I guess you should have known. I mean, I spent an awful lot of time playing in the closet as a child. I would make a little fort out of blankets and pillows, turn on the bare light bulb that was suspended from the ceiling, and settle in with my Little Foot doll and a pile of Little Golden Books for an afternoon of reading enjoyment. Sometimes Little Foot and I would burrow under the blankets and just fall asleep.
Eventually, though, I'd emerge from the closet and go back about the business of being a four-year-old. It was tough work, chasing the dog around and sitting up in my tree house. On really trying days, I'd try to dodge the horseshoes that so often flew across the back yard. All in all, it was a simple life.
As I got older, I realized that I felt a strange attraction to boys, especially boys in their underwear. It wasn't any profound revelation - you don't hear a whole lot of stories about eight-year-olds coming out - but I noticed it nonetheless. The difference between me and the boys I liked to look at was that while they were ogling the girls in the Sears catalog, I was checking out the male models in the JC Penney ad.
Sometimes I would do things without a clear awareness of what I was up to or why. I remember Dad spanking me for playing "I'll show you mine if you show me yours" with another boy from my Sunday school class in the church bathroom one Sunday. There was the time we went to an open house and someone had carelessly left a Playgirl magazine open to a centerfold on the workbench in the garage. When I lingered too long looking at the picture, you dragged me away.
Once you found an HIV/AIDS newsletter in with the stuff I brought home from the library. Ah, the library. I remember surreptitiously perusing the What's Happening to My Body? Book for Boys, paying special attention to the illustrations. On more brazen days, I'd type 'naked men' into the card catalog, but I don't remember it ever coming up with anything I thought I was looking for.
There was the locker room in middle school. Hell, there were a lot of things in middle school. As is often the case, everyone else articulates it before you do. People used to call me gay, probably because of my awkward appearance, but maybe because they caught me checking out their boxers. Of course, one of them had slept over at the house, where we had played something akin to 'Doctor.' Suffice it to say he was less than enthusiastic about my diagnosis.
By high school, I had more or less figured it out. That is not to say that I accepted it. There were girls here and there along the way. My desperate attempts at 'normalcy' were often thwarted, however. One in particular had the class not to turn me down outright. In hindsight, when a tenth grader knows you're gay and you don't...I was just always impressed that she so aptly tackled such a potentially humiliating situation. She remains one of the coolest people in my world.
By high school, I was sure enough of my sexual orientation to go into some fantastic denial. If I threw myself into the church youth group (stabbings and all, but that's another entry altogether), I figured, God would cure my inclination toward boys. Instead, my attempts to fantasize about girls were regularly invaded by boys. There was no winning, especially late at night when everyone else was asleep and I'd seek out potentially fantasy-neutral material like Baywatch; I could make the argument, I reasoned, that I was in it for the girls rather than the guys, even if I knew it was a lie.
Then we moved to Alabama. The last thing I ever expected the move to do was give me some perspective, but once I realized that even moving across the country couldn't de-gay me, I began the process of truly accepting myself. Of course, then you found pictures of naked men on the computer (for about the third time) and promptly banned me from it, as well as Will & Grace and ER, the liberal media influences you blamed for my recent behavior.
About a year after that incident, I officially came out to the first person who wasn't me: my friend Princess Sherry. I did it by finding the cover of Time magazine with Ellen DeGeneres and the words "I'm Gay" and pasting my head over Ellen's. It was one of my best comings out.
Not that there have been too many bad ones. In the two years since telling Sherry, I have told many, many people, including friends near and far, my government team, my high school newspaper, the readers of this web site, and my college campus, where I serve as president of the Gay-Straight Alliance. And the rockiest experience I've had was telling my sister Crash last Thanksgiving. She said "Ew!" immediately, but she clarified that that was only because she thought I was going to say I had sex with a girl.
What a difference two years makes. I'm now domesticated and in a fulfilling, rewarding, loving relationship. If only I could get married to my Danwich. Perhaps that revolution will have come in another two years.
Lately, though, I've been thinking about that closet. Who could have known those years ago that I would eventually emerge from it and find the happiness everyone wants in life?
Certainly not you; you're still in denial, after all. The simple fact that I've never said the words "I'm gay" to you gives you a glimmer of hope that it's not true. It can't be true; our son, the one who wanted to go to seminary school and become a Lutheran minister - he's one of those people?
The thing is, there's a reason I haven't come out to you yet. I'm kind of afraid to. I'm not really that worried about what Dad will say (probably nothing you haven't already said, or just nothing at all, like usual), but I do worry what Mom will say. I know that I am gay and also that I am a good person. This isn't shame. It's good, old-fashioned fear of rejection. Mom, who taught me how to read so I could sit in that closet with my books, turning her back on me because of my intrinsic nature - that's what scares me.
So I'm going to take the coward's way out, at least for now. Too bad about that National Coming Out Day thing. For your birthday this year, Mom, I got you something we can both enjoy: another year of your fantasy of my life. Enjoy it, and have a slice of cake for me today.
Love,
Your son Pat
