Come out when you’re ready to come out
By Alfred P. Doblin
October 11 is National Coming Out Day. On one level, it does not affect me anymore. If I were to call up one of my friends and say, “I’m coming out,” their response would be: “Again? Did you leave something in the closet? A tie? Or perhaps a pair of shoes?”
That I can joke about it is a sign of progress from where I was 35 years ago, when I finally did come out. There was nothing funny about it then, and the idea that I would become so flippant about it decades later was as improbable to me as the possibility of hooking up with a woman.
But National Coming Out Day remains important to me because there are still many individuals – young and old – who struggle with accepting who they are. To them, I say, “Come out when you are ready. It doesn’t have to be October 11, or in Pride Month, or while you are waiting on a line to see Kiss of the Spider Woman. Come out when you are ready.”
I was 33 when I came out, and the more I reflect on my coming-out process, the more I am amazed at how much I fought what I always knew. My strongest early gay memory is seeing the play, Cactus Flower. Picture it. Not Sicily, but the Royale Theater on 45th Street in Manhattan. June of 1967. A nine-year-old is taken with his parents and sister to see a play with Lauren Bacall. The plot is way over his head. I was small for my age, so everything was way over my head, but I digress. Early in the play – it may have been the first scene, I don’t recall – a young man climbs through a window wearing a towel. That was it. A hot man in a towel. I was transfixed. I think the play ends with the cactus plant on Lauren Bacall’s desk blooming, but I am not sure. Neither Bacall nor the cactus was wearing a towel or for that matter was a shirtless young man.
While I hope my memory of the scene is correct and I have not conflated it with something else, the dates are right because I’ve saved every damn Playbill from every Broadway show I’ve ever seen. They’re in official Playbill binders filled to their maximum capacity. I have 23 binders to date. And still it took me to 33 years to come out of the closet! Lauren Bacall’s cactus wasn’t the only late bloomer.
My story is significant because there was no social media in 1967. No one was telling me to be gay. There were no gay role models. Gay was not even the common word for homosexual men. The word most trafficked began with an “f” and it still cuts me sharply today.
This week, the U.S. Supreme Court heard a challenge to a Colorado law that bans licensed therapists from using what is termed as “conversion therapy.” The therapy has been widely discredited by the medical community. Its underlying principle is that gay people can be taught to be straight.
If that were the case, would the therapists who believe sexual orientation is a choice also believe “practicing” straight people could be taught to be gay?
I’ve never met a straight man who could be pressured into being gay. And I have never met a gay man who said society or some outside influence made him gay. It doesn’t work that way. I don’t have a medical degree – it’s not as if I could tell you with impunity not to take Tylenol if you’re pregnant – but I have almost 68 years of lived experience and I can say with surety, I did not choose to be gay any more than I chose to be. Period.
If there were gay role models in the 1960s and early 1970s, perhaps I would have come out in high school. I don’t know. Looking back, I wasn’t ready for any of that as a teen or even in my twenties. I needed space. A lot of space. It required me moving from Long Island to Los Angeles. But that was just me.
Which brings me back to October 11, National Coming Out Day. I’m not a fan of all these “days.” They are contrivances based on a moment in history that unintentionally put pressure on people to “get with the concept” on that date. No one should feel compelled to come out on anyone’s timetable but their own. It is a personal journey, and I can say with pride, that I came out when I was ready and because I had met someone who was kind, safe, and lit me up in a way I did not think I could be lit up.
It was glorious. Most gay men I know do not describe their first gay experience as glorious. I make no judgement on that. We all want and need different things. There is no one way to be gay. There is no one way to be. Period.
You cannot turn off being gay like a light switch. Yes, that is a reference to a song in the musical The Book of Mormon. (I said in my first blog there would be showtunes.) Reparative therapy is dangerous. Yet, the Supreme Court will probably rule in favor of the licensed therapist and many states across the country will find their bans on the practice disappear. I fear the damage to LGBTQ individuals subjected to the therapy will be longer lasting.
That saddens me as an elder gay man. But I remain hopeful that the human spirit is stronger than the legal profession and the vagaries of nine people in black robes.
Come out when you are ready. Things may not always get better, but things will always change. Laws change. Society changes. And how each of us deal with both changes. But who we innately are? That doesn’t change. And whatever it is that makes us whoever we are does not need repairing. It needs nurturing. And it needs – from time to time – celebrating.
So celebrate October 11, if that date works for you. If it does, shout it out. We will applaud you for your courage, strength, and most importantly, for your authenticity. But if not October 11, there are 364 other possibilities in the year.
For me, October 11 is a day to remember that I started coming out long before I knew I was gay. There’s a Judy Garland song lyric – I cannot help myself – “I was born in a trunk in the Princess Theater in Pocatello, Idaho.” For me, as a gay man, it was the balcony of the Royale Theater in New York City, New York.
Until next time, Alfred with a P