| Thursday, July 07, 2005 |
| out in public |
Someone asked for my coming-out story recently, so I figured I'd share with y'all.
I never knew what "gay" meant growing up. I attended a private Catholic school throughout my elementary and junior high education, and it just wasn't discussed, even during Sex Ed. It wasn't until I entered the vast, brightly-colored world of a public high school that I came in contact with the very idea of "the gays." Children in suburbia are for the most part coddled and spoiled, but only so far as they conform. Throughout those four years I started edging away from that conformity as I realized that maybe it wasn't a case of "I can see why girls would think he's cute" as I'd assumed for my entire life to that point.
My sophomore year I came out to my best friend. She was surprised, but supportive, though her first question was "are you sure you don’t just think you're gay because you've never had a girlfriend?" I was quick to defend myself: "I've had a girlfriend! In kindergarden, a girl named Amanda pushed me into the closet and kissed me, on the mouth!"
A short time later, I came out to the person who would become my greatest ally to this day--my older sister. She too was surprised, but she has been great about it--she's never questioned it, and never hesitates to listen to me rant when I need to. She even told me a story that helped a great deal. When she had just started university study at Colorado State, she got a phone call from my dad, who had just seen a movie about Matthew Shepard. He told her that he was glad she hadn't chosen to attend school in Wyoming; it was hard for him to believe that there were people in the world who could do that to someone. When I heard this, I actually felt good about it--it was a sign that my dad would worry about me being gay, which in turn implied that he'd be accepting of it. Overall, a positive start to the process--I was encouraged.
Emboldened by my portfolio of two successful comings-out, I aimed for bigger fish--my parents. I told my mom first--I've always felt more at ease with her than with my dad. I basically came straight out (and came—not-so-straight—out) and told her one night. She grew quiet for a while, and then without looking at me, said, "give it time." While it wasn't the worst possible outcome, I was devastated. That put a halt to my progress. I stopped talking about it with everyone, even the people I'd already come out to. I grew even more introverted than I already was, and avoided my friends. I was gay, that was certain; I couldn't start denying it then. But that one of the people who was supposed to feel nothing but unconditional love for me could deny me, deny who I was, struck me deeply.
Interestingly, the person to bring me out of my slump was the next person on my list where I'd left off--my dad. I was sitting at my computer, and he at his desk, and he told me that he'd been checking up on the websites I'd been visiting--one of them was PFLAG. He asked me if I were gay. Having sworn to myself never to lie about it, I quickly said yes. I didn't know how he was going to react, but I knew that if I wasn't at least truthful about it, it could never be a positive part of my life. To my surprise, he took it fine. He was stoic about it, like he was about almost everything, but he accepted it, and wanted to understand what it was like. He even offered to "spread the word" to my extended family, but I refused. If anyone was going to know, it was going to come from me. Just like that, I was back on track.
After my initial forays into the out world, I thought I was doing pretty well. If you'd asked me then, I would have described myself as out and truthful about my sexuality. I would have been lying.
While it was true that I would never even think about claiming to be straight, I wasn't being honest, with myself or with others. Whenever any subject related to romance or sexuality came up, whether it was talking about politics, or someone asking one of my cousins about his girlfriend, my heart skipped a beat. I didn't look like the stereotypical gay male, and I certainly never talked about it, so most people assumed I was straight, and treated me as such. And I let them.
I spent years in this kind of limbo, where those close to me knew I was gay, but I didn't talk about it, and hid it from my larger family and the general public. I became very good at changing the subject, and speaking in vague generalities. Everything I said, every move I made was carefully calculated--it got to the point where this manic obsession with keeping up appearances kept me from talking to people I loved at all. While I never lied when asked about my sexuality, I purposefully kept it from people. I didn't admit to anyone, least of all myself, how important in my life my sexuality is, and in that I was being dishonest about who I was.
I've only started being honest with myself about my sexuality very recently. In the course of my studies last semester, I wrote a nonfiction story about the first time I was ever really attracted to another boy. My teacher, a grad student, urged me to read the piece aloud at a public reading, and I did. It was the first time I'd ever outed myself to a group of people, and the first time I'd ever outed myself to someone I didn't know. The reading was well-recieved (I even got a catcall from someone in the audience), but it wasn't until I'd gotten back to my seat that I realized what I'd done, and it felt good.
After the reading, a woman whose writing I admire very much approached me. She'd been one of the guest speakers during class, and she's writing a novel about her experiences with her partner and their daughter. Her partner concieved the girl, and so when they split up, she herself had no legal relationship with her daughter. I admire her for sharing her story, and so when she tracked me down after the reading to congratulate me, I was stunned.
A couple of days later, I was to give a presentation in my Cultural Diversity course. I ended up scrapping the formal presenation the night before, and I just talked about exactly this--about various stages of out-ness, the reasons for them, and my own experiences in telling an auditorium full of people I was gay. My teacher, an out lesbian, cried.
Shortly after that, I turned in a letter to my nonfic teacher as part of my final project--I wrote about these experiences, about how empowering they had felt. She sent me an email in response, and included an essay she had written for one of her graduate courses, that she was unable to finish, she said, until she read my letter. The essay was titled "Out In Public," and in it she wrote about me reading my essay, and discussing coming out in a class presentation--she wrote about how my "bravery and quiet confidence," attributes I'd never associated with myself, inspired her. In the email she told me that our guest writer that had attended my reading was in fact her girlfriend, and that this was the first time she'd come out to one of her students.
Before my reading, I sent a panicked email to a mentor of mine. He replied almost immediately, and in his email was a line that I scribbled on my papers for both the reading and my presentation: "lay claim to who you are...with truth, dignity, and trust."
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posted by La Malinche @ 3:04 AM   |
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