I'm Coming Out!

In Honor of National Coming Out Day...

In the out-versus-closeted continuum, RuPaul might be a 10. She is pretty out there, out, proud and glad to drape herself in a rainbow flag. On the other end, you might find Tom Cruise or Kenny Chesney.

Now, as for me, I think I might fall somewhere about a 7 or 8. My parents don't know I'm gay. Well, at least not that I'm aware of. Or maybe like good Southern families, they just don't talk about those things. In either case, I decided a little more than a year ago, after debate for years, that I'll tell if they ask, or if a situation arises in my life that requires them to know.

Most of my friends are gay, and the ones who aren't gay know I am. And to be honest, unless you're gay, I don't let people into my world easily.

Most of my co-workers don't know about me. Although, in the past week, a few more people at the office have been clued into my secret.

My policy for coming out is to use good judgement. I'll tell you when you need to know or when I'm ready for you to know. I don't go to great lengths to hide it, nor do I make it the first thing a person recognizes about me.

Some people live quietly in their closets. Some crawl in behind the dusty shoeboxes and cower in the dark. Some men slowly open the door, and others kick the door down. My experience was more that someone ripped the door off the hinges and came in after me.

After a long and heated discussion about our respective sexualities, my college roommate, with whom I'd been fooling around with for years, pinned me on the bed with his knees and told me that I was gay and I would never be happy until I admitted it. The best he had been able to do up to then was get me to confess that I might possibly be bisexual.

That was also the same summer that I discovered Diana Ross. In a moment of boredom and love-sickness, I picked up the unauthorized biography at the library, and I bought three cassette tapes: Miss Ross and the Supremes, the best of Motown - 60s & 70s and the best of Motown-1980s.


I got stuck on "I'm Coming Out." The thought intrigued me and terrified me. I didn't want the world to know, but I wanted to let it show.


The whole "coming out" issue was complicated by the fact that my college roommate and I were from the same hometown and had been best friends all through high school. We had the same friends, and when he began dating a guy in our hometown who was known by all our friends, I knew it was just a matter of time before I was dragged through the homosexual mud.

Sure enough, it wasn't long until I was asked to come home by a girl friend to explain to another girl friend that I wasn't gay. She's in love with you, Julie said, and she'll be devastated to know that you're gay. So just come home and tell Diva you're not and it'll be okay.

I went along with the plan. I told Diva how absurd it was that I was gay and it was totally untrue. And I figured at best, I might be bi, because I still wanted to marry and have kids and and blah, blah, blah. She breathed a sigh of relief and we had a good laugh about it. In fact, we laughed all afternoon because...wouldn't it be so funny if I indeed were gay? The gay jokes ran rampant, and they eventually wore on my nerves. So I pulled her aside and confessed that I wasn't really bi and there was no way I was straight. I'm gay.

I knew she needed time to process it, so I told her to write down any and all questions she had. Nothing was too taboo, and keep a running list of questions. The next time I was home, I'd answer any and all questions she had.

The next time I was home she had a list of 35 questions, and I answered them all.