Correlation is not causation.

I was a pretty naïve sophomore when I moved into a sixty-person, vegetarian, clothing-optional co-op. I never entirely fit in, but it was an easy, tolerant place for me to grow up. My closest friends are still from Loth. When I first got there, though, there was a lot to the culture I didn’t understand.

There were half a dozen men in the house who always had one pant leg rolled up, and I just couldn’t figure out why. I must have worked on that for weeks. I watched them, and I thought about it, and I just kept at it. Why did they always have one pant leg rolled up?

Finally one day I put it together. I finally noticed that the five or six guys with one pant leg up were not the manliest men in this house full of sweet hippies. That was it!! They were bi! It made perfect sense … one pant leg up, one pant leg down … a little something for everyone.

And I was good with that. I never mentioned it to anyone, ‘cause I didn’t want to admit that I hadn’t known that one rolled pant leg meant you were bi. Really, I mostly forgot about it. Solving the secret code meant that it wasn’t interesting anymore, and I’ve never cared who anyone sleeps with.

Years later, at a different school, I rode my bike up to my early morning class, locked it real quick, and reached down to unroll my pant leg. Oh holy shit. I must have stood there in shock for thirty seconds. I had been so sure, and so serenely wrong, for years.

I guess I'll say two things in my defense. First, it was internally consistent and it fit the evidence. Second, it is no stupider than using an earring to announce a preference for boys.