Living in New York the past two years, Donald fell into an active homosexual life. He visited bars, went weekly to the gay baths and formed mostly gay friendships. I say he “fell into” this life because he has shown in his history more expansive possibilities. But an incident of impotency with a woman, on arriving in New York, activated his underlying unconscious fear of women. Donald began to avoid them, and his superficial male relationships were hardly fulfilling.
His major problem is combining sex with an otherwise good relationship. He’s proved a capacity for both, but not with the same person. He wants to marry and have children, at the same time leaving open the possibility of one or two male friends or lovers. Therapy has helped him understand some of his neurotic behavior; recently he has begun to spend most of his time with a female social worker. His impotence has not returned and I feel he is open to the possibility of complete intimacy–this time combining sex and intimacy in the same relationship, male or female.
Because I feel Donald is more than halfway out of the tunnel of neurosis he has moved through all of his life, and still going strong, his progress is difficult to pinpoint. He is a troubled bisexual but he is becoming healthy by changing. As an illustration, I offer a short conversation that recently took place in my office:
“The last time we talked,” I said, “you spoke of marriage. How do you feel about that now?”
“Good. ‘Stronger’ would be a better word. Millie [the social worker] is sure but I’m still feeling my way. She doesn’t really understand the fear I have of the impotence returning.”
“Has it?”
“No. But it’s there in the sense that I worry about it. And then there is the homosexual thing. I’ve told Millie about it but she doesn’t take it seriously. I don’t think she cares if I go to bed with a man because she really can’t imagine it. Now with another woman I know she’d be upset because she told me so.”
“Do you see your bisexuality as a problem?”
“I want men. I want Millie and I want men. How can I tell Millie that one of the great joys of my life is getting down on my knees and sucking a big beautiful cock? I still spend a lot of time looking for the big and bigger cock to suck.”
“Is that a problem?”
“It will be if I lose Millie.”
“Is that likely? Is that a real fear?”
“No. I see what you’re asking. No, it’s not. I’m still confused about which... I mean what I want. On my knees with that cock in my mouth, I don’t have to be really responsible except to give pleasure. Does that make any sense?”
“What about getting pleasure... direct pleasure?”
“I get direct pleasure with Millie, but I don’t trust it. I don’t trust it to be there. Does that mean I don’t trust women?”
“What do you think?”
“Let me tell you what I think you think. Okay?”
“Sure.”
“It’s not that I don’t trust women. It’s that I don’t trust myself with women. Did I ring the bell?”
“Did you hear it?”
“Yes.”
“So did I.” I laughed.
I won’t go into the dynamics of some of Donald’s homosexual behavior except to say that he has worked out a good deal in therapy and is now able to be not only sexually intimate with another male but also emotionally intimate. His compulsions have lessened or disappeared as he has matured. In fact, we are about to end therapy. Donald’s relationship with Millie has also progressed to the point where they are living together and are making plans for marriage. As a matter of fact it would now not be inappropriate to transfer Donald to the next chapter–’The Healthy Bisexual.” However, his “health” is quite new and not yet deeply entrenched, so let’s leave him here as a person in transition.
CHAPTER 7
The Healthy Bisexual—Profiles
I once had a patient who through a hellish compact with his conscience held a locked-up point of view on all things sexual. It took very little to engage his conscience, and one day he struck his wife when she suggested that his point of view had more to do with intolerance than it did with common sense. She left him, taking their four-year-old son with her.
“It broke my heart,” he said at our first session. “It’s a goddamn crime these days to have a healthy say about sex.”
“What is ‘a healthy say’?” I asked.
“We had our son in this private school, and I found out that not only were some of the teachers homosexual but the head mistress... the head mistress was a dyke.”
“Was she a good headmistress?”
“What the hell difference does that make? She was sick. How can you be a good anything if you’re sick?”
“How do you know she was sick?”
“What do you mean, how do I know?”
“Did she do anything to indicate to you that she was sick?”
“That’s what my wife asked before I hit her.”
“Is that why you hit her?”
“Listen, I’m not proud of the fact I hit her, but don’t tell me anyone can do a good job at anything if they’re unable to have a normal sex life.”
“I would never tell you that.”
“Then I’m right.”
“By definition, yes.”
“Why couldn’t she see that?”
“Maybe she did,” I said as gently as possible.
“Then why did I hit her?” He began shaking his head. “No. No. That’s not what I mean. I mean why....” And he sat in the chair in genuine bewilderment for the next couple of minutes....
His confusion is common. In a democratic society if the majority believes blue is green, chances are that blue will soon come to be green. Majority opinion is a powerful means of persuasion. But as we know, the majority is not always right.
When my patient hit his wife he was speaking for the primeval past. When she walked out of the house, she was speaking, silently, for a more enlightened present and future. “Then why did I hit her?” he asked. And before drawing another breath he had an inkling of why. Although he couldn’t at the moment realize it, the “truth” stunned him. We are, in our time, not only undergoing rapid changes in our understanding of human sexuality but in our understanding of all areas of human thought. Less than a decade this side of the year 2000, we can for the first time in human history afford to admit that women are equal to men and that sexuality is a means of creative expression as well as an instinctual procreative drive.
The healthy bisexual is a twentieth-century idea. What can we learn from the healthy bisexual? I offer the following cases.
Harold G.
For the first edition of this book, I interviewed Harold G. in 1976–once in my office and twice at his apartment on Manhattan’s Central Park West. Harold is a successful television writer whose work has earned him a reputation for what is called in the trade “quality product.” The most striking thing about him physically was how young he appeared for his 55 years.
“You don’t look a day over forty,” I said at our first meeting.
“It’s in the genes, I guess.”
“You don’t think it’s perhaps how you lived?”
“Oh sure. But one tends to play down such... well, vanity.”
“Are you vain?”
“Not vain, but perhaps a bit unblushing when it comes to what I have.”
“Have you always been so sure of yourself?”
“No.”
“What kind of background have you had?”
“You want the long version or the short?” He shook his head and smiled. “No, no, I’m kidding. I was born in Philadelphia in what I suppose you’d call a semi-slum. My mother died when I was about eight. My father was a fender repairman. He ran an orthodox Jewish home for me and two older brothers. We were eight, fourteen, and sixteen. My oldest brother left home when he was about twenty, and he later became a playwright. Very successful. Very respected. Very famous. He changed his name.”
“Is that why you b
ecame a writer?”
“Yes and no. I’d wanted to be a doctor, but there wasn’t enough money. Besides, World War II decided a lot of things. I was drafted and served five years. The war was hell, as they say, and when it was over, I wanted to be really free. I was good at writing so that’s what I did. I was in on the early days of television and I grew with it.”
“Any regrets?”
“Yes, in the sense that I’m not the artist my brother is, but then again the quality of my life is and has been more nicely balanced than his. I’m happy. He’s not. ‘Happy’ is a dumb word, but I think you know what I mean.”
“Why are you ‘happy’ and why isn’t he?”
“We’ve talked about it. We have a good relationship. He’s gay. Really locked into the life and, like anybody locked in, he’s kind of desperate. My other brother–the middle one–became a lawyer, a very good one. He’s married, living in Arizona. Straight as an arrow and we don’t get along at all. He’s been married three times, by the way, whatever that says. He won’t talk to my oldest brother at all because of the homosexual thing. Weird.”
“Tell me about your sex life. When did you first experience sex?”
“I actually remember getting this great feeling when I played with myself, as early as two or three. Continued to do so, which naturally turned into masturbation. Never had any wet dreams because I never missed a day.”
“Guilt?”
“Sure, but not enough to stop me. When I got older I used to forge notes so I could get sex books from the library. My brothers helped me, too. We all read a lot. Not just sex books. Everything.”
“What fantasy life did you have?”
“General thoughts of women. Pinups. Betty Grable. You know. I began playing around with girls when I was about eleven or twelve. Nothing heavy but lots of feeling and kissing.”
“Did you like it?”
“Oh sure.”
“Did you have anything sexually to do with males at that time?”
“Not unless you count circle jerks at camp, and then there was this kid on the block in Philly who used to blow everybody.”
“Did you like that?”
“Yes, but I didn’t admit it, even to myself.”
“Why not?”
“I didn’t want to be thought of as queer. I didn’t want to think of myself that way. And I knew my oldest brother was homosexual. He left the neighborhood, but still everybody knew my father threw him out of the house. So I thought that being queer was dangerous. Then my other brother, the lawyer, became super straight. I suppose to make my father happy. It really screwed him up. My father used to say that my mother would turn over in her grave if she knew her first born was ‘a sissy boy.’ So the second born had to make up for that. It was hard on him, and he used to warn me of the dangers of becoming ‘a pervert’ like our older brother.”
“Did you think of your oldest brother as a pervert?”
“No. I thought he was terrific. But I didn’t say that. Jesus, it was worth my life at home to say a kind word about ‘the faygela,’ and the neighborhood was just as bad.”
“How old were you when you had your first sexual encounter with a woman?”
“Oh that. Boy, that was awful. A gang-bang. I must have been like tenth in line. I was seventeen. I never saw the girl’s face, She was kneeling up on a bed, and guys were lined up outside this window of a closed-up summer cottage. She was taking it in the vagina from behind. Lots of guys lined up. Really sordid but not unusual. That went on a lot in those days. There were those girls who would do it in a gang-bang. My lawyer brother sort of made me do it. Then he went home and he told my father I was a man, and that made my father happy. I was about to be drafted, and they both wanted to get me laid first so I would... ‘get off on the right foot.’“
“How was the army sexually?”
“That’s when I began my sex life, really. I met a girl after boot camp, and it took a while but I finally got her in bed, I was going overseas, and that took care of her guilt, I suppose. Anyway it had that love-in-a-sleeping-bag quality, and we had quite a lovely time, although neither of us knew what we were doing. She was a nice girl. We talked a lot. Then I left. I was gone for nearly five years so, although we didn’t know it at the time, that was the end of that.”
“You went overseas?”
“Yes. I won’t go into my experience in the war more than to tell you I was a lab tech and a medic. I got my doctor thing out doing that. What I didn’t lose was my interest in psychology. In fact, I sometimes ghost as a writer for psychological articles. I know quite a bit about psychology, for a layman. Anyway, my work in the army brought me close to nurses, and although they weren’t supposed to socialize with enlisted men, they did and I managed to get close to a few.”
“Sexually?”
“Yes. They were all, without exception, older than I was. Some only a few years, some as much as ten or twelve. The longest relationship was with a woman thirty-two. I was nineteen. We had to sneak around because of the regulations. We had very intense sex because it was all we could have, and I learned a great deal from her. She was the first woman I ever made love to who had an orgasm when we fucked. I thought that was so wonderful. Before that I didn’t know women were supposed to enjoy it. She enjoyed it. Everything. I remember once in London we managed to find a room for twenty-four hours. She got there before I did, and when I went into the room she was lying on the bed naked. Her long, beautiful legs spread, her hands cupped around her breasts, and written across her belly in lipstick was ‘MATINEE TODAY.’“
“Did you feel anything like love for her?”
“In a way, but not deeply. I might have but they shipped her out. Back to the States, I think. I missed her very much.
“For about six months I didn’t have sex with anyone. Then I met Stan. He was a chaplain’s assistant. He played classical piano and was an incredibly sensitive human being. Very good looking. Older than I was–I’d say about twenty-eight. We met off the base at some beer party. At first we were just friends. I knew he was homosexual but I figured I could handle it.”
“Were you attracted to him?”
“I didn’t think I was. I just didn’t think of myself as being attracted to men. Well, we got a twenty-four-hour pass at the same time and we went into London. Took a room together. That night in bed he reached over and touched me. Before I knew it he was down on me. I wanted to stop him but it felt so good. And it was exciting to be desired that way. He went down on me about three times during the night. Each time it got better. In the morning he was asleep so I skipped out. Back at the base I wouldn’t talk to him, and after a few days I asked for a transfer. I got it. I never saw him again.”
“Were you bothered by the incident?”
“Haunted by it. I swore I’d never do that again.”
“Did you think you’d turn out like your oldest brother?”
“Exactly.”
“Did you do it again?”
“Not till 1950, I was discharged and went to New York University on the G.I. Bill. I met a girl there at one of the dances. We fell in love, made plans to get married and did get married within the year. June 1946. We’ve been married now thirty years. Her name is Alice.”
“Is it a good marriage?”
“I think so.”
“Children?”
“One. A son. He’s married, living in Florida. Good kid.”
“How often do you and your wife make love?”
“You mean over the past thirty years? That’s a tough question. I would say two-three times a week. She had rheumatic fever as a child and has a heart condition, which sometimes gets in the way. We have good sex, though.”
“Have you had other women over the past thirty years?”
For the first time he hesitated before answering. “No.” He sat quietly for a while. “I’ve wanted to but I’m terribly romantic when it comes to women. I could easily think I’ve fallen in love and I just don’t want to hurt Alice. Also, I
have this impotence thing with women the first time. I had it with the nurse and that first girl and Alice–every women I’ve ever slept with. I never thought of it as a problem. I still don’t. I’ve never been impotent with any woman more than once, the first time. But that makes it hard–no pun intended–to make it with other women unless I develop a relationship, and I’m very involved with Alice so it’s just never happened. There have been two episodes over the years, but neither went beyond that first impotent time. The thing is, with a woman I have to know her. I have to care.”
“Do you see that as a hang-up?”
“Yes, but I think it’s a good one. It means I value sex with women.” He smiled. “Also I’m smart enough to know that that’s a rationalization. It’s generational, I think. How I was brought up.”
“Had you forgotten about Stan by the time you got married?”
“I thought I had. But of course I hadn’t. Then in 1950 I was walking the dog in Riverside Park at night. This guy approached me and we went into the bushes. He blew me. It was exciting. He gave me his phone number, and once a week I would give him a call, go to his apartment and he would suck my cock. He did it with such relish, the way Stan had. Then I met another guy in the park and the same pattern developed.”
“How did you feel about what you were doing?”
“Rotten, because I was sure that I must be a homosexual. There was no other way to look at it. Every book on the subject, every expert said that if a man engaged in homosexual acts, no matter how much heterosexual sex he enjoyed, he was homosexual.”
“Did that stop you from doing it?”
“No, but it limited my enjoyment. The desire was too great to stop. I really loved it. But I hated being homosexual. A closet queen. I didn’t feel homosexual. As a matter of fact, I didn’t feel heterosexual. I felt sexual. I wanted sex and I wanted all I wanted. It relaxed me. Made me feel better. I now realize that of course I was attracted to men and women from the beginning. Even in camp as a kid during the circle jerks I wanted the other boys, and I wanted them to want me. Of course I never admitted it.”
The Bisexual Option Page 10