A little less than 36 hours ago, I revealed my true colors. No, I didn’t go to Finland to betray my country in the presence of Russian dictator Vladimir Putin. I came out as a polysexual man, and, for the first time in my lifetime, I actually feel at peace with myself. The image associated with this story, which I created using a computer program called Inkscape, contains the polysexual pride flag, although I am not the inventor of the polysexual pride flag.
Since you’re going to see the word “spectrum” used multiple times in my coming out story, I’ll talk about the first spectrum that I’m on. At a very young age, I was diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome. As Asperger’s syndrome is an autism spectrum disorder, that put me on the autism spectrum. I wrote this blog post at my own blog, Apollo Corner, about my experiences as someone with Asperger’s syndrome, and anything I could add about that topic would be redundant.
I’m from an area of the country that is not the first place a typical American would think of as welcoming of the LGBTQIA+ community. In my high school graduating class (I don’t remember the exact number of people in my graduating class, but it was fewer than 125 graduates), every single member of the graduating class, including me, was cisgender, and I don’t know of a single classmate of mine who identified as being of a sexual orientation other than heterosexual. In fact, at the time I graduated from high school, which was 11 years ago, I considered myself to be heterosexual. In my entire lifetime, I’ve only met one individual in-person who I knew for a fact was not a cisgender heterosexual person: a transgender man who worked at a pharmacy that filled an antibiotic prescription that I needed to treat a tooth infection.
It wasn’t until a couple of years ago or so that I began to question my own sexual orientation and eventually realized that I am polysexual. I use Twitter a lot, and, as someone who follows quite a few people who are part of the LGBTQIA+ community, as well as many allies of the LGBTQIA+ community. It was through my usage of social media that I began to view sexual orientation, gender identity, and romantic orientation as compromising a three-dimensional spectrum, rather than a set of binary choices. I didn’t choose to be polysexual; I’ve always been polysexual, but I just didn’t know it until recently.
However, it wasn’t until earlier this month that I felt comfortable coming out as polysexual. I read this column that a young woman named Katie Winbauer wrote for The Bismarck Tribune. I live in an area of the country that is a little over 800 miles from the Bismarck, North Dakota area, which is the area of the country that The Bismarck Tribune serves, and I’ve never been to North Dakota before. However, after reading Katie’s column, which was about her story as an ally of the LGBTQIA+ community in an area of the country that, like the area of the country that I’m from, is not the first place a typical American would think of as being welcoming of the LGBTQIA+ community, I felt comfortable publicly disclosing my sexual orientation.
A little less than a day and a half ago, I publicly revealed my position on the sexual orientation spectrum as polysexual, and I thank everyone who has publicly offered me support.