TONGUE FIRMLY EMBEDDED IN CHEEK A few weeks back I found myself in an animated discussion on a now-forgotten subject with a couple of my friends who’re avowed bisexuals. I saw avowed because really, I only have their word that they’re bisexual for proof. All the time I’ve spent with them each has tended to show a marked preference for persons of their own gender. Sure they claim to have slept with members of the opposite sex but have little evidence to show to back up their claims. And no P, being married to someone for 5 years does not automatically mean that you had carnal relations with them – in fact, the case is often the contrary. And there are thousands of nuns, wedded to The One True Saviour, out there who will tell you I’m right.
For some reason that conversation took a turn into how I never see my bisexual friends, specially M, in daylight. Its almost always at night, sometimes on cloudy days or indoors. At that point M did come up with an instance where I’d met him under the glaring sun. But by then, the train of that particular thought had already left the station in the direction of the common ground uniting vampires and bisexuals.
Having given it not a lot of thought, I’m convinced that there are undeniable similarities between bisexuals and vampires. For example, both demographic groups are equally happy partaking of their pleasure with men or women. And then there’s that common tendency to involuntarily co-opt the rest of humanity into their respective groups. Vampires, as we know, have a rather lamentable ability to sign you up to lifetime membership of their club with just a caress of their canines. Bi-sexuals, try to do the same thing using, The Kinsey Scale and fallacious reasoning as weapons of choice, to considerably less success, I should add.
“Sit yourself down Mr/Ms. of professedly mono-sexual persuasion”, your bisexual friend/acquaintance will tell you if they sense you’re in a moment of faltering logic, “And let me tell you why you’re not straight/gay at all.”
This is when the Kinsey work will be brandished, “The Great Kinsey spake thus:
‘Males (ed: insert MCP alert here) do not represent two discrete populations, heterosexual and homosexual. The world is not to be divided into sheep and goats. It is a fundamental of taxonomy that nature rarely deals with discrete categories... The living world is a continuum in each and every one of its aspects.’ ”
Followed by the astute use of fallacy:
“And so it must be that everyone’s bisexual. How bisexual they are depends on where they fall on the Kinsey Scale that runs from 0 to 6 with 3 being actively (as opposed to avowedly) bisexual.”
To me it’s a bit like saying there are no primary colours, no red, blue or green, only the colour white. I actually believe in the Kinsey scale and in the existence of a continuum of sexual orientations, but to me the fact that there’s a scale means that it has ends and the Kinsey scale is book-ended by Straights (0) and Gays (6). However, try telling that to an avowed bisexual, and you might very well find yourself staring at bared – hopefully blunt – canines.
Finally, and this is a curious similarity: The existence of both demographic groups is doubted by large sections of the population. There are many, many gay, straight and bisexual people who believe that there’s no such thing as a vampire – that they don’t exist. And similarly there are tons of people (straight or gay, though likely not bisexual) who are more likely to believe in the existence of a unicorn-capable-of-healing-wounds-in-a-twinkle-with-pixie-dust than in the existence of an actual bisexual person. Within every bisexual person, they will say, is a confused gay man/woman. I should point out that as a convert to the Kinsey scale I’m not one of the bisexual-sceptics. I am, though, a vampire sceptic. Which is good, otherwise the fact - that I believe in the existence of both groups - would be a fourth (and surely damning!) point of similarity!
So what does this all mean? What of it? After all, similarity does not imply sameness. It does not. And so for me, this analysis has little utility. But if one is not a vampire-sceptic and not a vampire-wannabe, then the curious commonality between bisexuals and vampires would suggest that checking if one's bisexual friends sleep on (in?) box beds or not, might be a very good idea.
