Family Pictures
1. I'm probably not 13 yet. It's Saturday morning and my brother and I have sat in front of the TV from the 6 a.m. cartoons to the WWF. Now it's the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling. My brother, two years younger, isn't paying much attention; I'm staring at the TV so hard my eyes hurt. Which is normal for straight girls, right?
2. Early high school. Teaser for syndicated "Married...with Children" show in which Kelly auditions for a music video. The teaser shows lots of MTV babes in their rock-slut gear. Fast forward: me and my brother migrate to the TV when the show comes on. I say "You're just watching this for the chicks." He says, "Well, why are you watching it?" I say, "Um...maybe the rock guys are hot." Yeah, right; I didn't believe that as I said it. But what else is a normal straight girl to say?
3. High school. My brother, my father and I are watching "In Living Color." My mom (who does not share our sense of humor) tells us to come downstairs after the show. When the show's over, we sit there till the credits roll and the commercials start. My mom asks what took us so long; I say "Oh, they like the Fly Girls." Fortunately, my mom is too busy glaring at my dad to ask me what took me so long.
4. My mom can't find her Victoria's Secret catalog. I overhear her say to my dad that she thinks my brother took it. I hope she never asked him about it, because it was under my mattress the whole time.
Expert Advice
All of which would make an outside observer say, "Hm, this girl is attracted to women." But it never occurred to me that I was queer. For one thing, I definitely did like men, and if I liked men, I was straight, right? I'd been reading my mom's magazines, like Redbook, since I was five, and I'd read the letters to the "personal" advice columns (i.e. the sex columns) where women said they were happily involved with a man but found a female friend attractive and, oh my God, were they gay? The advice persons always said something like "It's perfectly normal to aesthetically appreciate an attractive physique, it's just like looking at the Venus de Milo in an art museum, you're perfectly normal and definitely not gay." My teen magazines sometimes had the same kinds of letters and the same kinds of answers. If you liked men, you weren't gay, and it was just "aesthetic." I never asked myself how, exactly, the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling were comparable to the Venus de Milo, or whether it was an aesthetic reaction actually to be sexually turned on by it.
In retrospect, it seems ridiculous. How could I discount these feelings and deny that they were sexual? But no one ever told me bisexuality was an option; I didn't know there was anything between Straight Girl and Butch Dyke. I had to pick one, and since I liked men, I was straight. Even when I was looking at that Victoria's Secret catalog under the covers with a flashlight.
Falling Out
At least until my freshman year of college. Yale is a very queer-friendly school; the LGB Co-op has the best dances on campus, and hundreds of straight people go, not just queers. One cold October day I was walking past the library steps and saw a small crowd. I recognized one of my friends and went over to say hi and see what was up. Turned out to be a National Coming Out Day speakout. I, Straight Girl, skipped class and stood in the cold and the rain all afternoon listening to people talking about their coming out and their experiences as queers. My friend asked if I was going to the coming-out Co-op dance. I said I would. I did. I stayed past 2 a.m. and helped clean up afterwards...just moving tables and talking to Co-op people, feeling an amazing sense of community...still thinking I was straight.
My Lord, was I dense.
But I started thinking...how good I felt around these people, how much fun I had at the dance. A few weeks later, there was a women-only dance, and that very same friend (I guess you could call him my coming-out coach) asked if I was going. I thought about it...really thought about it...about dancing with a woman, holding her in my arms, kissing her, feeling her lips and hands on me...and, at just about that point, I thought, "You know what, I think I'm queer."
The very next day I told my roommate (who said, "Oh, okay. Hey, do you think I look good in this outfit?") and everyone else I met. My gay friend gave me a high-five and said "Welcome to the club, sister." And I don't think I'd ever felt better in my life.
I didn't go through the long, painful, uncertain secrecy that I guess most other queers do. (I did hide it from my parents, but I was never totally closeted, hiding it from everyone.) The only struggle was getting it through my own thick skull. That was like clawing your way out of a closet you didn't even know you were in - fighting my way through all those "if you like men you're not queer" messages, all my internalized "it's just aesthetic" automatic thoughts, looking at myself hard enough to see who I really was, underneath all the things I thought I was or thought I should be or never thought to think about.
So I didn't so much come out of the closet as fall out of it - once I figured out I was queer, I pretty much landed in the middle of the living room and said "Hi, everyone!" Kind of like one of those Kramer entrances on "Seinfeld." Not very graceful, probably a little startling to everyone else in the room - but it's fast, and, hey, it works.
Mom and Dad
But I sure crammed myself back in the closet when my parents were around. I carefully listed all the things I had to hide on Parent's Weekend: my copies of Out and On Our Backs, my Co-Op dance posters, my pink triangle buttons, even my appointment book with "9 p.m. - Co-Op meeting" written in it. The Parent's Weekend package included buttons saying "Proud Yale Parent," and my mom put hers on her purse strap. After they left, I was talking about it to my roommate, and she said, "If you told them you're gay I bet your mom wouldn't be wearing that button anymore." I almost started crying. I've always been the Good Daughter, the straight-A student, starring in all the school plays, accepted at Yale, the one my parents are proud of. (My brother's very smart, but he has learning disabilities and has never done well in school, plus he was going through a serious death metal phase.)
My parents were having their own problems at this time. My dad was going through a long, severe clinical depression, having problems with alcohol, and kept talking about leaving his job and, presumably, us. My parents talked about getting divorced on and off for years. I didn't want to cause any more problems; I wanted to make everything all right, keep it nice and happy and normal. Saying "Guess what, not only are you guys on the verge of divorce and my brother making Napalm in the garage, I'm gay!" was not going to help.
I hid it for about six months - although I did talk about my gay friends and going to Co-Op dances, trying to gauge their reactions and get them used to hearing the words. Then, that spring, I had a serious bout of clinical depression. (Even after years of seeing my dad's depression, it took me a few months to notice that, too - in fact, it was my best friend and coming-out coach who finally said, "You're always miserable, you're not going to class, you're not eating, you don't want to get out of bed, now what does that sound like?" And I literally knocked my fist on my head and said "Oh, yeah, depression." Like I said, I can be very dense.) He and my roommate took me to the university hospital and checked me in. I talked to a psychiatrist, who diagnosed depression and prescribed medication for it, and told me to stay in the hospital for at least a week. Well, I had to call my parents about that. And while I was on the phone with them, it, well, came out - I don't even remember thinking about it - I just said, "There's something else I have to tell you. It's not helping my mental health to keep this secret. I'm bisexual."
Silence.
Then my dad said something about grandchildren, and my mom said something like "Are you sure?" and "Maybe you just admire other women" (where have I heard that before?), but they didn't flip out. Maybe that's just because I was in the hospital with a serious mental illness and they didn't want to drive me over the edge, but still, it wasn't as bad as I thought.
I can't say they've gotten very far past that initial phase; they concentrated on my depression, rather than my sexuality, and were not very conversational when I tried to bring it up. I guess I'm lucky that they believed in my mental illness and supported me in getting treatment - I do know lots of depressed people whose friends and family say "It's all in your head, you can snap out of it" - but I wish they'd see that the things they say about mental illness could also apply to my sexuality. They belong to a depression support group and they're always talking about the stigma of mental illness, how people need to be educated about it, that it's genetic and not the depressed person's fault - I mean, what does that sound like? But I've never quite gotten up the nerve to say that.
Maybe if I were really "out" I'd push my parents to talk about it, try to get them to understand that I'm not just confused or being rebellious, and that I can't just sweep it under the rug because I like men and can "pass" for straight. I don't want to pass for anything. Sometimes it's enough trouble just being myself.
Still, they didn't disown me, and they were perfectly polite to my ex-girlfriend. (And my ex-boyfriend, for that matter.) I know they still love me, and I'm pretty sure they're still proud of me. I can live with that.
Epilogue
Everyone has at least one great coming-out line, and here's my favorite:
During my "Hey, everyone!" stage I was talking to an acquaintance and mentioned that I was bi. She was really interested and asked a lot of questions, and then said, "I'm sorry if I'm being too personal. It's just that I've never met one of you before."
"No," I said, "because there only is one of me."
© 1999 zeugmagirl@geocities.com
Updated Feb. 15, 1999
URL: http://geocities.datacellar.net/WestHollywood/Park/7375/out.html
This page hosted by 
Get your own Free Home Page
Back to Homepage.
Go to "Apples and Oranges,"