40 Years Out of the Closet, I Was Scared of the Plumber
Happy Pride. We’re in a New World. And Sometimes, it Doesn’t Feel Safe.
The other day I made a decision that felt icky. And that I should apologize to my wife. I felt like I had betrayed her. And that maybe I was getting paranoid.
Because when the plumber gave me an eyebrow-raising on-the-spot estimate of how much it would cost to rip up the laundry room floor, lay pipe, and cement it over again, I didn’t say, “I need to check with my wife before we commit.” Nope. I said, “I need to check with the other owner of the house.”
I felt ashamed. But. I. Was. Scared. Because it could go so many different ways simply by using a pronoun or a gender-specific title. Because I pass. I don’t fit any stereotype. I’m just a middle-aged mom who wears lipstick and always makes sure her usually long hair looks nice before leaving the house.
Even though our experiences over the years had been almost exclusively positive when we were out by happenstance or being loud and proud this felt different. Sure, there was that one zealot who said we were going to hell and dragging our children with us when we were waiting to get our marriage license, but he was the exception.
An eon ago, when our first kid was born, we agreed that we would never be in the closet again. That it sent the wrong message to our child. About us. About him. About our family unit.
And back then when our toddler announced to the grocery store line that he had two moms, we were a novelty. First two-mom birth at the hospital. Second same-sex adoption in the state of Washington. By the time our daughter arrived, we were a thing. And when our younger son arrived, he was both of ours at birth, no home study or adoption process needed. No big whoop.
Other than to us. We thought he was a big whoop. Still do.
So, after all that history, it should have been a no-brainer to say “my wife” to the plumber.
When I confessed my cowardice to the aforementioned wife, she totally got it. No shame. No blame. She said it felt risky to be out now. That you never knew what people would do. That she would have done the same.
In our own home.
In 1986, we were afraid of Molotov cocktails being thrown through windows at gay bars. We were afraid of being gay-bashed. Attacks on trans folk, BIPOC queers, and gender non-conforming gays were commonplace. The fears remain, even though we show up on the cover of mainstream magazines and have bigtime famous folk thanking their same-sex spouses on the red-carpet.
And now we’re afraid of mass shootings, shootings in schools, shootings on subways, and plumbers whipping out a gun after coming out in the laundry room of our own home. Or coming back later to burn down the house.
Sound paranoid? Maybe, but there are a lot of angry people out there. People who carry concealed weapons. People who have uncivil behavior encouraged by world leaders. People emboldened by laws diminishing our rights, making us less-than and justified targets.
Usually, people surprise you in the best ways. You throw out a pronoun, the word “wife”, and what you get are stories about their lesbian sisters, their gay sons, their outrage that being queer is even an issue, their own coming out stories.
But that day, standing in our basement laundry room with three guys I didn’t know, fear made me hesitate to come out. I could call it caution. I could call it privacy (though would a straight person avoid the pronoun for their spouse? I don’t think so, not matter how private). But it was fear.
I don’t know that I would do it again, tiptoe around a pronoun, but then again, if I felt that frisson of fear, perhaps I should. Maybe my instincts were good. Maybe subconsciously I knew this one situation was different than with all the other contractors who’d recently updated our copper pipes, updated our electrical panel, updated our dying deck.
I guess I won’t ever know. Perhaps because of that decision on that day, I have the choice to make a different decision another. And isn’t that a sad state of affairs.
Happy Pride. May it be safe and joyous and empowering and make headlines that make us smile. May it be free of fear.
