Editor’s Note: The following submission is from Bill Kieffer. Have an LGBTQ+ related experience or story to share? Having your article published on this site will automatically enrol you into a raffle to win a $50 Amazon Gift Card. Submit an article today via queerdeermedia.com.
[amazon_link asins=’B072LVPR2M’ template=’ProductAdRight’ store=’ourqueerstories-20′ marketplace=’US’ link_id=’592e2ac9-8cb0-11e7-b9fe-29bd41c4f555′]I have loved three people in my life. Two women and one man.
I have had sex with only one of them.
It wasn’t the man.
So, the issue comes up: If I’ve never had sex with a man; why would I label myself a bisexual?
Why would I so strongly identify with being bisexual?
How do you know that you aren’t just a homosexual …in denial? …enjoying white privilege? …waiting for something better to come along? …waiting for some sort of sugar daddy to come along?
Other bisexuals have come along and done the Q&A. I’ve read them. You’ve read them. I’m not doing that. You either got it then or you didn’t.
I grew up having issues. I was depressed and socially inept. I had a great deal of anger in my life. I had no positive male role models. All at once, I had no father figures in my life and too many at the same time.
None of that makes me bisexual, of course. I just wanted to explain how I spent half my life not realizing that I was attracted to both men and women. I was so angry with the line of pretend daddies my mother brought home during my childhood and teen years that any attraction to males instantly sparked vicious images of torture and savage revenge that would literally overwhelm me.
It wasn’t my torture but theirs that I would see. They’d betrayed me, my mother, and my sisters.
I got quite creative with these torments. They often veered into a deep, dark fantasy land that would make Hieronymus Bosch blush. I had Daddy Issues, and not in a good way.
In retrospect, these fantasies might have been a bit over that top. Only one of my step-fathers had ever hit my mother (once, that I’m aware of) while another refused to accept their parting of the ways with very aggressive stalking that would have gotten him arrested these days. Others in New Jersey had it worse by far growing up.
In later years, I was able to mostly let that anger and rage go. The worst things that all four of my father figures had done was the thing they all had in common: they had all failed to love me enough. I was able to forgive them for being human.
Yet… there were still these deep, dark fantasies. Violent.
I was a pacifist and until my early twenties I fought these images.
Then my girlfriend realized that maybe I was ignoring the obvious; that these dark day dreams belonged to my own hidden desires. So, we began to learn things about BDSM and ourselves. Both my wife and I began having TS or TinySex (the text based sex scenes that would go on to be called CyberSex, not to be confused with web-based sex scenes) with other people. My wife and I didn’t mesh up exactly.
She is a strong willed woman who knows exactly what she wants, and in BDSM, what she wanted was to be submissive.
I am quite a bit more fickle. I am a Switch; sometimes a dom, sometimes a sub. Most of the time I would be a dom. I discovered that I preferred to be a nurturing dom. Spanking bored me after the first minute. I hated body fluids. I preferred mind games.
So, not a perfect fit, but still a wonderful exploration that I enjoyed and came in handy when I met the man I’ll call GG, for those were his online initials.
Now, I’d gone to the far, far corner on the Internet to research Furry Fandom for a possible comic book series I wanted to submit to DC. I liked the idea of juxtaposing the cartoony “funny animals” with the dark and then hot Vertigo line of comics. I wanted to do something about cross species love and relationships and how America (and the world) might really work if, instead Races of Human, we had different Species.
With Disney’s Zootopia out, I probably should submit that again. But I digress.
At the time, Furry fandom wasn’t on Facebook. There wasn’t even a Twitter.
But what they did have, beyond Usenet groups and BB boards, were mailing lists and a few text based Multiple User servers that allowed visitors to create and build text based items… including bodies. This was the first place a Furry could live as his “Fursona,” the realization of his animal self. Furries could play with each other in these places whenever they had a moment to dial in and act out.
I created myself as Charger, a horse, because I’d always liked horses. I think there is a nobility in the way they are subservient to man. Also, I rather liked the idea of having a long penis.
Honestly, I may have been over-compensating, but at the time it was just a “mask” for me so I can research. I’d seen a lot of racy Bugs Bunnys and more of Disney’s Robin Hood than I thought was healthy; but that didn’t mean these Furries would be open to Captain Carrot having a bulge in his pants.
I met a lot of people and I built some rooms while I kept track of my new friends. Because reading text is virtually hard wired into one’s brain, these online encounters were easily more intimate than real-life, especially for the introverts that made up the bulk of Furry.
Just like with the BDSM world, some people dropped their walls immediately and let themselves be vulnerable in a way they never could in the outside world. Sometimes, you’d discover that the Vixen you’d been yiffing was a 50 year old college professor with a beard. Sometimes, you’d discover that you were misled in other ways. There came a time when every player has to be reminded that it is just a game.
Until, one day, you realize that it isn’t.
I fell down the rabbit hole that is Furry. As a community it was so accepting, I kinda forgot why I’d came.
I left Charger behind and became Greyflank, a horse, but more like myself. It’s hard recall all those differences over a decade later. Charger was large and gentle. He fainted at the sight of dragons (causing a great deal of awkwardness with many Dragons). Greyflank was a switch and into BDSM.
I’d decided that it was time to move my research into direct sexual interaction, assuming that I’d be able to keep that inner distance that balanced all those sexual gears when you decide to play well – and intimately – with others.
I played with several people… although people wasn’t the write word. Some of them were good at it and some of it was bland. There was even a guy who wanted to be a toy and ripped about. He never liked my attempts to rebuild him and turn him into something else… but still, I kept trying because he was a nice man.
GG was an Italian programmer who had come to America because his little village was a damn dangerous place to be a homosexual. He got plunked into the Boston area and at first that seemed a blessing. Still, while it was an improvement and he had support like never before, was beginning to feel trapped and smothered in his new home when I met him online.
Online, GG was a goat.
I teased him when we first met, telling him that I had a “farmyard” bias. I learned immediately that his English wasn’t perfect and I was careful to make sure we understood each other. One of the things I learned early on was that he was almost addicted to the online experience. His goat “fursona” wasn’t just a collection of words, it was how he saw himself. Things were realer here to him, emotionally, than what we called the real world.
He liked to be roughed up and he wanted a master in real life.
So, I fucked his brains out.
I admit, that I hadn’t really considered the implications of the 2nd half of his statement. Not as seriously as I should have.
Eventually, I’d made a number of mutual friends and learned that he was serious about being totally honest emotionally in the Furry world we were both now beginning to build onto. Never mind that he didn’t really have horns or hooves. He was a stubborn, dirty, smelly goat and probably the opposite of my organized and put together wife. Still, they both knew what they wanted, they shared that in common. I was hooked on GG.
I made it clear that I couldn’t be his owner/master in real life. I was married, but I promised him the truth and openness. We tried things and he called my on anything he thought might be harmful or unpleasant in real life – to either his “player” (that’s how we referred to our real selves from with the Game) or the Goat he wished to be.
We met in real twice.
One time went Foobar with my wife withdrawing her permission after he was settled in for the night in a nearby motel. That was awkward. The other time, went better, just picking him up at the airport, dinner, and then taking him to a mutual friends house where I hoped he got the good time he deserved. I don’t recall which happened first. It doesn’t matter.
I remember smelling him and hugging him. I could feel his spine beneath his t-shirt, the texture of his hair in my fingers as I gave a teasing yank. I kissed him on the forehead and then slapped his tiny, tight ass.
If I hadn’t beed married, I would have had sex with him either of those times.
And, in some ways, not having sex with him made it better for me. I don’t have to wonder now or ever if it had been good for him. I loved him and I wanted him in a way that might have twisted my stomach before my BDSM experience, for they too had impressed upon me that your mind is you biggest sexual organ.
Eventually, GG made the choice to leave everything behind cold-turkey.
I was part of everything.
I’d seen his Sisyphean struggles to learn about himself, accept himself, and be true to those things. As hard won as many triumphs had bean in those arenas, GG found himself growing more miserable, violent, and self-destructive. Once you know the truth of yourself, it’s hard for a stubbornly honest person to live a lie. He’d unwittingly made the real world a lie.
I agreed, not that I think I had much of a vote.
So, GG disconnected everything and left the Furry Worlds. He left the online Bulletin Boards. He left the Usenet groups. His Fursona slept without waking for years until one day it was swept away in a periodic house cleaning.
I had crossed my fingers that he would find what he needed, or at least close enough in real life. Every two years or so, I would check in with his “player.” Sometimes, I would get an answer. Sometimes not.
It’s been about a decade since he left me… well, the Furry community. I’m never Charger online anymore and Greyflank has evolved into me a bit more… and I have evolved into him. I carry my bisexual label proudly, my desk at work is decorated at work with My Little Pony stuff. I sometimes dye my hair pink. It didn’t fly so at some places, but at my current job? They are accepting and I feel welcomed. I’ve been brave, hoping that somehow I’ve helped him by some sort of karma magic. My wife comes to LGBT parades and stuff with me.
I’ve spoken to GG’s player recently. He is in England, now, and calls himself by his furry name, as does his lover and all his mates. Just about everything he ever wanted, he has.
What he doesn’t have, he says he outgrew.
GG’s dreams had seem impossible at the time. I’m so happy to know he survived several crushing defeats to finally get his happy ending.
His lover is now reading the final draft of my novella, a erotic horror novel that will be out later this year from Red Ferret Press that GG inspired in part. He gets final say in whether or not I mention GG’s or his player’s real name in the introduction or the dedication of the book. He made my goat happy: I owe him a debt.
I love GG. I love my wife.
Not one of us wants to have a three way.
But still… I don’t have to have sex with someone to love them so much that my heart hugs itself when I think of them.
My GG is asleep in my heart and my brain.
It doesn’t matter that I never had sex with him in the real world. I wanted to. It doesn’t matter that he had more sex than I ever will.
I am a bisexual because I could love a man with as much fervor as I could love a woman.