Misery Business
I have always been pretty open sexually and extremely curious about women, but there had never been a time where I’d seen a woman and thought ‘I want…I need…I have to have sex with her!’
Enter the band Paramore. The first time I saw lead singer Hayley Williams in the video for “Misery Business” I knew I wanted…I needed…I had to have sex with her! When I’d hear her raspy singing voice or see photos of the diminutive, fair-skinned beauty hidden under a perfectly-mussed red mane, my body did something it had never done before when looking at a woman—it responded sexually. I was undeniably in lust. Coincidentally, around that time, a writer friend of mine had been given an assignment I’d have killed for; he was invited to join the band for several days on tour.
“Show her my picture,” I begged him. “Ask her if she’d sleep with me! Just once.”
“You do realize she’s barely legal, right? Remind me never to let you babysit my kids.”
Unfortunately, nothing ever materialized.
Since then, I’ve had two other girl crushes, one on a lesbian and one on a girl who whose run the gamut of sexual identities over the last 20 years— straight in her teens, lesbian in her 20s, bisexual in her 30s. This sexual metamorphosis intrigued me.
Then, as if on cue with my curiosity, Lindsay Lohan, who’d always identified herself as straight, began a same-sex relationship. Subsequently, several major magazines and talk shows began running articles and segments on women who, while insisting they were straight, had begun having sexual feelings toward—even striking up relationships with—other women. This phenomenon, no longer taboo, has even been given a name: Sexual Fluidity.
Sexual orientation is often viewed in black and white terms with no gray area. Recent studies suggest, however, that especially in women, sexual desire can be fluid throughout one’s life depending on biological, cognitive and environmental factors, among others. This notion was first suggested back in 1948, when Alfred Kinsey introduced a sexual continuum scale. On the seven-point scale, zero represented total heterosexuality and seven represented total homosexuality. Most of those whom Kinsey studied fell somewhere between these two numbers, suggesting the notion that many people—even those who, like me, had identified as completely heterosexual—can have urges toward the same sex.
Armed with this information, I set out to find other people who identified themselves as straight, but have, at one time or another, acted upon their sexually fluid urges.
Emily, 30
Emily’s sexual awakening happened more by force than by chance. After a long-term relationship ended with a messy break-up, Emily declared she was done with men.
“I’d had it with them,” she tells me over coffee. “I was done. There were so many things they just didn’t get. I thought a woman would [understand] a woman better.”
Although she was not sexually attracted to women, Emily began frequenting a gay-friendly area of town hoping to strike up a conversation, and subsequently get a date, with a lesbian. When I questioned how she’d know who was a lesbian, she said she was looking, more or less, for “girls who looked butch.”
“It was not as easy as I thought. I learned pretty quick that just because someone likes girls, it doesn’t mean that she likes you. And even the few who were attracted to me, got turned off when they found out I’d never been with a woman. No one really wanted to get attached to someone who was straight. And I wasn’t attracted to most of them, either, so I don’t know how that would work out.”
After a few weeks, Emily met Tara. Her hair was cropped close to her head like a man’s cut—she actually gets it done at a barber shop—and she was wearing a men’s button-down shirt and baggy jeans cuffed at the hem.
“She looked more masculine than the average girl, but you could tell she was a woman. It was hot.
She was going into a book store so I followed her in and asked if she could recommend anything. I ended up buying a book that I’ve never even cracked open.” The pair clicked and the rest, as they say, is history.
“Tara knew about my history, and knew I’d never, you know, done this sort of thing before. But I really was attracted to her. It took me by surprise, actually. So we eased into things.” Emily pauses, before adding, “Slowly.”
When I asked what her first sexual experience with Tara was like, Emily blushes and smiles wide, giggling like a school girl.
“I can’t even explain it. It was like nothing I’d ever experienced. It was, like ‘Wow.’ Amazing. Amazing.” Emily looks down and smiles to herself. I can tell she’s mentally replaying the scenario in her head.
When asked about the future—does she see herself with Tara, or women, forever— Emily is unsure but unfazed. “Who knows? I mean two years ago if you told me I’d be with a woman, I would have laughed in your face,” she says. “I don’t know what the future holds. But for right now, I’m really happy with the way things are.”
Randall, 36
I met Randall through a friend, as he’s been dating her mom, Kate, for about a year. Although he’s considerably younger than her he’s every bit as mature and impeccably groomed in that millennial-era metrosexual kind of way. As I later learned, Randall, a therapist, had gotten out of a serious relationship with a man prior to dating Kate. We met in his office to discuss the concept of sexual fluidity, not only from his personal experience, but from what he sees in his work.
“I’ve never really seen myself as gay,” he says, “but I never ruled out the possibility of dating a guy. I didn’t have the courage to pursue a same-sex relationship though, until I was in my 20s.”
I was curious about how he decides which sex to date and when. Does he wake up one morning and think: ‘I want to date girls this month?’
“I’m attracted to the person, not to their sex,” he explains. “It’s true though, that sometimes I am more drawn, sexually, to one sex than the other.”
While confidentiality laws prevent Randall from divulging specifics about his patients’ experiences, he does tell me that he’s worked with many adults who have “always been straight but reach a point in life where they’re attracted to someone of the same sex and feel conflicted.” While he has seen some men, like himself, he admits that he sees this phenomenon “markedly more in women.”
As for me, while I still identify as straight and am in a monogamous, heterosexual relationship, I do have a definite attraction to women at this point of my life. And while the outside world may view me as straight, there is no doubt in my mind that my sexuality is flexible and fluid.
So Hayley from Paramore, if you’re reading this, give me a call. Maybe your sexuality is fluid, too, and you just don’t know it yet.