Whenever I commit to some goal, come hell or high water I usually see it through to the bitter end. I come by that honestly, growing up as the “type A” oldest child in the American Midwest, where dogged hard work is valued over almost any other virtue. And so it was that in middle school I decided that I was going to get Perfect Church Attendance for the year. In high school I was going to get first chair trombone in the band. In college I was going to get that 4.0. At my first job I was going to get that promotion. And most crucially, throughout that entire time I was absolutely definitely going to be straight.
I was probably ten or eleven years old when I first became vaguely aware that there might be something different about me. I remember being a little too curious, a little too nervous, changing in the locker room for PE class in my Lutheran middle school. Talking about it was out of the question of course, but probably every angsty adolescent boy had that experience right? I had no idea what “gay” was at that time, other than perhaps some condition associated with the AIDS crisis and one of those sins the Church was definitely not cool with.
As I got a little older and the Internet embraced its true potential as an adult content distribution system, almost by accident I began to explore my curiosities a bit further, in shameful solitude. Twice I was almost caught. The consequences of being discovered were unfathomably horrifying, so I committed to never having the risk of being discovered again. If I had been smarter at the time I could have invented “Incognito Mode” a decade before Google popularized it, Netscape Navigator would have won the Browser Wars, and I’d be retired on some island in the South Pacific…
I gradually became aware that my interests and fantasies were definitely not normal straight behavior, and yet the thought that I could be gay never crossed my mind. I was so threatened and terrified by that possibility and all its sinister implications that I banished any consideration from my mind completely. Flamboyant gay stereotypes portrayed in the media only further confused me. If that was what “gay” was then I was most definitely not gay.
Throughout high school my feelings only grew stronger, fueled by hormones and time. But years prior I had committed to an increasingly desperate struggle to not be gay. I would lament that I just didn’t “get” girls, how to safely know whether they were interested, when and how to advance around the “bases”. I was a computer geek after all, I needed an algorithm or rule book to explain these things.
I threw myself into every extracurricular activity imaginable, or at least the ones that didn’t require much hand-eye coordination. After a few years of chronic debilitating illnesses my Mom was finally able to identify the culprit: stress. With her help I got better at managing it, but I never took my foot off the gas pedal. And I had to be careful because there were a lot of obstacles to dodge on that road. Fifteen years later I still vividly remember making a comment to a friend in the math hall after third period, and his reply was “dude, that’s a really gay thing to say”. His tone left little doubt that this was a Very Bad Thing, so to my list of extracurriculars I added constant vigilance: constantly vigilant of saying or doing anything that might be construed as too gay.
The cycle repeated in college, only with more excuses and more booze. On one of the only dates I went on, a girl invited me back to her dorm room after dinner. I politely declined, on account of some homework that needed doing. A year later I finally learned what that invitation implied and how comically clueless my truthful-yet-callous declination had been. I like to think I’m generally an intelligent and rational person, but never once did I stop to reflect on events like this and how they could relate to my furtive, deplorable, but definitely not gay fantasies. There was no time for girls in college anyway, I’d worry about that once I graduated.
But when I graduated the cycle continued, in a new state with a new set of goals to chase. I clung to the delusion that I’d wake up one day with a nice wife, knowing full well that such a miracle could only result in heartbreak. Yet this still seemed better than the alternative of a lifetime of loneliness. My parents were getting older, my friends were settling down. As each half-hearted attempt at securing a girlfriend inevitably failed, I slowly became resigned to my fate of dying alone. I moved across the country to San Francisco: for a bigger paycheck, better career prospects, another distraction.
To the outside world I appeared to be a generally happy and successful person with a good life. I had a wonderful, loving family, great friends, and a career I loved in a lucrative industry. The truth is that I was increasingly miserable with every passing day. I had this constant, gnawing anxiety, this growing desperation, in the back of my mind. I was convinced that I was irreparably broken, and I was running out of places to hide.
Finally life dealt me a hand that I couldn’t bluff my way out of. I suffered my first major professional setback. My best friends moved across the country. I was an insatiable extrovert turning into a hermit. And years of tearful prayers that I would wake up straight one day remained unanswered. I became truly depressed, barely able to get out of bed some mornings. I developed an eating disorder, gorging myself on the weekends in the hopes of becoming unattractive, then starving myself during the week to try to repair the damage.
And for the first time in my life I actually became aware of what I was doing and why I was doing it, and yet I couldn’t stop it. I tried to see a therapist, but I was hardly able to even vaguely allude to my true concern. The best I managed to say was that my eyes would sometimes “drift” towards men. The poor therapist never had a chance. He suggested “experimenting” in the Castro (San Francisco’s famously gay neighborhood), which I honestly agreed to as a very practical course of action even while knowing I wouldn’t follow through with it.
The Christmas holidays offered a respite as I traveled back to Michigan to see family and friends. On the flight I watched a movie that turned out to be a drama about a teenage man who hooks up with older men, all the while telling himself that he’s straight and living in fear of being discovered. I began to see in this troubled protagonist a struggle that I somehow thought was uniquely mine, across the whole entirety of the human experience. His struggle with accepting himself, his fear of how others would react, the fact that he was apparently just a normal teenager who happened to also be gay and not some outrageous caricature of something I didn’t understand.
My life was narrowing, dimming, and I was afraid to see how much more darkness the new year might bring. I decided to give therapy another shot, and found a therapist who specialized in LGBT counseling. This time, with some skillful coaxing, I was finally able to stammer the words “I’m afraid I might be gay” amidst sobs of rage and grief repressed for decades. I desperately didn’t want it to be the case. Life would be so much easier, so much better, if I could only be straight! But I had finally begun to acknowledge the mere possibility of what I had long known deep within to be true.
How would I proceed if I did turn out to be gay? Would I submit to the Church’s prescription that I live a life of chastity, forever struggling against my sinful urges? I seriously considered that — for a day or two — but no, I cannot believe in a god who created such richness in life only to cruelly deny it to some. What would people think if I told them I was gay? Could I avoid telling people? How could I be 100% certain that I was?
To answer these questions I did what any good engineer would do: I studied. I studied the biology of homosexuality. I studied the history of the LGBT movement. I studied coming out stories, some of which (to my great shock) were very similar to my own. I studied gay people, their behaviors and personalities and appearances, and finally woke up to the true evils of stereotypes. I came up with a very prudent, conservative plan. I would experiment. And maybe, after six months or so, after I was absolutely certain that I was gay and that there was nothing I could do about it, maybe then I could take that massive risk of coming out to my family.
But a dam inside me had burst. I couldn’t bare the thought of actively deceiving my loved ones, I couldn’t risk them finding out through the grapevine. I needed to talk to someone, to ask for forgiveness, to offer some explanation, to tell my story. Four days after seeing that therapist I decided to jump off what felt like Mt. Everest and come out to my best friend and cousin, who lived nearby. I was absolutely terrified. There would be no going back after that, and I was convinced that everyone would think differently of me, think less of me, from then on.
In the midst of what I later recognized to be a mental breakdown, I took that leap of faith. At one point as I was stumbling through my melodramatic monologue my cousin exclaimed “you’re still the same Keith!” But that is the great tragedy of being as deeply closeted as I was. You become so incredibly homophobic towards yourself, so convinced that homosexuality is this monstrous, twisted, violation against nature, that you believe you’d lose everything if anyone found out. You’ve been presenting a lie to everyone you love for a lifetime. Why shouldn’t others hate you when you hated yourself so?
20 years after I first subconsciously rejected the possibility that I could be gay, I was cautiously emerging from the closet at the ripe old age of 32. My cousin helped me see what was so obvious to most people in my generation: being gay is no more right or wrong than being straight. Period. End of story. It needn’t define you. Most people won’t think less of you for it. I’m ashamed to say I was shocked to discover this. That I didn’t personally have a problem with other gay people was somehow completely unrelated to whether I thought other people would have a problem with a gay Keith.
But my cousin had given me the courage I needed, and I was finally ready to tear off the band-aid. I obsessed over every detail of my coming out. What the narrative would be. When and where I would come out to whom. After a month that felt like a year, I flew back to Michigan to come out to my parents. They were great. I do not blame them in the slightest for my extended stay in the closet. I never gave any indication that I might be gay, never any hint of my struggle. They did the best they could with the knowledge they had, and I would be far worse off without such loving, supportive, emotionally available parents as mine.
After my parents came the rest of a large, complicated web of family and friends. Nervous phone calls, more flights: it was quite a production. Each time the butterflies in my stomach were a little calmer, the words “I’m gay” came a little easier. And not a single bad reaction. Those closest to me were sad that I had struggled for so long, that they couldn’t have helped. My friends said “thanks for letting me know, I’m happy for you, this changes nothing”. Everyone was extremely supportive, from my lovably curmudgeonly Grandma to my college drinking buddies to my roommate. I am still blown away by people’s capacity to empathize with that which they cannot possibly understand: the unsolicited “I’m proud of you” comment, the unprompted “you’re so brave” text message.
After the dust settled from my Coming Out Roadshow, I became overwhelmed with a whole new panoply of emotions I had never known. I felt a visceral anger towards a homophobic culture that had so long deprived me of the richness of life. An intense grief for all those years lost. A budding anxiety about how to “be gay”. How would I meet people? Would they judge me for coming out so late? How could I ever be attractive enough, confident enough? What “type” of person am I interested in? Do I still want children? But I also felt a monumental relief as I was able to connect with men on a level I had tried and utterly failed at with women for so long.
Writing now with the benefit of hindsight, this story sounds a little incredible, even to me. I wasn’t brutalized by the police as were those trailblazing heroes in the ’70s. I didn’t spend the ’80s attending funerals of friends who didn’t survive the AIDS crisis. I didn’t have to struggle for basic civil rights in the ’90s and ’00s. I wasn’t even seriously afraid of rejection as I came out to my loved ones. So what had I been waiting for?
Despite all the progress that has been made, the world remains a deeply homophobic place. Religions still institutionalize discrimination, and export that to society at large. Prominent public figures endorse gay conversion therapy as not only effective but desirable. Some states continue to reserve marriage, adoption, and even sex itself as strictly heterosexual. The masculine ideal remains impossibly toxic, glorifying aggression and competition while deriding emotional expression or beauty or anything vaguely “feminine”. Adolescents still nervously qualify risky comments with “no homo!”, as if that were a bad thing.
These experiences, bombarding a gay child constantly for years, insidiously metastasize into a profound self-loathing. The child is unequipped to recognize or understand how he’s different, to be critical of the world, to consider that perhaps the world is wrong and his feelings are right. But he learned very quickly from the everyday experiences of homophobia that this oddity within him presented an existential threat, and so he begins a desperate and doomed struggle to fix or compensate or hide in order to be loved, to survive.
Why did I wait so long to come out? Because I hated myself and I didn’t even know it. Because if I came out I would have had to admit to myself and then the world this little quirk, this unspeakable betrayal of masculinity, that I was a man who was attracted to other men. Because I subconsciously decided at a young age that this quirk meant I was intrinsically flawed, but if I worked hard enough I could maybe convince the world — maybe convince myself — that I wasn’t completely worthless, that I deserved to be loved.
I couldn’t come out of the closet until I was able to accept myself, and that wasn’t easy for me. Some people go to their grave — often far too early — unable to accept themselves. There are still places in the world where your physical safety and life itself are at stake. Even in 2018 California I still regularly meet people who experience fear, hatred, rejection — sometimes from their own parents — merely for having been born gay. It breaks my heart.
If you are struggling with your sexuality, know that you aren’t alone. There’s nothing wrong with you, you aren’t sick or a deviant or any less valuable a human being. You are every bit as deserving of love as any other person. The world needs your uniqueness; it is in embracing diversity that humans find our greatest strength. Millions of people have had your struggle before, and millions will in the future until we can rid the world of the scourges of stereotypes, stigmas, and discrimination.
Coming out is so important. All that energy you devote to being closeted is energy not spent living life to its fullest. Read other people’s stories on sites like rucomingout.com, or books like The Velvet Rage. Watch coming of age movies like Love, Simon. If you have someone in your life you can truly trust — like I had my cousin — talk to them. Talk to a therapist. Talk to me. We each have only one life to live, and it is far too precious to waste living in fear. Even if you’re not ready to be out publicly, accept and love yourself for who you are, not who the world tells you you should be. It’s never too late.
But I won’t sugarcoat it: being newly-out is not without its challenges. You may find yourself to be a stranger in your own skin. I’m still trying to figure out how to greet people; apparently the firm handshake I grew up with doesn’t cut it. You may need a refresher course in sexual health. The wondrous world of dating someone you want to date will finally be available to you. But even though it’s infinitely easier to date the gender you’re actually sexually attracted to, dating is still tough. You may discover that you are far less emotionally mature than you thought. You may end up effectively going through puberty again, if you managed to skip it the first time around like I did.
Whatever the challenge is, don’t be embarrassed, don’t try to run from it. It’s not your fault if you grew up in an environment in which homosexuality was such a threat — real or perceived, emotional or physical — that you had to suppress and hide such a big part of your authentic self. Don’t blame yourself. Be kind to yourself. Be patient with yourself. Surround yourself with those who will support you. It’s cliche but it’s true: it does get better.
I’ve now been out for 9 months in arguably the gayest city in the Solar System: San Francisco. My Facebook profile has gotten about 1,000,000% more sparkley, I’ve made some amazing new friends, and — according to my sister at least — suddenly become much more interesting. It took some time to truly understand the meaning, but I’m proud to be gay.
Am I suddenly the happiest I’ve ever been? Honestly: no. For the first time in my adult life though, I have hope that I can be the happiest I’ve ever been. I have hope that my best days lie ahead of me. And hope is something worth committing to.
