HOW OUT IS OUT--PART 2

At various times, I've subscribed to Out magazine and The Advocate. I've read the columns imploring all of us to come out, come out, wherever you are. Easy for a writer at a liberal (gay) magazine to say.

In sports, very few men come out and, if they do, it's typically after retirement. Even gay figure skaters play coy until the lucrative dollars from ice shows dry up. Sure, there are exceptions, but let's remember they are just that: exceptions. There are many (hetero) male-dominated businesses where being openly gay remains taboo, all "not that there's anything wrong with that" banter aside. 

I'm successful in my career. I've climbed as high as I want (and, really, I never planned to get where I'm at now--flukes happen). But there are times when I feel I am suffocating from my job. At work, I can chat about my dog, the Canucks, my run-in with the crazed lady who lifted the cauliflower from my grocery cart (a case where, indeed, size matters). But the boss doesn't have a dating life. (Even if I did in theoretical sense, the boss doesn't have a dating life.) 

It's not solely brought on by others. I perpetuate the notion that I must be the asexual one. Right or wrong, I can't break the established standard. Again, I'm suffocating. A career that I once adored and spoke passionately about for endless hours now seems to drag me down. Am I out? No. At least not enough. 

A career change would be prudent, but also foolish. At thirty, it was easy to deep-six the law career. I moved out of state to resist any temptation to change my mind, but my way of life wasn't tied to my salary. Sure, I took a huge pay cut, but my car was paid for and I didn't mind sleeping on sheets of cardboard on the floor of a rented bedroom. (Friends eventually pitied me and purchased an inflatable camping mattress at Canadian Tire.) I could "afford" to be young and stupid. Yes, Mick Jagger, time was on my side. 

I should try to get in with an arts organization, a charity or a publishing house. Of course, I'd be the middle-aged apprentice. I could take the coffee orders, stuff the envelopes, at least temporarily. I'd be out again. Free. 

But, alas, my mortgage isn't free. And my house won't sell. (It doesn't help that the flooring guy I had in last week spotted a leak in the ceiling. Curse him! Keep your eye on the ground, floor man.) 

At thirty, I thought my career change and country change constituted a premature midlife crisis. But now I can see that this is that moment. It's about feeling stuck. Quicksand stuck. 

I still smile, I continue to be amused by my blunders, but even my laugh has begun to sound more throaty, more muffled in the past year. 

Being out matters. Despite the fact that I cannot identify much that is gay in my current existence, it is part of an identity that I struggled for a dozen years to realize. For now, I have to restart the coming out process that I hated so much all those years ago. 

I swore in the mid-'90s that I was done with the drama. Let them ask. Why was it always on me? But they don't ask. Not my generation anyway. Never will. Despite how much I loved the message of "It Gets Better", I don't think it does when you remain passive. Happiness is about more than being away from the bullies. So for now I am not going to come out at work. I don't see that happening. And I'm not quitting. Can't. 

But I do have friends from prior work settings who still meet me for coffee and still only chat with me about dogs, hockey and large vegetables. I know they know; it's just never spoken. My next trip to Starbucks will be more substantial. Another big reveal awaits!

It's a start...

HOW OUT IS OUT?

I thought I officially came out twenty-six years ago. In the living room of my unlit Dallas apartment, I told--er, "confessed" may be the better word since it felt like a crime in Texas--my best friend that I was, deep breath, a homosexual. (Homosexual was more dramatic than gay, less abrasive than the Larry Kramer-adopted faggot.) 

It went well. She listened and we continued talking for at least another hour. 

Then I didn't hear from her for three weeks. And we never really talked about it again over the next seven years. The friendship suffered to the point where I even missed her wedding. 

Four years later, I felt compelled to come out to my sister when she asked me to be her daughter's godfather. Knowing there would be a ceremony in a Catholic church, I again confessed. She politely informed me a week later that she'd talked to a priest and made a decision to find a different person (rather than a "different" person) to fill the role. My parents, not knowing the reason for the switcheroo, assumed it was another case of me being difficult. 

It took four more years before I flew to my parents' beachside condo on the Gulf of Mexico for a coming out weekend. By then, I was in love and I was tired of spending Sunday dinners with his family in L.A. while keeping mum about his existence to my mom and dad. 

My mother's reaction? "Can't you just abstain?" My father, a doctor, went into a clinical spiel about condom usage. 

Coming out is awkward. It should be unnecessary. Friends and family should feel free to ask and the question shouldn't feel like a putdown. "Are you gay?" Just a point of clarification, not incrimination. 

Would have been so welcome two months before senior prom at my Texas high school. Back then, the cause wouldn't have been my right to go to the prom, but my right not to. Lori Baker would have had such a better time. (She wisely dumped me midway through prom night, sneaking off with uberbrain Jeff Hull. I'm guessing they snuggled while pondering the long-term impact of Reaganomics.) 

Leaving Dallas and heading to Los Angeles was the smartest move I ever made, Northridge earthquake and getting shot at during the Rodney King riots notwithstanding. Sure, I made the mistake of attending one of the most conservative law schools in the United States, but I found my way into West Hollywood and discovered another world. My day and my night were radically different. It was like my own "Looking for Mr. Goodbar" but without the drugs and violence. Or the Richard Gere. (Sigh.) 

When I worked as a research attorney for a couple of judges, my colleagues knew I was gay. The judges didn't officially know, but the earring gave it away. 

Both my partners in L.A. were openly gay. Their jobs made it easy: the first worked for AIDS Project Los Angeles, the second for a liberal Jewish charity. It was the latter guy who convinced me to pierce my ear; he also inspired me to slap a pink triangle on the bumper of my conservative Honda Accord. I was out. Maybe not so loud, but proud. I volunteered for APLA, attended AIDS Walks and marched for days in protest of California Governor Pete Wilson's veto of AB101, a bill to outlaw workplace discrimination against gays and lesbians. 

But things changed when I moved to British Columbia. I got a job working with kids and peeled off the bumper sticker. Insecurity? Sure. That gay=pedophile equation from my eleven years in Texas crept back in. Amongst colleagues, I remained openly gay. It was easy as all the other men were gay, too.

Then I took a job transfer. No more gay work buds. I worked most closely with a devout Mennonite woman. I never pretended to be straight, but I was the asexual single guy (despite the fact I had a partner). 

More transfers and promotions and my gayness washed away completely. I am now the asexual single guy with no parenthetical. Despite my exhilarating L.A. days, I am not a trailblazer. I am not in a profession where being an out gay man is common. There are some lesbians who are more open but, to my knowledge lesbian=pedophile never took, not even in the Bible Belt. 

So now I'm out in pockets. Most of my family knows, except for my evangelical Baptist brother and his family. Friends scattered about North America know. At work, well, there's that one co-worker who figured it out and tried to set me up with a straight single guy in her neighborhood. (She's better as a teacher than as a matchmaker.) That's it though. In my rural community, not a chance. There are well-settled lesbians, but the gays stick to the cities. The single ones, at least. 

Given my current situation, am I out at all? Do I need to be? I know the answers, but I don't know what to do anymore. More on that in my next blog posting.