is it worth it?
Yes. Look at your own story, at the women who, because you were brave enough to say it, felt brave enough to tell you they are the same. That is what a name does. Bi erasure is real, and bisexuality still gets treated, by straight and gay people alike, as a wobbly halfway house rather than a home of its own, though I find less of that in circles that embrace "queer." A word won't always feel perfectly accurate; plenty of us feel more bi some days, more gay or queer on others. But claiming one helps the right people find you and, gently, over time, helps you see who couldn't be in your life. It already cost you a friend. It will also, I promise, bring you the open-hearted, cool people who will be better than the friend you lost.
I'll leave you with what I most believe about all this, even if it sounds a little philosophical. A label doesn't create the feelings and doesn't make anyone's love or sex life more real; there are people who enjoy their same-sex desires their whole lives and never use these words, and their loves and pleasures are no less true for it.
What claiming a word really does is tell the next closeted person they are not the only one, that others are out there, and that a freer, more open life is possible. You did that already. So the answer to "What was the need to say I'm bi?" is just the belief, one I think many people share, that our lives are not, strictly, just our own. It is a service to others; being publicly gay or bi is fundamentally done for them, not just ourselves, and that is what life, and friendship, is all about.
Hey there! I’m Alexander Cheves. I’m a sex writer and former sex worker—I worked in the business for over 12 years. You can read my sex-and-culture column Last Call in Out and my book My Love Is a Beast: Confessions, from Unbound Edition Press. But be warned: Kirkus Reviews says the book is "not for squeamish readers.”
Here, I’m offering sex and relationship advice to Out’s readers. Send your question to askbeastly@gmail.com
