Well my father has known I'm gay for just under 48 hours.
(I've been looking for a good place to start a new blog so I figured this was a pretty big milestone to touch on.)
Now for some, the coming out process isn't as difficult as it has been for me. (For others of course, it's even harder so I have no right to complain.) But some background on how this has all come to be.
I've known I was gay since 7th grade. I didn't really have a word for it but I knew that I was interested more in guys than girls and that made me different from most every other boy at Holy Trinity (as far as I knew). Now back at that point in my life I was pretty religious, not particularly because I wanted to be but because that was just what you do in Harlan. I grew up in an Episcopalian Church, went to a Southern Baptist youth group and attended a Catholic Middle School, I'd say the religious fates were stacked against me. (Or for me depending on your opinions.)
Harlan is a very conservative rural town in South Eastern KY. There's an Oscar winning documentary about it called "Harlan County, U.S.A" and I have yet to actually see it all the way through. Someday I'll sit myself down and actually watch it but I feel like I lived there so I've already got a pretty good idea about what's going on. It's a coal mining town that has basically dried up in the past 10 years or so. After returning home this Christmas I really started to see how the town has just crumbled in the past couple of years. I don't know if this has always been the case and in my youth and inexperience I just never saw how bad the situation was or if it really has been slowly falling apart since I've been gone. One of the few things that the residents of Harlan can cling to is their faith and I know exactly what that feels like.
I spent a large portion of my middle/high school years trying to pray out the gay. I went to bed every night beginning my prayers like this:
"Dear Lord, thank you for this day and everything you've given me. Please make me straight."
The prayer would continue from there on whatever topic I had for the day but every day for I'd say about 7 1/2 years, I said those words. I was ashamed of who I was and all that it entailed. I didn't want to be gay. I thought it was wrong and that if I would just try hard enough or pray hard enough or believe hard enough that I could "overcome" my "sinful desires" and live the life that God and my family wanted me to live. There were no gay role models for me, no examples of a gay man who was a success and anything other than a coke-addicted queen parading down the Castro with a feather boa on shouting at the religious right. I most certainly didn't want to be that, I thought to myself, and that was what gay was to me.
My father was always one to belittle other people. The "N word" was pretty common in my house. He called people on TV faggots. He told a family friend who had a niece who was marrying a black guy that "I would rather throw myself off a bridge than see my daughter get married to a N*****." Needless to say, not the most tolerant environment for the closeted gay kid to grow up.
So that's some of the backstory on the home life. Conservative. Religious. Small. Stifling. Etc. Etc.
I went to college in 2002 and started coming to terms with the fact that I was gay. I went to Centre College in Danville, KY (www.centre.edu) which was a great school where I had lots of AMAZING experiences. I wouldn't change my past at all, but looking back it probably wasn't the best place to discover myself as a gay man...I discovered nearly every other part of me but the gay side still sat in the closet pretty securely.
I first came out to my best friend Kate in November of my sophomore year. Not because I was proud or comfortable with it but because it was really hurting our relationship for her not to know. She was interested in me romantically and I didn't want to lie and say that I just wasn't in to her. I figured, of all people, she needed to know this. It was one of the scariest moments of my life. I had never said the words "I'm gay" to anyone other than myself before. While she took it fantastically and after it was over I felt a huge sense of relief, I still wasn't ready to come out to others. I swore her to secrecy and continued living my so called straight life in college.
So here's the deal. When you go to a school with less than 1,500 students, you know everyone and if you don't know them personally you at least know something about them. "There goes so and so, she hooked up with what's his face last night at the Phi Delt house." "Did you hear about John Doe passing out in the hallway this morning?" "Blankety-blank does crack off the toilet in their apartment, drunk sorority girl told me she saw it last week!" Etc. etc. So when a single fraternity guy has not once gone home with ONE girl EVER, when that same guy is a dramatic arts major, when that same guy is a really good dancer and that same guy is strangely non-threatening to women...people begin to talk. Sadly that same guy was so entrenched in keep up appearances that he refused to believe that anyone could think he was gay and even if they did, at least they had no real proof. I was raised to believe that unless someone is telling you "I'm gay" that you should always give them the benefit of the doubt that they were straight. I assumed everyone would do the same for me.
I started coming out to more and more people as I became more and more comfortable with the idea of other's knowing. By my senior year most of my closest friends knew and I was actually dating a great guy (long-distance) who I had met abroad in London. I was becoming more and more at ease with the idea that this was a part of me that wasn't something to be ashamed of but rather something that made me who I am. I was really happy with who I was and who I was becoming and I started to see that this person had developed as a direct result of me being gay. If I was straight, I'd be a much different person and who knows what he'd be like. I like this person quite a lot and am excited to see what becomes of him.
After graduating from College I decided I wouldn't lie about my sexuality any more with new people. I moved to CA to work with a theatre company there and I was open about having a boyfriend with anyone who asked. I didn't do the obnoxious "Hi Strother Gaines, nice to meet you, I'm a homosexual *firm handshake*" kinda deal but I never hid the fact that I had a boyfriend when asked. It was such a normal thing for me to be gay in CA that it was a refreshing change of pace that allowed me to become even more confident in the person I was. I started telling more people from my past that I was gay and eventually during the Christmas of 06 I came out to my mom. She was my first family member to know and while she did cry and told me "this feels like a death" she has since become such an amazing supportive mom. I knew she was totally ok with it when she tried to convince me to get in touch with Oprah's interior designer. "He's so handsome Strother and he has a beard which I know you like." Thanks Mom.
So it's now been about 2 years since Mom has known and my sister eventually figured it out. We just had the official talk about both of us acknowledging that we both knew the other knew. She's not particularly excited about it and strikes me as the type of person who says "Gay people are fine as long as they don't flaunt it or do it in front of me cause that's gross" kinda girl. Everyone I guess is entitled to their opinion but I'm entitled to my response as well. I don't feel any need to pursue that conversation with her any further now, she knows what's going on and she can react however she likes to it. So, now with all the members of my immediate family knowing (sans my 10 year old brother) I was starting to feel the pull to tell Dad. For my brother I told him (in between watching Home Movies Season 3) that sometimes women fall in love with women and men fall in love with men and there is nothing wrong with that. A lot of people in Harlan are going to tell you that it's wrong or gross or bad but I wanted you to know from me that they're wrong. Their opinions are misinformed and that sometimes that's just the way things happen. Who you love doesn't determine your worth or the type of person you are and it's totally fine for a man to love a man or a woman to love a woman." He said "Ok, I know that." I asked him if he knew a man could love a man or a woman a woman before I said that and he said "Yeah I knew that" and then I asked him if he thought it was wrong and he said "No, I thought it was ok. Let's watch the next episode." I had normalized the idea for him but not given him too much to process. I think he already knows I'm gay but just doesn't fully understand what that means yet. He loves me unconditionally and I know there will be no issues with him.
Dad was the only person in the world I was worried about finding out. I thought when he did I would be disowned because when I was 12 he told me that "If you ever bring home a black girl, you're out of the will and if you ever bring home a guy, I have no son." Pretty clear. While I didn't particularly enjoy going back to Harlan for holidays, I did want to be able to see my Mom and little brother so it was nerve wracking to think that I might lose that.
December 27th 2008. I woke up knowing I was going to tell Dad. I had spoken to my mom about it and she said "I've had three years to process it and I'm fine with it now. Maybe it's time he got a chance to process it too." (She's only had 2 years but I guess she meant 3 Christmases to process.) I knew that she was supportive of my decision. I started packing all my things for the trip back to DC. I came back from one trip to the car and told her I felt like I might throw up and she said she might too. If nothing else, it was comforting to know that we were in this together. I got all of my stuff in the car, hugged everyone and said goodbye then asked dad "Can I talk to you in the driveway?"
I wanted to do it outside of the house in case he started yelling or potentially hit me, that was something I didn't want my little brother to see or hear. I decided I would give all of the explanation before saying the actual words because once those hit the floor I knew he'd shut down. I took a deep breath and I gave my spiel. I don't really remember exactly what I said because I was floating somewhere outside of my body due to nerves but it was something to the effect of:
I have to tell you something and I know it isn't something you're going to be excited to hear. I've been meaning to tell you for a while but I've been scared about what your reaction was going to be. I want you to know that I'm not telling you this to prove a point, to hurt you or to just "be liberal". This is a part of who I am and if you and I are going to have any sort of real relationship it's a part of me you need to know about. I've known about this since 7th grade and it's been something that I used to pray about a lot and something that I've thought a lot about as well. I'm really proud of the person I am and who I've become and I don't like the idea of hiding any part of myself from people for fear of how they'll react. I don't know what's the easiest way for you to hear this or the best way to say it so I just will...
Deep breath
I'm gay.
*silence*
He was quite for some time. He looked down at the ground and wouldn't look at me. After a long pause he asked "How do you think I should respond to this?"
I told him I knew what I thought he would do and what I hoped he would do but I really had no idea how he actually would react.
He said "Well you're my son, so I'm not going to turn you out and I do love you but this is something I can never accept. I think it's wrong. I don't agree with the lifestyle and you can't change my opinion on that. I hope that you're not sure about this. Maybe you're not sure."
I told him if I wasn't sure I certainly wouldn't have told him. Then I asked him what he meant by "the lifestyle". I told him I wasn't your run-of-the-mill homo and I wanted him to form his opinions off my actions and my life and not his ideas of what it means to be gay.
He said he didn't know what he meant by "the lifestyle" which to me means he's either just spouting rhetoric about "the gay lifestyle" or he means anal sex and just wasn't comfortable enough to say it. (I guess I'm pretty thankful he didn't mention anal sex, I can only imagine how uncomfortable that conversation would be.)
He was silent for a bit more and I asked him how he felt. He said "It feels like a cold smack in the face and to be honest I'm ready to smack you back *makes a fist and shows it to me* so I wouldn't push this much further."
So in the scheme of things, he only threatened to hit me. He didn't actually which is a step up from what I thought he'd do so I guess there's the bright side.
I took the hint and said that I wanted to be open and honest about my life with him from now on and if he had any questions or wanted to ask me anything to please let me know because I would answer anything. He said he thought that was a good way to be but that he didn't have any questions. I told him I would call when I got back to DC to let them know I made it back safely.
We turned to walk up the stairs and our arms touched. He gave me an intensely awkward side hug but I feel like that little gesture means a lot. I hope I'm right.
So now the processing time begins for him. I called mom to tell her how it went and that Dad was going to go out to think for a while. I later called back to see if he had come back yet and he had but he had said nothing. I think he's going to go the "ignore it and it'll go away...and if it doesn't go away I at least don't have to deal with it" path. I guess that's really the best I could hope for knowing his past and his outlook. I have hope that maybe he'll one day become supportive but I don't hold on to that too tightly. The burden of hiding myself is off of me and now I am living my life totally open and honest about who I am and who I love. The constant fear of someone telling my dad is gone and I don't care who finds out that I'm gay because the one person who could have had the biggest impact on my life knows now and I'm still here. I got to a point where I realized, I'd still be here even if he did disown me. I'd still be the person I respect regardless of how he dealt with it. I think that's what gave me the courage to actually tell him.
I've got to thank all my wonderful friends for being so supportive of me during this. I have yet to experience any negative response from anyone when I came out to them and the love and support I've gotten from all of them have shaped me and brought me to this milestone in my life. I know that it is because of the people I have been privileged to meet that I am who I am and I thank each and everyone one of you for being there for me in whatever way no matter how small. I am so lucky to have such a wide spread and amazing group of people in my life and I count it as one of my biggest joys to know them all.
Well, that's enough douching out for me. I tend to get all sappy when it comes to this stuff. Enough of that. I guess thus ends my first blog entry for "Aint' No Hummus in Harlan". Hope you enjoyed, I'll do my best to post on here with some sort of frequency but I've never been too good at that. Maybe with this schnazzy new layout I'll be a bit more inspired. I've got quite a lot to write about these days too...maybe some combo of the two will make a blog. Sorry this entry has been so long, I figure the backstory is the bulk of the post and hopefully from now on I can be a bit more concise.
More to come.
