On Coming Out and Sitting Down

 

A little more than a year ago, I was given a dream.  In this dream I was wandering through an unfamiliar town at night and I saw a colleague unloading a car who stopped to chat with me.

Suddenly we were interrupted by a young man in his twenties who was running toward us. 

He wasn’t running like people who run for fitness. 

He wasn’t running to train for a race.  

He was running for his life.  I couldn’t see anyone chasing him, but the desperation in his stride was apparent.  

I wondered if when he reached us, would he ask for help? But when he was near, I could see that he didn’t even see us.  

All he knew was the imminent danger and dread that fueled his speed. 

And when he was close enough, I still didn’t recognize him, but I recognized something in his face.  

I knew that he was gay.  And *that* was what he was running from.

When I woke up I saw clearly that the dominant metaphor for being secretly gay (which I had for many years accepted and identified with) being “in the closet” unintentionally masked how much desperation and effort went into the secret.  It required you to run like hell.  It was exhausting, life-consuming WORK.

What exactly was the young man running from? 

The clear and most obvious first answer is - secretly gay people are running from persecution.  They have already experienced it directly and indirectly and it felt deadly in those moments because they had to deny it both to their assailants and to themselves. In the world of the dream, that young man was being chased by people.

The second answer is much more awful.  Secretly gay people are often running from themselves.  More specifically, they know if the wrong happenstance draws together a mocking person,  who just happens to see the wrong kind of gender expression?  Or if someone who knows the secret turns it against them?  If that happens?   The most terrifying monster of all will catch  them and devour them.  That monstrosity?  Is the thing that they cannot bear to acknowledge.  

The thing that they are.  Themselves.  

How are these Monsters created and sustained?   Humans have been creating monsters for as long as we’ve been around.  When you create a monster, you simultaneously create an alliance against the monster.  Or sometimes you cement a frail alliance.  You also gain the right to seize more power, demand obedience and retain control. Monster-making is a very effective way to solidify the bonds of people who feel threatened.

All the best horror filmmakers know that if they can hide their monsters longer, only show hints and shadows, the audience’s horror will grow, they’ll be more and more invested in the story and the film.  If they could get away with it the filmmaker would NEVER actually show the monster.  Just make sure that the audience knew that the monster was real.  That the monster was lurking.  That the monster’s arrival might be any moment now. 

This past week, a gay teacher friend of mine who teaches kids in a rural school district where teachers aren’t “out” because they can’t be, heard students expressing disgust and horror about an LGBTQ+ affirming image they saw.  

Where did they learn that disgust? 

Where did I learn it?  

It’s so pervasive, quotidian and subtle - that I always knew it.  

I always knew that I was gay and I also knew that gay people were monsters.  Not fun or cool monsters but truly horrible dangerous monsters.  And I did not know how to accept that understanding of myself so instead I ran.  So many of us ran. 

I was eight years old when Havey Milk gave this speech (that's him in the picture and here's a clip of it below) and I was 38 years old before I even knew who Harvey Milk was.

He spoke these words against the monster making that was happening against gay people in 1978. He was convinced that once people realized that it was their sons and their friends and their neighbors and their co-workers who were gay?  That the monster making might turn into something better:  Hope. 

I never had a single conversation, just a normal conversation, with an openly gay person about anything until I was in my mid-thirties.  I had been kept away from the monsters. I had been keeping myself away from the monsters.  Closets are not built by their inhabitants.  They are thoughtlessly mass-produced by consensus and fear.

Since I’ve come out, I have experienced some profound monster-making by “friends,” acquaintances, anonymous harassers, employers, colleagues, but I have experienced much more love, generosity and support. I have experienced hope.

I have experienced love and generosity and support from people who I would not have expected it from.  And maybe more importantly, I have been learning how to afford love to and for my own self.  

I wholeheartedly reject the monster-making enterprise.  I, like you, will always be tempted toward it when the margins feel small, when my strength feels frail.

Being a gay man is a good thing.  Not a monstrosity. It’s ordinary, inevitable, and good.

It is also who I am;  it has shaped the life I have led and I am grateful for it.  

When I told my wise friend Connie about the dream and how it sort of contested the metaphor of a closet, andt the good thing about the “closet” metaphor is the “coming out” part because that affords the opportunity to take personal action and express yourself.  To come out. I asked her:  What kind of analogous metaphor could we use if the metaphor for being secretly gay was changed to: 

Running - Like - Hell? 

And after a moment of thinking, she said, “What if you just sat down?” 

Why does there need to be a coming out day?  

Because it’s part of just sitting down into the goodness of who I am even when I’m not running like hell.

(You can check out Harvey Milk’s speech at this link - https://www.docsteach.org/documents/document/milk-hope-speech)

(also:  I have often wished that I could “come out” more on this day, and many times it was not the right time nor place in my life.  To those of you who are waiting for a safer time and place, I wholeheartedly affirm your waiting.  Sit down into who you are.  Don’t let the monster(s) chase you. Come out only to who you need to when it is safe for you.)