in which our hero recollects
So National Coming Out Day was a couple days ago. I didn't really think much about it except to contemplate, however briefly, how much things have changed and how proud I am that a lot of kids never have to go through the crap I waded through. But, through the Outer Alliance--which is a group of Science Fiction & Fantasy writers who promote LGBT advocacy in the genre-- I read a few blog posts from authors who recounted their coming out stories or what coming out meant to them through their work, so I thought I'd share mine.
April 22, 1987. The night of my Senior Prom. The night I got my ear pierced for the first time. The night I started smoking for reals. The night I met my first openly gay person. The night I uttered the words, "I'm gay" for the very first time.
It's a pretty bland little story. It changed nothing outside of the fact that it started this snowball's trip through Hell for the next few years.
But the ball did start rolling.
My "date" for the prom went over a cliff on an ATV a couple weeks before the event. She was still recuperating, so we called off going to prom. There was some other teenage drama that happened too, but largely it was her inability to actually go that kept us from, y'know, going.
So it was just another Saturday night, really. Most of my friends were going to the prom. Not that I didn't spend a lot of Saturday nights watching TV with my parents anyway, but it's a nice shot at a narrative segue.
My best friend at the time, Tom, came over in the afternoon, and said that he was going to hang out with his girlfriend at the time, Glenda, and her friend from Albuquerque, Robert, who was openly gay, and did I want to go?
Ummm...I think my heart has probably never beat so fast. I probably would've beaten my friend over the head with a shovel if that were the price of admission to meet another actual living breathing gay man. And, in retrospect, I probably should've beaten him with that shovel, but that's another story.
So we went. And we went out to dinner for the first time at Ed Debevic's, which was a retro fifties diner here in Phoenix back then, and became our new favorite hangout through the rest of high school and our first few visits home from college, until it was so packed with jerks and fratboys. And until we were old enough to get into bars.
There's a lot of in-jokes in my group of friends from that time that started that night. At dinner, I played it cool--not really; I was about as cool as the surface of the sun, but I tried--about asking Robert about his experiences at being gay. Naturally, his being out and more comfortable with himself, as well as possessing self-esteem (something I wouldn't have for years and years), Robert had a lot of stories to tell. Some of them are probably even true.
Anyway, I loved the fact that he had his ears pierced, and said so, so he volunteered to pierce mine. After dinner, we went back to Glenda's house. Her parents were divorced, and her mom almost never there, so we almost always had the run of the place. In the middle of their dining room, Robert took a needle and some ice, and pierced my left ear. Afterward, we went to see the Rocky Horror Picture Show, which had been our default activity since I first introduced Tom & Glenda, as well as our absent companion, Linda (who was to have been my prom date; we never dated or anything, it was just a friends thing though I know it meant more to her than that), back in January of that year.
We dropped Glenda and Robert back at her house since it was closest to the theatre, and then Tom took me home. In the dark theatre, I had made up my mind to finally tell someone, anyone, I don't think I really cared who, that I really really liked the idea of having sex with men. So from the moment we left Glenda's mom's driveway, I began to steel myself, trying to gather the courage to open my mouth past teenage banalities about the night and say what I meant to say.
To leave Glenda's house, you took a small street that met up with Encanto, which is the half-mile marker between Thomas Road and McDowell Road. From Encanto, it was about a short city-block to 67th Avenue, although there's a stoplight there with an interminable wait, especially at 2:00 AM, since it relies on pressure sensors to switch the light. Not enough cars, and you wait and wait and wait. I don't remember that night how long we had to wait, but I do know that we turned onto 67th Avenue and made our way north, toward Thomas Road. Like I said, it was only half-mile from Encanto to Thomas, and I know that I had managed to sputter out something along the lines of "I'm like Robert!" to Tom long before we hit the light at Thomas.
And he took it well. And we talked. And it was nice. I still had to find a way to break my earring to my parents--mom went ballistic; my dad picked me up at my job that night along with my brother with a simple "so how's your ear?" and that's all he ever said, to his credit--but one of the hardest things I've ever had to do was now done.
The road was hardly level and easy from there on. It was treacherous, and sometimes I was navigating blindly, but that was night I took the first step. And it was good.
Glenda would come out her first year of college. She'd kill herself our senior year. I still miss her.
I saw Robert a few more times but once Glenda died, the link to our friendship was severed.
Tom continued to be my friend to lesser and greater degrees, off and on, for 22 more years. He would come out when we were 19, and I was in college and he was in the Army. I just recently cut him loose as a friend because he still thinks I'm that scared 17 year-old boy. I probably should've realized that his friendship had no value when he fucked a guy I had been dating two nights after he dumped me. Oh, should I mention that Tom and I were roommates at the time? And that I was in the same room at the time of the fucking? Probably, huh.
But the journey has been worth it. We learn and learn and learn, if we're lucky. And it's worth it. I don't want to be anyone else but me.
April 22, 1987. The night of my Senior Prom. The night I got my ear pierced for the first time. The night I started smoking for reals. The night I met my first openly gay person. The night I uttered the words, "I'm gay" for the very first time.
It's a pretty bland little story. It changed nothing outside of the fact that it started this snowball's trip through Hell for the next few years.
But the ball did start rolling.
My "date" for the prom went over a cliff on an ATV a couple weeks before the event. She was still recuperating, so we called off going to prom. There was some other teenage drama that happened too, but largely it was her inability to actually go that kept us from, y'know, going.
So it was just another Saturday night, really. Most of my friends were going to the prom. Not that I didn't spend a lot of Saturday nights watching TV with my parents anyway, but it's a nice shot at a narrative segue.
My best friend at the time, Tom, came over in the afternoon, and said that he was going to hang out with his girlfriend at the time, Glenda, and her friend from Albuquerque, Robert, who was openly gay, and did I want to go?
Ummm...I think my heart has probably never beat so fast. I probably would've beaten my friend over the head with a shovel if that were the price of admission to meet another actual living breathing gay man. And, in retrospect, I probably should've beaten him with that shovel, but that's another story.
So we went. And we went out to dinner for the first time at Ed Debevic's, which was a retro fifties diner here in Phoenix back then, and became our new favorite hangout through the rest of high school and our first few visits home from college, until it was so packed with jerks and fratboys. And until we were old enough to get into bars.
There's a lot of in-jokes in my group of friends from that time that started that night. At dinner, I played it cool--not really; I was about as cool as the surface of the sun, but I tried--about asking Robert about his experiences at being gay. Naturally, his being out and more comfortable with himself, as well as possessing self-esteem (something I wouldn't have for years and years), Robert had a lot of stories to tell. Some of them are probably even true.
Anyway, I loved the fact that he had his ears pierced, and said so, so he volunteered to pierce mine. After dinner, we went back to Glenda's house. Her parents were divorced, and her mom almost never there, so we almost always had the run of the place. In the middle of their dining room, Robert took a needle and some ice, and pierced my left ear. Afterward, we went to see the Rocky Horror Picture Show, which had been our default activity since I first introduced Tom & Glenda, as well as our absent companion, Linda (who was to have been my prom date; we never dated or anything, it was just a friends thing though I know it meant more to her than that), back in January of that year.
We dropped Glenda and Robert back at her house since it was closest to the theatre, and then Tom took me home. In the dark theatre, I had made up my mind to finally tell someone, anyone, I don't think I really cared who, that I really really liked the idea of having sex with men. So from the moment we left Glenda's mom's driveway, I began to steel myself, trying to gather the courage to open my mouth past teenage banalities about the night and say what I meant to say.
To leave Glenda's house, you took a small street that met up with Encanto, which is the half-mile marker between Thomas Road and McDowell Road. From Encanto, it was about a short city-block to 67th Avenue, although there's a stoplight there with an interminable wait, especially at 2:00 AM, since it relies on pressure sensors to switch the light. Not enough cars, and you wait and wait and wait. I don't remember that night how long we had to wait, but I do know that we turned onto 67th Avenue and made our way north, toward Thomas Road. Like I said, it was only half-mile from Encanto to Thomas, and I know that I had managed to sputter out something along the lines of "I'm like Robert!" to Tom long before we hit the light at Thomas.
And he took it well. And we talked. And it was nice. I still had to find a way to break my earring to my parents--mom went ballistic; my dad picked me up at my job that night along with my brother with a simple "so how's your ear?" and that's all he ever said, to his credit--but one of the hardest things I've ever had to do was now done.
The road was hardly level and easy from there on. It was treacherous, and sometimes I was navigating blindly, but that was night I took the first step. And it was good.
Glenda would come out her first year of college. She'd kill herself our senior year. I still miss her.
I saw Robert a few more times but once Glenda died, the link to our friendship was severed.
Tom continued to be my friend to lesser and greater degrees, off and on, for 22 more years. He would come out when we were 19, and I was in college and he was in the Army. I just recently cut him loose as a friend because he still thinks I'm that scared 17 year-old boy. I probably should've realized that his friendship had no value when he fucked a guy I had been dating two nights after he dumped me. Oh, should I mention that Tom and I were roommates at the time? And that I was in the same room at the time of the fucking? Probably, huh.
But the journey has been worth it. We learn and learn and learn, if we're lucky. And it's worth it. I don't want to be anyone else but me.