I'm Coming Out

I’m Coming Out

            “Mom, I’m gay.”

            “Mother.  I am a homosexual.”

            “Mama, I’m a big ‘mo.”

            I was twenty eight years old and, ready or not, about to come out of the closet. And unable to find the perfect way to break the news.  It was June 2001, and I had just moved back to Birmingham after an unsuccessful two-month stint in New York City.  Throughout the previous year, I told a few close friends who, to my surprise, were not really surprised.  I guess my penchant for fashion and Barbra Streisand spoke volumes. 

One evening, after a few too many beers, I told a childhood friend who was notorious for being loose-lipped.  Three weeks later, I discovered that news of my sexual proclivities had made it down the interstate, through the woods, and around the hollow to my tiny hometown of Linden, two hours south of Birmingham.  After an emergency cocktail meeting with my roommate, Allison, she told me what I already knew I needed to do.

            “Craig, you have to tell your parents.  What if they hear it on the street?  Besides, you moved back here from New York because you had unfinished business, right?”

            “Fine, I’ll do it.  But only over the phone,” I replied.

            “Over the phone?”  She was incredulous.

            When I was growing up, I stayed in my room most of the time and talked to my parents through the walls.  So I figured that coming out via the telephone wouldn’t be much different.  So on a beautiful Sunday afternoon in late June, I made a phone call.  I rehearsed various versions of my speech for an hour but still didn’t know how I was going to say the words.  When she answered, my mother was busy in the kitchen cooking something.  I took a deep breath.

            I always knew that I was different.  I distinctly remember having strange feelings for other boys even in grammar school.  Not that I knew how to act on them.  However, our next-door neighbor, Barry, did.  He was a grade level ahead of me and liked to watch “Wonder Woman.”  Apparently, Lynda Carter locked lips with someone on the previous night’s episode, because the next afternoon, Barry pulled me into our laundry room to show me something. 

“Let me show you what Wonder Woman did last night to Steve Trevor.”

He laid a big fat kiss on me, right on the lips.  It was by far, the grossest thing I ever felt.  The lips, the tongue, the smell of Doritos.  But as disgusting as it was, it opened something up inside my gut.  For better or worse, I knew that everything changed with that one kiss. 

            I went on through grammar school playing occasional games of “doctor” with Bobby Barkley, a boy in my class.  But I always pushed the thoughts aside and tried to focus on girls.  Usually to no avail.  In junior high, after my clandestine year-long affair with Steve Avery ended, it was back to the occasional tryst with Barry, who by this time, had grown out of his “Wonder Woman” obsession but not his love for Doritos.  I assumed that these feelings for other boys would one day disappear and I could date girls, marry, and have children.  I even dated a few during high school and college, but most girls don’t want a boyfriend who can also style their hair. 

            After college, I moved to Birmingham and went to my first gay bar.  The men, the music, the energy.  I was mesmerized.  So were they.  Gay men love a fresh-faced blonde just out of college.  And I was so emotionally retarded, I didn’t realize this.  I just assumed they all wanted to date me.  Sure, they wanted to spend time with me, but the time they wanted to spend with me was horizontal.  I became somewhat of a tramp.  During this entire period, I assumed still that I could play around with guys, maybe even have a short-term relationship, then put it all aside and marry a woman. 

After three years of this behavior, I was a wreck.  I slowly came to the realization that my homosexuality was here to stay.  And the pressure of keeping it a secret was about to make me implode.  So I made a decision.  I told my friend Lindsy.  She was so supportive and happy that I finally came out to her.  She gave me the confidence to tell my other close friends.  Their reaction was all the same. 

“I’ve known for quite awhile.”

“Seems like somebody could have clued me in,” I would always say.

I also had a moment of false clarity.  Still firmly entrenched in denial, I figured that coming out to my family would be easier if I moved to New York City.  I could build this fabulous “Sex and the City” life, be out and proud, and live amongst all the gays.  So, in 2001, I said goodbye to Alabama and moved to New York with no plan, no leads for a job.  I was also much younger than I thought I was.  I moved in with a gay guy and a straight girl that I met through an online roommate finder.  I butted heads with Mark immediately.  He was too brash and pushy for my taste.  Valerie and I, however, hit it off.  She guided me through two months of job rejections, drunken nights, and one night stands.  She was going through a break-up, so we often found ourselves sitting on the fire escape, mid-afternoon, drinking Coronas.  She in her robe and me in my ill-fitting, banana-yellow swimming trunks working on my tan.   

Something happened during those two months of negativity though.  I changed.  I got stronger and realized that to succeed in New York, I needed to move back to Alabama and finish some unfinished business.  I needed to learn to live like an out and proud gay man in a place where “out and proud” isn’t widely accepted.  Because if a gay guy can make it there, he can make it anywhere.  After much soul-searching and several thousand dollars down the drain, I decided to move back to Birmingham.  I bought some cheesy self-help book called “Now That I’m Out, What Do I Do?” to prepare me for the life I was dealt, said a temporary goodbye to Valerie and to New York and flew home.

A month later, I was making the phone call.  As the phone rang, I was strangely calm.  But when Mom answered, everything I planned to say flew out the window.

“Mom.  I need to tell you something.”

“What’s wrong?” she immediately asked.

“Nothing’s wrong.  I just need to tell you something….you know…how…I haven’t had a date in a long time?”

“Yes,” she casually replied.

“That was rhetorical.  And…you also know…how much I…um…love Barbra Streisand?  And…I do like…um….’Will and Grace’ a lot.  And…Bette Midler.”

“Are you trying to say what I think you’re trying to say?”

“I think so.”

“Well, that’s your choice.”

I began to get irritated. 

“No, it’s not a choice.  It goes all the way back to birth.  Back to the birth canal.  Back to you.” 

“You don’t have to get rude.  You’re my son.  I don’t understand it right now, but I still love you.  Now I have to get back to this recipe.”

We got off the phone, and I was confused.  I expected either complete acceptance or fireworks.  I got neither.  I didn’t really know where we were.  The phone rang.  It was Dad.

“Your mother just told me what you said.  I wasn’t surprised,” he deadpanned.

“Well goddamn it.  You could have let me in on the secret that everyone else seemed to be privy to.”

“Don’t cuss,” he continued.  “I just meant that I suspected so I did some research on the internet.”

My mind was agog.

“It’s just the way the cards fall out of the bag.  I know you didn’t choose it, and someday your mother will know too.  Just be careful and know that both your mom and I love you.”

We got off the phone.  That was the first time I ever heard my father say that he loved me.  Wow.  Fireworks of a different kind. 

Allison came into my room and asked how things went.  I told her I needed a beer and that she should change clothes for happy hour.  I sat down on my bed.  It was done.  No turning back.  It felt strange but exhilarating.  Everything was out in the open now.  I could have gay friends and openly date.  Go to gay clubs without having to pretend I was going to a sports bar.  Bring strange boys home and not have to sneak them out the window in the morning.  I changed into my tightest little tee-shirt, because I was taking Allison to happy hour at a gay bar.  It was time that my parallel lives converged into one.  I looked down at the book that was lying on my bed.  “Now That I’m Out, What Do I Do?”  I picked it up and read the author’s answer to this question.

“Relax.  Be yourself.  Have some fun, and spread your wings and fly.”

So I did.