I’d laid down ground rules before we’d started that I wouldn’t be sucking Neil’s dick or bottoming for him. Fucking around or not, I wasn’t anywhere near ready to expose myself like that to a man—and I feared I never would be again. My rules hadn’t seemed to hinder anyone’s enjoyment though. They’d both seemed to love it when I’d taken his ass while he’d been fucking her. And my dirty little secret was that, while I’d been inside him, Nikki, a woman I’d thought I saw a future with, had ceased to exist.
I should have walked away from her the very next day. But I’d stayed for three months. Unsure of what it all meant. And, worse, unsure of how I’d felt about it. It dug up emotions and memories of Shannon I had blocked out years ago. And, with every day that passed, I drifted further and further out of Nikki’s reach. I had no clue what I wanted anymore. After as badly as I’d been burned, gay men scared the fucking shit out of me. But, honestly, so did women.
So, as I stood frozen in middle of my hotel room, listening to her accusation across the line, I knew she was wrong. Man, woman, T. rex, or mythical god. I was not built to be in a relationship—with anyone.
“No. Not with a man, either.”
“Evan, it’s nothing to be ashamed of.”
I resumed my pacing, but my steps became heavy with anger. “I’m not ashamed of anything, Nikki. How the hell do you even know about Shannon?”
“I went to your place tonight to get my stuff. I was cleaning my clothes out of your closet and your shoebox of pictures fell off the top shelf.”
“It fell,” I repeated sarcastically. “Bullshit. You were going through my shit.”
Her voice rose to match my own. “Maybe I was. But damn it, Evan, you didn’t think to tell me that you spent two years in a committed relationship with a man?”
“I told you about Shannon!”
“Never with the pronoun him or he!” she shot back. “You knew exactly what you were doing. You knew I’d assume he was a woman.”
I had no response. That was exactly what I’d done. I’d done it to every woman I’d ever been with since him. And her next statement explained exactly why.
“You don’t think I deserved to know that the man I was falling in love with is gay?”
Labels. Labels. Labels.
The entire fucking world used them.
I fucking loathed them.
For some reason, bisexuality was the black hole of labels. It didn’t mean you got two labels—gay and straight. It meant you got zero. To gays, you weren’t gay enough. But, to straights, you weren’t straight, either. You weren’t enough for anyone. Most would assume that enjoying both genders would mean your dating pool was so vast you’d have no trouble finding a mate. They would assume wrong.
For me, bisexuality was a curse. Despite the widespread theory amongst homophobes everywhere, it didn’t go hand in hand with promiscuity. It meant that an individual was attracted to both sexes. Nothing more. And nothing less. Some had a stronger preference. And, for a while, mine was men. But Shannon had more than fixed that. For the last ten years, I’d been living a relatively straight life. (See, even I used the labels!) But that did not mean I was suddenly straight. The one with Nikki wasn’t the first threesome I’d ever had. But I emotionally couldn’t handle anything more than a casual fuck with a man.
Yet, to hear Nikki tell it, I was still gay.
“No, I didn’t think you needed to know! Because I’m not fucking gay!” I roared. “I told you on our second date that I was bisexual. Wait. You are right about one thing. I didn’t tell you Shannon was a man. But who fucking cares? You sure as shit didn’t while I was balls-deep in Neil’s ass.”
“And it ruined us!” she shouted back.
“No offense, Nik. But I’d had ass before you. It wasn’t exactly my first time.”
She scoffed. “Real classy, Evan.”
“And you calling me gay is?” I barked a laugh. “This entire conversation is ridiculous. Jesus fuck. How did we get here? I’ve been waiting for over a week to get the chance to talk to you. To tell you that I do care about you. Maybe not the way you want me to, but I do. And this is what I get? Fuck.”
“I just want you to accept who you are so you can finally be happy,” she whined.
After marching to the minibar, I retrieved a bottle of beer. My patience was gone. I didn’t even know the woman on the other end of that phone anymore.
“I think the only thing that I’ve accepted during this conversation is that we’re done. And, if you want my opinion, if this is how you view me, we never should have been together in the first place.”
“Evan!” she screeched.
“I’ve got to go. I’ll be home tomorrow night. Please have your shit out of my house.” I pressed end and tossed my phone on the bed, wishing I could have thrown it against the wall instead.