And I benefit from the struggle. A few years ago I sat in a Boston restaurant with a dear friend, an out lesbian whom I'd met through a mutual love of 19th-century French novels, who was barking at me gently yet insistently that I could not be bisexual. The distinction didn't exist. I was clearly gay. I was poised in my most natural offhand Jack Benny impersonation, open hand clasped delicately to cheek, wrists at ease and a coy, cubbish look on my face.
Bisexuality is the straggling Independent party in national sexual politics.
As it stands, generally, to straights, bisexuals can be forgiven for their supposed lapses in judgment and can be brought back into the fold. Confessions of bisexuality, at least on the celebrity level, are treated with much more tolerance than those involving homosexuality. Homosexuals embrace bisexuals for the same things that unnerve the straights, but are annoyingly persistent in the belief that if you've traveled even a slight distance into their sights, you've registered your permanent residency and they're free to add you to their population and exploit you statistically. And bisexuals by definition wouldn't seem comfortable making such a definitive choice. They can organize themselves, and do, but their efforts fall short of the established alternatives.