Bedrooms and Hallways (or, Let's run the sexual gamut)

I've been a big fan for Rose Troche's "pansexual" comedy for a long while now and, watching it again the other night, I thoroughly believe it is holding its own against the ravages of time. The acting is still charmingly over-the-top, the direction just off-centre and the script assuredly navigates the terrain between flippant comedy and too-meaningful drama. Bedrooms and Hallways seems as fresh and clear skinned as it ever has, the only thing that seems to have changed is me.

I remember when I first saw it; on top of finding it cheekily witty, I also found it quite unsettling. The idea that a centred and self loving gay man could enter into a relationship with a woman I found disturbing and unrealistic. I suppose, after fighting for so long to be comfortable with myself, the notion that all that hard work could be undone was incredibly challenging.

And I have often thought about it since.

Seeing the film again recently, I have to say that my view on the matter has changed. In the past few months I have had a good many friends, and friends of friends, broach the topic with me. I even know of one or two who have made the jump. Speaking today with a new friend, who has been on both sides of the proverbial fence but refuses to use the label "bisexual" because labels always leave a sticky residue, she used a very similar rational to the characters in the film: the person is more important than the bits.

Byron says, "If it walks like a duck..." but I tend to side with the no-labels camp. I can understand that the preconceptions that stick to the sole of bisexuality would be even more severely misleading than prejudices many in the gay community feel are wrapped up in "gay", especially if it is truly a love of a specific person that is at the core of the relationship. Troche's pansexuality comes to us residue free. Hoorah! Use it with glee for a few years before the community at large gets a hold of it and sullies it with their pernicious pre-conceivities (do you like that one? I just invented it myself).

My point?

I guess, I have just come to the realisation that I don't find the idea challenging anymore. I don't think I'll be making the jump any time soon but I wouldn't feel confronted if one of my friends did. I still think our struggle to be comfortable with ourselves as sexual beings leaves an indelible mark on us as individuals, and to turn away from that battle in some way belittles it but, looking back now, I don't think that that was my issue way back when (when? 1998).

Back then, it was the ramifications the switch would have on all the gay trappings that led me to be disturbed. If someone was no longer gay, would they have to change themselves, their personality? We collect our sexuality around us like with songs and clothes and parties and friends. The "gay" lifestyle, if you will.

Were those trappings so incidental? So disposable?

Yes.

And that was a scary thought because I thought of those things as more important than they are.

I don't need a badge to be me.

And I certainly don't need a label.

Now that I am happily myself; now that I am comfortable that the different aspects of my life are not draped around me as identifying marks of my sex life, I am comfortable that I would still be me even if I fell for a woman. And being comfortable in that makes me comfortably trust that anyone else could do the same.

I got all that from a fluffy little film. Well, I never.