Staying In II: The Mulligan.
I'm fascinated by how this "not telling folks I'm queer" game is playing out. I like how much more I listen and how much less I talk with my usual main topic of my conversation--Leora and our life together--taken out of the mix. I dislike the mild but persistent guilt that what I have told my colleagues about myself has so fundamental a gap.
Today, as I was contemplating how to cram nine bulging 9x12 envelopes into seven envelopes' worth of space, I started humming the Tetris theme and then blurted, to the room at large, "I need Leora's mad Tetris skills right now."
As soon as I realized what I'd said, I figured, Game over. Because surely my coworker J.'s response would be, "Who?", to which my response would be, "My wife", and that would be that. Instead, J. said...nothing (and don't call me Shirley). If she'd heard what I'd said--if she was aware I'd spoken at all--she didn't show it.
This brings us to that ancient koan:If a dyke comes out in an office and no one hears, is she still closeted?
And what of the game, the point of which, you may recall, was to see how long I could go before coming out to my coworkers. While it's true that I technically came out, it's also true that I came out to...no one at all. To use that tired old sports metaphor: I may have missed the stone, but the other team didn't even pick up a broom. I guess now I have to decide: do I declare the game ended and go back to my usual blithery self, or do I call this a Mulligan and continue with the next end?