I didn't realise you were relatively newly out. You looked happy and confident
Hmm, I remember someone else saying something like that a while ago.
I think one way in which I probably differed from the average BiCon first-timer is that, having gone to almost every bi event I could find in the previous 6 months, I knew about a dozen other BiCon-goers quite well before I got there, and I was sharing a flat with some of them. So I never had that "don't know anyone, who can I talk to, try to get the social courage up" stage.
It's also probably relevant that I'd spent a lot of time from 1990 to 1995 doing lots of "self-development" type stuff. I'm wiser now than I was then, but I was already getting to be fairly at home with my own feelings by then, and with the principles of how language relates to reality - a useful grounding for the world of identity politics :-) So I feel like it didn't take me long to get my bearings in the new territory when I first came out.
Having said that, it's not actually the case that I spent all of that BiCon happy. I took advantage of the "see a counsellor" facility at one stage, because being in the BiCon environment was stirring up some unfinished business with the aforementioned person I was in love with (although they weren't there themself).
I also remember feeling a bit oppressed, and at one point intensely irritated, by the apparent assumption (as expressed in numerous jovial references to "pulling") that everyone there including me was in pursuit of sex or at least snogs. I remember having a ranty outburst about that as we walked to the disco one night (not aimed at one person in particular, but a frustration with the whole environment). "I'm NOT here to PULL, all right?! There are other reasons to be here!" Or words to that effect.
But it's true that on the whole I had a good time and thought the whole thing was basically fab :-)
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branchandroot
(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-21 04:50 pm (UTC)::grins::
I didn't realise you were relatively newly out. You looked happy and confident
Hmm, I remember someone else saying something like that a while ago.
I think one way in which I probably differed from the average BiCon first-timer is that, having gone to almost every bi event I could find in the previous 6 months, I knew about a dozen other BiCon-goers quite well before I got there, and I was sharing a flat with some of them. So I never had that "don't know anyone, who can I talk to, try to get the social courage up" stage.
It's also probably relevant that I'd spent a lot of time from 1990 to 1995 doing lots of "self-development" type stuff. I'm wiser now than I was then, but I was already getting to be fairly at home with my own feelings by then, and with the principles of how language relates to reality - a useful grounding for the world of identity politics :-) So I feel like it didn't take me long to get my bearings in the new territory when I first came out.
Having said that, it's not actually the case that I spent all of that BiCon happy. I took advantage of the "see a counsellor" facility at one stage, because being in the BiCon environment was stirring up some unfinished business with the aforementioned person I was in love with (although they weren't there themself).
I also remember feeling a bit oppressed, and at one point intensely irritated, by the apparent assumption (as expressed in numerous jovial references to "pulling") that everyone there including me was in pursuit of sex or at least snogs. I remember having a ranty outburst about that as we walked to the disco one night (not aimed at one person in particular, but a frustration with the whole environment). "I'm NOT here to PULL, all right?! There are other reasons to be here!" Or words to that effect.
But it's true that on the whole I had a good time and thought the whole thing was basically fab :-)