my bi elle

These twin articles came from the April 2000 edition of Elle magazine. The front page promised articles from "Bi-Try babes", although, as is clear from the pieces, neither of the two women are just experimenting. The whole feel of the article seems to sum up the troubles with most coverage of bisexuals in the mainstream (and gay) press - can you imagine the outcry if Elle ran a piece hanging on a "whats it like being a lesbian, then?" article in the same tone? An example is the way the standfirst breathlessly promises a revelation about having it both ways, reinforcing the usual 'swinger' model for bis - cause if you like boys and girls, then, obviously, you must swap from one to the next, right? - SB

From Kate Moss kissing Anna Friel to Ally McBeal's soon-to-be-seen Sapphic snog, everyone's playing the bi-try game. But what's it like to genuinely love men ~ and women? Two bisexual writers reveal how they have it both ways

It's hard to say when I first realised I was bisexual. I never had crushes on women teachers or put posters of girl pop stars on my bedroom wall, but I remember at 13 secretly scanning my friend's dad's copy of Playboy and wanting to kiss the girls as well as have their sexual power. Then, at 15, 1 dreamed I made love with a gorgeous girl at school called Laura. I didn't like boys any less, though. which made me think that perhaps I was bisexual.

As I grew older I associated being bisexual with being cool, mainly because my heroes - David Bowie, Patti Smith and Steve Harley of Cockney Rebel - were sexually ambiguous but also because, to me, it signified a certain independence of mind, a certain questioning and intelligence. I'd always felt slightly different from my friends, so being bisexual suited me perfectly. I realised that fitting in was something I couldn't do. so I decided to make not fitting in a virtue. I never made an issue of my sexuality with my friends or family, but at the dinner table one evening, when I was 16, my mother asked why I didn't have a boyfriend. I replied, 'I'm bisexual: personality is sexy, not gender.' My mother was appalled. 'There's no history of bisexuality in our family.' she said, as if it were some kind of disease. I sounded braver than I was. I guess what I really wanted to do was shock my mother and so, after that. the subject never came up again. A few months later, though, I tried my luck. I had a party and ended the night snogging one of my girlfriends just to see her reaction. She was surprised but secretly pleased, because she pulled away with a smile on her face.

Still, we were so embarrassed about what we'd done that we didn't speak about it until years later. I had sex for the first time when I was 18~ It was with a boy at school and I thought it was like something between a funfair ride and watching paint dry. The same went for my first experience of lesbian sex. Not long after I went to college in London, my best friend locked me in her bedroom and leapt on me. I thought, why the hell not! But the encounter was a total farce - neither of us had any idea what to do and ended up acting like two extras in a porn movie. It's only funny now because we were so serious about it then.

Boyfriends came and went in my 20s. By now it was the 80s, when the only dykes I knew were Thatcher-hating, mullet-sporting 'wimmin' with whom I had zero in common. I was working in public relations, spending money like it was Evian. Being a boy-loving woman meant wearing red lipstick and a micro-mini. Lesbianism meant living on the dole and going vegan. There was no contest.

But the 90s were a different story. This was the decade of the Lipstick Lesbian. New clubs made for a glamorous scene where a bisexual woman could dip her toes in Sapphic waters without diving straight in. Dress codes went beyond Millets to Morgan and McQueen. Champagne replaced Tennants Extra and kitten heels shared the dancefloor with Timberlands. All my straight friends were busy finding stable relationships but I was ready for some fun. I started hanging out with a great party crowd - a cocktail of gay men, bisexuals and fag hags. One of my new friends was a bisexual girl, Caroline, and I'd usually end up kissing her at the end of a night's clubbing. She made it clear that she liked me. I enjoyed the tease and we became good friends.

Her interest in me was very seductive. Soon I began asking myself,'Why shouldn't we take the relationship to the next step? Why shouldn't we sleep together?' I knew Caroline had had girlfriends in the past and this, finally, was my opportunity to have sex with a woman who knew what she was doing. I asked her to take me to a gay club and, at the end of the night, asked her back to mine.

Sex with Caroline was completely different to anything I had ever experienced before. It felt completely natural. I remember seeing her naked for the first time and thinking how beautiful she was. After we made love, I just felt totally satisfied - sexually, emotionally and spiritually. And I felt empowered because I'd finally been true to myself and acted on my sexuality. Yet I was also quite traumatised. I couldn't speak to Caroline for a week afterwards and refused to return her calls. To see her again meant a relationship and I had to decide whether I really wanted to go out with a woman, to be openly bisexual. I thought about how it would affect my life, my friendships and my relationship with my family. In the end I realised I didn't give a damn.

After our next date, Caroline and I hardly spent a day apart. I'd spend every week end at her flat and she became my best friend, confidante and lover. She encouraged me to go for what I really wanted out of life and I became more creative and confident. I finally felt comfortable with who I was.
The sex was so good, I started thinking that perhaps I was a lesbian. I'd see a great-looking man and he'd register zilch on the sex Richter scale. Then I'd see a beautiful woman and feel weak at the knees. This was worrying. It was one thing to be bisexual, but I was uncomfortable at the idea of being a lesbian. It made me think of smelly old women living with 10 cats. I had to make sure I could still have good sex with a man.

A month into the relationship I told an ex-boyfriend, Mark, about Caroline and he thought the whole thing was fantastic. The two of us went to bed, had good sex, fell asleep and woke up relieved. Me, because it proved that I was still bisexual; him, because his pride was still intact. But sex with Mark wasn't as intense or exciting as it was with Caroline. I was having a wild time and, for the first time, went public. Being bisexual is weird. While straight people see us as some kind of novelty (at least two female friends asked me to join them in a menage a trois with their boyfriends), we seem to threaten gay culture by our very existence. We're seen as indecisive or just plain cowardly (as one gay girlfriend once said to me, "You're just too chicken to be a lesbian". We're certainly not a minority, though. One friend told me she'd secretly slept with a woman she worked with; another that she'd slept with a girl at school; another (the schoolfriend I'd snogged) that her best friend had ended up being her lover. Only one friend turned pale and has since kept her distance.

After the first two years of my relationship with Caroline, tensions began to creep in. The sex became less frequent and I started being sexually drawn to men again. Caroline used to go away for a week at a time with her work, and when she came back I'd usually been seeing a lot of male friends. I was never unfaithful to her, yet it was pretty obvious I was tempted. Loving Caroline was a wonderful experience but it made us both needy, something which made me uncomfortable. Men want to talk about films, books, football - all of which I love rather than discussing the relationship. Caroline was more complex than any man I'd ever been out with and I'd started to miss the relaxed relationship you can have with a man. Physically, Caroline was the more traditionally masculine one, wearing jeans and no make-up and being practical and efficient opposed to my fluffiness. But I was the more masculine emotionally. I showed my feelings less and when I did I either cried or shouted, but then it was over and forgotten. Caroline held on to issues for longer, and when I refused to discuss things she would get into terrible moods. I began spending most of our time together trying to work out what I'd done wrong or what I'd said to upset her. And if there was an emotional issue going on between Caroline and me, she was never comfortable about making love.

The moment of truth came when we started talking about our future. Both of us were bisexual and we wanted to do the conventional thing: we wanted to have children with a man. And so, after a lot of soul searching, we decided to go back to being friends. But it wasn't that simple. Caroline's tenderness was still hard to turn down, but it was suffocating me. We'd have a conversation about how the relationship was over and I'd think I knew where I stood, but then two days later she'd call as though nothing had changed. I couldn't break free on my own - I had to have an affair with a man.

It had been almost four years since I'd had straight sex and all kinds of doubts e were in my mind. What if I didn't like it?; Maybe I was so out of practise I'd be crap. Eventually the decision was taken for me when I ended up in bed with someone I met at a party. He couldn't have been more perfect and we started seeing more of each other. I felt as if the last year of my relationship with Caroline had been like holding my breath underwater and now I was coming up for air. Still, I never told him about Caroline. I guess I wanted to keep him separate from that side of my life. When I told Caroline about him, we both knew our relationship was over, and I think we were relieved. Now, just over a year later, we're both dating men and are still good friends. Because I felt swamped by Caroline's emotions, I began imagining how men must feel and it's led to a greater understanding of how they view a relationship.

I think it's a myth that all men can separate love from sex. They feel just as vulnerable the morning after the first night, they just don't show it. Men love gutsy women but don't like us to compete with them in a relationship. Because I understand men better, I understand my reactions to them more clearly. If I get a post-coital hormonal attack of neediness, I don't panic and think that I want to have all their babies. I just want a hug, for God's sake. But mostly what I've learned is that, while once I supposed that having a boyfriend was important, now. for me, it's just the other side of the coin. Maybe I'II just spend the rest of my life flipping it over.

- Jane Evans

Author Stella Duffy recounts the highs and laws of her sexuality

I was never meant to turn out like this. Like most women in their mid-30s, I was meant to have a better education than my parents, a secure career, ultimately becoming a wife - and mother. Instead I make an interesting, if errat ic, living from writing books (and occasionally working as an actor) and live with and own a house with my girlfriend.

As the youngest of seven children, six of them girls, from a south London Catholic family. I certainly don't come from a liberal background. When I was five, my parents, older sister and myself moved to a small timber town in New Zealand - further still from the broadminded cosmopolitan metropolis. And yet, despite a childhood that lacked late-night TV to widen my horizons (in my day, soap operas were about old ladies groaning in the snug, not young ladies moaning in the snuggle), I was fortunate enough to realise early on that nothing seemed 'yucky' to me. When other girls at school fancied various Bay City Rollers, Starsky and Hutch or John from The Tomorrow People, I did, too. I fancied them all. But I also knew that I thought Kate Jackson, as Sabrina in Charlie's Angels, was pretty hot as well. Kissing boys, kissing girls - I never felt that one was right and the other wrong. Even spending every Sunday morning at Mass didn't affect my innate sense that it was wrong to love someone. Anyone. While I've been hurt by attitudes towards homosexuality, as I never held those beliefs myself, I never had to feel there was anything wrong with me.

I started to come out at 17 -whispering both to myself and (more quietly) to a few other people that maybe, perhaps, I could envisage myself being not entirely straight. That I was bisexual. Or even dare yourself to whisper it - gay! After that, I shagged some girls. Then more boys. Now this is not behaviour that is usually welcomed by the gay community. There's long been the double standard of huge joy when a straight woman comes out and awful opprobrium when the opposite happens. I understand the reasons behind this, I just don't find it conducive to notions of either freedom or community. But I did - do - call myself gay, lesbian. Why not bisexual! Well, in common usage to say I'm bisexual implies a roving sexuality, that I might sleep with some bloke as well as my girlfriend. Now, monogamy isn't easy but, for my girlfriend and I, it's what works. While I'm capable of having good sex with both women and men, the truth is I'm having good sex with one good woman and I hope to keep it that way. The second reason bisexuality isn't an option for me is emotional. I've loved men I've had relationships with but I've really loved women more. So much so that, at 27, 1 decided to give up altogether after having my heart broken again. Society makes it tricky enough to have same-sex relationships, let alone when they end in tears. And it seemedd that if I had good relationship, then why not find myself and settle down? At least could (hopefully) make babies, hold hands knowing no one would even notice and kiss in public without it being interpreted as a political statement. But then a friend introduced me to Shelley, I fell in love and the rest is both our history and the first chapter of my first book! It probably wouldn't have worked to have found myself a nice boy but the point is, wherever I am on the sexuality spectrum (and I believe it varies for us all), emotionally I'm probably, almost definitely, gay. It has very little to do with sex. It's about who you love. I love her. She's a woman. So I'm gay. Physically, emotionally and spiritually. Not a 'lifestyle choice' then, just love. There has been some fallout. Our relationship is no easier than any other; we have the same arguments as everyone else, but we also deal daily with a world that finds us 'interesting' at the very least, offensive at worst. As adults we've had to rethink our place in the world. Shelley and I can't have children by happy accident', yet, like most women, we grew up expecting to be mothers. And then there are the constant reminders that we're different - like asking for a double room in a hotel, then being shown to a twin. I know some straight people find it tedious when gays go on about sleeping together but how else do we get a double bed? Yet, despite the institutionalised homophobia. I mostly feel that I'm fortunate. Many of my straight women friends moan about men constantly. I don't. I regularly work, drink and play with many men. I just don't sleep with them. Unlike my friends who have a man for love and a best friend for understanding. I get both at once. And, with time, I've also come to realise that it isn't just me who feels slightly different to the rest of the world - most of us never feel we really belong. We create our own homes and families, hoping that through the smaller community we'll come to understand the large one. And that's not being gay or straight, male or female. That's being human. Coming out has also offered me the opportunity to create relationships from honesty. It's not always easy. I have many regrets about my father's death; that he died not knowing who I really am is not one of them. I've lived with the pain that comes when honesty is rejected, but I still believe that it's best to try.

Stella Duffy is the author of Eating Cake (Sceptre, f6.991 and Beneath the Blonde (SerpentS Tail, f6.99)