Betty Dodson with Carlin Ross

Better Orgasms. Better World.

 0 items

• Login
• Join

Search this site:

I used to call myself a 95% lesbian. Now I’m a queer femme who sometimes sleeps with men. This fact still bemuses me. I wasn’t a Gold Star lesbian — I’d slept with 2 men. But I hadn’t really enjoyed sex with them. And it didn’t really matter; I was married to a woman and would be spending my life with her. And though our marriage would sometimes flex enough to let a third person into our bed (indeed, that’s how I slept with the second guy) whether or not I could actively desire a man was irrelevant.

And then my marriage ended and suddenly I was single. Suddenly I was single and determined to explore my sexuality and test my limits. Still, men weren’t on my radar. Oh, I’d get the occasional offer, but I’d either dismiss it as a perfunctory attempt to score, or I’d just laugh it off. Sometimes I’d flirt, but I never thought twice about actually sleeping with him.

And then this summer I met the Chemist. I was in the beginning of a friendship with his girlfriend at the time, but one day he emailed me, explaining how attracted his girlfriend was to me and how it was his sincere hope that she and I could hit it off physically. And that while he’d LOVE to be part of it, he didn’t need to be if that was a hard limit for me. He just sincerely wanted me and his girlfriend to start the sexual relationship that she seemed interested in.

Color me shocked. Like I said, I’d been getting the occasional proposition since I singled up. But I never took them seriously. I always dismissed them as polite or that I’d misunderstood the intention, or whatever. The Chemist was so blunt I couldn’t brush his words aside, but he was so polite and sincere that I was inclined to let him be part if such a thing were actually to happen.

And, as it turns out, it did, and I did. And I enjoyed myself. (I’ll tell this story another time)

In the time between that first time and his moving out of state for a new job, the three of us played, and I was turned on by the Chemist than I was by the girlfriend. I liked and desired the girlfriend in her own right, but my desire for the Chemist was, shockingly, stronger. Which development sparked a lot of deep soul searching. I couldn’t say that I was one of those lesbians who just happened to fall in love with a man, because I wasn’t in love (in like, yes, in love, no). I couldn’t deny that this was pure desire. Not just desire for his intelligence and personality (which is very compatible with my own), but desire for his body, too, and what he could do to me with it.

What I realized is that one of the biggest reasons I am a lesbian isn’t because of sex. I mean, I LOVE having sex with women, don’t get me wrong. And women are far more likely to get me hot than a guy. But when it comes to receiving pleasure, a skilled partner of either sex can get the job done, and even as inexperienced as I have been, and even after having sex with the men I did in the distant past (as disappointing as I found them to be) I understood that. And I understood that they wouldn’t be the kind of men I’d choose if I had my druthers.

No, the biggest reason I identify as lesbian rather than bisexual is because of love and partnership. When it comes to who and what kind of person I look to partner with, espouse, have children with, it was women that I wanted. Now, that’s in past tense not because I feel differently about that, but because I’ve changed my mind about wanting a spouse, co-habitating partner, co-parent at all. It may just be in the stage of divorce I’m in right now that I feel that way. I realize that I’ll always be poly, but that doesn’t mean (obviously) that I couldn’t have a spouse or new co-parent (for new kids, step parent for the ones I’ve already got) but I honestly can’t see myself ever wanting that again. I don’t EVER want a spouse-type person to co-habitate with me. I don’t want to add a step parent to the mix of my kids, and with being infertile, I don’t want to go through another partner’s pregnancy just to have another child that I have no legal rights to.

So, for the first time since I started thinking about having sex with people, I’m not evaluating people based on their potential as a life partner, but just looking at them from the standpoint of desire and their potential as lovers and play partners. Which opens up possibilities I’d never allowed myself to consider before. Older men, younger men, men at all, butch network consultants who are only in town for a couple of months, people who live out of state…

And that new mindset seems to be causing me to radiate an energy that’s drawing diverse potential sexual partners towards me.

A couple months ago I wrote to the Chemist and told him that he’d broken me. I made crude jokes about being fucked straight. Or at least fucked bi. I quipped that i’m “bi-curious from the other side”. It’s funny. And not. Here’s the thing: almost no one who knows my real name knows that I’ve been sleeping with men. Well, let me clarify that: none of my family, none of my co-workers, none of my casual acquaintances, or my exwife know I’ve been sleeping or dating men. My good friends know. It’s almost like I’m closeted again. No, I AM closeted again. Which bugs me, dammit! I like to walk my talk. I’m only happy when my behavior matches my principles. I doubt I’ll keep this hidden for long. But I fought too long and too hard to get my family to accept my gayness: I am not ready to educate them on the subtleties of my sexual desires. Eventually, though, yes.

But for now I’ll just tell all of you. I’m a queer femme who flexes enough to have sex with men. And if something more emotional develops with a male lover? I’ll do some more growing and complicating. But in this moment I’m homoflexible and becoming increasingly more comfortable with that.