I’ve learned a lot from being both bisexual and someone who doesn’t like carbonation, mainly that men and women, to me, are like coffee and Red Bull. Coffee is familiar, comforting, and makes sense in every context. Red Bull is loud, alarming, and tastes like what a robot would cry if it stubbed its toe. And yet, if I’m tired enough? If I’m thirsty enough? If it’s 3 am and nothing else is open? I will absolutely fuck a Red Bull.
And that, dear reader, is how I ended up breaking my 2-year fast from heterosexual intercourse last night.
Or rather, and this is the part that will baffle future historians, I had sex with a man whom my hands, tastes, and muscle memory repeatedly misidentified as a woman. This was not metaphorical. This was biological, tactile, and embarrassingly physical. In layman’s terms, I tried to speak Dude and accidentally started conjugating in Lesbian. I had forgotten the mechanics, the motions, the way he’ll question you if you slap his ass.
We met at Trader Joe’s. Obviously. Where else would I be scammed into heterosexuality? He was in the frozen aisle, holding two bags of mangoes with the soft regard of someone cradling a newborn. He was wearing a vintage dress shirt with his sleeves rolled to a precise, femme-adjacent angle. He talked in the soft, apologetic register of someone raised by an all-women commune. I was charmed. It happens.
Anyway, cut to: his apartment, beige walls, the scent of bergamot and suppressed ambition, and me trying to relearn the whole macking-on-a-guy-shebang.
But here’s the thing. My body doesn’t know how to have sex with men anymore. It only knows the sapphic sequence. I kept defaulting to muscle memory. Reader, I did the Knee Thing. For context, the Knee Thing is the act of sliding your leg between a lady’s thighs so she can grind like she’s auditioning for Blue Is the Warmest Color. Works flawlessly on women. The angels sing, and the earth quakes. You’re not supposed to attempt it with a man. But alas, I did. And shockingly? He went along with it! He tried, bless him, to hump my kneecap, with the chutzpah of a golden retriever proving his eligibility for the Westminster Dog Show. I cheered him on! Like a soccer dad. I was like, “Yeah buddy! Use your hips! Let’s get in there!”
Why? I don’t know. At that point, I had committed to the bit.
Another thing I forgot about having sex with men: the unavailability of boobs. My hands kept reaching for them anyway. I desperately searched for soft, obedient topographic features meant to be explored with the tender reverence of a person finding the secret menu at a deli. Instead of a velvet answer, my hand encountered sternness. A rib. A sternum. A sternum, reader. All I felt were the hard angles of a man who does push-ups in his living room while watching Naruto.
I tried. I really did. But every few minutes I caught myself defaulting back to girl-sex choreography. I tried to unhook his bra. He did not have one. The final straw: I whispered “God, you’re wet” out of muscle memory. He sat up immediately, offended. “I have a dick! I can’t be wet!” “Not with that attitude,” I think I had muttered.
He hasn’t called since. And honestly? Fair.
But you must understand that I was not confused. I was not disoriented. I wasn’t even disappointed. I am simply…deeply, fundamentally hardwired. It was not intentional. It was inevitable.
I am bisexual, yes. But at this point I am bisexual the way someone is Catholic after years of lapsed Sundays.
But if you’re reading this, sir: I was trying my best. It’s just that my best is gay now.
Godspeed.
Olivia Stemp is a senior Writing for Film, TV, and Emerging Media major who will never drink another Redbull. She can be contacted at ostemp@ithaca.edu