“Sorry, I’m looking for something serious,” was the message I got over Tinder from a woman I’d been chatting to. Up until then, I was having a relatively good time. 

We’d set up a date to meet, but she cancelled the day before it was meant to happen.

To be honest, my favourite part of dating was when people cancelled, so I wasn’t bothered. But I also couldn’t work out what part of our two-day conversation about Parks and Rec warranted this sudden verdict. So, making sure not to sound too pushy or creepily invested, I asked why – and she told me that she’d only just noticed that I’d listed my sexuality as bisexual.

“I’m looking for more than a hookup,” she stated, before unmatching with me. 

While I did agree that our opening chat about different fantasy books had been seething with dank erotic tension, it felt like a real leap to assume that I was purely seeking to slake my disgusting bisexual lusts. 

All images by: Jade Florence

During this period of my life – my early thirties – I’d embarked on a kind of bisexual experiment. I’d just come out of a semi-closeted 11-year relationship, so I was keen to explore what dating looked like as an out bisexual man who was no longer willing to compromise on my own queerness. 

I wasn’t going to pretend I was purely ‘gay’ when dating men, and I wasn’t going to try and force my wrists into a false heterosexual rigidity and grasp at straightness when I was dating women. When I dated non-binary and gender diverse people, I’d simply enjoy the experience of dating relatively free of expectations.

I went into this period of dating with a kind of Virgo methodology – I would try to keep my dates balanced in terms of gender, and I would go on as many dates as possible. This gave me a lot of experiences to make my ultimate judgements on. 

I kept some notes at the beginning, but I decided against keeping a spreadsheet, in case any of these people were murdered in the future and the police discovered it, rightly considering a spreadsheet an indication of serial killer behaviour. 

I was interested in finding out what bisexual dating looked like.

While there were many people who didn’t bat a single eyelid at my queerness, I did find myself surprised at the amount of times misconceptions, weird projections, biphobia, bi-erasure and bi-superstition interfered with my dating life. 

It was the gay man who felt comfortable enough telling me that “bisexuals are sexual tourists”. 

It was the liberal, arty, free-love type woman who told me she would be “concerned about AIDS”. 

Living so comfortably in my own enlightened bubble, I had come to assume that it was a kind of binary issue – you were either homophobic or not.

It made me realise that if I wanted bisexuality to be part of me forever, and not just for Christmas, it was something I had to fight for. 

They say you don’t come out of the closet just once, but multiple times for the rest of your life. 

Bisexuality reinforces this idea, because people view it as something unstable, erratic. If you don’t continue to confirm it, to aggressively hold space for it as its own concept, then people will default your sexuality into something ‘easier’ to understand – something based on their own perception. 

If I don’t continue to thrash and make a scene about my sexuality, I magically become straight (or straighter) when I’m dating a woman. If I don’t continue to be annoying and cringe about my identity when I’m dating a man, the fact that I’ve dated women is considered a mistake of the past, or is erased altogether. 

I learned that I had to make a fuss; I had to clear a space for myself.

Another time during my dating stint, a quite attractive man – in between buying me cocktails – kept making jokes about how I wasn’t the first “straight guy” he’d turned, despite the fact that I kept pointing out I’d dated other men too. 

Bisexuality, I discovered, is awkward. 

For many people, the awkwardness comes from the invisibility of it, from the way it’s like a cryptid: something people have to see to believe. 

For me, the strange thing has always been that the assumption of my straightness has never truly existed – my physicality, my fashion and my flamboyance all sending gay signifiers. 

To paraphrase Gandalf the Grey, I do not pass (as heterosexual). 

Even when I’ve dated women, it’s assumed to be closeted behaviour – a mistake before becoming gay. When I was dating a bisexual woman, we were accused of being mutual beards by a (subsequently) former friend. 

For me, other people’s lack of understanding around my bisexuality was at most an annoyance, if not just mildly sad for them. I always contextualised this ‘problem’ in a sticks-and-stones kind of formula. 

Why worry about some people having outdated notions of bisexuality, when I’ve been beaten up in the middle of a busy Sydney park in broad daylight for “being a fag”, with the police openly laughing at me?

Who cares that half my matches on apps were bored straight couples looking for a threesome, when me and a previous boyfriend were once chased down King Street by some guy ranting transphobic slurs?

But it began to feel like my sexuality, in whatever way I represented it, was besieged by outside forces and their opinions. To manifest my bi-ness – which allowed me to be true to myself and made me happier than I’d ever been before – I’d have to fight against the perceptions of other people. 

I had to clear a space. 

Back when I used to go to music concerts, when I was younger, cooler and more keen to be sweated upon by a room full of strangers, my tactic was to get to the front row early, and aggressively make space for myself as the crowd grew thick and claustrophobic. 

This took a mixture of grit, willpower and using my bony elbows and knees to stay strong. Because I am long and tall, I was out of place in that front row, and people would try whatever they could to shift me. Great surges of bearded men and tiny girlfriends would seek to dislodge me, like some kind of seabird standing proudly on a wave-tossed rock. 

But I wouldn’t move, and that’s why Julian Casablancas from The Strokes once hit me in the face with a water bottle he dropped – it was all worth it in the end.

That feeling of aggressively holding space, of determinedly standing up and refusing to move, felt most similar to my time dating as a bisexual man. 

It was about stubbornness and pride and inconveniencing others. Perhaps not the most romantic attitude, but one I refused to abandon during my ‘experiment’ era. 

My attitude was based on antagonism and bad experiences, like when an organiser at my university’s queer space firmly told me to “pick a side” when I was just a baby student looking to explore my sexuality for the first time. 

It’s why I became someone who put my hand up to write about my experiences, to volunteer and work for the queer community, and to show up at parties, prides and events, even when people would gatekeep. I did this to consistently confirm that the B in the queer alphabet was represented.

Holding space, I realised, was exhausting. And I have to admit, sometimes my motivation was more spite against the gatekeepers than altruism.

I came to realise however, after a while of committing to this attitude, that I had made a mistake with my defiant notion of clearing space: the idea that I was doing this in opposition to other people. 

Even though I have dealt with people who have specifically not wanted me to exist in the fullness of myself – as the most truthful and expansive version of myself – it was a mistake to set myself up against them. It was a way of forgetting the good parts of my sexuality, the freedoms, the glorious stupidity and the brilliant humour of it all.

It was a mistake to treat my sexuality and my personhood only as a rebellion, as a form of protest. Sometimes it is, but that can’t be everything.

Bisexuality, I’ve come to realise, is just as much about glamour and abundance as it is about rebellion. I am a ridiculous creature of lust, love and glorious inclusivity, and spending my life committed to this style of living is the joyous part of holding space as a bisexual. 

Every day I get to look absurd and beautiful. And, like an ageing Hollywood starlet, I refer to the lovers of my past, and wink at my affairs of the heart and body that span people of all genders, and those with no gender at all. 

When I fall in love, I am able to fiercely celebrate the fact that I’ve fallen for someone, across the wide spectrum of humanity. This is truly remarkable.

Holding space for my bisexuality is about making the commitment – in my own actions and self-identity – to never compromise on how I view myself, on living the life I want to live: in my own truth. 

It’s clearing a space against my own insecurities, my own doubt and all the fucked up hangups and toxic things I’ve been taught. 

Once that space is clear inside yourself, you can’t help but hold it automatically. It stops being an external battle, and simply exists as a truth. 

This makes all the difference in the world – it feels liberating, honest and free. It means my relationships are now about finding someone who I love – someone who also loves every part of me. It means happiness.

You can’t diminish my sexuality if it’s held firmly inside myself. It’s no longer about furiously marking space just so that other people can’t diminish me, but rather about making room for my own authenticity. 

And in that space I’ve cleared, there’s also a place for joy and acceptance, among all the other bullshit that goes into being bisexual.