Coming Out Is An Every Day Occurrence
Back in the Closet
Newly married and afraid again
During the wedding ceremony, I realized there was a problem. I had been out for over twenty years, but I suddenly wanted to hide. I didn’t want anyone to find out I was gay or that I was marrying a man. This was particularly distressing because wasn’t this a time when I should have been celebrating my union with the man I loved?
I had been responsible for making arrangements for the photographer. When I emailed him, I asked him if he was comfortable taking photos for a same-sex marriage. Still fresh in my mind was the court ruling upholding the baker’s right to refuse to make a wedding cake for a gay wedding, and I didn’t want the photographer to balk once he met us at the courthouse. I had visions of him storming out once he saw that we were about to commit a sin against God.
Pete and I got married at the courthouse in a ceremony where the only other attendees were the officiant and the photographer. We wanted a small wedding, with none of the trappings, no reception, no gifts and no cake. Both of my parents are dead, and I don’t have a close relationship to my sibling, who lives hundreds of miles away anyway. Pete’s father is also dead, and his mother has dementia and has difficulty getting around, so she wouldn’t be able to attend. He has a brother who lived locally, but they had a distant relationship, which was something that bothered me a little. I was hoping to develop a relationship with my in-laws, but Pete wasn’t close to them, so that put a damper on it. Pete didn’t want to invite him and didn’t tell him about the marriage until the night before the wedding, texting him a single sentence saying he was going to marry me the next day.
During the ceremony, the officiant instructed us to hold hands and face each other during our vows. I was immediately uncomfortable. Even though there were only two other people in the room, this made me feel uneasy. I don’t think Pete and I have ever held hands, and the only time we maintained eye contact for more than a few seconds was when we were trying to make the other crack up, which was frequently.
I had to bite the inside of my cheek to prevent myself from laughing out loud. This made it difficult to concentrate on our vows (civil ceremony, no custom-made vows, thank you). The officiant said something about marriage being a serious commitment that shouldn’t be entered into lightly, and I felt a pang. Was I making a mistake? Why hadn’t we held hands before? Why do we say “I love you” so infrequently? Why did we wait twenty years after becoming friends to get married? Were these signs we shouldn’t be getting married at all? Oh well, too late now.
My fears about what the officiant would think about marrying two men were allayed somewhat when she said, “Do you take this person to be your lawfully wedded spouse?” She said “person” instead of “man” and “spouse” instead of “husband.” She wasn’t making assumptions about gender.
After the ceremony, the photographer took us outside to get some action shots of us walking around the courthouse in a nice area with greenery. He instructed us to hold hands as we walked. I immediately became more aware of the people around us. There was a woman sitting on a bench facing us. There were people behind us. All of them would see two men holding hands and, as the photographer instructed, maintaining each other’s gaze.
I felt inhibited, but it went deeper than that. I felt afraid. I was afraid someone would hurl some hurtful comment our way. I was afraid we would be attacked by an outraged person. I was afraid of physical violence.
This was a fear deeply ingrained in me from growing up in the 1970s and early 1980s in the Deep South, where being gay was tantamount to being an affront to everything everyone held sacred, including religious beliefs. The caution one needed to take against outing oneself or being outed was based on a real necessity, not something imagined. My existence as a biracial person was bad enough without this complication.
The incidence of being called “faggot” (and “chink”) and being bullied physically ramped up exponentially when my family moved from the northeast to the South. The other students, of course, were correct. I can only imagine that I gave off a vibe or was too effeminate or held my schoolbooks toward my body instead of down at the side. Holding your books that way was enough to ruin any boy’s reputation, as was crossing your legs, which I did far too often, unconsciously. I tried to be vigilant about that sort of thing, but I didn’t succeed enough to pass.
My body was tense throughout the photo shoot, and I felt my face freeze into a distorted mask. These pictures would not look good. But there were a couple of times I burst out laughing at the tension of having to walk, talk and maintain Pete’s gaze. Maybe those moments would look OK.
We live in a blue state, so my fears, for the most part anyway, weren’t rooted in anything rational. No one in the park seemed to care that there were two men holding hands, flaunting their otherness. But I didn’t seem able to take that in.
We went home afterward, and a couple of hours later we left for a five-star hotel. Our room had a beautiful view of the water that captivated me, and I stared at it, feeling a little more peaceful inside. But when we went to the pool, I became vigilant about the people around us that saw us walking and sitting together. It was pretty obvious we were a couple, I thought. A gay couple. But no one gave us a second glance, and the servers were very attentive. Still, I imagined they were grumbling about having to serve two fags.
I went through all of this without realizing what was going on in my head. The second day we were there, perhaps spurred on by meditating at the beautiful view, the penny dropped. Oh my God. I felt so ashamed that I was thinking these things, I didn’t tell Pete right away. But I finally told him and asked him if he was feeling the same way. He wasn’t. He didn’t believe that anyone cared whether we were a gay couple, and even if they did, so what? He didn’t feel self-conscious with me, like I felt with him.
I was going to have to get over this. It wasn’t fair to Pete or me and wasn’t even rational. Not anymore, not here, not now. So, I started making an effort to be conscious of these feelings and thoughts in real time and talking back to them with something more reasonable. I even deliberately outed us. At a restaurant, the server was listing the items on special and wedding soup was one of them. I said “How appropriate. We just got married.”
I was proud of myself. It wasn’t easy but I maintained my internal composure. I carefully watched the waiter’s expression, and he didn’t seem to care. Pete said he was proud of me, adding “I know how hard that must have been for you.”
It is hard work to get rid of deeply ingrained fears, as well as internalized homophobia, even toward oneself. It’s difficult to love yourself when, from the time you were a child, others rejected you. But at least I now know what I need to do. And having the unconditional support of the man I love helps a lot.
