WHAT LIFE FOR A BISEXUAL CAN REALLY BE LIKE.
Imagine that you were a dyed in the wool Holden fan in the 1980s and you worked for a company that offered you the choice of a Commodore or a Falcon as you company car. You chose a Commodore, and in 1987, someone above you was leaving and your boss said that it was a chance for promotion and wanted you to go for it. You did, and on the day that person left, your boss extended their hand not to wish you luck but to take the keys to your Commodore and give you the keys to the other person’s Falcon. Your initial thought is, “But can’t I keep my Commodore!” Your boss says, “No, that will go to the person who takes your job.” You accept this and find that you are pleasantly surprised with the Falcon. Some may think that this is a conversion story, but it’s not. When the end of 1989 rolls around and your wife needs a new car, you tell her that she can have a brand-new Holden because that’s what you’ll be getting and she says, because your company allowed partners to also drive their company cars, “Actually, I’ve come to like the Falcon, and I was hoping that we could buy it.” You then say, “Funnily enough, so have I, and if you want it, I’ll make an offer.” A few weeks later, you ring your wife and ask her if she’ll be free to meet you that afternoon. You collect her and drive her to the Holden dealer to pick up your car and you say to your wife, “Hop into the driver’s seat. This car’s yours.” She drives the Falcon home, and you take delivery of your Commodore.
Seven years later, you’re called into the new boss’s office for what you hope will be a routine meeting, only to find that you hear the words, “You’re being made redundant.” Due to your long service at the company, your package includes two years’ salary. You’re in your fifties now. About a month later, you arrive home in a taxi, having surrendered your company Commodore.
You and your wife decide to keep the Falcon, as it’s been good to you, but whenever you and your wife go out for a drive, you don’t find yourself looking wistfully at Holden cars that pass you on the street, wishing that you still had one or you had one now.
Many people equate being bisexual with not being monogamous, but for many, this is not the case. Yes, there might be some people who are married to someone of the opposite sex and have an extramarital partner who is of the same sex, yet this is also true of heterosexual people who are married but have extramarital affairs with people of the opposite sex. There are plenty of bisexual people who can be married to one partner for years and not look at anyone else, or they might have a partner who is of the opposite sex and when that relationship breaks down, may finish up with a partner of the same sex.
One thing that bisexuality should not be confused with is this. If we take Elton John as an example, whilst I don’t doubt that he genuinely loved his ex-wife, Renate Blauel, he is a homosexual man who married a woman. For him, bisexuality may have been a steppingstone to being gay but it’s not in every case.
If we take it with the analogy of the car, it could well be that another person from the company might have had a mixture of Commodores and Falcons, they might say, “If I drive a Commodore, I drive a Commodore; if I drive a Falcon, I drive a Falcon,” just like a bisexual might say, “If I love someone from the same sex, I love someone from the same sex; if I love someone from the opposite sex, I love someone from the opposite sex.”