Читать книгу Stand and Deliver!: And other Brilliant Ways to Give Birth - Emma Mahony - Страница 18

There is no easy way to bring up the topic of bisexuality, so I am going to launch right in there. First, it often appears in fantasy form during pregnancy. It may be hormones, or something to do with your changing shape and your body image changing with it, or it may be the increasingly unwelcome notion of a rough, masculine touch when all is taut and tender. In Becoming a Mother by Kate Mosse (no, not the supermodel, wake up at the back, please) one woman explains rather explicitly:

I used to think ‘I wish I was with a woman.’ I had this feeling all the way through my pregnancy and this was for two reasons: one, all my women acquaintances, friends, were so appreciative of my changing shape. I had so many compliments about my bump, I can’t tell you, and they genuinely meant it, they think it’s beautiful. And two, because I just thought a woman would know how to make love in such a way (what I wanted was to be licked, sucked; even being touched with fingers could be too intrusive and painful) …

So much for the fantasy, but what of the reality? Well, out of bi-curiosity I asked eight of my closest friends if they had ever snogged a girl or more, and a (surprising) six said ‘yes’. Their forays usually took place in their early twenties (and usually under the influence of drink or drugs, where boundaries are fudged anyway) but that straw-poll indicates quite how on your doorstep the bisexual issue might be. Of those bi-curious six, five have gone on to get married and have children, so their experiences mostly point to a flowering of their early sexual selves. One even suggested that ‘all women are fundamentally gay’, but that we have switched off that part and chosen not to pursue it. While I wouldn’t necessarily agree, I would say that bisexuality is still taboo in a way that lesbianism no longer is. A lesbian who has ‘come out’ has weathered the reactions and disapproval of family, friends and neighbours to be her own person and find support within a recognized group. Someone who has had bisexual dalliances might be nothing more than keen to cover it all up.

Pressing my confessing friends further, I find that their flirtations with the same sex can be put down to everything from horniness to boarding school and missing Mummy, from a painful break-up to becoming a radical feminist, from confusion to vulnerability – all understandable emotions and situations that didn’t determine their future sexual proclivities. But carrying around the knowledge of these forays has been a weight for some of them.

If you sit in one of the six seats occupied by my friends, now might be a good time to process this aspect of yourself. Write it out in your pregnancy journal, speak your mind to a friend who’s also been there, or raise the subject generally with your partner (even the most prudish man entertains top-shelf magazine fantasies of Dos Lesbianos en la Piscina). Don’t just stamp it down, and don’t believe that because you are now entering a new, ordered, conservative world of pinnies and nappies that you can suppress this side of yourself. You can’t. It will come back and haunt you, and may translate in the most unexpected way. One of the six admitted that the ten-year-old memory had stopped her from pursuing friendships with other local mothers, in case there might be something ‘inappropriate’ in her manner. The only thing inappropriate in this loyal friend’s behaviour was her own self-sabotage because of her ‘guilty secret’. Don’t let that be you.

If, like me, you reside in the other two-eighths of the group, a hetero square-o that has never crossed that line, don’t be quick to judge anyone else. Otherwise, you might find yourself looking back from the other side of forty, putting out the milk bottles after tucking up the children in bed, thinking ‘Mmm, maybe in my pursuit of men of all sizes, ages, shapes and colours, I missed out on something here.’ Perhaps ‘love is universal’ (as one friend offered by way of explanation for her own Sapphic sorties). But you, for all your suburban riches, will never know. And Madonna, Britney and Christina are never likely to ask you to join them on stage to find out.