Bi-Coastal (1985)

The year 1985 saw the explosion of a new subgenre of adult entertainment: bisexual video. These releases, which would proliferate over the coming years, were defined by the unique attraction of men having sex with both men and women. While displays of bisexual desire had been (and would continue to be) common for adult entertainment’s female performers, comparable examples among male performers were few and far between. Bisexual videos would capitalize on this gap in the market, eschewing straight/all-male divisions, prizing threesome scenes between two men and one woman, and celebrating men’s potential to desire multidirectionally. This chapter considers one of bisexual video’s first successes, Tom DeSimone’s Bi-Coastal, which follows a Chicagoan woman’s journey into the bisexual world of the Los Angeles modelling scene. Bi-Coastal provides a useful case study through which to consider bisexual video’s historical emergence, its representational trends, its performers’ relation to the fast-changing landscape of adult entertainment, and its curious proliferation amid bisexual men’s stigmatization during the AIDS crisis. Attention to Bi-Coastal, and to bisexual video more broadly, uncovers an important chapter in the history of adult media, wherein the transgression of boundaries upheld between all-male and straight proved an alluring attraction.