On National Coming Out Day: "You Must Come Out!"

I turn 36 this December but I can still remember so much about the day that I came out to my mom, over 16 years ago on the back porch of our Beech Street house in Red Hook. It was twilight on our covered porch and we had eaten dinner out there - Dad had gone down to the family room to play a video game on his computer, I think, with some game on behind him. Baseball probably. I wish I could remember what we had for dinner. Hamburgers maybe.

It was an honest admission, one that had already been about eight years in the making. I remember being in eighth grade Social Studies and something touched me in my gut. It was a weird mix of feelings in my body and I remember somehow acknowledging something like lust, something that felt fantastic. And terrifying, because it came from the boy sitting next to me. I’m guessing I was about 13 years old.

A lot of the thoughts that I experienced, leading up to and after that moment, are the things that so many gay people share in adolescence: terror, anxiety, regret, shame, confusion, longing, and so much more. I wanted to like girls and I did, partly because I was drawn to girls as friends and also because I sincerely loved many women who were close friends. Another classic: conflating deep female friendship with amorous intention and motivations. I had girlfriends and truly loved one that I dated my sophomore year of college, an incredible woman whose friendship is a treasure. She’s married and had a child last year. I am mostly certain that she holds no grudge for that time together, but that’s a story as old as time, too - how men convince themselves of their ability to maintain a heterosexual relationship, despite or as an attempt to cast out their homosexual identity.

If I said I didn’t clutch to a bisexual identity for some time, as a built-in safety net in case everyone in their life decided that being gay was unacceptable, I’d be lying. It was much more manageable to approach queerness with the faint hope that I wasn’t fully gay. That summer that I came out to my mom I came out as bi on the porch was the summer of 2002, between my sophomore and junior years of college, even though I wasn't entirely sure that they would continue to pay for my college education, or that my beloved late grandmother would continue to love me unconditionally, like she did then.

I often think of the gay cultural touchstones in 2002 as a good indication of what created a pop cultural landscape that included queerness. There was Pedro Zamora, the gay cast member of Real World: San Francisco, which aired in 1994. Zamora died in November of ‘94 from AIDS-related illnesses. Will & Grace started airing in the fall of ‘98, so Will Truman and Jack McFarland were on my radar. Ellen’s character came out to Laura Dern’s character in “The Puppy Episode” in 1997. Queer as Folk debuted in 2000. Also, Mark Wahlberg’s toxic masculinity was hugely alluring and he launched his Calvin Klein underwear campaign in 1992. I know now of course that dozens of artsy, queer films had been created but no one showed me (I'd find them senior year of college with a Netflix membership, back when you got DVDs in the mail in those red envelopes). I didn’t have any gay friends until college, I didn’t have an LGBT mentor until my 20s. No teachers were out at my high school and only rumors of students. Including about myself. I’ll never forget the middle school moment when these girls started spreading the rumor that I was gay, which caught me completely off-guard and deeply hurt me, but I vehemently denied it anyway.

I don’t blame my mother for being upset but she was. I remember her, and my dad about a week later, before I left for junior year, having a lot of questions about my sexual activities. What I had done. What I hadn’t done. If I was using protection and if I knew that it was essential for me to do so. Little did they know I wasn’t even close to being sexually active. Well, the reason I came out to my parents in the first place was my very first boyfriend. We hit it off at the end of my camp experience, where I was teaching Journalism and Poetry to upcoming 9th through 12th graders at Yale in New Haven. We flirted aggressively and he made the move on the last night of camp and we kept it going, long-distance, into his senior year, my junior year. I was elated. I was in love, puppy love, for the first same-sex relationship I’d ever had, the first relationship where physicality was a true thrill. I wanted to tell anyone, everyone, but it still felt a little frightening. But I told my mom anyway.

I didn’t tell too many other people in the next few months, just some select friends. Slowly but surely I got more comfortable with it, more ready to confront anyone if they had a problem with it, with me. My first boyfriend and I broke up and I was sad but not devastated. Now I had Friendster and MySpace and I could flirt with tons of guys online. And making gay friends at other schools. And developing my sense of self. I wanted to find romantic and physical connection as a 21- and 22-year-old senior at college in a very small town in Central New York and it was extremely difficult. But I went 3,000 miles west for grad school in Oregon and had a blast finding my truest version of myself.

Things got better with my parents after I left for Oregon, somehow, time passed and they became more comfortable with it. When my brother got married in Hawaii, they independently started talking to me about it. My mom asked me when I first knew. My dad affirmed that they would love whoever I love. Now, both of my parents are fierce and outspoken LGBT advocates, the kind of people who will tell a friend, face-to-face, that they don’t appreciate hateful jokes or cruel words.

When I was 20, in 2002, and coming out to my mom on that porch, gay marriage wasn’t legal anywhere in the country. Massachusetts would pass the first same-sex marriage legislation in 2003. Matthew Shepard died at the hands of murderers at the age of 21 on October 12, 1998 - 20 years ago this week. I can understand why it would’ve been terrifying to have your son admit that he thought me might be gay in 2002. But I’m so glad my mom and dad fought through that and came out on the better side of acceptance, love, care, and compassion. Not everyone is so lucky and I’m one of the lucky ones.

I’m always reminded of Harvey Milk on National Coming Out Day. His courage and convinctions, and the courage of so many men and women to be their full selves way before I did, are what I cherish on this day (and my parents’ love). Anyway:

“Gay brothers and sisters,... You must come out. Come out... to your parents... I know that it is hard and will hurt them but think about how they will hurt you in the voting booth! Come out to your relatives... come out to your friends... if indeed they are your friends. Come out to your neighbors... to your fellow workers... to the people who work where you eat and shop... come out only to the people you know, and who know you. Not to anyone else. But once and for all, break down the myths, destroy the lies and distortions. For your sake. For their sake. For the sake of the youngsters who are becoming scared by the votes from Dade to Eugene.”