This is Sitting Queerly, a newsletter focused on the late blooming queer experience, the lofty goal of opening up conversations and celebrating those who embrace their full selves.
Happy Bisexuality Awareness Month!
I recently stumbled upon a clickbait article identifying yet another obvious sign you’re bisexual even if you don’t realize it.
Basically, the article was seizing on how this one TikTok influencer (he works in tech and likes to travel, natch) was obviously bisexual because he has a green velvet couch.
He just likes the color green! he says. I have green bedsheets, too, so what!? he says. He never confirms nor denies that he is bisexual.
There are so many bisexual tells that it’s impossible to keep track of them. Among the ones I’ve encountered…
Not sitting up straight
A taste for lemon bars
A tendency to use “finger guns” as a conversational gesture
A fondness for the movie The Mummy
Flannel
Converse sneakers
…and so on.
These are, of course, stereotypes, in jokes, unscientific assumptions. And there’s so many that it would be impossible to NOT have one apply to you, regardless of whether you bat for both teams.
Yes, I do struggle with sitting straight (hence, Sitting Queerly) and do love to wear the flannel outershirt I got for Christmas from my younger sister several years ago. But I don’t use “finger guns,” Converse sneakers are too narrow for my feet and yeah, The Mummy is a good movie, but I’d much rather watch Master and Commander: The Far Side of The World, Hero or a Wes Anderson flick. I’ll eat a lemon bar but my wife, straighter than a ruler, is ravenous for them.
And I have never had nor desire to have a green velvet couch.
I mean, yes, I do have a couch in a sage green color (with matching armchair and ottoman) but the upholstery is microfiber.
My wife and I did pick it out together as it was my family’s wedding present to us. Given that we had a dog and two cats at the time, it was a pragmatic while also aesthetically pleasing choice.
A green velvet couch is a bit too modern for my taste anyway. When I bought my first house 15 years ago—a charming little 1920s Craftsman—I had a whole other bedroom and office space to furnish as well as a larger living room and kitchen. I didn’t want some cheap particle board flatpack stuff from IKEA (footnote: not that such things were an option as the nearest IKEA was six hours away). Instead, I trolled second-hand and antique shops. I came away with two dressers, a mid-century modern one with a cedar drawer and a taller American Empire-inspired piece. Then there was the half-circle end table with the leather inlay on top. And I hated how empty the kitchen cabinets were so, despite living on my own at the time, I excitedly purchased a second-hand eight place setting of white china, half with gold trim and half with silver, at Goodwill. I also was very proud of the tiny sugar jar with a charmingly crackled glaze that I picked up.
Several years ago, when my wife wanted a desk or something to store her papers and related things, I spied a Chippendale-inspired repro escritoire (footnote: a secretary but I wanted to use a fancy word) that I purchased for her birthday. When we moved into our current home (a lovely Cape Code Revival albeit with extensive renovation/additions) nearly two years ago, I spent weeks looking online for a china hutch that would fit the aesthetic I planned for our dining room around the dark-stained dining room set my wife had purchased (with my approval, of course).
We’ve otherwise adapted what furniture we’ve acquired over the years to whatever our living space is at a given time. I’m loathe to replace things if I already have something that fits a need so long as it’s cleaned up, fixed or freshly painted.
Which reminds me, my couch isn’t even green anymore! After 12 years which included two moves and dealing with two additional cats and two kids, my wife became increasingly bothered by how dingy it looked. No amount or intensity of cleaning seemed to fully remove years worth of kids spilling food or leaving uncapped markers wedged between cushions and animals tracking who knows what on it. All the covers she bought online just didn’t look or feel good.
So now its a silvery gray, covered in a machine-washable chenille that I picked up at Joann’s and spent months reverse-pinning and sewing on a second-hand sewing machine.
So, another strike against stereotyp—
Akhtar returned to TikTok to plead his case once again in a follow-up video. “I found something to make it even better to prove to you guys that couch color doesn’t define sexuality,” he said, before swapping the couch’s cushions for blue ones (still in velvet, of course).
The switch didn’t convince his commenters, though: “I mean… DIY-ing ur way through life is VERY bi,” one pointed out.
—dammit.
Well, I guess u/juliuspepperwoodchi had it right…