I Explored Bisexuality Because My First Sexual Experience Was With a Female
Digging deep into my sexual history.
The point of this newsletter is to tell my story — well, in specific, to tell my sexual story.
Yes, I know I’ve written that I’m focusing on telling the story of my once sexless marriage and my sexual renaissance after my divorce. However, to understand how I got into the marriage I did, why it became sexless, and why I explored my sexuality the way I did after my divorce, I have to tell my whole sexual story.
So here’s one of the first stories in my sexual journey — how I lost my virginity to my best female friend at thirteen years old and how the experience transformed my sexuality.
“I want to kiss you,” Tess said as we sat on the couch together one afternoon at my parents’ house. It was summer. My parents weren’t home. I’d never kissed anyone before — not even a boy.
I was a very young thirteen. I hadn’t even gotten my period yet. Tess was also thirteen, but mature for her age.
She was wild, boy-crazy, and had already “developed.” She had breasts by nine and her period by ten. She was petite and blond and, no, her story doesn’t end pretty. How could it? Her father was abusive and abandoned the family. Her mother got cancer when we were in high school. By the eleventh grade, Tess had a boyfriend who was twenty-seven. And yes, she got pregnant (but miscarried).
She herself had been breech born, and this was said to be the reason why she did so poorly in school. She suffered from oxygen deprivation during the birth, maybe had some kind of brain damage. I only knew this because her mother had told my mother, who then told me. I don’t know. All I know is that Tess pursued a friendship with me, and always seemed to adore me.
I wanted so badly to be loved. I was shy and Tess was extroverted. Looking back, she probably only wanted me as a friend because I was so meek and insecure. I went along with anything she said — like kissing her when she asked me to.
It was weird to be kissed by my best friend. I didn’t necessarily like it. I didn’t know what I wanted at that age. I didn’t know if I’d even like kissing a boy. I went along with kissing Tess because she wanted it.
I had problems at home myself. My parents were still married, but my father was severely depressed. I wanted to be validated, and here was this beautiful, impulsive girl, who was so much braver than I was, wanting to kiss me.
I let her.
Soon, our clothes were off, and we’d moved to my bedroom, where she wanted to give me oral sex. I assented because she wanted it. When she asked for me to do it to her, I did.
It was my first time for everything — my first time kissing someone and my first time being naked with someone else, and my first time touching genitalia and having mine touched, and my first time licking and being licked. What did it mean? What did it mean that I was doing this with a girl?
I didn’t know what bisexual was at that age. I don’t even think I knew what lesbian was. No one was out at my high school. At this point, I wasn’t even in high school; I was still in junior high. And Tess was my best friend.
Neither of us orgasmed from the oral sex. After a while, we just stopped. Tess put back on her clothes and so did I. She rode home on her Schwinn.
We never spoke about the experience again. Tess never brought it up and neither did I. We continued our friendship as if what we’d done together never happened.
Tess lost her virginity to a boy a few months later. I would lose mine just shy of my sixteenth birthday. By age seventeen, Tess was dating a twenty-seven-year-old man, who didn’t go to our high school.
I decided to drop her as my friend. I had to focus on school. It dawned on me that I’d have to start applying to colleges soon. I had to keep up my grades. Tess didn’t. She wasn’t going to college. She was in the remedial track.
Then the adult who Tess was dating got her pregnant. I heard about it around school. She had a miscarriage, and I was glad I wasn’t friends with her anymore. Maybe that makes me sound mean, but I think I already sensed that everything she touched brought bad luck.
Except for one thing: she’d touched my body and changed my life. I never forgot Tess. She was my first time for everything — and she was a girl. Did this mean I was bi?
I felt confused.
I spent years after my experience with Tess wondering about my sexual identity. In college, I continued to explore. By my junior year of college, I had another friend like Tess — unstable, unruly, uninhibited.
Dana was smart though. She was always finding ways to fondle me in public. She loved to make out with me at parties and bars. I think she only did it to attract men.
I loved it though. But that I liked it so much left me feeling perplexed. Maybe I was bi.
I graduated college and met more girls. I met beautiful lesbians out at clubs, who wanted to date me. And so I went through a lesbian phase.
I began dating a gorgeous, alcoholic heiress. We tried to have sex but mostly it was just us lying in bed naked together, both of us waiting for the other person to lead. Neither of us was willing to do it. So we just lay there, embracing, neither of us making a move.
I wondered if maybe I wasn’t really into this girl thing. I broke up with the heiress and tried to just date men. The urge to have sex with women didn’t go away though. I continued to fantasize about lesbian sex.
I had more experiences. Sure, I typically slept with men. I only wanted to have romantic relationships with men. I ultimately married a man. But still every so once in a while, I’d end up with a woman.
So am I straight or bi? I’m less straight than a lot of women, but more straight than many women who categorize themselves as bisexual.
So how should I define myself?
I’ve come to understand that human sexuality is on a spectrum. While some people are wholly on one side of the spectrum or the other, so many of us are in between. But it’s those in-between spaces that are so confusing. They’re confusing because we expect people to take a side, to assume a non-flexible identity. You’re either gay, straight, or bi.
But what about if you’re something in between?
By allowing myself to inhabit those gray areas between gay and straight, bi and not bi, I’m comfortable letting other people do so, too. I no longer demand that people choose a single sexual identity because I’m comfortable with my own fluidity.
In the coming days, I’ll explain more about how my sexually exploratory nature influenced me to marry the kind of man I did, and how our marriage ultimately became sexless.
In the meantime, please feel free to leave me a comment if something about this story resonates with you.
This is so incredibly well-written! Thanks for sharing your story :)