My therapist will tell you that “coming out” is one of the most pivotal moments of a gay man’s life.
Being party to something you know is true, might be true, you don’t know if it’s true, but others – do they think it’s true?…is an indescribable magnitude of difficulty, ripping through like earthquake waves on a daily basis to the point where you forgot where you were when the shaking started.
I never really “came out”.
And it’s not like I walked out of my mother’s womb to show tunes (it was a C-section) – I genuinely think there was a possibility things could have gone either way.
I saw a meme recently where someone posted a picture of a handsome guy at the gym and it said something along the lines of “as a gay man you’re so confused – do I want to look like him? Fight him? Screw him? All the above?”
If you can understand that, you can understand what it’s like to be in the closet.
This isn’t some tale of woe or discrimination. Sure I got called “faggot” in middle school, and to be fair I was probably acting the part. But straight men typically treated me with respect. Some straight women treated me with care, others with suspicion. Gays treated me with even deeper suspicion, and as I’d later learned, would privately thirst then tell their friends that I was silly for not coming out.
I knew something was different with me in elementary school and I chalked it up to anxiety. I wanted to look like the other guys, and I always felt like I never matched up. It was weird. I kissed a yearbook once because he looked perfect, and I thought I looked flawed.
But I had crushes on girls, huge crushes – from Allison in preschool all the way through college. They activated an instinct in me, something that felt wired and not learned, and of course that all added to the confusion.
There were the typical drunken hookups in college – one notable one which ended in running out the door half naked in the rain. It happens. Happened with girls too.
After college there was that “d” word, and I don’t mean “dick” – I mean “dating”. I hadn’t really done it and it seemed like everyone had. And I tried – I tried turning hookups into dates, but they ended messily with me and another guy trying to figure out what went where after way too much to drink.
By the time I got to, well, 4 years ago, it all seemed a mess.
I wanted to be like those straight guys, I wanted that image, it just seemed to be on a pedestal where I felt like I was, comparatively, on the floor. I even recruited some of those straight friends to help me butch up – and they treated me with compassion and acceptance as I was instead of the judgment I feared. But the identity crisis roiled inside like a bad case of food poisoning, and one night, after a lot of martinis while stumbling down Sunset Blvd, I typed out the following.
It was not how I wanted to “come out”, but the force of keeping it down was too great. I wanted to vomit.
I didn’t like close friends knowing I was sort of “wink and nod” into guys too and strangers wondering why I looked and acted a certain way.
I felt shame. I felt shame for my family, who had always shown nothing but support for any of my decisions. I felt shame for my straight friends who tried to help me figure it out, like I’d somehow let them down. And I felt shame for what was to come – a lost opportunity at what I thought was a “normal” future family.
The whirling dervish of awkwardness and fear and lashing out sliced to a stop that evening of June 24, 2016.
I know my dad knew of how I related to guys before he died. I know it in my heart, because he knew my heart – after all, he became my best friend. And although it was never a conversation we formally had, and although he only asked once in high school and I thoroughly denied it, he wouldn’t have asked if he didn’t assume. He was just happy I was hardworking and focused, and accepted me. His knowing silence was the greatest gift.
Before losing my mom, she got to meet and spend time with my partner. He was very sweet with her – as if she was family already. My only regret is they didn’t get to spend more time together, although lord knows what tea they’d have spilled together.
The point is – for anyone gay, bisexual, what have you – it gets better if you make it better, and that choice is up to you. You can suffer and struggle or you can make a life for yourself. Those who present themselves as “allies” are often the worst bullies, trying to fit you into a preconceived notion of what it means to be gay or lesbian or trans or however you choose to identify.
Case in point – Rep. Aaron Schock. He was the youngest member of Congress, a Republican, and obviously handsome. The bitter gay Left tore into him like vultures even though he never came out and just, on the surface, was working out. They bullied him, and it was far more insidious than just calling him “faggot” – they tried to forcibly out him and paint him as a traitor to the gay community for his political views.
this was their “evidence”
I pushed back against this forcibly in a 2014 post entitled “Leave Aaron Schock Alone“, and I regret not the sentiment of standing up for someone being bullied by the media, but the object of who I stood up for because of the following.
Later into his term he was forced to resign from Congress after being investigated for illegal use of campaign funds, and instead of sticking in there and hiring some Dershowitz-like attorney to defend his “honor” as an Illinois politician, he caved and took a government plea deal to avoid prosecution and pay back the funds.
But that’s not the bad part.
He outed himself as the stereotypical WeHo fitness gay, popping up at Coachella and on Grindr, and fed into the worst narratives he was accused of as a gay dilettante who lifts.
“hey guys, which way’s the circuit party?!”
Of course a smart man would’ve handled campaign funds correctly and even in absence of that, partied discreetly and/or found a nice man and proved the haters on the left wrong. Instead, Schock turned into some fake IG “I’m evolving, love me again” influencer and confirmed politics-wise that he never really wanted the role but was probably bankrolled by some rich Illinois Republicans to run with the tacit promise of “don’t be too much of a limp wrist” – for shame.
Not that I have any strong feelings about it.
Wait…yessIdo.
We were rooting for you…we were all rooting for you!
Tyra was mocked for this as an early reality show meme moment even though in context – she saw a young black model who reminded her of her making excuses for her shortcomings and blaming how she was raised. Even earlier in the clip Tyra says “when my mother yells at me like this it’s because she loves me”. She recognized the similarities and wanted someone to create success instead of self-pitying.
When I saw Schock, I saw someone who was like me – probably in the closet, probably didn’t know how to admit it, and felt like I needed to stand up and defend. A lot of that is because I felt like I had to stand up and defend myself, and it hurt to see someone else being treated badly who was struggling.
The anger comes in seeing that person then walk across and join those haters and admit “yeah, I’m a big ol gay and all I care about is pool parties and being pretty” when you see that, well, Schock had the potential to really change a lot of minds. He looked sharp, and could’ve been an effective politician. Hell, who knows, he could’ve been President, a much more telegenic alternative to “Mayor Pete”. So to see him floundering around in civilian life when he had an opportunity I could dream of, while I struggled to build those kinds of opportunities for myself, was gutting.
I avoided coming out because I didn’t want to be typecast. I wanted to be able to make a funny joke without people thinking I was mincing like some Charles Nelson Reilly parody. I wanted straight men to be comfortable around me, and not think I was some Svengali, pulling them close just to strike at their weak moments. I wanted straight women to think of me as more complex than a bracelet they could wear to go shopping and complain about their problems. I wanted people to think I could be the whole gamut, from silly to sexy to butch to boring to smart to goofy and anything in-between without those arising from some expectation or assumption, but from me as an individual.
And now? I think I have it. I feel free to be expressive and introverted, meet anyone on their level, and be myself.
I feel free of the barriers I created for myself, and it’s my “coming out” wish, 4 years later, that others can feel that same freedom. There’s a lot of people out there – and we really are all rooting for you.
I’m here to show: you can make it better.
and there’s nothing wrong with being an instagram thirst trap