The most transgressive thing I did during the Pride Parade was tell my coworker I’m in a long-distance relationship with a man. The six years and 700 miles kind of long.

It’s not something you’d expect if you just met me now; I get my dyke hair cut by dykes at a dyke salon, I wear collared shirts to the office and, when my cube-neighbor just asked me how I missed seeing Magic Mike in theaters, I laughed and said, “that movie has nothing for me.” And the other day I marched around my city wearing a big button that says, “Vag, it’s what’s for dinner.”

But I ended up in a cab with this coworker later, and the subject of B^2 came up. There’s always a moment when I’m getting to know someone new—a moment that often sneaks up on me and lasts just for a few seconds—when it is either natural to insert my lovely, long-term partner into conversation, or seemingly impossible thereafter. But there are many versions of our story, and not all of them are safe for work, and sometimes I’m maybe oversensitive to that.

In one story, I’m a single queer woman living in a big city. I don’t have much free time, but when I do, I date. A chef from a fancy restaurant, a German political scientist, a middle school teacher, if I’m bragging. I go jogging by the water and sing along to Ani DiFranco songs. And as my homophobic ex-boss used to tell me, sometimes “you dress like a dude.”

In another story there’s B^2, the cis-gendered man I’m madly, deeply in love with, but not quite ready to plan my life around. The love still grows, not every day exactly, but most days. We don’t talk every day, but most days. We are not growing old together, yet, but we most likely will.

Sometimes I get the stories confused. Two weeks ago one of my colleagues asked me who B^2 was. She said I wrote about him on Facebook a lot. We were in her car on our way to a drive-through for lunch.

“He was my college boyfriend….” I began.

“…But now you’re gay,” She interrupted. There was no question in her mind, and that was refreshing, because there are usually so many questions in my mind. So I said yes. Then the hamburgers arrived.

Which of these stories is more appealing? And aren’t they all, in some sense, lies?

Pride is supposed to be about bellowing out your love from the rooftops. And for the first time in my life, I’m not afraid to shout YES, I love vag and the women who have it.  But I’m still afraid to say I love men too—that the person who fucked me last night was a man, and the one person I fucked at a post-Pride party was also a man.

Some people say that if you can’t pick a side then you’re a greedy, grabby, dabbling, disease-spreading slut. Those words, together and alone, are what keep me from calling myself bisexual aloud. (That, and because the term is in cahoots with the concept of the gender binary, and fuck. that. shit.)

Coming to terms with this is perhaps going to be a life-long project.