Closeted

After graduating I moved home.  It sucked.  I was officially a grown ass man but I could not support myself and had not taken the necessary precautions to have a job and the money to move out on my own.  So I did what I had to do.

But what I got from it was a friendship from my parents to their adult son.  I wouldn't trade it for anything in the world.  Being the youngest of three I was lucky enough to learn from all of the mistakes my brother and sister made along the way (much at their expense!).  They complain that I never got enough spankings as a child, and my retort is that I simply just did not deserve as many as they did.  In actuality I just learned how to work my parents the right way after seeing what stupid things my brother and sister did that seemed to consistently get them into trouble.

This is all a part of being the "baby" of the family.

Nonetheless my parents have become great friends to me.  I talk to them about a lot of things and it is funny to me that I talk to them more about me being gay than I do my brother or sister.  Not that it matters either way but before I came out I would have never imagined it to be this way.  I guess I had pictured me and my sister having late night conversations and her wild eyed at my recounting of gay adolescence.  I was wrong about this.  

It was at the time of our first Grandmother's funeral.  We knew she was leaving us, so we all gathered together to say our goodbyes.  At a family lunch my sister-in-law asked me what I thought of her friend.  It was a girl that I knew also but had always known to be friends (and the same age) as my sister-in-law.  I said "yeah, she's nice," but before the rest of the words could fall out of my mouth I realized what she was up to.  

Holy Shit!  I thought to myself.  She is trying to set me up with a girl?

For a while leading up to this I had convinced myself that my family was fully aware of my homosexuality.  It was obvious.  My voice stayed the same as it always had been but my t-shirts and jeans got tighter and tighter.  

So when I realized what my sister-in-law was up to I began to freak out.  Surely she is joking with me.  I had no excuses planned out.  The best I could muster was "but she's like 30 years old" even though in my mind I knew that in the past week or so I had been out with a 36 year old.  

I realized what I had to do.  Cry for help.  I decided that I would take this tragic weekend and use it to come out to someone in my family.  I had always thought that my sister would be the easiest, so of course, I picked her.  The family limo picked us up from the house and she had to get her car that was still left at the funeral home.  

"I'll take you!" I almost shouted as soon as she asked out loud for a ride.

On the car ride to her car I said "I have something to tell you...I'm gay"

She was quiet for a while.

I gave her a look.

"Well what do you want me to say?" she asked.

"I don't know, I've never come out to anybody in my family before I dont know what to say."

It was awkward at first but we mustered through what I thought would be the most uncomfortable part.  As the conversation unfolded I realized that my sister was prepared.  She had known.  All along.  As I knew she would.  So instead of being what I had hoped she would be, she had an artillery of things to throw my way.  She went on to tell me that she didn't necessarily think that being gay was a sin, but what she felt was that I was too prideful to let God tell me I was wrong.  She had a whole mess of other stupid shit to say to me and overall I left feeling worse than I did when I was lying to my entire family.  

After it was over she asked if I minded that she send me some things.  I wound up on a mailing list for Focus on the Family (one of the worst organizations on the planet!) and then I got an email from her.  In the email she listed verse after verse from the bible.  She went on to say that if Mom and Dad asked her about it she would not lie.  It was the worst email I have ever gotten in my life.

I responded letting her know that I had plenty of bibles.  What I did not have was plenty of sisters.  I said that I knew what the bible said and that I would really appreciate her to just act like my sister instead of my pastor.  I also told her that it was not her place to tell Mom and Dad about me and that if she did we would end all forms of communication because she would have betrayed my confidence in her.  

She wrote back and simply said "I hope that I can be the sister you need me to be".

Unfortunately things have just not been the same since.  I made an attempt to confront her about it coincidentally when our second grandmother passed.  At this point my sister and her family were planning on moving to Japan for three years, so that her husband could pursue his "dreams".  We were talking back and forth and I admitted that I felt as though there was something between us.  She kept asking what, I kept saying "I don't know".  Finally she asked "BUT WHAT IS IT?"  and I shouted "when I came out to you it SUCKED!"

She confessed that she was sorry because she had things that she had been dealing with in her own marriage.  It still didn't make up for the hurt that it had caused.  It was hard to have so much trust invested in my sister, and then have it tossed aside as if she was a total stranger.  

Before I came out I had imagined my brother freaking out when I told him that I was gay and had thought of all the ways to tell him that I did not care what he thought.  I was wrong about this too.  I could have never imagined that my brother would speak so eloquently about a subject that I have never heard our family discuss.  

That's the thing about my brother.  Growing up he was quiet, often.  We always said he was in his own world but little did we know we had a great philosopher among us.  When I came out to him it was not by choice.  The only one that I chose to come out to was my sister, and that is another story altogether.  My brother called me up one night (this was when I worked at the Gap).  When I got home I called him back around 9:30, I remember that it was late cause I figured my nieces were in bed cause of a school night.  He sounded very awkward and then asked if he could come over to hang out.  I was a little confused but as soon as I put the phone down I knew what was to come. 

I knew right away that he had heard or figured out that I was gay and now he was on his way over to confront me about it.  I paced the parameters of my apartment endlessly until the 45 minutes had passed and he arrived.  This was a drastic move on his part since his family lived in Waxhaw and I lived in the University Area at the time.  

As soon as he walked in we sat down on the couch.  It was awkward.  We never spent that much time together, so a random visit on a thursday night was somewhat out of the ordinary.

"Justin, I heard a rumor" he said.  The rumor was from his wife, who heard from her mother, who heard from his wife's nephew, who had been at a party at UNC-Charlotte, and heard from someone else...

I stopped my brother because at this point I was OVER IT!  "

"I'm Gay"

"You are?"

"Yes."

Then my brother went on to tell me that he wanted me to know that he loved me.  He also confessed that he would have no idea how to even imagine what life would be like to live with something like that and for that he was deeply sorry.  He told me that there was no point in telling me what the bible said about it because he knew that I was a Christian and that I had read what I needed to and made my decision which he trusted.  

I began to bawl my eyes out.  This was the only emotional moment that my brother and I have ever shared together (aside from when he was left to watch over me and would stick my head in the toilet and flush and I would cry about it).  

We talked for a while, he asked if I had told anyone else.  I told him about how things went down when I told our sister and he said that he was disappointed in the way that she had reacted.  He asked if I minded that he tell his wife (whom I love dearly) and of course I did not mind at all.  He said that he would not tell mom and dad because that was my business to tell.  

Growing up with 7+ years in between the two of us I never had that experience of a big older brother to protect me on the playground.  It was not until this night that I realized that was exactly what he was.  

My parents were an altogether different story.  I graduated.  I moved home.  My old room.  My old routine.  Although we became much closer it all began after I came out to them.  

As I mentioned before, it was not by choice.  This guy in one of my Social Work classes at UNC-Charlotte had given me this documentary "Rock Hudson's Home Videos".  It was on a blank VHS tape and looked like it should be covered with vaseline and hair, if you know what I mean (and for the record, it was not).  But it was a shady looking tape.  I never watched it.  I only took it to make the dude (who I would assume was in the closet) happy.  

I was pet sitting for a friend and I was staying at his place.  I got a phone call from my dad and he said that mom had been looking for something in the attic and found the infamous "Rock Hudson's Home Video".  He asked if I was experimenting with anything.

Now up until now I was at my wits end about this gay closet stuff.  I was over it.  I was out to EVERYBODY (including Brother and Sister) at this point so the only people left were my parents.  I had made my mind up that I would tell them as soon as I moved out of their house OR if they directly asked me I would not deny it.  

So he was directly asking me.  "Are you experimenting with anything, son?"

My dad always likes to throw...."son" on the end of a question so that I understand that he means business.  Its a condescending "dad" thing he does.  

"Well...I'm not experimenting, I'm pretty much in it"

The secret was out.  He said he wanted to come see me and talk to me in person.  He came to my friends house where I was housesitting and picked me up.  When I got in the car he asked if I wanted to go and tell mom because I knew that he would have to tell her so I might as well be the one to do it.  When I finally mustered up enough umph to say "Mom, I'm Gay" to my mother, she denied it.  "Justin, you're not gay".

"Yes...yes I am gay"  I was so pissed!  It has taken me a lifetime to finally get it out and she wasn't letting me do it.  

We spent a lot of time talking that weekend.  We actually talked a little more than needed.  By the end of the weekend I put an end to it.  I told them that it was not fair to me to have to divulge the private details of my life just because I am gay while they would NEVER feel so inclined to ask my brother or sister about such intimate details.  I put my foot down and told them that we would not be talking about that sort of thing anymore because it was not fair to me.  I ended the weekend and lengthy conversation by telling them that I would really appreciate if they would hear more than one Christian view about being gay.  I said whatever information that you get I would really appreciate if you would use God's gift of discernment to decide for yourself what you choose to believe but if you would just be open to reading about more than one perspective.  

A few months later my mom told me she was reading a book by Anne Hache's mother.

Awww shit, I thought.  I figured that would really mess her up but as it turns out the book is about loving your family members despite being gay.  Apparently Anne's father was gay and died of AIDS but had kept the secret from his family.  Anne's mother speaks about how hurt she was by the lie and how she dealt with that.

One afternoon when my dad and me were taking out the trash we had just dropped the trashbags in the bin and closed the lid when he said "I'm reading a book by PFLAG"

"Um...okay."

He was proud of himself for doing so because it was a request that I had made.  He said he was being open to reading other points of view and that he did not plan on marching in a parade with me but that he thought that the book was very insightful.  

Progress was made.

On a few lunch outings with my mother she would ask me questions.  Just random questions out of curiosity.  After our discussions unfolded we would begin to reach her threshold for tolerance.  She would stop me mid sentence and say "Okay...okay, That's good."  I would just nod and acknowledge that she had grown uncomfortable.  I was impressed with her that she was trying.  She struggled but tried to find ways to connect.  There was one conversation that we were having and she kept asking me questions that I knew that she did not want to know the answers to.  I told her "Curiosity killed the cat, Mom".  She simply replied, "I'm no cat, Justin". 

Since those "precious moments" we have begun to have more intelligent gay conversations that the ones we had that first weekend.  My dad has told me that he is disgusted by parents who disown their gay children.  He says he knows a few fathers that have done so and he just doesn't understand how they can think they are doing God's will by cutting off their own children.  

The day I came out to them was actually on Valentine's day.  It could not have been a more appropriate holiday to come out and learn just what Unconditional Love is all about.  

I remember that things changed after that day.  I thought "I CAN TAKE ON THE WORLD!"

I am out to my parents, its over!  There is nothing else to be afraid of.

I'm coming out, I want the world to know....