Many months of study and activism later, my bi identity was pretty thoroughly integrated into my consciousness. But something didn't quite fit. My sexuality was continuing to expand, beyond attractions to members of two genders, to encompass new relationships with myself and with the sea, trees and sky. I saw that the turnon when i was excited about a new piece of research wasn't all that different from the feeling inside when i was with a lover; rather the setting (library v. bedroom) caused me to label one ``sex'' and the other ``intellectual.''
In addition, i found myself in bed with assorted partners, the sex of whom was relatively low on my list of concerns. While gender mattered to me politically and affected my feelings of security in my new identity, it made no difference to me in my emotional or erotic desires. Although lots of my new friends said they loved both wimmyn and men, their desires were rarely of equal proportion. It became clear i was of a different type: i fell in love with people, not plumbing. In fact, if i shared good, deep conversations with someone, it didn't matter if they were four feet tall, weighed 300 lbs., and were confined to a wheelchair - i would inevitably feel physically attracted. Whether or not i chose to act on that attraction depended on many variables, such as the level of reciprocity, whether the person felt safe to me, and how much time together the situation would lend itself to, but physical appearance wasn't one of them. I was searching for a set of human qualities traditionally distributed across gender boundaries: intelligence, compassion, sensitivity, independence, etc. Thus i was interested in people who came across as culturally androgynous, by virtue of acting as whole human beings.
While the modern phenomenon of having an identity based on a description of one's lovers may be somewhat ridiculous, if i'm going to be subject to such a system i figure i may as well choose an accurate label. I enjoyed the term ``queer'' when it seemed ``normal'' meant George Bush and Wonderbread, but it's a tricky appropriation since i also want to communicate that forming a family with five sexually active adults is a wonderfully sane and healthy choice. I was looking for a way to define myself positively rather than in reaction, and ``queerness'' is inherently oppositional to some posited ``normalcy.'' I flirted with the term ``omnisexual'' (meaning ``all''), or as some people prefer, ``pansensual,'' but i'm not attracted to everybody and everything! However, ``poly'' means ``many,'' and can thus reflect my erotic feelings toward myself, a wide variety of human lovers, and the dazzling interconnected universe surrounding us. So i'm trying out ``polysexual'' for a while, till something better comes along. Any suggestions?