In The Closet

“Wow, your sexual orientation is a real problem for you, isn’t it?” My therapist’s office always smelled faintly of Patuchili incense, and felt completely haphazardly tidy.  During our weekly and sometimes twice weekly sessions, we sat opposite one another in  velvet easy chairs. We were surrounded by overburdened bookcases crammed with metaphysical books, psychology books, feminist nonfiction, classic novels from the lesbian canon, and a special section for tarot style card decks. I always felt a measure of peace just walking into the Emily’s crowded office that more resembled a parlor than a psychotherapist’s office. That office was a safe place for me to hammer out and work through the last thirty-nine years of my life…from the beginning until each moment that came before the moment I sat in the chair. I rehearsed with her the water-stained and dog-eared stories from my childhood; my adolescent againstnavigating my oldest son’s adolescence, the uncertainty of being a mother, the conflict I felt as a nurse who always seemed on the brink of burn out. She knew the story of my divorce—. Bbut she didn’t hear the whole story. , I mean, I told it, but she didn’t hear it. Instead, Sshe heard only what she wanted to hear, the saucy bits about an emotional affair at the end of my marriage. How this affair harkened back to my  with a woman harkening back to early twenties when I was proclaiming lesbianism. It was had been the most meaningful relationship I had hadat up to this time in my life, fresh from a weird- as -fuck relationship that left me financially strapped and terribly confused why I made such a terrible decision.

I was feeling triumphant that day because I took a brave step a few days before and accepted a date with a man who happened to chat me up in a local coffee shop. Not a manufactured online meet cute. Organic. It felt real and hopeful. That’s when my lesbian therapist remarked, “Wow, your sexual orientation is a real problem for you, isn’t it?” and this is close to the last thing she said to me.  I wish I could remember my response to her pronouncement as a response to my news I had a date with a man and decided to stop seeing a woman.I don’t remember what I said to her after she proclaimed I had a “problem”. What I do remember is I never spoke to her again. I do remember leaving her tiny Pachuliapatchouli-scented, crystal,- and trinket- filled office just off a quiet downtown street that last time. I little stunned and probably shattered I could no longer trust this therapist. I remember stopping to admire the tulips but I don’t remember crying or sharing with anyone what happened. My silence was no doubt shame I had this new “problem.”.

Looking back, my time with Emily was a safe haven where I healed broken places. I spent hours over a year and a half hammering through all sorts of guilt, remorse, grief, and depression. It’s a miracle her declaration that spring afternoon in 2004 didn’t undo the good work, the needful work, the hard work we had accomplished together. She helped me come to terms with my guilt over avoiding a custody battle--—which stood to further damage my young children—that led to their father having full custody and relegated me to Disneyl Land Mom status. This woman knew about my mother’s mental illness, my sister’s emotional and physical abuse. She guided me through difficult inner child healing exercises, helpeding me confront physical abuse. But somehow, a coffee date with a man was just too much for her.  And if it was too much for her, it must really be a problem, so I had to pick a side. I broke the coffee date so I could be an authentic lesbian. Not some wishy-washy bisexual who couldn’t make up her mind.

Not my first rodeo with picking a side. This wasn’t the first time a lesbian had degraded dismissed my sexuality. I mean it’s one thing if random chicks are telling you your sexual identity isn’t real, right?  So there must be something wrong with me if a licensed therapist is telling me this. And it wasn’t like I lied to women I met and dated. I was always honest about my decade long marriage to a man. And I felt like my history with women in college and just beyond made me a legit candidate for the Girl’s Club. So yeah, I’m a lesbian, I guess..

That claim always felt dishonest because I wasn’t sure thatit was true. But I had to pick a side— and that’s how I became a closeted bisexual. Me, who started delivering a “Closets Kill” manifesto sometime in the mid-eighties. My closet made it possible for me to take codependent people pleasing to the point of erasing my authentic self.

When I was a little girl and things were spiralling spiraling out of control between me and my sister, my safe room was my bedroom closet. I would hide under a pile of clothing, and I felt safe. But this closet wasn’t a refuge, it was a prison. I didn’t have the courage to say fuck all y’all to the naysaying straight people and lesbians forcing me to pick a side.

The first time I came out, I was bold as brass at nineteen informing my parents I was “gay”.

“You both should know I’m dating women now. I’m a lesbian. I hope you can deal with it.”

I’m pretty sure that’s, h how I laid it out. Just vomited my feelings and left them no room to go to their default of “How could you do this to us?”  And, surprisingly, that wasn’t their reactions.

My mother,“This is a really hard way to live. And how do you really know? I bet this is just a stage. Why are you rebelling like this?”

I stopped listening when she told me this was a hard way to live. How the Hell did she know? Her comment bristled my young and ridiculous bravado.

My father was silent for a long time and then turned to his work for an example and weird half-assed support,. “I’ve got gals like you working for me and they are good people. Hard working. But I think you’re just kinda fickle with people. So you probably aren’t gay.”

But I wasn’t really a lesbian at this point because I continued to see men off and on. And for six months before we all graduated and went separate ways, I enjoyed a bawdy co-housing situation with three other bisexuals in a romantic and sexually fluid household. After I graduated from college, I rekindled my first lesbian relationship and was adopted by her friends in Lubbock, Texas.  I hated my job in Dallas and couldn’t find another one, so I left and became enveloped into in a diverse lesbian community. We were a ragtag mix of lipstick lesbians, hippies, wiccans, dykes, and jocks; mostly joined together by our sexual identity. When I moved in with Julie and Lisatwo of the women, . I was twenty-three and for the first time in my life my heart felt open. I felt free to be myself. And my parents finally got it. Not a stage. They shunned and deemed me  “too difficult to deal with”.

But Lubbock was a desolate place, in the middle of an ugly red clay prairie with endless wind that was either too hot or too cold. Not a place people would pick to live unless they were escaping actual Hell , held a deep desire to go to Texas Tech University, or felt as if they had finally found their people. What a time I had experimenting with separatist feminism, mysticism, hallucinogenics, music, and art. It didn’t matter my parents disowned me, I had my chosen family. I was a loud, proud, and an out lesbian. When the AIDS epidemic reached Lubbock, I got louder and prouder, deep diving into activism. And then after a three year on- again off- again relationship with a woman, I took a ski trip with friends from high school where I met a man in Colorado. It was the first time in four years I was smitten by a man. Wasn’t it lucky he didn’t care I had been in relationships with women. He didn’t make asinine remarks about watching me have sex with a woman or inane three-way suggestions. He didn’t care because he was as bisexual as I was.

“Hi, it’s me and you’ll never believe what happened in Colorado. I met a man and I really like him.”

My parents were thrilled and I was back in the family.  Oh my God it felt so good to be back in the family again. I was included for the first time in years in family events and no longer “too harddifficult” to be around. My parents loved me all over again and I didn’t have to hear how they didn’t “get me” or my “lifestyle”. I was no longer told to stay away from family funerals or weddings or dinners because I was “too hard to explain”.

Falling for a man came with a huge price. and tThings didn’t go well when I told my lesbian family about him. My chosen gay and lesbian family decided they couldn’t love me. For several months, there was outrage and even public scenes. My favorite was in the middle of a grocery store when an acquaintance—not even an ex-lover—grabbed my arm and shoved me.

:  “How can you do this to us?” he exclaimed, fingers digging into my arm. “How can you do this to us?”

I heard that a lot. I was told I betrayed them. I was called a liar. But weren’t they betraying me? I thought I had found a family who would love me for me. But no. Those lesbians reduced me to a vagina, mouth, and fingers. I only belonged because I liked to have sex with chicks and lived in Lubbock. I didn’t fit in their box and so I was “too difficult” for them, this time. My heart and my soul didn’t matter. I didn’t matter.

A few months later, II left Lubbock. and oOn that cold March day, I left Lubbock  my only well wisher was Jamie, a remarkable woman with an open heart who simply wanted me to be happy. Months later, Jamie even came to my wedding. She remains the only lesbian I’ve known who doesn’t make my bisexuality out as an existential betrayal. I am simply Laura to her and who I slept with didn’t trouble her. Mystified her maybe, but it didn’t matter. then and it doesn’t matter now.

After a few months of long distance dating this man and then moving to Colorado, marriage had seemed like a good idea. In retrospect, Hhis proposal was half-assed at best and should have been a big red flag.

“I think we should get married because my parents are upset about our living together. If we get married, Mmy parents can stop fending off the rumors I’m gay.”

The wheels started to turn, I was already back in my parent’s good stead, me getting married would prove I was the straight daughter of their dreams. Perfect plan.

I said, , “Ok, let’s do it. My parents will be thrilled they no longer have to make excuses for me.” It was a win-win for everyone one but us.

The marriage was a dumpster flashfire fueled by his alcoholism and ended after a mere sixteen months. But lucky me, my family scooped me up and allowed me to be the prodigal daughter despite a divorce at the tender age of twenty-eight. .  and oOver after a mere sixteen months. Luckily the divorce didn’t alienate me from my family, in fact they gathered closer to me after we split up.  This made

dDating men was easy.   and it was easy to pretend my love and desire for women wasn’t really important. I pretended my love and desire for women wasn’t important if it means mommy and daddy love me. I wrapped up all those beautiful memories with Kayla and Jamie in a box, and set it in my closet. choosing to dDatingate men meant assuring myself it was for the best.  because mMy parents were happy—t. To hell with what I need and want, the most important thing I can do is please them. I was the poster girl for “People Pleasing Codependent.”.

It wasn’t long into my newly found straight life that I met the man I share children with. After a brief courtship, when I told my mother we were going to marry and have a child, .

“It’s so soon after that divorce but you and Ed have a lot in common. What did you tell him about the other things?”

“I told him I dated women, of course I did!”

And of course because I listened too carefully to the straight world and the gay world when he acknowledged my truth telling with acceptance as that being in the past, I started wondering if it wasn’t just a phase. I wish my therapist, Emily had been able to accept me as I am.  I would love to know and understand if my decade married to a man left me feeling swallowed whole and silenced because of his personality or because I was quelling my authentic self. He treated like a third child, I was cut out of important decisions and spoken to like one of our sons. By year nine our marriage was in constant turmoil and I was dying inside. I swore I heard applause. I was still in the family! I was completely transparent with Ed about my past and he assumed “that time you were with women was just a phase”. At that point, I wasn’t even sure it wasn’t a phase. I spent a decade feeling swallowed up by a controlling man who treated me more like the third child than a wife. Depression settled in and consumed me until I was dead inside. The only thing that wasn’t dead was longing for a romantic relationship with a woman. It was a longing I hadn’t allowed myself to feel in many years. I ended up in an emotional affair with a woman, praying Ed would leave me.  Our marriage was already in tatters because I felt silenced and never felt like a partner. But and this need was what he chose to fixate on and blame. But this divorce moved me back out of the closet and, once again, naturally, again,  out of the good graces of my parents for a few years. Oddly enough, despite my codependent need to make everyone happy, it wasn’t until my therapist’s edict that spring day that my equal attraction to both men and women made me uncomfortable. I stepped out of the People Pleasing Closet for a few months until I allowed myself to be forced back into it where I lived for another decade.

My People-pleasing Closet was not without collateral damage. My sons were put squarely in the middle of their parents’ divorce; the woman I feel in love with a few years after the divorce was also hurt when I discovered the closet and left her after a rich shared decade. Outside of putting my sons through a divorce, the most hard -felt collateral damage of the People-pleasing Closet is my relationship with a woman I loved for nearly a decade. She knew my history with men extended beyond my marriages. But I didn’t tell her the whole story of feeling forced to choose by a therapist and not feeling entirely confident I was a lesbian despite being completely sure I wasn’t straight. I censored this because I was afraid I would lose her. I had been rejected before because I was attracted to men. Our relationship started a few months after my therapist told me I had a “problem” and I picked a side. For years I betrayed her through a lie by omission. When things were unraveling between us,  she was understandably crushed that  I felt something was missing and I needed more than women in my life.  It was a truth I had known all along that I marked off the “B” in that string of letters. I’ve done a lot of stupid things in the name of “love” and sex, but the ways I hurt her is a festering  unforgiven remorse and guilt . This lie of omission and the deep hurt I inflicted was the wake up call I needed to finally say, “Fuck all y’all, you can love me, hate me, ignore me, just don’t ask me to go back to the closet because who I love and fuck makes you uncomfortable.”

 Claiming my bisexuality has been tricky. Not only is it problematic for lesbians but I’ve been hypersexualized by straight people, and my bisexuality is reduced to visions of girl-on-girl porn. The reality is the actual sex is secondary to my identity. When I crashed through the closet door, I crushed the closet and opened my heart to a whole new way to love and accept myself. I spent my adult life approaching everything with reluctance, conflict, and minimal self-worth. Was this why? Was it as simple but as complex as who I am drawn to love with my body, mind, and heart? Was black and white approach to love and sex the root of all my hand-wringing second guessing?

The twists and turns, lost friendships, estrangements, and uneasy steps towards self-forgiveness have led me to self-acceptance and my most authentic lifeled me to the here and the now. Because that’s what shitty horrible sad things ultimately do, they put us exactly where we are supposed to be. Isn’t it lucky? But what a damn shame a decade agao I had to hurt myself and someone else to find my beautiful bi familyto reach the point of accepting my authentic self and create my family of choice. . This beautiful family feels undeserved and daily I bask in the grace this heart opening gift of having a chosen family who accepts me as my authentic self.  One nightA year after I burst out of my closet, I was laying next to a special lover I met through this chosen family. a lover and a friend. We shared the same values, similar childhoods (his without the toxic elements of mine), and an uneasy road to owning we were neither gay nor straight but bisexual. In the dark room, laying on our backs and holding hands, we chatted in hushed tones as if there was a sleeping child nearby.

“You know, people—lesbians—have said terrible things to me when I come out as bi.”

“Gay men can be awful, too.”

We volleyed the ugly things said to us by people we thought we belonged with.

“’How do I know you won’t leave me for men?’”

“’There’s no such thing as a bisexual.’”

“’Oh you’re a lesbian just afraid to admit it.’”

“’I don’t fuck bi guys I prefer the real thing.’”

“’I don’t date bi, call me when you come out of the closet.’”

Our call and response helped me realize I would never retreat to a closet again. I would never compromise on this need to relate to both sexes on a physical and intellectual level, which meant bending the monogamy rules. In that moment in the dark with this gorgeous human, I knew If I was given the chance at another relationship, our shared bisexuality would be on the table in front of us every day and would not be an elephant in the room or a dirty secret we didn’t speak of. I also knew in that moment if I had missed my chance at long-term happiness with someone, while it wouldn’t be my first choice, I would make a happy life because I loved and cherished who was becoming.

copyright 2023 Laura Ann Klein