coming out stories:
1. I am asked if I am gay and told that if I was that’d be ok. It’s not the first time I’ve had this conversation, but it is among the first times I’ve felt odd about the presupposition that I should expect that it would not be ok. I am neither calmed nor comforted by the tacit support. I am not left feeling as though any answer would be satisfactory, except distinct shame and disgust at the accusation. Faced with the prospect of estrangement, backed into a corner, I harden and bite back.
My response is as unkind to other queers as it is untrue.
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My response is as unkind to other queers as it is untrue.
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2. Sometimes coming out feels like a long, one-way conversation between you and a thousand ghosts. The more you do it the more you wonder “have I told this person yet? Am I repeating myself again? Am I annoying? What’s the big deal?”
It can also feel like a watershed, moving together in concert toward the bays of our own becoming. We carve, through repetition, our own creeks, streams, and rivers. We become, through drought and desert, canyons of tired stone.
It can also feel like a watershed, moving together in concert toward the bays of our own becoming. We carve, through repetition, our own creeks, streams, and rivers. We become, through drought and desert, canyons of tired stone.
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3. I am asked if I am queer and I shutter. There is no presupposition but watered-down vodka and lime juice, a bunch of worn-out string lights, and a dorm room floor prone to collapse. My friend, the lesbian, knows not what is pouncing through my head. The sudden inversion of a question I’ve been asked before. I lie and I know it, the “no” slipping through my teeth as I mourn its passing. There is clarity in deceit, and I am grateful to have found it.
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4. There are plenty of faggots in nature. And not just the slipper snails, the polyps, or the seahorses. I’ll call the osprey queer as his sharp talons tear into the gills of a bluefish. I’ll call the deer dykes as they shed their antlers for the winter. What is fucked up in nature is ours to determine. As I guide my guests through stands of phrag I’ll remind them, there’s a faggot here too.
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5. Coming out sometimes feels automated. As though the admission is robotic, preprogrammed, a formality in the strictest sense. I suppose that it sometimes is, in the sense that sometimes it’s a chore. Sometimes I dissociate as my mind repeats a script often repeated. I am used to this mode.
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6. There is some power in refusal, you must remind yourself when you find that you are wary of the demands of identification. Language is ripe for abuse, and there is dignity in refusing its allure. There will be days when you find that language is a boundary, the border between yourself and the clear white canvas of an open Google doc. You’ll come out when you’re ready to speak it, and no sooner.
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7. Sometimes you’ve gotta tell yourself a lot of things before you tell yourself the thing you’ve gotta hear. You’ve gotta run around in circles like a tail-chasing dog, your own shit stuck to your asshairs. You’ve gotta let them trim it sometimes, when it is unmanageable, and be more careful when you are chewing on strings. You’ve gotta come out to yourself, again and again, more than anyone else. Best friends are good company, regardless of gender. Find them, and let them pet you when you are ready.
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8. My tits have been sore and this is a good thing. A little joy reflecting upon the tips of small waves produced within our ferries wake. This morning the sun glistens upon them, little sparkles like the ones a friend casts upon my misty cheeks in the hot afternoon sun of a New York City Pride. My nipples are warm and sensitive, as the estradiol flushes them red with brand-new capillaries. I watch my face glisten upon the bay and I think to myself “This. This is where you were heading.”
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