I Came Out As Bi. Everyone Else Came Out With Their Opinions

Apparently, being a bisexual man means everyone has a theory about your life, except you. To some people, I’m secretly gay. To others, I’m basically straight. To a surprising number of people, I’m destined to cheat on whoever I’m dating.

Coming out didn’t free me from those assumptions – it just gave people permission to say them out loud.

Growing up, I didn’t know one could be two. I learned that gay and straight were monoliths – rigid archetypes dictating not just your sexual interests, but all of your behaviours. The way you spoke, the way you walked, even how you spread your legs could tell the whole world whose legs you were interested in spreading.

We didn’t need viral Andrew Tate TikToks telling us ‘the rules’; if you found yourself in violation of the Straight Code, one of your schoolmates would let you know posthaste.

Because I didn’t lisp or prance, I truly assumed I was straight. I liked girls, I watched sports, I was angry as hell without knowing why – the whole nine. I did google shirtless pictures of Orlando Bloom (love your work, bud!), but I chalked it up to a blip in my straightness, a gay cheat day, if you will. (Are they still cheat days if they happen five days a week?)

It didn’t help that I was raised religious. The preacher at my Baptist elementary school politely informed my second grade class that homosexuality was a “mortal sin”. (Thank God he did. Without that guidance, we would have turned Mrs Murrow’s classroom into an Athenian bathhouse.)

To add to my confusion, behind that preacher stood a statue of Jesus, splayed on the cross, like a scarecrow for queers. Crown of thorns, nails in wrists, and… shirtless? Looking, dare I say… chiselled? It felt like mixed messaging. If you’re going to build a scarecrow, one shouldn’t stuff it with delicious corn.

Even after I drifted away from religion, the internalised homophobia stuck around. Whenever I dated a woman, I spent the entire relationship worried she’d sniff me out. That I’d forget to close an incognito tab and everything would unravel. As it turns out, the emotional distance that anxiety bred wasn’t exactly a chick magnet, either.

The first person I came out to was a girlfriend. We’d been together six months, and she was openly bisexual, so I figured the time had come. When I told her, she said she was happy I told her, that she supported me, but her follow-up questions betrayed her seeming acceptance.

“Do you… prefer men?”

“No, I prefer women and actually, I’ve fancied one in particular of late – you.”

“Well… okay. But am I enough for you?”

“If anything, baby, you’re too much.”

She laughed at that, she kissed me, and we let it lie.

But the topic just kept coming up. Always, “I’m worried I’m not enough for you,” until one day she made it explicit: “I’m afraid you’ll cheat on me with a man.”

To me, this didn’t feel like a logical concern – if that was the plan, why would I have told you I was bi? If cheating was the intention, wouldn’t my best course of action be to withhold that information at all costs? That would be like if Sweeney Todd gave the police Mrs Lovett’s pie recipe – it’s going to arouse suspicion.

Those fears echoed one of the oldest stereotypes about bisexuality: that bisexuality itself isn’t real. Straight people assume you’re secretly gay. Some gay people assume you’re just not there yet. Everyone seems to think you’re eventually going to pick a side.

It seems she saw me not as someone who had desires for both, but as a closeted gay man sneaking a toe out of the closet. If my bisexuality is just a journey toward gayness, then I’m moving at a glacial pace, like the shifting of a tectonic plate.

A few months later, we broke up, and I found out through a friend that she had cheated on me with her male coworker. Maybe she wasn’t worried I would cheat on her with a man – she was worried I would cheat on her with that man. I may be bisexual, but I still prefer one at a time.

I had half a mind to mosey my way back into the closet at that point, but I knew that this pattern would repeat if I couldn’t be honest about it.

I thought that coming out would be a moment of epiphany, that the fetters of my sexual shame would morph into wings and I’d showboat above my withered chrysalis. The reality has been far less poetic.

Coming out began what will likely be a lifelong journey, a quest to identify who I really am under the vestiges of my concealment.

I’m happier now. I don’t worry about seeming gay anymore. The cat’s out of the bag. I don’t suffer through a Rusty Nail anymore; I order a piña colada and cross my legs as tightly as I please.

And when I do meet someone who says they don’t understand how someone could like both – or insists I must secretly prefer one – I tell them, “It’s okay. You’re just going through a phase.”

Maxx Eddy is a comedian blending stand-up and storytelling. He was named a New Face of Comedy at Montreal’s Just for Laughs Festival and recently made his American TV debut on Comics Unleashed with Byron Allen. Maxx Eddy: Bi Meets World will be performed at 5pm at Gilded Balloon Patter House, Edinburgh, from 5-31 August.