When I first came out in college to my conservative mother as a not-entirely-gay guy — which is to say bisexual — it was true then as it is now. I am attracted to, and date, people across the gender spectrum. I did not foresee, however, that I would grow to regret my decision. Not the coming out, but the fact that by calling myself bi, I had given my mother the impression I could choose to live a heterosexual life. But was it actually possible for me to make that choice?
I spent much of my adolescence confused by my split attractions. It took me a while to figure out what was going on; my religious household was repressive of all sexuality, not just queerness. Take when I’d attend a beach or pool party, as was customary for Florida tweens. Were it to somehow get back to my mother that, while posing for a platonic group photo, my bare arm might have touched the bare shoulders of a female classmate, I would not hear the end of it.
In high school, I had a hard time understanding why stretching sessions on the soccer team left me disoriented and warm. Or the butterflies I got when, in front of our lockers, I asked a girl to go to homecoming with me as a friend, by way of a dinky cardboard sign.
Still, it wasn’t until college that I experienced the interpersonal flailing known as dating. It was through that process that I came to know myself as bisexual, and everything clicked. Thankfully, I was at Yale, where being queer was about as notable as being a humanities major (which is to say, not at all).
But in tense moments, that label is used against me. During phone arguments, my mother will often note that it deeply upsets her that I date men, and when I say I cannot help who I am, she rebuts with something along the lines of, “Well, aren’t you bi? You could choose to be with a woman then, for God’s sake. You’re making your life harder on purpose.”
For my mother, my self-declared bisexuality keeps the option of a righteous path in life open, if only I renounce my queerness. As she sees it, there is a choice — I simply keep making the wrong one. As a young adult, I often wished I had just let her think I was gay. In our war of words, there would be no “choice” for her to spear me with. She’d think me doomed, sure, but at least “doom” is simple.
Last year, I turned 27. I started thinking about how I’d like to meet someone I could build a life with. I started thinking about what would happen if the next person was my life person. About what would happen if that person ended up being a woman.
If I announced that I intended to spend the rest of my life with a woman, it would likely be one of the happiest moments of my mother’s life. The thought of her satisfaction, and the bigotry at its roots, makes my stomach churn. I could so vividly see my mother falling to her knees, exalting the Lord, and breaking down in tears of joy. It’d probably be the worst that seeing someone happy for me could make me feel.
But, I realize, she wouldn’t just be celebrating my turn away from “sin.” She’d also be rejoicing at her eldest son’s life becoming easier. Tightly wrapped around my mother’s inexcusable homophobia is a sincere worry for me.
In an attempt to appeal to my pragmatism, she once warned over the phone, “Be careful, if people know you’re not straight, it might make things harder for you as an actor.”
Sadly, she had a bit of a point.
As a performer, with every queer joke I make, I think, “Is there a director or producer who will see this and then only ever see me as a gay guy?” Last year, I role-played meeting casting directors for an acting coach’s class. Afterward, she recommended I be more “masc” in my day-to-day professional life, since she saw in my scene work that I could convincingly pass.
I remember spending vacation on a beach in Tulum, Mexico, with a college boyfriend. As we shared a towel on the sand, he accused me of avoiding his touch. The awful thing is, he was right. I was. I worried how we might be received in a foreign public. I deflated us both in those moments, my fear sinking our love into the ocean before us.
With each new piece of anti-L.G.T.B.Q. legislation, my safety feels shakier. I am reminded of the day I wore a crop top as I entered the J train in Brooklyn. Droplets of spit landed on my cheek as someone stepped off. After the doors closed, a bystander removed her headphones. “I think he just spit on you,” she said.
Whenever I’m on a date with a woman, I am struck by just how palatable our affection is to those around us. On the deck of a ferry, I wrapped myself and my date in a blanket to buffer the wind. As she closed her eyes, an elderly couple looked on, smiling softly. I settled into a strange feeling of security: Wow. How simple life might be should this date turn into the rest of my life. After countless brushes with hate as a queer man, every date with a woman shows me a potential life altering shift.
Appearing straight makes life easier. But is it a choice I can honestly make? And if at some point I do stop dating men, what of my past queer relationships? Would they somehow be emotionally discredited? Could I build a meaningful life at the intersection of my desire to live truthfully and society’s desire for traditionalism?
In the age of dating apps, there seems a clear approach to the question of choice. With one setting filter, I could self-induce romantic myopia and limit my potential matches to only women (or, of course, men). But almost every date I’ve been on in the past year has came from some sort of in-person happenstance. On one occasion, I met the host of a podcast I admire at a dimly lit rave. After a drink or two for courage, I crossed the dance floor to ask her out. Another evening, I was standing near the water station of a bar when someone bumped into me. She apologized, we got to talking, and I then met the friend she came with. He and I hit it off. I’d eventually learn the run-in had all been a ruse. The friend’s Emmy-worthy performance as Clumsy Wing Woman earned the guy my number.
How could I pretend to choose whom I love in a world full of chance encounters? I’d be robbing myself of the true beauty and joy of romance, which is that it’s never within our control.
In being with men, I’ve been exposed to so many different embodiments of masculinity, each one deepening my understanding of my own. From women, I’ve been lucky enough to experience a life-changing kind of tenderness, redefining how I in turn care for others. And with those outside the gender binary, I’ve had my own sense of self-expression expanded.
I don’t want to dull my life in order to ease it. The only truly possible path is dissolving the dichotomy and letting the universe take the reins, bringing me who it will.
I’ve experienced moments of love: A partner and I launching into a foot race down a street in New Haven late one night, arriving at the end of the block breathless, gasping for air between loving glances. Another lover and I discovering, in a Cobble Hill apartment, that we had both secretly felt something when we first met as friends three years prior. We collapsed into laughter on the couch. Not because we had chosen correctly, but because we had never been choosing at all.
Attraction finds us when it does, in whatever form it has, takes us where it will, and teaches us what it wants. Love arrives as it always does: unbidden, and beyond negotiation.
Tarek Ziad is an actor and a comedian who performs at the Upright Citizens Brigade and writes the newsletter Perfect Information.
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