I think women are perfect and men are beautiful

I’m not sure of the term I should use for myself. Bisexual seems rigid, pansexual leaves too much leeway and queer is just too vague. So, let me describe it.

When I was around 14, I had a male friend. I’m a guy by the way. Prior to that friendship I had liked girls. They have this pure way of approaching things that I cannot get enough of. Anyway, back to my friend. 

It was the typical male friendship. Mindless bickering, loud chats as you walk back home from school. The kind of friendship where you don’t ever remember what you talk about but you talk every day.

I don’t know when it started. All I know is that I started noticing how pretty his eyes were. They had this way they would gleam when the sun hit them. And when he smiled, oh Lord when he smiled, I could almost get lost in them. 

In the beginning I would catch myself drifting off when I read a book or did the dishes, just thinking about his eyes. How they complimented his sharp perfect teeth, and how they gleamed with a special brightness every single day when he stepped into class.

It didn’t take me long to realise that I was beginning to like him the way I liked girls. Even more than the way I liked girls. I was in love for the very first time, and every time I thought about it, it made me both giddy and nauseous. I had fallen in love, yes, but with a boy? That was not supposed to happen. Hell, I didn’t even know what to do with penises!

In time I realised nothing would come of it and I nursed my broken heart. It took me months; months of dreaming about him, writing poetry about him, getting over him. At the end of one random day I realised I hadn’t thought about him, and I knew I was finally free.

I went on to a mixed senior high, where I fell for more girls. I never had any feelings for a boy there. Maybe it was the trauma of my first love. But sometimes I would see a boy naked and feel this tightness in my chest; a grim reminder that the attraction had not left. In university, I came to terms with myself and dabbled with both. Yet I felt like a fraud to both parties.

So now I don’t really know. I live a quiet, private life. Working, earning my keep and minding my business. I don’t have a lot of friends because I know they would all leave me if they knew my truth. I’m currently single and on pride month, I think about what I will do in the next few years when the time of marriage arrives. 

I think women are perfect and men are beautiful. Will I marry a woman and feel like a fraud although I might love her? Or will I ever have something to do with a man again?

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