On my first date with Seyran, which I wasn’t actually sure was a date because he seemed kind of gay but I was still attracted to him but I was trying not to be because he was much too young, we went to see one of his friends perform in a concert.
“He’s bisexual,” he whispered into my ear.
What are you? I thought.
I was astonished when Seyran had asked me on a previous occasion if I was bisexual because when I told Mardi I was bi when I had visited the year before, he had asked, “What’s that?” I thought maybe I had been introducing a new term into the lexicon, especially since no one seemed to know what the word “queer” meant. I had done a performance art piece at that time, and even the journalist who wrote an article highlighting the same-sex loving content of my work hadn’t hear the word “queer” before.
Seyran had already revealed that he knew lots of gay men in Yerevan, which implied he might be one. He had asked me questions about my poems and my 90s era punk band, so I convinced myself that he was just a gay fanboy. But in my fantasy, he was a queer-allied straight guy, like my previous boyfriends in America, and yet it seemed highly doubtful to find such a soul in Armenia.
After the concert, we went backstage to say hello to Seyran’s friend, and the musician seemed so happy to see him, holding his face in his hands to kiss him on both cheeks and ruffling his hair.
Somethin’s goin’ on there, I thought, my gaydar on an ultra-sensitive setting.
The next night, our second date, we had just started making out when I began laughing.
“What’s so funny?” he asked.
“Seyran – you’re gay!”
“I’m not gay; I’m bisexual,” he said and smiled. “Like you.”
I wanted to slap the top of my head with the heel of my hand, but I refrained. Instead, I smiled.
We’ve been together for four months now. At first I thought he was a promiscuous kid, incapable of having a committed relationship, and then, after a couple of weeks, I questioned whether he wasn’t bisexual, but actually gay and unable to actualize himself fully here in Armenia. But if sexuality is fluid, what’s so wrong with this? There are many factors that determine who and how and when we love. But in my more fearful mind, it meant that our connection wasn’t valid. My concerns allayed when he stuck around for a while, when it was clear he was attracted to me.
In these past four months, we’ve been working through stuff, because of the age difference, because of the cultural disparities, but also because of the different ways we see relationships. Though I don’t think I’m rigid, I am more certain of what I want and need, but he is still in the process of learning. We both like the stability of having a domestic life together, but he is possessive of my time and it sets me off. He keeps theorizing on having an open relationship, which logically seems okay but frightens the bejesus out of me.
I don’t know how long this will last, with all these differences and doubts, so all I can do is stay in the present.
As I have been trying to make sense of our relationship, I have also been hearing stories that oddly reflect our reality. I’m not sure if it’s just me being self-centered, or if there just happens to be some symbiosis between me and Armenia right now. In any case, Seyran keeps telling me that this person and that person identifies as bisexual:
An older man, a doctor, was involved with a woman for many years but never married her; single and living with his sister, he now has mostly sexual relationships with men. One day, the doctor claimed to me that the ideal marriage would be with a man and a woman.
A young married couple invites us over for dinner and shows us their photos on their computer: there are images of her in her underwear giving another woman a bowl of apricots. He is writhing in mud, half naked. Seyran tells me that the husband is having a relationship with the older doctor.
A young woman with short hair and combat boots drunkenly throws herself at her waif-like male co-worker at a party: neither of them come.
As I heard of these cases, I thought, “Who are they kidding. They’re all gay!” Then I wondered how they knew the word bisexual. I told Seyran that Mardi had never heard of it when I told him I was bi last year.
“No, baby,” he said. “Everyone knows this word. Mardi just doesn’t know English good.”
It was another moment when I wanted to hit my head with the heel of my hand. I had been making assumptions again.
Tradition holds enormous psychological, cultural and social power, reinforced by the church and local customs. I’ve learned from a younger friend that she only has anal sex with her boyfriend in order to avoid technically losing her virginity, so that she can still be an acceptable bride. At the same time, young men can be seen consuming imported porn at internet cafes at all hours. A friend who teaches sex education to young women worries what will happen when they meet men who aren’t receiving the same information. The penal codes of the Soviets left behind a brutal homophobia. Then there are tourists, ex-pats and re-pats bringing in their own attitudes. Independence has opened people up to sex and more expressions of sexuality have been surfacing, so it is a very tender time. It could be that I just don’t know Armenian good, too dependent on what Seyran tells me to know how people really identify, but I don’t think it’s problematic if some people who call themselves bisexual might ordinarily identify as gay (or straight, or whatever) under other circumstances. For those who have found space in their minds and bodies, who have slipped into the gaps between the tightly knit family unit and the repressive government, it’s a time of experimentation, of staying open, of striving to understand oneself.
Like me and Seyran.
I know now, my relationship with him won’t end or continue because we are both bisexual, but because we are both incredibly complex people, like everyone else here.