A couple of years ago, I wrote this account of my coming-out for the Duke University Queer Infoserver. This version has been slightly revised.
I didn’t start coming out until three years into college. High school was just too scary a place even to think about it. Not that I attended a rough high school--there were no gay-bashings at my school that I heard about--but it was definitely in the air that there were some things that people would not know how to deal with. I couldn’t help but notice the subtle signals. People used the word “gay,” or behaviors or attributes associated with certain stereotypes of gay men, to mean stupid or ridiculous, as in “Ohmigod, that song is so gay,” or feigning a mincing, limp-wristed walk to imply that someone is ineffectual. I knew that I found the male body more compelling than the female, but these signals led me to believe that if I acknowledged that this attraction was sexual, bringing the label “gay” upon myself, I would lose any shred of respectability. I heard people use “fag” as possibly the nastiest insult, and somehow I knew that the word involved me. I didn’t want that word thrown directly at me. So I explained my attractions to myself as envy--“I wish I were that beautiful”--withdrew into my studies, and music, and accomplished a great deal, but at the cost of isolation. No matter how lavishly you decorate your closet, it’s still a closet.
I stayed that way for two years of college. To be honest, for much of that time I was quite content in my little closet. I had plenty of work to do, enough to pretend that I didn’t need other people, and enough to pretend that these impulses I didn’t understand might not exist. But I still liked men, and it was becoming more insistent. Finally, one night in my junior year, I was watching “Beverly Hills 90210.” It had just started that fall, and (I shudder to admit) I still thought Jason Priestley was cute enough to tolerate the corny plots and silly acting. Now, this is a bit of an embarrassment to me today, but it’s true--seeing him on screen that night is what made me realize, undeniably, that I was gay.
This was a shock. I had always expected to meet “the right woman,” get married, and raise children in the standard suburban ranch-style home. Now, in my mind, all that was gone. I didn’t fit into heterosexual society, and I thought that society would never let me fit in. And this was the only society I knew. My entire image of “the gay lifestyle” was based on the popular stereotype of loveless, desperate men doing dirty things in unromantic places. Was I destined to become one of these? It seemed the only possibility for a gay person in a straight world. I spent a lot of energy despairing over this.
What changed my mind? Essentially, getting the facts. I’m forever grateful to an article by Bernard Cooper in the January 1991 issue of Harper’s magazine*, for showing me an alternative to the unsavory picture of gay life I had assumed to be true. In the concluding paragraph, Mr. Cooper announced to the whole world, with no shame, that he was gay, and, a step beyond that, mentioned his current seven-year relationship. Up to that point, I couldn’t have imagined that anyone could do such a thing (come out, or have a long-term relationship), or that there were communities of gay men (and lesbians, bisexuals, transgenders, I was later to learn) that could provide me with the life I wanted, only in a slightly different form. I had begun reading the article in despair, feeling like a moth drawn helplessly to the flame that would destroy it, but finished it with hope. My people were out there somewhere, and I was going to find them.
I had seriously overestimated straight people’s disapproval. Where I thought that even the slightest disclosure of my sexuality would cause all my friends to desert me, I learned over time that most of my friends at the very least didn’t care whether I was gay, straight, or from Mars. Most, in fact, liked me better: our relationships deepened as I felt more and more able to share more and more of myself with them. Even my parents took the news rather well. I told them in a note that I left for them to find one morning when I was visiting home (I couldn’t bring myself to tell them face to face). They were surprised, and they didn’t understand right away--they raised the unlikely possibility that I might have “made a mistake” and somehow guessed wrong about my sexuality--but the bottom line from the beginning was that I was their son, and they wanted what would be best for me. They have since done their best to learn about gay society so that they could better understand and support me. My dad has even appeared in public on a panel, representing the perspective of a parent of a gay person--now that’s support!
This helped, but it wasn’t the whole story. I still wanted to feel like I could share my life with someone, but I didn’t know how this would be possible. Several things took care of that. I made contact with my university’s Gay/Lesbian Alliance, and started to make friends. In the process, I discovered not just a network of gay and lesbian people, but also a whole subculture, whose style suits me far better than straight culture ever did. I started reading GayNet, a global Internet mailing list, and from this began to suspect the sheer size of this subculture. I saw that there really were places where I belong and people who understand; I just needed to connect with them. Shortly thereafter, I came out (at a roller-rink, no less, in an ironic reclamation of one of the most awkward junior-high-school social spaces!) to a number of classmates in my department (I was in music, so there was no shortage), and I’ve never looked back. There’s no question that the doubts and fears about other’s reactions were well worth it, if they led me to that “place where I belong,” where I do not have to lock away a good chunk of my personality, where I can bring all of myself to the table and act as a whole person. That, ultimately, is what coming out is all about.
* Cooper, Bernard. “A clack of tiny sparks: Remembrances of a gay boyhood.” Harper’s v282 n1688 (Jan. 1991), p. 64+.