Coming Out

In a previous post I brought up the subject out outing. As I mentioned, for a lot of straight people, the concept of ‘outing’ is foreign. They don’t get it. They argue that what someone does in their private life should be private so why go after celebrities, politician, etc. and force them out of the closet? Just let them live their lives.

But they have no idea how damaging and restricting the closet is. And I see the closet as an apt metaphor. A gay person is constricting their personal life to a small space where really no one can come into. And closets become filled with clutter, making space more and more a premium.

I spent my late teens and all of my twenties in the closet. Any exploration of my sexuality was furtive. Clandestine. Something simple like buying a gay magazine was a dance of covert glances, a shuffle between sections to the final grab and snatch to dash to the cash and hope no one would notice.

Sex becomes even more brutal. You are in the mode where you are not seeking anything long term or satisfying. You can’t because how do you explain this relationship that you feel no one will accept. So it becomes a cycle of one-night stands or plunking down money on prostitutes. It becomes an anonymous scene for just getting your rocks off and then feeling dirty because you did.

You have to sit with your friends & colleagues and listen to their adventures with their girlfriends and/or wives. But you cannot bring up your adventures else you will be judged and possibly ostracized. That is the life I lead for close to 20 years.

I am not saying this to elicit sympathy or pity. That is in the past and stuff I have to deal with. But most straight people have no idea how it is to grow up gay.

And I believe that the longer you are in the closet, the harder it is to come out. You are constantly building a house of cards. Your life becomes a series of half-truths and subterfuge.

This becomes so engrained that even if you wanted to come out, you can’t. If I lied about my sexuality, what else did I lie about? I imagined that accusation in the eyes of my friends. So I continued with the pretence and charade.

The thing is that a house of cards is always in danger of falling down. More and more energy is put into keeping the swaying structure from collapsing. It becomes draining, debilitating. You start to close yourself off from those around you.

Where it really hurt me was in my writing. Instead of projecting my energy outwards, it was pulled inwards and my writing started to dwindle. I didn’t have enough for both.

To be blunt, it was starting to kill me. Some may think that I am being dramatic but I’m not. I was starting to have serious mood swings. I was feeling isolated. I would explode for no apparent reason. I was becoming hard to deal with, be it at work or with my friends.

At first, I had no idea why. But I started to realize I needed to come out. I could not live with who I was becoming. I couldn’t live with myself.

I was terrified when I made the decision. I imagined my friends abandoning me. My parents disowning me. I had hear and read horror stories of other people coming out. But it was a step I had to take.

What is sad is I totally underestimated my friends. I had projected my fears onto them. I made assumptions that I should not have.

The first people I came out to were my friends Brian and Jude. They were stripping the wood floors in the new place and I was helping. So I told them I had something important to say. And said it.

They looked at me and said: “And?” Then there was his parents, Blanche and Johnny. I was in the kitchen and again said I had something important to say. When I did, the reaction was: “That’s it? I thought it was something serious like you were sick.”

They were not dismissing what I was saying but for them it wasn’t of any major import. I was still their Loekie. The key thing was that I was happy.

Within a month I came out to most of the important people in my life. It wasn’t all smooth. My friend Errol did bring up the lies and stories I made up. My friend Darren seemed to be fine but was distant and remote for the longest time. Not everyone was quick to embrace me right away. But over time, they saw I was still the same person and could see why I had done what I had done.

Coming out was liberating. Finally I could tell my friends about a guy I was interested in. And when things did not work out, I had people I could turn to and talk about it.

The obvious question is what of my parents? Almost everyone I came out to said not to come out to my parents. They knew the family dynamics and were afraid of the reaction. Especially me the only natural son who was supposed to continue the family name and line.

It was months later, on my birthday. I was out in Chateauguay to see my parents. As I chatted with my mother, she asked me if I was gay. Before I could censor myself, I said yes. Then I realized what I had said. But there was no way to take it back. There was disappointment but, at least from my mother, the sense if I was happy, then it was okay. As for my father, he never said anything about it but then again, we never talk anyway.

But no matter what, the closet is still following me. At work, I am cautious about announcing my sexuality. Some gay activists will be quick to jump on this and say I really haven’t come out. And for me that is a load of tiger manure.

Any friends I have at work know about me. But the rest don’t count. There are people I work with right now I could care less about. We are co-workers that is all. I am cordial with them, chat and joke with them. But they have no influence in my life. I don’t see them outside work and have no reason to.

If they ask, as a couple have, I will answer truthfully. I am not hiding my sexuality but I am not running around trumpeting it either. The world out there is cruel & dangerous and you have to be careful.

Every day is a struggle. Coming out is just the first step. In many areas, homophobia is rampant. And from what I have learnt over the past few years, there are some battles with fighting for and some that are not worth the effort. The key thing is one of the major defining aspects of me does not rule my life. I am not ashamed of being out. Being proud, well that is a work in progress.