Cover

Dedication

For the women who love other women, and especially the ones
who love everyone else, too

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1: Gemma

True love doesn’t exist. Or, at least, I’m not sure if it exists for me.

I know that’s a grim statement coming from someone who writes for a romantic advice column. But I’m a realist. And I’m human, too. I’m not some wise, omniscient fairy godmother who doesn’t have her own fucked-up love life to worry about.

In college, I fell deeply in love with my roommate, Celeste. I didn’t even know I was bi until we met, and I loved her so much I was ready to come out to my very traditional Korean parents and possibly upend my entire life, just for her. But then the next year, Celeste not only dumped me through a text, but also moved back home to Seoul without any explanation whatsoever.

Then I met James, who I thought was the One. We dated seven years and got engaged. And even after all that, on one random, rainy day, he said he didn’t love me anymore.

The beauty of being bi, I learned, is that you can get rejected by both women and men.

I press my forehead to the cold surface of the Muni train window. The rain’s really coming down now, persistent and miserable. After living in sunny Southern California for the first twenty-two years of my life, I find San Francisco’s wet season to be unbearable. Seven years of living here, and I still hate the cold rain and fog, which makes it seem colder than the fifty something degrees it really is.

In college, people called the journey home after a hookup the “walk of shame.” Back then, getting caught doing the walk seemed like the worst thing ever, which, in hindsight, was pretty sad, because why should anyone be ashamed of having a sex life? But whatever shame I felt then is nothing compared to the utterly soul-crushing sense of failure I feel now on this train, on my way to crash on my friends’ couch at age twenty-nine with a cardboard box filled with my stuff.

Half of my friends are engaged or married, while most of the rest are in long, committed relationships. Some even already have kids. Sure, a few are single, but a lot of those friends are uncoupled by choice. Meanwhile, I thought I’d be married by next year. Instead, here I am, newly single and without even my own place to call home. A rogue car spinning off the track as the others race past.