San Francisco turned me straight

I was a hardcore lesbian when I came to the famously freaky city. So how did I start sleeping with men?

Published March 1, 2012 4:59AM (EST)

  (Shutterstock/Salon)
(Shutterstock/Salon)

This essay is the first in a new series on Salon about bisexual experiences.

I proposed to my last girlfriend in Lesvos, Greece, at sunset, overlooking the craggy shores of Skala Eresou. I carried the ring 8,000 miles. I wasn’t eloquent, but she cried and I cried and as we walked back to our rented house, we played a game where we guessed the number of stray cats we’d see along the way. We said the loser had to kiss the winner a million times.

Shortly after that, we moved to San Francisco. Shortly after that, I was on a different shore and she was on a boat drifting farther away from me each day. Shortly after that, we stopped having sex. Words were somewhere in the absence growing between us but I couldn’t find them. My only weapon was repetition. I made us dinner. We watched "Glee." We went to yoga. Shortly after that, she told me she wanted to date men, that our relationship was over.

My ex-girlfriend now has a boyfriend and lives in Minnesota. My yoga teacher, who announced to her mom at age 8 that she was a lesbian, now exclusively dates men, and has been in a committed relationship with a man for more than a year. My straightest guy friends have all at least made out with other men, while others are now dabbling in full-on dude sex. Whatever norm you came in with, San Francisco eventually takes it and turns it right on its (uncircumcised, pierced) head. It shouldn’t have surprised me that the City wanted to have its way with me too.  Still, I was the last person who thought I’d be a lesbian who spent the next year and a half of her life ...

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By Anna Pulley

@annapulley writes about sex and social media for SF Weekly, AlterNet, After Ellen and the Chicago Tribune. She's also attempting to lead a haiku revival on her blog, annapulley.com. Let her send you overly personal emails: http://tinyletter.com/annapulley.

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