A Bi Girl's Guide to Dating

by Lily Rosen Marvin
Illustration by Meg Adams

1. When I told him I liked kissing girls I was already halfway out of the car. I tossed the truth back at him and fled the scene. A bi girl’s hit and run. His hands were big and clumsy but somehow he caught the words. He held a piece of me so gently, as if I’d shatter at the first sudden move.

2. The first time she kisses me her lips taste like strawberry Jell-O and cheap vodka. I take her hand in mine and it’s smaller than I expected. The knob of the cabinet door presses into my back but I don’t care. I just want to stay in this moment as long as it will hold me.

3. When he asks about my history I tell him every name but hers. Go looking. I want you to earn it. Stories told for the first time tend to stumble. Words bubble up behind my lips, desperate to be heard after all these years. He reaches inside me, pulls out a piece of my heart, and hands it to me like it’s worth something. It doesn’t matter that everything we say is silly and superficial. No one has ever made the space for me to talk about girls the way I talk about boys. Every question he asks trips over itself, wanting so bad to get it right. He’s the first person who’s tried this hard to understand me. It’s easy to mistake being seen for being loved.

4. The first time he kisses me, he bruises my lip. It’s clumsy and eager. All teeth and not enough air left for our lungs. I wear the purple and blue like a badge of honor. My fingers brush over the spot long after the colors fade, looking for the last traces of proof that we were real.

5. When he asks me who I’d pick, Austin Butler or Vanessa Hudgens, I know what he wants to hear. Because he likes her voice. Because he likes my laugh. I’m standing in the shadow of a bi girl fantasy. All of a sudden the piece of me he’s holding feels cheap. As if my sexuality is a slinky piece of lingerie, something I’d slipped on just for him.

6. He asks me how I feel about tongue piercings and the girl from the gay bar. He’s holding the puzzle piece wrong. Turn it. Turn it again.

7. The sky here is stubborn. It holds the city lights long after the world has gone to sleep. She laces her fingers through mine and I’m surprised to find they don’t fit the same as before. My words fall from her lips. I see you. I see you. I see you.