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Bisexual Married Men: Nana
3k Plays11 months ago
Happy new year! Here's another interview from this special series on bisexual men who are married to women. This week I interviewed Nana, another subject in my book, Bisexual Married Men: Stories of Relationships, Acceptance, and Authenticity (out now). Nana's story is unique and layered, especially because he was the only interviewee with a military background (which intersected heavily with his Bi+ identity...), but it also features common threads that many Bi+ men have experienced – though we often feel like we’re alone.
There are 20 minutes of bonus content with Nana, plus FULL LENGTH VIDEO of the interview, only on my Patreon -- enjoy!
Stay tuned for a few more interviews with Bi+ married men. Thanks for listening and supporting my work!
Visit my website to learn more about the book, press, and events
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Transcript
Introduction to the Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
🎵
00:00:12
Speaker
Hello, everybody. Welcome to Two Bye Guys.
Introducing Nana and His Story
00:00:15
Speaker
My book about bisexual married men is coming out, and so I'm here today with another interview subject from my book, and I'm so excited to talk to him again today. So welcome to Two Bye Guys. In the book, his name is William. In real life, his name is Nana. Welcome to Two Bye Guys, Nana.
Nana's Experience as a Bisexual Man in the Military
00:00:38
Speaker
So in the book I called you, you're welcome, thanks for being here. In the book I called you William, do you want to tell me your whole full name now? Because I was not brave enough to pronounce it. My name is, and everybody who knows people know this is really me now.
00:01:02
Speaker
I'm not going to attempt it, but I love it. Welcome to Dubai, guys, Nana, aka William. Nice to have you here. Yes, take a bow, take a bow. I really enjoyed hearing your story last year, maybe over a year ago at this point, but it was sometime in 2022, I think. Was it that long ago?
00:01:29
Speaker
I think so. Wasn't it? Well, I mean, 2022 was just like six months ago. Wasn't that long ago. Yeah. Yeah. I think we talked. I think we talked about a year ago. It was after I knew the book would be published and you were one of the additional interviews I conducted. And so you were one of six people I picked out of 150 that volunteered. And
00:01:52
Speaker
I think there's multiple interesting aspects of your story. But what makes it really unique from everyone else's is your involvement in the army and the military and how your by development played out in that environment, which is unique and fascinating. So we'll get into that. Before we do, this is how I'm starting with everyone.
00:02:20
Speaker
Tell me why did you decide to participate in this project in the first place? As a young man, growing up, I didn't have this resource. I didn't have these perspectives. I didn't have these voices telling me that I could exist.
00:02:49
Speaker
Um, affirming that, um, I was not something that was supposed to be thrown away. So yeah, so, uh, yeah, I'm, uh, the reason I want to participate in this is because if I had someone doing what you're doing, telling a story that I could relate to.
00:03:15
Speaker
then I think a couple of, I may not, I may have saved some tears. And so that's it. I'm trying to save some child, some unnecessary crime.
00:03:29
Speaker
Beautiful. I love it. Beautiful. And knowing your story, you've done a lot of work to get to the point where not only are you comfortable with yourself, but you're comfortable putting yourself out here and your name and your face and everything. And that's very admirable.
00:03:49
Speaker
Okay so there's going to be a lot more for people in the book and a lot of details but why don't you take us through sort of the brief version of like when did you first start to realize you were not straight and how did your bi identity develop over time and you know tell us sort of just the whole story the brief version.
00:04:13
Speaker
So the brief version is I realized that I was not heterosexual before I was 10. That was clear to me. The names and the labels that would go with that, that took years to figure out. And it took even longer to come to acceptance of that. But, you know, there was...
00:04:37
Speaker
Best friends, when you were a kid, there was summer camp. We talked about that. There was being nervous in the locker room. There was going in high school, in junior high school. There was joining the military, sweating bullets in the open. I was there.
00:05:05
Speaker
There was the first real same sex relationship I had. There was...
00:05:14
Speaker
getting married, falling in love with a woman, still trying to navigate that mess. It's a process that's still ongoing, to be honest. So that's the Cliff Notes version. Okay, yeah. It is definitely an ongoing process for all of us. Okay, so it's funny you mentioned the camp thing, because I remember that from your story where
00:05:39
Speaker
what you told us about is that you met a bi person, a bi guy at camp who used that word. How did that affect you? And then because I know you didn't adopt that word right away, what happened after that? Why didn't you adopt that label right away?
00:06:03
Speaker
I didn't know at the time that it was me, you know? At that particular time, I was still discovering my attraction to girls, like girls, girls, girls everywhere, you know? Because it was right there at the beginning of puberty. So, yeah, girls was the thing.
00:06:31
Speaker
And now that I think about it, it's really fun to look back at it now because having sex with males was something that... It's what you did before you learned how to jerk off. And then you find out about girls, it's like, oh, that's awesome. And so then that's where I was at at that point. So it was less that I...
00:07:00
Speaker
I didn't identify with it, but it would not be the truth for me to say it didn't resonate. It resonated. I just didn't know if that's who I was at the time. So it was like, oh, that's a thing, you could do that? I was more shocked that it was a thing, you know? Right.
00:07:23
Speaker
David Bowie, Prince, those were my idols growing up. Even Michael Jackson. These were all people that was presumed to at least be by, especially David Bowie and Prince. Prince had a mushroom haircut. Only girls wore that. He showed up in his little sister's drawers with a trench coat on for one of his concerts. It's like, ooh, yeah. But yeah, I just didn't...
00:07:50
Speaker
I just didn't know that that's who I was. That's the short answer.
00:07:56
Speaker
really interesting. It's kind of like you were following your interests and your attractions and having experiences and then just like the awareness of what that was called or what that might mean for you is what took more time. So when did you enter the army? Like what age? And at that point, how were you thinking about your sexuality and how did you explore your sexuality in the military?
00:08:26
Speaker
I joined the army when I was 19 and technically I joined before then, but you know, that's, that's this weird thing that army was doing where you were signed up, but you weren't actually in and it would only count if you stayed in all the way through to your 20 years, which I did. So, um,
00:08:52
Speaker
But there was a question, this was back in the 90s, early 90s. So there was a question on the entry exam, or not the entry exam, the entrance contract. There's two contracts you gotta sign. And the first one, it was like, they ask you, are you gay, lesbian, or bisexual? And I struggled with answering that question.
00:09:15
Speaker
Because by then, I knew who I was. I knew who I was. I didn't have to like it, but I already knew it. And I decided to go with lying. I said I was heterosexual. And that decision was validated, which I absolutely hate in retrospect, because my recruiters started making fun. At first, he was real somber, like he was taking it seriously. And then when I answered it, he was like,
00:09:45
Speaker
Cause for a second there, I thought she was going to be like, I'm joining the army so I can look for a buddy friend. And I was like, you know, you just, you gotta deal with it. You gotta deal with it. So I wasn't happy about it, but you know, so what was the rest of the question?
00:10:02
Speaker
Well then, so you entered and you knew this about yourself, but you told them you were straight. So then, what was that like? How did it play out? Did you have to hide this for a long time? And how were you exploring your sexuality during that time?
00:10:19
Speaker
Well, I had to hide it in basic for sure. It was eight weeks of me being with a bunch of strangers from all over the country. And I had to make sure I focused on building... It was actually the place where the military was trying to break everybody down.
00:10:44
Speaker
to rebuild you back up again. That's what they say, tearing you down to build you back up. The focus was, I wasn't looking to get laid. I was too tired at the end of every day to get laid, to want to get laid. I don't even think I really, well, I may have gotten some me time. No, I didn't even get any me time during that. People did, but I wasn't one. I was exhausted. I was exhausted. It was,
00:11:13
Speaker
From before the sun come up, you're either pushing the ground or you're running. And by the time it's all said and done, you smell like the crack of every butthole you can imagine. It was terrible. I wouldn't trade the experience for anything in the world, but I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy. It was a rough time, but it was also a good time. I found out some things about myself and the men to my left and the right. So it was the military. It was basically training bed. You had to be there.
00:11:43
Speaker
Um, AIT is when things relaxed a little bit and I started to get start feeling myself a little bit more. Um, that's advanced individual training. So you got basic training where they teach you how to be a grunt. And then you got advanced individual training where you learn how to do your job. That was more relaxed. That was a whole lot more sexually charged. Um, I still focused on the girls cause they were available. They were, they were available, right? Um,
00:12:14
Speaker
guys less so. There were what I call near misses. There were at least three near misses where I could have ended up hooking up with a dude, but I didn't. One of them was really, really public. I'll tell you about this story later on if you want to hear it, but anyway. There were a couple of them, huh?
00:12:42
Speaker
Is that one in the book? Maybe. It's not. It's absolutely not. Okay, we'll come back to that then. Circle back to that one. But yeah, so there was some near misses. There was a guy who showed me some interest, but I wasn't sure at the time where I wanted to be at. So that one kind of died by the wayside, especially when everybody around me was telling me this is what they were seeing. And I was like,
00:13:14
Speaker
He's enemy, and he's cool, but I don't know if this is what I wanted. And then there was this other guy who graduated right before. Anyway, there were near misses in AIT. And it wasn't until I got to my first duty station that, and I think I told you about this, where my two girlfriends didn't respond to me on my birthday. That's in the book, right? Yeah. And then- And you went out to a gay bar.
00:13:41
Speaker
I don't think it was a gay bar. I just was a gay guy that I didn't know was gay. I didn't know it was gay. When he got there, I figured it out in the morning. That tells the story, doesn't it? There's the whole story right there. Then he dumped it with the whole phase. Yeah, right? There you go. Okay. You can read all about the whole phase in the book.
00:14:18
Speaker
Let me ask you this from what I know and have read and from when we talked like it seems like in the military especially in the 90s and 2000s and maybe it's changing today a little but
00:14:34
Speaker
that there wasn't much acceptance of homosexuality or queerness, but that there was a lot of it going on under the surface or behind the scenes. How much does that resonate with you, and how did you see that? Okay, so I've always been law enforcement adjacent, even before I went and became a military police officer.
00:15:06
Speaker
They would refer to them as rings, like prostitution ring, a drug ring, a homosexual ring. That's how it was regarded. That being said, there were people who were openly, obviously, in all but name, not heterosexual. There was this one guy who worked in personnel
00:15:34
Speaker
you would spot him in a crowd. Oh, that's the gay one, right there, him, right over there. He's the gay one. But he was awesome. He was, I think what it boiled down to even back then was if you were competent enough, nobody cared about what you was doing when the whistle blew. And the reality of the matter is that
00:15:55
Speaker
Back then, in the 90s, it wasn't a zero defect. So you were expected to... All of these things was against the law, by the way. You were expected to be cheating on your spouse. You were expected to have open little things going on that you and your spouse was cool with. We call it polyamory and swinging now. But back then, it was just you being a freak. You were expected to drink and drug. And all of these things, these things were expected.
00:16:26
Speaker
But these things were not allowed to be discovered. These things were not allowed to be out. These things were not allowed to impact your work. The straight-laced
00:16:42
Speaker
Evangelical, who was actually about their book, was supposed to be able to operate right next to you, even if you was a dot in the wool, red horns having Satanists that was having bestiality sex every weekend. All of this stuff was really cool, but it was important that you was able to keep it away from post and not let it affect your work. So long as you can do those two things, no matter what your vice or your sin was,
00:17:12
Speaker
let it go. If people found out about it, you weren't being cautious. You're supposed to get hammered to the wall because you were not being the best soldier you could be. That was the mentality. Interesting. Yeah, it was interesting.
00:17:32
Speaker
when they first came up with the concept of don't ask don't tell this is how this is how weird it was when don't ask don't tell first came was first part of the conversation back in the Clinton era i want to say um or before the Clinton era don't yeah so before the Clinton era as a matter of fact there was conversation in the military uh LGBTQ
00:17:57
Speaker
It was just LGB, LGB back then. There was conversation in that community amongst us that was like, do we even want this? We have it. Good. Nobody says anything. So long as you're not broadcasting it and embarrassing the unit, don't embarrass the unit. I mean, everybody has to go by that rule. Don't embarrass the unit. How are we being different?
00:18:23
Speaker
I mean, everybody don't go to jail. That's not the thing that everybody can, you know what I mean? And a guy?
00:18:32
Speaker
A guy went to jail for performing cunnilingus on a girl. They were out to get him. And so he came in one week, one Monday morning, bragging about his weekend. Yeah, man, I got this girl, I did this, and da, da, da, da, da. And the first sergeant heard it, the commander heard it, and somebody else in the office heard it.
00:18:59
Speaker
Well, there you go. They didn't want you there in the first place. They wanted to get rid of you and they used that to get rid of you. So it was like, so the conversation was how was that different from what we're doing? And so there was, there was a conversation in the community and for a while I wasn't sure where I fell on that to be honest. Um, I didn't want the culture to change. I didn't want massive changes in the culture. Um, because this is what I was used to. And in all actuality,
00:19:28
Speaker
it was not as threatening as it was as a civilian, because as a civilian, I was just, the proper term to say is a black kid. I was thinking another word. I was just a black kid in a black neighborhood. And we hate those guys. LGBTQ plus, that's a deaf sentence, usually from your own family.
00:19:57
Speaker
true to form, my father said he was gonna put one around in my head. I don't know if that's in the book. I don't know if that's in the book. I don't remember that. My father said he was, my father, I will never forget, I was 11 years old. My father swung by to pick me up. He was doing something, I don't remember, we stopped by and went to McDonald's. I was 11. And my father said, son,
00:20:27
Speaker
I don't know what prompted him to say it, but he said, he said, son, if I ever find out you're a faggot, I'm gonna shoot you in the head myself. So good to know that. I ate my food. And I had to hold that in forever. And I didn't speak on that until I talked to my spouse about that a while ago. My wife was the first person I told about that.
00:20:54
Speaker
So my mama didn't hear about it. My best friend didn't hear about it. I didn't write it in my diary. I don't have a diary, but I didn't write it in. I wouldn't have wrote it in there if I had one. But I told my wife was the first person in the world I told about that. And that was only a couple of years ago. I've been married for 23 years. And a couple of years ago, two or three years ago, I tell my wife this.
00:21:21
Speaker
So that one? Yeah. With that being what's at home?
00:21:31
Speaker
a situation where I can be who I am so long as I don't rock the boat too much. Right. Yeah, that's really heavy to deal with at home. And I can understand why you were not sure how you felt about Don't Ask, Don't Tell, because it sounds very complicated. It's like,
00:21:53
Speaker
on the one end, they could use it against you if they wanted to get you anyway for whatever reason. But at the same time, your good performance in your work could shield you from that homophobia in a way that the work was more important, which is interesting. I don't know. It kind of cuts both ways. It's weird.
00:22:18
Speaker
It is weird. Oh, it's so I mean, it's what a what a interesting place to be figuring this out and discovering it. Okay, so you mentioned your wife, let's let's talk about your relationship a little.
Love and Relationships: Meeting and Coming Out to His Wife
00:22:33
Speaker
Tell me about how you guys met and then how did your sexuality become part of that relationship? Like, when did you come out to her and what happened?
00:22:45
Speaker
But first tell us just how you met and started dating. I had a friend. I'm a gamer geek. Don't judge me. I am judging you highly.
00:23:02
Speaker
Then we got something else to circle back around to. We're playing, because role-playing games figured in a lot in how I dealt with my sexuality. Interesting. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I met my wife through a friend that I was gaming with. He married this really attractive at the time.
00:23:32
Speaker
He divorced her, so we don't care. She was cute at the time. I don't know what she looked like now. He married a really attractive Italian lady. And like any other red-blooded American male, I said, yo, hey, she got a sister, a friend or something you can hook your boy up with? And he was like, yeah, sure. So he brought my future wife by.
00:23:59
Speaker
by my room and I wasn't there. So he left a note on the door. So I went and found him later on. And he was like, yeah, I got this friend. You asked me if the hook you up with one of my wife's girlfriends. So do you want to do your thing? I'm like, yeah, bet.
00:24:20
Speaker
Mama's leading loves too, so let's do this. And I'm thinking it's just a booty call. I'll go over to the house. We play some cards to break the ice. My friend and his wife didn't leave. We're just left together. I'm getting her life story. Neither one of us speak the same language, but we're making it work that way.
00:24:45
Speaker
that did something to me in the back of my head somewhere. And you mean literally didn't speak the same language, right? Yeah, she spoke Italian and I didn't speak any Italian and I spoke English and she didn't speak no English. It was cute, yeah. It was an Italian English dictionary in the house though, so we just
00:25:08
Speaker
the whole time. It was awesome. We went and got pizza. I smoked back then, so we went and got pizza and cigarettes. But I got a good sense of who she was, even though I couldn't understand all the words that was coming out of her mouth, and I didn't know all the details that she was giving me. Just the sense of who she was impressed me. I said, you know what? I was going to try to smash tonight, but I just want to call you back to see what's going on.
00:25:37
Speaker
She had different plans, so that went that way and that went that way, but I did call her back, you know? And then, you know, the romance kind of just flourished from there. Slowly but surely, she started speaking English. I started speaking Italian. We met somewhere in the middle, and then I proposed to her.
00:25:56
Speaker
Cool. Cool. That's the Cliff Notes. That's the Cliff Notes. There's much more in the book. Everyone should read it. It's very cute. When you proposed, were you out to yourself or her as bisexual? If not, how did that happen? I told her. I'll say it that way. I told her. She says she understood what I was saying and
00:26:27
Speaker
that she was glad I gave her the vocabulary because the word bisexual didn't apply sexually in Italian. You say something is bisexual in Italian, you're talking about a clothing item that a male or female could wear, not a sexuality. So I did tell her before I proposed to her,
00:26:53
Speaker
We were laughing and joking about something, and I think it was one of those things where guys always say, hey, baby, I want to see you with another girl, you know, we're disgusting that way. And that was somehow in the conversation. And she said, well, you ever do it with another guy?
00:27:14
Speaker
And I had to come to Jesus moment. And I said to myself, I'm like, you like this girl. And if this keeps going the way it is, she's going to be around for the long haul. You got to get this out of the way. You got to have this conversation now. And so I did. I said, yes, I have. I've seen one up close. And it ain't that bad.
00:27:43
Speaker
I kind of had fun with it. I missed the experience to be perfectly honest. I said, but right now I'm not curious about anyone else because all I can see in my life is you. Man, that was the right answer. I never proposed to him on a birthday after that conversation. And that's how we... That's how we got proposed to.
00:28:13
Speaker
And was she accepting of your bisexuality throughout, or did it ever cause conflict or struggle between you? That's weird. Okay, so, by erasure is a thing.
00:28:31
Speaker
And when you don't know, especially when you're dealing with men, apparently, um, I guess the, the idea of a man actually being bisexual is an affront to everybody's sensibilities. My wife had to work through that, um, for the longest time. She thought I was gay and wearing her as a beard. Um, really, and there's the impact that had on me.
00:29:02
Speaker
was, let's just say I'm still working through those challenges. So yeah, that was rough. That was a rough period. Yeah. And how, I mean, I know there's many steps and probably a long process involved, but how did you work through those things and communicate with each other?
00:29:28
Speaker
Honestly, this is just couples advice at this point. I believe the shit that she said and she believed me. That's what it boiled down to. We just had to start believing what the other person was telling them. And when we did, when we took those steps, a lot of the challenges went away. Or maybe not so much went away, just became more manageable.
00:29:57
Speaker
If I don't have to prove I'm not gay all the time, then I don't feel like I'm being inauthentic because performative masculinity is the absolute worst. You're not even being a real man at that point. You're just pretending.
00:30:21
Speaker
You're just pretending to be a real man. And that inauthenticity, it messes with you up here, in here, down there. It ruins everything. It doesn't stop breaking stuff. So when I got over that hump, it was like, oh yeah, life is so much better now. And it was for her as well. But there was a lot of crying that had to happen before we got there.
00:30:51
Speaker
Yeah, I love that. And you're not the only person in the book to basically say that exact same thing. You have to be honest with your partner, but there's the flip side of that coin. You have to believe your partner, both partners. And if you can't believe them, if you can't trust them,
00:31:12
Speaker
you know, why? Dive into that, figure out why. But you kind of have to get to the place where you believe each other because otherwise, you're trying to prove things to her, to yourself. And when you're trying to prove something, you're not really being yourself, you're trying to be a certain thing. And
00:31:33
Speaker
Yeah, I know we talked about that. We talked about the performance anxiety that I felt that many, many men in the book have felt because like sex shouldn't be about proving anything. It should be about pleasure and fun. And so, yeah, I love that answer.
00:31:56
Speaker
What's changed for you since we last spoke in your relationship or in your life, if anything? What changed? I'm trying to think where...
Exploring Ethical Non-Monogamy
00:32:12
Speaker
So I know I told you the last time we were looking into ethical non-monogony.
00:32:20
Speaker
Mm-hmm. Right. You had been just starting that conversation after doing all that work, right? Yeah. Yes. Okay. So we like it, but we're also in our late 40s, early 50s. So there's the whole time and energy thing.
00:32:46
Speaker
that's putting a damper on that a little bit. And health, aside from like occupational concerns, STIs and stuff like that. We're not really worried about that. As a matter of fact, we have a friend and our friend has their own thing out there. So that's good because he can
00:33:18
Speaker
We've been looking at some things that's going on with us, health-wise, and we haven't been available for him in that way. We still talk, we still enjoy each other's company, whatever, but there's not a lot of going on. And so that's unfortunate. But we know what this is. At least we know what this is. If we're not doing anything,
00:33:46
Speaker
I'ma say it, you can cut it out if you want to, or you can leave it in. If I'm not getting spit-broasted, it's okay. I don't have to, because we know what it is. I gotta take care of my health, my family's health, you know, stuff like that. But we did go out and we did have a good time with it, and we did explore, and we are going to,
00:34:15
Speaker
continue to develop this erotic side of ourselves. Cool. So it's a possibility, in a sense, but it's not necessarily something you need or are very focused on. Is that sort of accurate, or how would you say? It's not a priority. There. OK. There. It's not a priority. Right now, everything's in its place doing what it has to do.
00:34:45
Speaker
And if I have to do something that can't be provided for at home, we'll say. I have the leeway to do it. I just don't want to right now. I want to focus on us taking care of us in this respect.
00:35:07
Speaker
Cool. And what, if anything, did you learn by having those conversations about namanagami with your wife? Either learn about yourself or her or your relationship? Oh, first off, I learned that I have really deprived myself
00:35:30
Speaker
of all the joy of being married, especially to this woman. Yeah, that to me is the biggest thing. I could have been having so much more fun for so much longer if I wasn't screwing up my end of the equation, if that makes sense. I know we were both responsible for things not being perfect,
00:36:00
Speaker
But if I had just did my piece, then my late 20s, my 30s, and my 40s would have needed an OnlyFans channel and nothing else. It would have been a blast. And I would have been, I believe, I believe I would have been so much better off
00:36:31
Speaker
had we looked at, had I taken the lead and say, hey, look, these are the people that we are and we need to be these people. If I had did that, in reality, she was waiting for me to do that, which I learned over the years. A lot of times, apparently that's the thing. I can't speak for everybody, but one of the things I'm learning is that a lot of
00:36:57
Speaker
men who are having these issues with their wives are having them with their wives because they're not and this this is a true statement if you're by hetero whatever if you're having a challenge with your significant other especially if you're having one with your wife what the worst part of it is is that nine times out of ten if you just
00:37:26
Speaker
go and say, hey, this is what needs to happen for me. And just not to be too...
00:37:37
Speaker
I don't know. Old-headed about it. Just be a man about it and say, look, this is what I want. This is what I need. And I want you to come with me while I go on this journey to figure out who I am and what I want and what I need and where I'm going and what I'm doing. You're only going to get two answers. She's either going to say, yes, I'm in it.
00:37:59
Speaker
Or no, I'm out. At which point both of these are blessings for you. One of them hurts more, but both of these are blessings for you. And I feel like if I had just did that so much earlier, we'd have been a lot further along in everything and it would have been better.
00:38:21
Speaker
I love that perspective. It's like there's so many things people fear from having these conversations. But like you said, there's two outcomes, and in a way, they're both a blessing because neither of them is keeping this stuff hidden. There's almost no good outcome from that. I mean, maybe there's an externally good outcome, but
00:38:45
Speaker
but internally it's quite difficult and it can cause a lot of the conflicts you talked about. I also love that the conversation about non-monogamy or just open conversations about all of this stuff helped you feel really close to your wife and lucky to be in a relationship with her. It's counterintuitive to what people think about non-monogamy, but it makes perfect sense the way you describe it.
00:39:23
Speaker
Thank you everyone for listening to this episode of Two Bye Guys and this series on By married men paired with my book. There's about 10 more minutes with Nana coming up. It's great, stay tuned. But there's even more on Patreon, there are 20 minutes of bonus content with Nana, plus a full video of the entire thing. And this one is a good one to watch the video of, my facial expressions listening to some of these stories. They were funny for me to watch back while I was editing it,
00:39:50
Speaker
So you can find that exclusively at Patreon.com slash Robert Brooks Cohen. In the bonus material, we also circled back to those stories and other things that Nana mentioned toward the beginning. Fascinating stuff. I learned how role-playing games can affect sexuality development, and it makes perfect sense once I learned about it. Don't want to spoil anything beyond that. We also talked about masculinity and how that intersects with sexuality in the military.
00:40:16
Speaker
It actually caused me to bring up Jane Ward and what she's written about environments like that, which led to an interesting discussion about behavior versus identity and why that's so important in the military, and much more. So head over to patreon.com slash Robert Brooks Cohen for 20 more minutes with Nana, plus full videos for this entire series on by married men, bonus content on all future episodes and early access to everything. There's also a link in the show notes.
00:40:46
Speaker
So thank you everyone for listening and supporting my work. Hope you had a happy holiday season. Happy New Year! This episode will come out on New Year's Day. Thanks for listening to this series. There's a little bit more in this series, and then technically I have to finish book season. I have a few more by authors that I have scheduled interviews with, so we'll get back to book season. Then I'll take a little break and I'll talk more about what is gonna happen.
00:41:12
Speaker
Then, thanks also to everyone who bought and started reading my book, Bisexual Married Men, Stories of Relationships, Acceptance, and Authenticity, and thanks to those who have reached out to me. I really love hearing about what you all think, what you're connecting with, so thank you for the lovely comments.
00:41:29
Speaker
If you do like the book, now is a great time to write a review on Amazon or wherever you purchased it. It will really help people discover this book and help it get out there. I know it's going to connect with people. It's just a matter of getting it out there further. So I would really, really appreciate it if you've read the book and you like it and you authentically can write a review.
00:41:50
Speaker
if you would take a few minutes and leave a review. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Stay tuned for more episodes in January, and now here is a little bit more with Nader. Enjoy.
00:42:08
Speaker
I want to ask you this because I know in your story we talked a lot about spirituality and we haven't had much of a chance here, but how is your spirituality connected to your sexual fluidity, if it is?
Spiritual Beliefs and Sexual Fluidity
00:42:23
Speaker
It is, and not in the way I thought it would be. So we don't have a dogma in African tradition. Specifically, we don't have a dogma in voodoo.
00:42:36
Speaker
So a lot of African practitioners say we don't have this, we don't like this, we don't do that here. To quote Chaz Bosman, we don't do that here.
00:42:54
Speaker
but it is a revelatory tradition. And one of the things that I did was get initiated so that I can speak directly to our deities and what have you. A lot of my deities are twins. This becomes
00:43:19
Speaker
Germaine to my journey and I didn't know it. Generally speaking, only people who are twins get twins for head spirits, but a lot of my spirits are twins. So I was like, I don't know why I got it. My godmother's like, I don't know why you got all these twins. Maybe you're going to have a lot of twins. I'm not having a lot of twins. I'm not a twin. There's not a lot of twins in my family. I don't know where all these twins is coming from.
00:43:45
Speaker
turns out in the course of my practice that one of my twins is a brother and a sister. And so it lends itself to this
00:44:05
Speaker
I'm going to express sex, amongst other things, in this very both sides type of ways. And I see it play out in my day to day. So it actually impacts
00:44:23
Speaker
Not sexually, but I mean, this duality in my life impacts all over the place. Money, politics, everywhere. It's like, okay, I can encapsulate both halves of these things. And so it just makes sense.
00:44:38
Speaker
that we got over here to what's going on essentially that that's where I'm plugging into and in fact there's a set of spirits that I've always wondered why they're with me and that's why they're with me if you're not in the voodoo this is a lot of this is not gonna make sense to you but if you're in the voodoo it is
00:44:59
Speaker
So I mean, I can't say that I'm into voodoo, but I think that the where you got to with that about duality and seeing that and experiencing that in different areas of life makes total sense. And I wrote a lot about that in the book and this like, comfort with duality or acceptance.
00:45:21
Speaker
Yeah, I think I probably wrote that in your chapter. I can't wait for you to read the other chapters and find those connections for yourself. Is there anything you're still struggling with in this space that's still a little bit challenging?
00:45:39
Speaker
Yeah. What's funny is I still struggle with a lot of the same things, but it's mostly inertia. It's mostly inertia. So my biggest drag is that when I run into a
00:45:57
Speaker
challenge of any sort? I kind of always default to, is this a punishment? Is this because of this? I'm a big religious guy, so is this a punishment? It's going to always be there. Agnostics and atheists, you guys got it easy when it comes to this. When you get past, when you get out of the weeds, it's like, ah, I'm good now. But those of us that are in a system, we got to navigate it.
00:46:24
Speaker
But yeah, the biggest thing is inertia. Do I default to the self-flagellation?
00:46:37
Speaker
Is it because of some of my past weaknesses, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah? My saving grace is that because I start all the way back there and start digging stuff out, when I get to the other side, I've solved the problem. I feel like I solve my problems. And when I get new problems, I look to
00:47:00
Speaker
old causes for those new problems. And they're usually not the reason why they usually end up being building blocks, but I can use them for stumbling ones as well. But yeah, but that's my biggest struggle.
00:47:18
Speaker
Yeah, that makes sense. And that's great awareness of looking back at past blocks to address the future. Okay, final question. How does your bisexuality bring you joy in your life? Aside from the obvious? The obvious, you can start with the obvious and then go to the right. Okay, so the obvious is that sex is amazing. Like,
00:47:49
Speaker
First off, I don't understand hetero and homosexuality. I do not. I do not understand looking at a group of people and saying, nah, nah, I don't get it. I can look at, I can see looking at individuals and like, that'll never happen. I could see looking at individuals and saying, I would, but no, or I gotta, you know?
00:48:15
Speaker
But to look at entire swaths of population and saying, nope, that's off the menu. You out your rabid ass mind. There is no way in the world. There is no way in the world. And being able to look at everyone as everyone as both a potential best friend, completely platonic and a potential
00:48:46
Speaker
romantic relationship, or that even a relationship that without so much romance in it, being able to look and regard people that way, it really kind of blows the doors off of assessing people.
00:49:09
Speaker
I'm not worried about what it means when I look at a guy a certain way or when I look at a woman a certain way. I don't think to myself I could never be friends with her because why I can't be friends with her if I could be friends with him I could be friends with her.
00:49:24
Speaker
Most certainly, because I have absolutely no compunches between stretching her out and stretching him out at the same time. So, you know, I don't have all of these red pill manuscript problems that these dudes seem to be having. Apparently, it's a big issue. I don't have them. I don't even understand them. And especially they don't sound like they even like women. I don't know.
00:49:51
Speaker
And if I felt like that about anybody, I wouldn't talk to them. The only downside to being bisexual is dealing with other people who ain't.
00:50:11
Speaker
over went cool with being themselves, you know? Yeah. So everybody else is like, great. I am five minutes away from having sex all the time.
00:50:24
Speaker
I love it. I love it. Yeah. No, the biphobia and the stigma is real, but from the inside of it, there's all these possibilities and all these categories that can disappear and you can meet each person and take each relationship where it should go without expectations. I kind of like the categories. They're more fetish. But it doesn't matter. I'm going to break the rules.
00:50:55
Speaker
Well, and you can still look at them as categories, but I think what you're saying is that anything is possible with each person. Right. You're not limited to buy categories based on a person. Absolutely. I'm just poking fun. Yeah, absolutely. I know where you come from. It is...
00:51:18
Speaker
I personally feel like there is no more liberating a sexuality than bisexual. I kind of feel bad for people who aren't because they can't just look at people and be like, yeah, yeah, I can see this. You can't do it.
00:51:47
Speaker
The only people I can't look at like that and start drooling is family and kids. Everybody else is very gay. Yep. Good. And on that note. Yeah, cool. Well, that is all the time we have. But I love what you're talking about.
00:52:15
Speaker
the limitlessness and the joy of the sexuality.
Conclusion and Farewell
00:52:21
Speaker
And I can't wait for everyone to read your story in the book. I mean, we actually talked about a lot of different things today than what's in the book. We covered some of it, but there's a lot more details in the book about your development, your marriage, the details of how you worked through a lot of these things that I think will be valuable for people to take a look at. And
00:52:43
Speaker
Yeah, it's been really fun and chatting with you and hearing a lot of these funny stories that I think many people in the military will also identify with. So thank you. Thanks for being here, Nana. This was great. It was my pleasure.
00:53:00
Speaker
It was my pleasure. I absolutely love your podcast. I can't wait for the book to come out. And thank you. Honestly, you're doing God's work here.
00:53:15
Speaker
You're letting us be people. Honestly, I'm not even joking right now. You're making us people and not categories and problems and challenges and whatever else folks that aren't us think of us. You're making us human and we need that.
00:53:43
Speaker
Thank you for saying that. I appreciate it. And yeah, that's the goal. So thanks again so much for being here.
00:53:53
Speaker
Two Bye Guys is produced and edited by me, Robert Brooks Cohen, and it was created by me and Alex Boyd. Our logo art is by Caitlin Weinman. Our music is by Ross Mincer. We are supported by the Gotham, and we are part of the Zencaster Creator Network. Visit patreon.com slash Robert Brooks Cohen for bonus content, early access, and exclusive video episodes. Thanks for listening to Two Bye Guys.