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(Taken from SOMOS JOVENES, No. 261,
December 2006.)
Sexuality Between two waters
Alice Walker, Possessing the Secret of Joy
By Yusmileydis Verdecia Mengana
Dawn breaks. A shower of feelings drums on her window. Detached from reality, Yurait hears a cry of love in her heart that spreads across the most turbulent of all her fantasies.
Her skin breaks out in goose pimples. Despite the freezing winter cold, her body gets warm and moist as it sets free ideas, feelings and emotions previously sheltered under the yearnings of a strong desire, though not exactly for Adel, her boyfriend all through her teenage years, whom she adores. This time it's for someone who wears lipstick and does her hair?
Yurait plays society's game. She's unsure about moving on and fights against every value and principle long instilled in her, letting go the flood of doubts squeezing her soul.
"As a rule, there are times when bisexuals prefer people of their same sex and others when they go for the opposite sex, but even if their preference is the same at a given time they must strive to avoid parallel relationships, since it's important above all else to preserve one's values about stability." Specialist Mayra Rodríguez
While in junior high she felt exclusively attracted to boys. Although it was a boarding school where day and night she lived side by side with other girls in the dorm, she never looked at them as anything but friends. They would shower together, share the same bunk bed to study, walk along the dark halls in the still of the most romantic night, and yet the thought of touching any of her classmates never crossed her mind, never before had she felt that air of womanly tenderness that she can't help breathing today.
Why deny the explosion of my inner world, where both sexual desire and feelings take unforeseeable turns? Why conceal that attraction beyond description that I now feel for a woman when just days ago I only had eyes for men? I guess I'll live with that secret for the rest of my life.
An uncommon figure has appeared to her in a woman's body and with a woman's soul, with a woman's lips, hair and legs. A woman has shown up in her life.
For all her excursions into sex's liberties and miseries, pushed into the abyss of personal recognition, Yurait is yet to lose her unquenchable thirst for the intense delight of hearing her boyfriend's sighs by her pillows every evening as he gives himself to her. She enjoys his hands exploring every inch of her body as much as his lips kissing every corner of her soul. Now she's sitting on a fence on the sides of which blow different winds, each carrying pure and equally intense feelings.
My whole world changed and I didn't even notice. It happened little by little. First we exchanged phone numbers and addresses to begin a "supposed" friendship, what with all the interests we had in common. I soon realized that what I felt was more, much more, than just ordinary sympathy. it looked like what I felt for Adel when we started, and I was afraid to keep it going.
Yurait finds it hard to accept, but since that very moment she became a "bisexual" person, a being with a beating heart inside whose romantic or sexual desires swing toward people of both sexes.
That's how she copes with sexual diversity, just like heterosexuals do. Bisexuality is an orientation different from and parallel to hetero- and homosexuality. However, their common origin to the contrary, it has very rarely been socially stigmatized.
To me, being bisexual means a way to share my feelings, desires, affinities and sexuality with a man or with a woman.
Throughout history, homosexual flings between prestigious upper class men were rubber-stamped without a fuss, and a heterosexual marriage was generally the best deterrence against accusations of homosexuality. That's why some people labeled them hypocrites and impostors, depicting them as homosexuals who won't dare come to terms with the fact lest they lose either the social privileges that being straight entailed or the pleasures of homosexuality.
Rosa Mayra Rodríguez, holder of a Master's degree in Sexuality, assures that school, socialization channels and family in general are changing their current views on bisexuality. Many people no longer view bisexuals as "non-defined", sick or sexually aberrant persons, at times tagged by society as "side-changers" or "switch-hitters". Let's bear in mind that they have usually been seen as people with neither values nor accepted social attitudes. Now they're seen as hard-working, responsible people who are no different from heterosexuals or homosexuals and, their leanings notwithstanding, have succeeded in winning everyone's respect.
I realized that my infatuation was growing by the day, until it turned into love. Every night I would imagine what kissing her the same way that Adel kissed me would be like. I felt awful and couldn't understand why discovering that I was bisexual was so bizarre.
There are those who assure that "bisexuality doesn't exist" since, as an absolute entity, it's as unreal as homo- and heterosexuality. They say it's all about stories of human desire expressed in different ways by means of words.
The time agreed had finally come. I looked at her. She turned her wonderful eyes toward me and I immersed myself in them. Plucking up courage, I told her how I felt for her. We embraced, our bodies shaking as we kissed softly and at the same time passionately, and I took great delight in those woman-flavored lips? two bodies caressing each other so as to seem to be only one.
"What's different about bisexual people is that at some point in their life they choose a partner of their same sex and sometimes of the opposite sex. As long as it is desired, planned, protected and mutually accepted, having sex with either gender favors the development of one's personality." Specialist Mayra Rodríguez
Bisexuals were always believed to desire both sexes equally and to always have sex with men and women at the same time, a mistake in most instances. This is an individual decision that goes beyond any attitude related to a person's preference. "It's important that young people preserve their values about stability and avoid parallel relationships that involve sex with men and women at the same time," underscores Dr. Mayra, who is in charge of this topic at CENESEX (National Center for Sexual Education).
Bisexuality's challenge lies in looking at human sexuality as a book whose pages are constantly multiplying with stories that only come to an end or take a definite shape when death arrives. These stories are now finding their place under the sun.
I was
engrossed in the lovely images of that night. In fact, we had agreed to meet
again. I think I won't be able to give her up. I feel my life has changed.
Now I'm seized by two people who make me go in two directions. "The challenge facing sexual diversity, rather than bisexuality alone, is to accept, respect and live with the difference. It's a principle that becomes imperative because this is a very topical issue, and a complex one at that because accepting what's different always finds resistance." Specialist Mayra Rodríguez
Yurait feels totally fulfilled as a result of her two experiences. While that woman appeared in her life as a revelation of her inner self, as something magic that gave her wings to fly, Adel's tough and manly image never left her mind. His scent, at once strong and erotic, drifted by all the time as if to rescue her from a deep lethargy. He seemed like a window closing down to keep her from drowning in the shower of feelings drumming against it.
---ooOoo---
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