An interview with Devin Grayson

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By Shane Dingman

Continued from page 12

When did you first know you were bi?

Actually, the question is really when did I first realize that most people think they’re straight? That was so disappointing for me, finding out that most of my boyfriends got really uptight if I asked them about their boyfriends.

I was falling in love with boys and girls from the very beginning. Just little girl crushes on my part, but they all seemed totally natural regardless of the gender of the beloved. I remember being at summer camp when I was seven or eight and I wanted to marry the counselor, George, but we went swimming one day and I nearly drowned because I became so fixated on this girl’s eyelashes — her name was Nicole and when her eyelashes got wet they clumped into these perfect zigzag triangles, like a Vegas showgirl (though of course I had never seen a Vegas showgirl at the time). George swam over and asked what I was doing and I told him — I didn’t know there was anything weird about that, she was just frickin’ beautiful! — and he grinned and said, “okay, I guess I’ll have to marry you both.” And I just thought that was the PERFECT solution. This is why I loved him, he was brilliant!

My best friend from second-grade and I (and incidentally, she’s one of the people I now still game with every week) used to play these very sexualized, intense “let’s pretend” games, and we were always changing gender to suit the story. One summer much, much latter when I was in New Jersey visiting my grandparents she wrote me a letter in character — from Mark to Princess, actually (you guys get Battle of the Planets up there?) — and I had my first real experience of longing for what was essentially a fictional male (boy would THAT become a reoccurring theme in my life!). And then by the end of sixth grade, I was in theater and had guys I liked (usually the guy I was playing opposite to at the time — funny how that happens) and I think even had my first kiss with a guy on stage, but the first time I fell in love — that was Tina. And I do remember the first time we french-kissed the sentence “I’m kissing a GIRL!” went through my head, but that was it, that was the last time I ever thought about it that way. It wasn’t until I was in my mid-to-late teens that I became aware of any kind of gay culture or gay community (Tina took me to Castro Street in San Francisco, actually — a famous gay district — and I think I cried tears of joy for three straight hours in the middle of the street, as most queer people seeing Castro for the first time do). And it wasn’t until I met my first gay male friend that I really started identifying with the political side of the community.

Did you have any coming-out anxiety with your first same-sex relationship? Or for that matter, with your first straight one?

Not at all with the same-sex, described above, beyond that one thought. The guy I technically lost my virginity to, though, that was weird. Because I was a virgin and he was not and yet I had waaaay more experience than he had in terms of the intensity of my relationship with girls at that time. We were trying to be very romantic and very hetero and very classic — we were in the backseat of his mother’s car, which I thought was hysterical — and by that time I’d already been in all-girl menage-a-trois and stuff he could barely dream of, but for this one thing I had to put all my faith in him and I think for him it was a little intimidating, especially because I couldn’t stop laughing. Talk about being forced to be a representative of your gender! Fortunately, he’s a really great guy and everything worked out fine. I don’t even remember why we broke up, actually, but I still hear about him a lot from a mutual friend and remember him warmly.

It was not a big deal in terms of any identity issues on my part or anything though. To this day, I just really don’t get the conflict and am in fact a little suspicious of people who can’t fall in love with someone regardless of their genitalia. There was the one time my dad caught me with my second girlfriend and dragged me down to the laundry room to ask if I was “practicing.” I could see that he was anxious, and I felt bad about that, but I just couldn’t even imagine feeling ashamed about my relationship with this girl, I was so in love with her at the time. I told him that we pretty much had it down, thanks, and by the way, are the clothes in the dryer ready? He has always responded well to logical calm. Later he told me he worried that being bisexual would make my life harder and more complicated for me, but I told him that my teenage relationships were the best things in my life and that up until that point, it had only made things easier. And that has pretty much remained true.

Does the “gay writer” tag become just as sticky as the “chick writer” tag? If so, how do you avoid it, or for that matter deal with it (assuming the tag is meaningless to how you actually do your job).

Interestingly enough, no, it isn’t as difficult, at least not for me personally. Being taken out of the comic book writer community and dropped into the “female writer of comics” category is lonely — I don’t know what the hell I’m doing there, and because of my own personal proclivities, I haven’t done much to gather support for myself in that area. I have no relevant feminist work to point (though I’d like to develop some someday) and I don’t feel as though I’m a particularly strong or educated speaker for the cause.

Being dropped into the “gay writing” community, though — now that is a community! I get so much support there, both from fans and fellow professionals, and I’m so proud to be part of that population. I have done work that was consciously inclusive of the community and I’d like to do much more. I’ve done education and public speaking programs about GLBT rights and issues, I’ve marched in parades, I’ve signed up. That’s the big difference. You wouldn’t know I was bisexual unless I’d mentioned it out loud somewhere, which I have, proudly. The female thing, though...I don’t get to decide when to tell you that, when I’m comfortable being out in the world as a woman. I don’t think people choose their sexual orientation, but they do experience it — it evolves as a narrative you can participate in and decide when to share. It includes other people, both physical and emotional experiences...it is something that blossoms and something that you can more or less control the press on. Gender, on the other hand, is, for most of us, immediately present and difficult to ease into, let alone define. And it’s right there, written across, well, your chest.

This is part of what’s difficult about these questions — they’re so personal. I’m uncomfortable with being female but very comfortable with being bisexual. I’m sure there are people who feel exactly the opposite and would much rather be categorized as feminist pioneers than gay rights activists. As soon as I find one, I’ll set up an interview trade with her (“whoa...could you grab these questions here about the female thing? I’ve got your back on that kissing girls one, thanks!”).