Okay, okay. I said in a comment earlier that I'd decided to ditch my own coming out story because it had gotten too convoluted and I figured I would just latch on and comment on what others had written.
But I discovered that I just couldn't let it go. What I find interesting is that none of the stories I've read here (and I admit that I might have missed some; I can't sit at my computer the ENTIRE day, goddammit!), none of them, it seems, were written by people my age. Now, there's nothing at all wrong with hearing from younger people.
So, even though it's after midnight and National Coming Out Day is over, except in Alaska and Hawaii, let me begin, after the break.
I have to say upfront that, in some ways I truly had it easy. I was born and raised in New York; both of my parents and virtually all of my relatives, going back as far as I can trace them, have been politically progressive. While I am 100% Jewish, my religious upbringing was quite casual. My mom's family was fairly assimilated; my dad's upbringing was far more along the lines of Orthodox (but not Chasidic) Judaism, but he rejected the rigidity of his parents. Still, it wasn't until my mid-teens that either of my parents would drive a car or even ride the bus or the subway on the High Holy Days, or at least on Yom Kippur.
I was very much an introvert when I was a kid; my parents were quite reticent when it came to discussing matters sexual, and in some ways I grew up more than typically naive about sex. Even though I was constantly attracted to boys throughout my teens, I had no clue what this might mean. I assumed that I would meet a nice woman, fall in love, get married and raise a family, just like my parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles and all of my neighbors had done. How this was to be accomplished without dating, I really had no idea but I assumed it would happen somehow, at the right time.
I turned 18 a month before Stonewall, which took place right after the end of my freshman year at SUNY Stony Brook. I was a reasonably active participant in the anti-war movement throughout my undergraduate years. One day during the spring of my freshman year, my picture appeared on the front page of Newsday as the result of a sit-in at the campus library, which at the time was also the campus administration building. I called my folks to let them know what to expect, not because I feared their opposition to my politics but because they weren't always good at handling surprises.
I was an avid reader of the Village Voice at the time; and as a result I was well aware of the Stonewall riots. (The very famous picture that appeared on the front page of the July 3, 1969 issue particularly caught my attention. You can find the picture here; scroll halfway down. The fellow in the white shirt on the right? He was my roommate in 1977 and 1978.) At the time, however, I was an 18-year old virgin, who'd been on exactly one date with a girl in his life and who had no clue that he was gay.
Returning to college for my sophomore year, I discovered that one of the first gay student organizations in the country had been formed right there on my very own campus. Interesting to me because it seemed very progressive but, other than that, what did it have to do with me? If you'd asked me at the time, my response would have been "I dunno. It's cool I guess." I was reasonably bright; articulate I was not. By this time I'd become quite the stoner and acid head. Towards the end of that school year, I acquired my first (and only) girlfriend. I lost my virginity. Which was nice of course...but something was somehow missing even though I was now a full participant in the world of sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll.
Time went on; perhaps I grew up just a bit and perhaps the consumption of large quantities of LSD began to break down the wall between me and my own feelings. I found I had friends who were gay. Not a problem; they weren't me after all. Of course on top of my sexual attractions was a shitload of guilt and shame, along with partially digested verses of Leviticus. I had little religious instruction; in fact my family library did not include a bible. But somehow I'd managed to pick up just enough through osmosis to torture myself with. And anyway, I had a girlfriend; what was I supposed to do? But three things occurred during the final year of my five-year-long undergraduate existence.
One Saturday morning while taking the GRE's for the first time, I had a complete emotional meltdown. I turned in my test book (uncompleted), went back to my dorm room, grabbed a notebook and admitted to myself, on paper, that I was probably gay.
Later that same spring, the very first gay dance was held on campus. I recall vividly standing outside with my girlfriend, talking to the bouncer, who was a friend of ours, and wishing I had the nerve to walk through the door.
Shortly thereafter I entered therapy with school psych services and began working with a terrific therapist. After a few weeks I felt safe enough so that in my next session, I'd confide my little secret to her. Instead, when I walked into her office, she announced that she was leaving for a new job and that I'd be switched to another counselor starting the following week. Greatly disappointed, I sat on my discomfort for the remainder of the term, which was my final semester.
Graduation came along. I was set to go do graduate work in philosophy at the New School ("A 14th Street education at Fifth Avenue prices" was the phrase being thrown around widely on the graduate campus at that time). My girlfriend was admitted to the Ph.D. program in philosophy at Johns Hopkins with a scholarship. I found a part time job (fulltime in the summer) as a cab driver. One night, I was propositioned by a passenger. This was hardly the first time such a thing had happened, but each of the previous times I'd been hit on by someone who was quite sloppily drunk and otherwise undesirable. This time was different. The fellow was quite sober and quite handsome; he was probably a couple of years older than me. He invited me to come up to his apartment and I figured "What the hell, may as well find out if I'm really into this after all the anguish." I was. The following day I called my girlfriend and told her I was gay. Her response? "Oh, thought you might be." This was in 1973; she and I are still friends.
This really ought to have been the end of the story; after all, who had I been fooling? And in some ways it was; it certainly was the beginning of the end of my life in the closet. I gradually began to tell other friends--first my female friends and later my senior year college roommate. I told my sister. I had a conversation with my gastroenterologist (I'd been diagnosed with ulcerative colitis when I was 16 and he was the doctor I saw most often.) All were quite supportive; several were not surprised and not a few felt that it wasn't anything to be terribly worked up about. I stayed in my relationship with my girlfriend for a couple more years though.
The next phase of coming out didn't take place for me until the day after Gay Pride Day 1975. I was in summer school and of course was conveniently studying in the West Village. It was a warm night; I'd somewhere along the line been told that if you were gay and were looking for sex, the park at the end of Christopher Street was a good place to go. So, following my class on Spinoza, I picked up my books and headed west. I found what I was looking for, though I came to the unconclusion, as a result, that I'd fallen in love. The concept of casual sex was not one I had a great deal of familiarity with at the time. In fact, on the way to my apartment, the guy who picked me up had felt the need to explain to me what cruising was, how it was done, the opportunities for anonymous encounters in subway bathrooms, and a number of other things, all of which were entirely news to me.
From then on I found myself physically satisfied but emotionally disappointed a good deal of the time. I acquired my first STD. I spent a good deal of time in bars--something I'd rarely done prior to entering more or less fully into gay life--and elsewhere, looking for love in pretty much all the wrong places. Nonetheless, many cool things happened. I began to develop a circle of gay friends. I had my first reasonably enjoyable and enduring relationship with a man (it lasted eight months). I went to my first pride parade in 1977 and, in the middle of Central Park I ran into the guy who'd been editor of my school newspaper during my senior year. I began to volunteer at New York's Gay Switchboard in late 1979. All of my remaining friends from college knew I was gay, as did my sister and one relative, an actress who I figured she would be a good person to experiment on). But my sexual orientation was still a secret to my parents and my one living grandparent. And at work (I'd quit grad school in 1976 and began my career in federal civil service the following year), I simply did not discuss my private life, even though I found out fairly quickly who my gay co-workers were, and discreetly cultivated friendships with some of them.
I moved to Washington DC in the fall of 1980. I haltingly developed my first truly long-term relationship with a man shortly afterward. Sometime in early December I picked up a guy at a Dupont Circle bar; a couple of weeks later I came down with what I thought was a very bad case of the flu. It wasn't the flu, but of course I didn't know that at the time. The following fall I began to hear rumors of strange illnesses that seemed to affect gay men, including the cousin of one of my closest New York friends.
I bought a one-bedroom condo in the Adams Morgan neighborhood of DC and moved into it with my boyfriend. My parents came to visit us, though they stayed at a motel. They asked no questions as to how I was sharing such a cozy place with a "roommate."
I began to attend high holiday services at Congregation Beit Mishpachah, DC's LGBT synagogue. In the spring of 1983, my boyfriend and I attended the first AIDS candlelight vigil in front of the Capitol.
In June of 1985 I tested positive for HIV. Earlier that spring, a friend of mine told me that PFLAG was holding workshops for gay men and lesbians who were not yet out to their parents. I haven't seen that guy in many, many years but I owe him an enormous debt of gratitude. After testing positive I decided to put what I'd learned into action. I wrote my parents a letter. I no longer have a copy of it and, looking back on it, I doubt it was all that great a letter. The fact is I really ought to have come out to them in person. The upshot was: they told me that, while the letter had upset them briefly, they'd both known--or pretty much assumed--that I was gay. They were afraid to ask me about it because, if they'd been mistaken, it might have been embarrassing for them and for me. Again--who was I fooling, who was I protecting and who was I hurting?
My last living grandparent, my maternal grandmother who I absolutely adored, had passed away a few months earlier. To this day I very much regret not having had the courage to let her know who I was.
The day before my 35th birthday, I attended the first memorial service for a friend who'd died from AIDS. I ended my relationship the early part of 1986 and moved to San Francisco that fall. The following spring I began a new relationship with a truly wonderful man. My partner Mario and I entered a domestic partnership on Valentine's Day of 1991, the first day it was possible to do so.
Now here's the saddest thing of all to me: there I was, living in the city where it was more feasible than perhaps anywhere else in the world to be completely out and open as a gay man. There were quite a few out gay folks in my office. While I befriended most of them, to my other coworkers...I was a mystery, at least in my own mind. They knew this guy Mario would call regularly since there were only four phone lines in my department of twenty or so employees. What would it take for me to finally stop hiding myself from those around me?
Sadly what it took was Mario's illness and subsequent death from AIDS in 1992. During the last few months he was alive, with his health declining and with me becoming increasingly stressed out, taking time off from work when he was in the hospital, it finally became more trouble than it was worth to maintain even the slightest pretense of secrecy around the fact that I was in a relationship with another man. And that was pretty much that. I didn't really make an announcement; I simply started opening my mouth. Basically, nobody cared if I was gay; something that was abundantly clear to all but the utterly clueless. And if there were one or two who did care, they knew better than to say so because they were greatly outnumbered. While I don't necessarily have great occasion to discuss my personal life with people I engage with professionally, if the subject of relationships comes up, I talk about my partner, and I make sure I include John's name so there's no doubt. It only took me from 1971 to 1992 to be completely out in day-to-day life, and it only took another few years to finally get to where I could discuss the details of my life, as appropriate, with anyone who happened to ask me. Still, it's not as though I'm unaware of what I'm doing each time I choose to make that disclosure, and there's always just a bit of fear, a moment when I hold my breath while I see what the other person's reaction will be (if any).
The closet is truly an insidious thing because, for most of us, while it begins as a very understandable defense against homophobia, it continues to endure in many ways long after there's any need for it. Vestiges of the closet can be found even where we think we've completely destroyed it. If I treat my being gay as something that needs to be hidden, as something to be even a little bit ashamed of, it gives power to the homophobia of others. If I am comfortable being who I am, the power of homophobia is diminished.