Big Gay Closet

It’s a funny thing, the human mind.  Tell it not to do something, and it immediately does the very thing it is not supposed to do. I bet you’re thinking about elephants now. And probably asking yourself, what do elephants have to do with coming out?

Coming out is a process, like peeling back the layers of an onion, mostly because both involve a hell of a lot of tears.  In my case, I had a surreal start with coming out to my family (It’s always the ones you least expect), and a rather non-event coming out to my four best friends (they could not care less, and the one I was expecting to have the biggest freak-out had known for months already.)

But early into my third year of university, less than 8 weeks after telling my family, I was approached by a professor I respected above all others and was asked to do something shocking: write an essay on what it meant for me to be gay in the United Church of Canada.  I still remember the day he asked after class – my brain shut down and this voice that did not seem my own at the time immediately agreed.  I had two weeks to write the essay and submit it for the class to review and discuss the following week, on my birthday of all days!   And of course, I had to tie it in with the course topic, “Enlightenment and Transformation in Religion”.

Immediately I regretted my decision.  I spent nearly the entire two weeks crippled with fear.  Was I ready to come out publicly?  What would the class say about it?  Could I handle negative reactions?  What do I say?  For the most part, I tried to put it out of my mind, and was very successful until three days before the essay was due.

I had two courses with this professor, the other being “Death and Dying in World Religions”.  On this particular day, in the “Death & Dying” class, the professor posed a question:  What is it about death that you fear the most?  A seemingly innocent and academic question, given the course topic; but it shattered me!  I barely made it back to my dorm after that class before I broke down in fits of heart-wracking sobs.

What did I fear the most about dying?  I feared I would die without anyone knowing me; die alone, unloved, anonymous; I feared dying a damned liar.

I knew what I would write.  I went to my computer and allowed my heart to speak.  It spoke of the elephant in the room, of being gay but being afraid to say it.  It spoke of living in constant fear of being beaten, murdered, hated, unloved and alone.  It spoke of the interminable pain of watching my Church struggle with, and be torn apart by hatred as it tried to bring love and acceptance to … yes, to MY people!

I was gay – not some abstract concept, but a member of a real community. And damn it, a proud member! I would not accept lip service to the goal of equality, but demand real change. And may whatever god you believe in take mercy upon you if you had a problem with it, because I was taking names and offering no mercy.

In the process I discovered that my elephant was not all that big.  And that voice that was not my own that accepted the assignment was the true me, the gay me, crying to be set free.  I think back on that class, and recognise now the gift that it really was.

It was my transformation, my breakthrough to a form of enlightenment, and the best birthday I had had in a long time!  It was a true birth day, the day my gay self emerged into the world as a fully formed, self-aware individual who not only loved himself, but finally loved the world in which he lived.

And oddly enough, it was also the day I realised that the worst thing in the world that can happen to me is that I can die, and that is not something I fear anymore.  Thanks to that amazingly wise professor (Again, thanks Eldon!), I am fearless, and free.

Oh yes – and not a negative reaction in the class.  To date, I have never had anyone I encounter have a negative reaction to my sexuality.  I have truly been blessed.

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continued from here.

There it was – I had said it. The genie was really out of the bottle, and as far as I knew, my life in this house was probably over. Lord knows what I had expected to be my ace-in-the-hole, my mother, was a bust. I stood there naked of all support, feeling entirely alone in the universe. On that morning it seemed like time moved slowly, painfully so.

I clearly remember my father turning blood red, that shade he could only achieve in summer when alcohol, sun, and blood pressure reached the perfect mix, and then turning to look at my mother. This is it, I thought, the moment when I am truly undone. “Is this true?” he demanded of my mother, who weakly nodded.

Dad was the one he didn't expect to understand

He turned to me, stared at me long enough that I was certain he was considering where to punch me first, and then asked “Well, now you make sense. Jesus, what a way to start a morning! Want a drink, kid? You’ll probably need it; she’ll be like this for a while.”

I was floored! I took the drink (my father typically mixes a drink that is a glass of rum with barely enough mix to colour the bottom of the glass), and second, and the third.

My mother was positively apoplectic! Not only was her youngest son gay, but my father was not as outraged and hurt as she was! I was numb, for here was my gay right activist mother, who led protests, acting just like those evil parents I had heard about in countless other coming out stories. Here she was, my assumed knight defender, being all those things she had hated in other parents! Jesus help me, but the woman donated money to PFLAG!

And yet it was my father, the gay-joke telling good-old-boy who never understood her involvement with “The Fairy Queens”, who was taking it all in stride, who was being supportive, and was generally happy with the news.

I would like to say that things settled quickly, but that would be a lie. It took more than a year for my mother to finally get over it. My father, on the other hand, credits that day as being the first day he truly met his son. From day 1 he has been a strong supporter and the one I could turn to when i needed a shoulder.

Coming out to others was much less traumatic, well, except for an ex-girlfriend … she hit me so hard I saw stars. But as the years have gone by, I can only think of one thing I would have done differently: I would have done it years earlier! Ok, two things – I would have found another damned pen!

Masqueradehfx is a Cape Breton boy living on the mainland with a newfie boy. He rarely writes in red ink anymore.

Coming out to a pflag mom? Easy, right?

It was surreal, my coming out, and to this day, 16 years later, I am not exactly sure how everything ended up turned on its ear. You must understand, my mother was a gay rights activist within our Church, so being gay was not a big deal in my house.

When I came out during my 19^th summer, it should not have been a big deal. At least with my mother; my coal-miner, machinist father, on the other hand, would be a different story, but at least I would have my mother to help me through it. By the gods I could not have been more wrong.

And yet, after my second year of university, and a full teen years period of suspecting and forcing myself to live the lie, I was ready to accept the truth of who I always was. Earlier in the year an exceptionally wise professor (Thank you Eldon!) had got me into journalling, and so what was becoming a very large and full tome was being rapidly filled with questions about sexuality, fear for the future, and eventually a single line that would change my summer and my family: “Who am I? I am, and that feels good enough. But I am also gay … and that feel great!”

Perhaps God was toying with me that day, because half way through that particular journal entry, my pen ran out. And wouldn’t you know it, the only pen I could find at our summer cottage that would write more than a pale letter or two was a nice, new, bright red pen. So there it was, the last line on the last entry in my journal, in impossible to miss red ink, the admission “I am gay…”

Now I am not sure how it came to be that my mother read those words. Most likely is that she was reading it daily (my home was a matriarchy, and privacy laws did not apply in her benevolent kingdom), although she claimed that the journal had fallen off the shelf, on to the bed, open to the exact page, where the big red letters caught her attention. In any case, the rest of that day and night went by as normal – it was the next day that the universe inverted.

I awoke to find my mother sitting at the kitchen table sobbing – full on body shaking sobs! And my father standing near her, glaring at me like I had just robbed seven banks, four of which he owned.

“What the fuck did you do now?!” he shouted at me, “she’s been like this since 5am!”

I had no idea what I had done, certainly nothing to warrant this reaction, especially when she began muttering things about me “destroying my life”, “embarrassing the family”, and the real kicker, “about to die.”

Now for the life of me I had no idea what she was talking about, and was getting really scared as she went on about my imminent demise. Things were getting really tense until she unclenched a fist as she reached for another kleenex.

There it was, crumpled up but recognisable because of the bright red ink, the last page of the last entry in my journal. I screamed at her to give it back; she screamed that I was wrong and we could fix this; I screamed that she had no right to violate my privacy; she screamed that I should have thought about what this would do to the family, and back and forth for what seemed like an eternity. Until finally my father did what two decades of fights between myself and my mother taught him to do best: bellowed above us both and demanded to know what the fuck was going on.

“Don’t you get it?” I shouted in full hysterics, “I’m gay!”

To be continued…

Masqueradehfx is a Cape Breton boy living on the mainland with a newfie boy. He rarely writes in red ink anymore.