Big Gay Closet

People were talking...

There I was, a 13 year old boy, baby face, blue eyes, shy and insecure; standing in the kitchen, and my mother going on and on about the same subject once again.

“I am sick and tired of listening the same things, over and over again. They keep on telling me you are gay. That I must be blind or something not to see it. Everybody thinks you are gay, your sister, your brother, the neighbors, and to make things worse, you act really weird. You hardly have any friends and most of them are women. What’s wrong with you?”

The question resounded in my head like my own thoughts.

… what’s wrong with you? She was asking me the question that I had asked myself so many times.

That day was different. It was coming from my mother.

Because I had to say something, I said, “Well, as they say, ‘Vox Populi Vox Dei’.”

the voice of the people is the voice of God

“They say I am gay. And they are right. I am gay.”

My mother stopped for some seconds that seemed like an eternity and said, “Well… now I wouldn’t doubt it.”

She stopped talking all at once, and only talked to me again the next day to confirm that what I said was correct.

I reassured her I was telling the truth and she told me,

“Why did you take so long to tell me? You are my son, and I love you. It must have been horrible to pretend being someone you were not. I am sorry if I did not give you the confidence you needed to come out to me and to the world. There is nothing wrong with you. Rest assured that you are going to be as happy as everybody else and I’ll be there to meet all of your boyfriend as a proud mother in law.”

Saying so, she kissed me in my forehead and left for work.

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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.

...is the dog

I think my mother first became suspicious when I came home from kindergarten and announced that my teacher was the prettiest woman on earth.

“She’s more beautiful than you mommy!” I beamed, setting the mother-daughter relationship on a lifelong downward spiral.

She nearly had a nervous breakdown when a year or two later I announced I would not marry a man when I grew up.

“You have to!” she insisted.

If she wasn’t already convinced she was raising a dyke, my reply should have clarified.

“FINE. I’ll marry the dog! He’s the only boy I like!”

After I came out to her, she denied any memory of those conversations.

OttoKitty is an American woman who likes women and has for a very long time. She also likes dogs but in a totally different way, I swear.