Before I was queer and proud, there was the "blank page."  The page itself never existed,  it was merely a metaphor for what I was too afraid to admit even to myself.  By the winter of my freshman year of college I knew in my heart–or, more accurately, in my body–that I was bisexual but I wouldn't even write the words in my journal, my only true confidant.  It's hard for me now, years later, to explain the fear I felt then.  I suppose I thought that I could ignore my feelings and they would go away.  Maybe if I did not acknowledge the new desires that were settling themselves into my body I could control them.  After all it wasn't as if I had discovered that I wasn't really attracted to men, I had just discovered that I was also attracted to women.  Perhaps if I just pretended it wasn't real I could pass for heterosexual.
    I honestly don't know what it was that changed my mind, perhaps merely the realization that the feelings weren't going away.  Maybe it was because I realized that being gay (or at least not strictly "straight") wasn't as dangerous in Madison as it had been in my high school.
   I think I came out to myself in a matter of a few months.  In April I wrote in my journal:
Happiness is perhaps the key.  Happiness is obviously the key.  The question is the means to the end.  Do I dare rest the path on love?  And do I dare rest the path toward love on men?  Even if I answer  yes to these I've gained nothing, for I am only where I've been.  Only answering no brings innovation into the thought.  Perhaps then the answer is to abandon my yes's, search for happiness elsewhere than in love or seek love elsewhere than in men.
I had, at that point, not yet explicitely labeled myself.  Even just hinting at the possibility the way I did in that one entry felt risky to me.  A few days later I came out to one of my gay (male) friends and then finally to my journal:
I told Jeff the truth behind the blank page.  Pay no attention to that sexuality behind the curtain.  I must come out at least to myself.  I am bisexual.  How now, to keep that sentence from jumping off the page and writing itself on my forehead? ...
As usual I am trapped between worlds.  I cannot claim to be acceptable to either side.  Perhaps it doesn't matter.  I should have come out in purple.  That said, it becomes true.  It is true.  Now what? ...
Certainly it expands my options as I've hinted, but where does one start?
How does one tell?
Looking at myself gains no information. ...
It [my sexuality] was a harder thing to discover than for Jeff because it's hidden for me under strong heterosexuality, masked by it.  I almost wouldn't need to act upon it, I could be satisfied by [men] alone I'm sure.
    It took me another year to come out to anyone else, and another year after that before I started habitually marking myself as bisexual.  Oddly enough it was my relationship with a man that made me comfortable enough in my sexuality to be even reasonably out.  I suppose partially it was because that relationship was what made me comfortable with my sexuality in general but it had more to do with the way he accepted it when I told him that I am bisexual (merely days after I had promised myself that I would never tell him–I was only out to three or four people at that point).  Not only did he accepted he encouraged me in it, told me that it was okay that I didn't need to feel shame or fear.  It helped, too, that he isn't one of those men who fetishizes lesbian sex.  One of the (straight) male friends that I had made the mistake of coming out to early on in the my exploration of my identity was very encouraging, but not in a good way.  He wanted me to go out and have a sexual experience with a woman and then come back and tell him all the details.  I should have just sent him to Four Start Video.
    And so, even though, I've been in a relationship with a man for the past two years I am more at home in the reality of my sexuality.
    I realize that I am in a postion where I can easily be accused of being one of those women who adopts a lesbain or bisexual identity because it's trendy.  And I do feel a certain amount of guilt about the fact that I can walk the street unmarked but on the other hand it's very important to me to mark myself as bisexual and take on the political responsibilities (if not the fashion trends) that come with that  marking.  Sure I could identify as straight and sleep with women anyway (a perhaps more sensible alternative to labeling myself bisexual when I've never slept with a woman) but I'm not comfortable doing that because it feels like by accepting society's notion that, because I am primarily (thus far in my life at least) oriented toward men, I am straight is allowing society to erase an important part of who I am.  Given the trouble I took to come to terms with the "blank page" I guess I just think the rest of the world should have to do the same.