By Lilliana Méndez-Soto
My bi+ friends have come to me slowly via many different avenues. When I came out in the early 1990s in my mid-20s, I struggled to find anyone at all despite being an extrovert, and despite living in San Francisco—the supposedly queer mecca.
My longest-term bi friend is a male I met at a liberal church I attended then, and we’re still friends today. We still comment on the erasure we’ve experienced most of our lives in queer spaces, or share outrage about how we are (not) represented in the media.
Unfortunately for him, the issue of erasure is still alive and well, even in 2025. He had been a long time member of a supposedly queer men’s group, and for years there was no acknowledgement of bi members. When he finally spoke up for representation, he was informed that since he hadn’t dated a woman in a while, he was in fact not bi but “essentially gay.” He and his (gay) partner complained to the board about the biphobia and got no support—in violation of the organization’s by-laws. So they left.
For a long time, he was the only one; most of my friends were either straight or gay. I attended a bi women’s support group in the Bay Area, but many times there was not enough intersection in other areas our lives to forge friendships. Did anyone bike, hike, ski? Did they enjoy the same kind of music, food? I couldn’t find others with common ground.
The biggest barrier was distance. We came from far and wide to attend groups only found in personal ads pre-internet. There wasn’t much social time after official meetings, so if you connected with someone, and they lived far away, it was often a hurdle too difficult to overcome. And of course, these support groups were not for dating, which also meant dating other bi+ folx was hard in those days. After my first marriage, when dating again in my 40s, I found some bi+ people to date through apps, mostly in the poly community, but again, distance was a problem, and nothing stuck.
It’s been in my 50s that I’ve finally found more of a bi+ community after my second divorce from a straight man. I reconnected with a bi/pan man I’d met through an app before the marriage, though we’d never dated. Our friendship rekindled, and he was a gateway to meet more queer folx since he is active in the poly community. I’ve met other friends through apps, and some of these friends intersect.
In the wild world of poetry, I have also found more of my people. When I started performing poems related to being bi in public, people approached me afterwards and thanked me for expressing the truth of our shared realities—things usually left unsaid. Some of these were poets who lean into being queer, some whose work does not usually address sexuality, and some were not poets at all, just lovers of words like me. Bi like me. I think there are many of us involved in the arts.
The current Bi+Pan discussion group near me is very sweet, and has a dedicated facilitator who has shown up monthly for years. I started attending online during the pandemic, and now show up a few times a year. Most of the participants are younger, finding their way. A few are over 40, but not many. Lo and behold, I found out later the facilitator is connected to someone else in my circle, and one real-life friendship came out of this group.
In early post-pandemic times, after divorce #2, I also attended local “lesbian” meetups to connect with queer women. Many were friendly, I had a few dates, and many of the lesbians shared stories of prior relationships with men after a few drinks. They were a nice bunch, but I didn’t find my people there.
I met my current fluid partner in the wild, waiting for a bus at a ski resort on a beautiful powder day. We outed ourselves on the first chairlift after a long bus ride and walk to the gondola, and skied a few runs together—until the date he was waiting for showed up. We all skied together for a while, and when he left, I skied with her.
She willingly shared both their dating profiles on Hinge since I wasn’t familiar with the app, but it ended up I didn’t need a tutorial. Her date eventually became my current partner, so I guess it was just meant to be. Also good to be with someone finally on my team. We’re all still friends on Facebook, so no hard feelings, I guess.
My dearest friends of whatever sexuality have come to me through involvement with activities I hold dear—spirituality of various flavors (currently Buddhist), dance, outdoorsy activities I enjoy, and literary life. I’m glad it’s now easier to find more bi+ people because it’s always been a lonely thing to be the only one in a group of queers or straights.
Meeting other bis in the wild is certainly my preference—though it hasn’t been easy for this older GenXer. It requires feeling safe and self-disclosing if one is not clad in queer garb, which I am usually not (I just heard about cuffed jeans last year!).
In the end, for me, it’s not just queerness that makes for community—it’s people who love me and accept me for who I am. People with whom I have common ground regardless of how they identify, and with whom I can be unfiltered. At this point in my life, I’m happy to have a wide circle of friends of all persuasions.
Lilliana Méndez-Soto, is a poet and writer based in Northern California, U.S. She worked as a clinical pharmacist for 35 years. Her work has appeared in the journal Peregrine: The Caregiving Issue (2024), The Writing Coven Anthology: Women’s Stories of Healing and Resistance Vol. 1, and on Medium and Substack. She is currently shopping her novel and has a memoir in progress.