My Rainbow Flags (Part 1)
Signs I should have known I was gay before I came out
This is Part 1 of 2 as a follow up to the rainbow flags mentioned in My Story of Pride
When I tell people that I just recently came out of the closet at 28-years-old, the most common initial responses are usually along the lines of: “How did you not know?” or “What took you so long?”
While I still don't have a perfect response crafted three years in, I have spent some time looking back on my childhood, scanning for clues that might help me explain things.
What I’ve found during this exercise, I find quite hilarious. (If I can’t laugh about it all at this point, what am I even doing?)
To no one’s surprise, planted throughout my childhood are what I refer to endearingly as rainbow flags — signs that I should have known I was gay long before the age of 28.
While I don't necessarily think that liking or doing any one thing means someone is gay, I do think that in my case, all of the rainbow flags combine to make a pretty convincing argument.
🏳️🌈 I was “friends with too many girls”
Throughout my entire life, my girlfriends (friends who are girls, in case that was somehow unclear) have always always always been my safe space.
While in the closet, I always felt different for having as many close girlfriends as I did because it was way more than what most straight boys had. To add to the confusion, I wasn’t trying to hook up with any of them, which lead to a closeted person’s worst nightmare: rumors questioning my sexuality (my heart just started racing as I typed that… TRIGGERED).
One time in high school I used the sheer volume of girlfriends I had as a shield to protect myself from having to engage with a girl who was interested in me. When I finally ran out of excuses as to why it wasn’t going to work out, I had a friend relay a message from me — and I quote — “I’m friends with too many girls and she’d probably get jealous.”
Lmaooooooooo.
Yes, that’s definitely why it won’t work out…
Once I started making more gay friends, my lopsided girlie-to-guy friend ratio made more sense. I felt validated to find out that lots of gays grew up with a bunch of super close girlies. I imagine it’s because girls are oftentimes the people we feel most comfortable being our authentic selves around, and after spending so much of your life sporting a straight facade to fit in, this feeling of a safe space is invaluable and straight up relieving.
🏳️🌈 I was a Barbie girl
All of my neighbor friends growing up were girls my age and we played together all the time — including playing with their Barbies. (I remember having a particular fondness for Olympic Gymnast Barbie because she was so stinking bendy and I was obsessed with the 1996 US female gymnastics team, which is probably its own rainbow flag.)
It was cute for a while, but after a certain age, a boy playing with Barbies started to raise some eyebrows amongst the adults. I certainly have not forgotten a few of the comments made about the longevity of my Barbie playing career. Add those to the list of internalized side comments emblazoned into my memory for life!
Besides my affinity for Barbies, other “non-traditional” toys I dabbled in as a youth include: a Polly Pocket set that I remember feeling particularly adamant that my mom purchase for me in second grade, those stuffed Puppy Surprise bb’s, and those spinny flying fairies that probably got recalled for poking eyeballs out — you know the ones.
🏳️🌈 I was always deeply involved in school
One of the most enjoyable parts about coming out has been learning about rainbow flags in my life that I didn’t even know were rainbow flags until I started to make more gay friends(and started spending a toxic amount of time on Gay Twitter).
Apparently, gays have a penchant for being overly involved in things during school, like holding positions in Student Council and for being a teacher’s pet — especially when it comes to their English teachers (this is supposedly a real thing!).
Student Council was a ridiculously huge part of my life throughout high school (no tea hits quite like some piping hot StuCo tea 🍵) and female English teachers were always my favorite (if any of my former English teachers happen to be reading this, please forgive my grammar!).
✅ and ✅
🏳️🌈 Dating women gave me extreme anxiety
The concept of dating was undoubtedly the bane of my existence for the majority of my twenties.
Everything about it sucked:
- The social pressure to be dating — especially as I got older and everyone else was getting engaged
- The incessant questions from all angles asking if I was dating — or worse — asking why I wasn’t
- The stress from the actual dates themselves
- Not understanding why it never worked out
I tried really damn hard to make dating women work, but it never did and it unsurprisingly caused me a lot of stress.
Dating girls kind of went like this:
- Match with a super sweet girl on Bumble who seemed like a fun time
- Go on a few dates
- Go as long as I could without having to sleep with her, and then once it became weird that we hadn’t slept together yet, I would come up with some outrageous excuse in my head as to why this will never work out
- Pray pray pray that she would break things off or ghost me
- Be pissed at myself for letting this happening yet AGAIN
- Repeat
The frustrating part was that most of the girls I met were actually super fucking cool. I think I gravitated towards girls that I wanted to be my girlies rather than my girlfriends. Unfortunately, after dealing with my childish antics and avoidance strategies, they were understandably not interested in that.
I remember vividly how anxious I would be the day of a date. I’d tell myself it must just be those over-romanticized ~butterflies~ that TV and movies always talked about that you feel when you’re excited about someone.
Now, having a few years of dating experience with the gender that I am meant to be dating, I can confirm that 1) it was absolutely existential dread mixed with a heaping scoop of crippling anxiety and 2) I actually really enjoy dating (most of the time).
🏳️🌈 My celebrity crushes
One of the many scripted responses I concocted in an effort to convince others (and myself at times) that I was totally straight, bro, was my first celebrity crush.
From fifth grade, I had been telling people that my first celebrity crush was Halle Berry as Storm in X-Men. Turns out, instead of wanting to be with her, I just wanted to be her.
While I would never in a million years have classified these guys as crushes at the time, I can look back and say with full confidence that the guys below made me feel some type of way.
My childhood celebrity crush mood board:
Last but certainly not least, the movie moment that is responsible for more gay millennial sexual awakenings per capita than any other…
🏳️🌈 I’ve always been obsessed with the X-Men
The X-Men, which I’ve been obsessed with since I was single-digits-years old, are known to be deeply embraced by queer audiences for parallels between the mutant and queer experience.
It actually makes so much sense that queer people would be drawn to stories about teens being shunned from society, and even from their own families, because of how they were born. That’s an extremely relatable experience for much of the queer community — and any other community that is considered as “other” for that matter.
Vulture did a great job summarizing in this article about the queer subtext of the X-Men, but I’ll share one section I found to be especially moving.
In 1994, shortly after her 19-year-old brother died of leukemia, a young woman wrote a letter addressed to “the creators of the X-Men comics.” In it, she recounted how days before his death her brother had come out to her, confessing how deeply unhappy he was. His sexual orientation, he said, was also why he had always liked the X-Men. “He hated himself because he was gay,” she wrote. “He was a mutant.” He saw himself in Beast, in Rogue, in Iceman.
I cannot truthfully claim that the mutant/queer parallels were what drew me to the X-Men in the first place, but damn, it does track…
🏳️🌈 There are more… Part 2 below
What were your rainbow flags? Leave a comment or find me on Instagram and let me know (@ michaelwingsit)!
