| National
Coming Out Day is Oct. 11. As gays and lesbians around the country celebrate
the date with parties and events, many will be announcing their sexual
orientation publicly for the first time — while others will be
looking back at the vast amount of change that has occurred since they
initially came out.
Remember your coming out experience?
I do.
As any LGBT individual will tell you who’s been out for more than
20 years, there isn’t one single “coming out” moment.
I — like every one else — came out several times.
First I came out to myself — but that wasn’t too hard ‘cause
I knew I liked other little boys when I was five. It was getting over that
brainwashing by society that had taught me to believe there was something
mentally, spiritually, morally and legally wrong with me that proved to
be a challenge.
Of course I got past that when I realized all the anti-gay rhetoric I’d
been hearing for years was based on the personal prejudices of other humans
whose words had been included in the Bible and used over and over again
to perpetuate hatred from a so-called “divine” standpoint.
Then I had to come out to my closest friends. Ironically, as it turns out,
my closest friends at the time — a core group of individuals I’d
known throughout many of my school years — were fine with it. In
fact, it made no difference whatsoever because four of the guys were also
gay and one of the girls was a lesbian!
Then I had to come out to my family. That wasn’t as easy. I was the
only boy in the family and I knew my dad had hoped I would “carry
on the family name.” I put him off for awhile and moved on to my
two sisters. The oldest sister cried for a few minutes, hugged and me and
told me she loved me no matter what. “It’s not a big deal,
really,” I said. “No reason to cry.”
My other sister was the middle child and had caused quite a stir in the
family years before when she promptly moved out at the age of sixteen.
Eventually she landed in Colorado and she and I had corresponded by mail
and talked on the phone several times since she had left home. One day
a letter arrived from her with pictures of her and several of her friends — all
decidedly butch women in corduroy slacks and western shirts.
I laughed out loud as I dropped the photos on the coffeetable. “It
must run in the family,” I thought to myself. Turns out I wasn’t
off the mark at all. My sister and her girlfriend had already been a couple
for three years when I told them I was gay.
I could hear the laughter on the phone from her and my sister on the extension
in their bedroom. “So am I!” She screamed with almost a delighted
joy. “Have you told mom and dad yet?”
“No. I haven’t got quite that far,” I replied.
As a teenager and still living at home, I wasn’t quite ready to shake
things up that much yet. My parents weren’t bible thumpers but they
were southern natives born on the cusp of the depression. i knew it wouldn’t
be easy for them.
Mom, however, busybody that she was at the time, suspected something was
up and started digging for answers to questions she didn’t really
want to know.
Her answer came in the form of a copy of Blueboy magazine classically hidden
between my mattress and box spring. (How predictable was that?)
Back in those days my mother was prone to stomping, slamming, screaming
and spewing when she was upset about something. Like a venomous snake she
pounced on me.
“I want this trash out of my house,” she hissed. I snatched
the magazine from her hand.
Fortunately she was a smallish woman (around 5’3”) and I was
a large teen (at 16 I was already over six feet tall). “Don’t
worry,” I replied sarcastically. “I’ll make sure you
won’t see this again.”
“I don’t want that filth in my house at all,” she screeched.
“In the future you might remember that looking for things you don’t
want to find is a bad idea,” I sneered, as I grabbed my backpack
and stomped out of the house.
So there I was. Out to friends. Most of the family (at least two out of
three went well and the fourth was still undetermined). Life was okay for
the moment. Sort of anyway.
In the years that would follow I would have to come out again and again
to college classmates, employers and fellow employees, more friends, other
relatives (there were some other queers in the family, too) and eventually
my dad.
That took a while, but I have former Presidential candidate Pat Buchanan
(a vile nasty republican who waged his 1992 campaign on his hatred of gays
and lesbians) to thank for bringing pop around. “If you could have
heard some of the crazy things that man said,” my father remarked
once when I was visiting. “It made me realize he was talking about
people I care about.”
I glanced at him over the top of my glasses and chuckled.
He just smiled at me and nodded.
That was his first way of letting me know he accepted me.
By that time my mom had chilled out and accepted reality. She had known
and liked a handful of the guys I dated and later still would come to love
my partner as her own son.
Having mellowed with age — she no longer spewed, stomped, slammed
or screamed. Beyond the relationship of mother and son — we became
good friends and still are.
As for coming out these days — it’s no longer an issue. I refer
to my partner as quickly as any heterosexual male would speak of his wife
to anyone who asks.
My mom asked me the other day if I thought that ever bothered anyone. “I
don’t know,” I responded matter-of-factly. “I don’t
even pay attention to that kind of stuff anymore. Life’s too short,
you know?”
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