The bisexual girlfriend
aka me.
I, too, have quickly descended into the Heated Rivalry craze.
If your Instagram algorithm doesn’t look like mine, allow me to put you up to speed: Heated Rivalry is the newest TV sensation produced by Crave Canada and based on the gay hockey romance of the same name.
The show follows the decade-long secret affair between two hockey rivals: Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov. With 5 episodes already out and 1 more to go, Heated Rivalry has already become an iconic piece of queer media, thanks to its hot and tender portrayal of the kind of love story that renders you unable to think of anything else.
The sex scenes are explicit and the confessions heartbreaking, the actors are young, attractive and terribly talented.
Watch one episode and you’ll understand why me and many others have spent the week between Friday 12th and Friday 19th listening to All theThings She Said by T.a.T.u and weeping.
When my boyfriend and I watched episode 4 together a couple of days ago, I had to stop the video and make sure he understood the cultural significance of using a song by the russian duo that first introduced me, and many other queer kids like me, to the groundbreaking concept of girls kissing each other.
My boyfriend is as straight as they come, so I didn’t expect him to know the BTS of the 2002 hit, but it was still surprising to me that he’d never encountered any reference to it in his many years on the Internet. I told him about the two lead singers, who faked a lesbian relationship in the early 2000s as a PR stunt that wasn’t revealed until much later. I remember the disappointment I felt when the lie was uncovered: I had always been sort of obsessed with the video, even though I couldn’t really say why until much later on.
He had to know that it wasn’t just a meaningless background track - it carried baggage. Because a high percentage of the Heated Rivalry audience had the same experience as me, the reception to the music choice was incredibly positive.
A bunch of queer people who grew up at the turn of the century saw part of their culture used to enhance a story that is about (some) of them.
Ah, here’s the rub.
I have known about my sexuality from a very young age.
There’s some moments in my life that I now know to have been seminal baby gay experiences. The first time I dared a girl to kiss me in primary, the first time a girl showered in front of me, Vanessa Hudgens’ green dress in High School Musical 2.
I look back at it and I tell myself that not everyone had to go through that much self-discovery.
I was only really able to put a name to it at 15 (thank you Glee).
By that point, however, I had already met my current boyfriend, a then-13 year old I saw one summer evening in 2011 and haven’t stopped thinking about since.
Essentially, I came to terms with my sexuality while in love with him, so my experience with queerness has always seemed to me to be less valid, less real, less.
To make up for it, I go to every pride event I can go to, I have come out to (almost) every important person in my life, I seem to - inadvertently - mostly befriend people from the LGBT+ community.
And I have kissed girls until my lips hurt, I have held girls’ hands, ran mine through their hair. I have liked it a lot, as much as I liked kissing men in clubs, on the beach, at the park.
Well, except for one man - my man, the guy whose life I plan to share.
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In the midst of my Heated Rivalry excitement, I was overwhelmed by a strange sense of inadequacy and sadness, one that I have been very familiar with over the past 5 years.
In my mid-20s, as I was deciding who I was going to become, I realised that my bisexuality was not something that other people would recognise in me, because I was making a choice regarding my life partner.
I don’t plan to have a relationship with a woman, because I don’t plan to have other relationships other than the one I am in.
Is there any such thing as queer-grief?
If there is, I have found a way around it: I reclaim my queerness whenever I can - be it music, movies, TV shows, words. Ever since I can remember, I have been invested in queer stories and queercoded characters - remember Xena, Willow and Tara, Santana and Brittany? Why should I stop now?
Lately, though, I am asking myself: am I allowed to find as much emotion in queer stories as I do?
I am afraid, sometimes, that an outsider looking in would only see a straight girl getting off to really sexy men. Partially, that would be accurate - I have eyes and feel sexual desire. But it is so much more than that to me. The experience that is portrayed may not be my own, but I can still relate to some of its aspects, the shame, the confusion, the elation when you finally understand yourself.
My queerness shouldn’t really matter, because I have no stakes in it, because I am in a heteronormative relationship that I am happy with. Indeed, whenever I bring up my sexuality to my straight friends - who are all kind and supportive and good - there seems to be an underlying confusion as to why I am so hung up on stating that I am bisexual any chance I get.
On the other hand, if I’m around LGBT+ people for the first time, I go out of my way to let them know I am more than just an ally. I gravitate towards them, then my insecurity shuts me down - not wanting to seem too eager to have a “gay best friend”.
Maybe it boils down to this: I am not straight enough to let myself forget it, I am not gay enough for it to mean anything to other people.
But it means a lot to me.
It’s as if I am watching a room full of people I want to be friends with from outside a window, and it feels lonely and like maybe I am making up a problem that isn’t really there.
Still, I feel a weight on my chest that I am selfishly trying to get off by sharing this on the internet, perhaps because I want to feel seen, perhaps because I want someone else to feel seen.
I don’t know if I’ll ever seem queer enough, but I feel it as an integral part of myself. I don’t want to look like I am cosplaying a queer person, like I am only there to ogle and make funny references.
I am a bisexual woman that hopes to be understood. I cannot separate myself from the teenager who looked at her (straight) best friend and asked “wait. you wouldn’t have sex with a woman?” and realised that she had some exploring to do.