Coming Out - The Stories

[WillParkinson]

When I was a teenager I had a best friend named Kenny. He was like part of my family and I was like part of his. As I grew to understand my feelings I was sure there was something wrong with me. I was somehow 'broken'.

One day I could stand it no more. I went to Kenny and asked him if I could share a secret with him. He said, 'of course'. I took a deep breath and told him that I was gay.

He looked at me for a second and said....


"So?"

The earth did not split asunder and swallow me whole. Time did not stop. I did not lose my best friend.

It make the rest of my life so much easier.

(BTW, I've been best friends with Kenny for 40 years now.)

---

So that's mine. Tell us about a coming out story of your own. Be it good, bad, mundane, or whatever it turned out to be.

[teenagebambam]

1. I had returned to college...

..and was living with my parents. I had JUST come out (to friends, not to family) and was dating "R", whom my parents knew as a school friend. R was evicted from his apartment, and I suggested to my parents that maybe he could rent the extra bedroom in their house.

After about six months of messing up the blankets in R's room to make it look like he had slept there, my mother caught on, and called my sister (whom I had NOT come out to, but she had figured things out).

"Do you think the boys are gay" my mother asked.

"Well," my sister said, "would it make any difference if they were?"

"Oh heavens, no," my mother said, "but they've only got a full-size bed back there. They'll have to have something bigger!"

So for Christmas that year we got a Queen sized bed.

And are still together 17 years later I might add.

[dsc]

2. wow that is a totally sweet story

[mitchtv]

4. when I brought Partner home,

Mom put us in the same room (twin beds), but when my brother brought his unmarried fiance home, they were put in separate bedrooms.

[dsc]

3. I came out in college

I had broken up with a married man whose wife had found out about us and now had found out about another guy and filed for divorce. I refused to duck testifying for her so he threatened to out me to my family. I told them all. They were great given the circumstances. He caved so I never had to actually testify. I surely don't recommend that method of coming out but it was OK for me. I also didn't know he was married when I first started to date him.

[closeupready]

5. I would like to share, but my stories are sad and kind of painful.

So I just want to enjoy the good stories here, and offer sympathy to those who had similar experiences.

By the way, Will, your experience with Kenny almost brings a tear to my eye. :)

[Ioo]

6. Okay I will share mine with my father.

So my dad was the last to know. My mom found out when I was 17 but no one told my dad.

I got out of HS and joined the Air Force. Was stationed @ McDill a few miles from where I grew up. My mom said, you and Michael are getting serious, don't you think it is time to tell your dad..

So I made place to go to dinner Sat night with my mom and dad.

Come over to the house, we get ready to go... we are in the drive way pileing into the car and I turn to my dad and I say, "Dad, I have something to tell you..."

He turns to me, and without missing a beat says, "You like to suck dick, I know, I still love you, let's go to dinner"

My mom pissed herself...

At dinner he told me he had known for years and that no matter what he would love me.

[gaspee]

7. I'm gender non-conforming

Always been into "boy" things. Took the MMPI test and was told all my scores were so normal it was scary, but that I scored higher on the masculine side of the masculine/feminine scale than any woman he'd ever administered the test to. I paid my way through college on softball scholarships.

All that explanation leads into that I think my parents knew before I did. In fact, they were surprised to find out that I was mostly bi. The look on their faces when they found out I date men too? Priceless. Though at 40, I now identify as strictly lesbian. I haven't dated a man in 12 years though I am sometimes attracted to men. Not enough to date one though, LOL.

For a lot of us, there is no coming out. We are who we are and no amount of make-believe lets us "pass."

[Occulus]

8. I figured it out in high school

I knew immediately that it was a secret that had to be kept- and never mind that everyone I knew already knew, I didn't.

In 1994, my mom found some stuff in room and literally kicked me out into the rain. I didn't go to school for a couple weeks, and my grades plummeted, and the following year, my parents revoked any funding they were giving me for school. I dropped out, and haven't been back.

I was a musician. I was the best musician in my school system when I graduated high school. I played (past tense) oboe, piano, percussion, marched colorguard in DCI, and got a scholarship (which this event killed). I was even starting to write for ensembles. My whole life, I was musically talented (and didn't even know it for most of my life), and my mom admits that she and my dad knew it when I was five years old. They did nothing, even going so far as to encourage me to play sports when I was a kid, instead of giving me piano lessons (which they denied me, when asked, AFTER I helped BUY a piano). All that is over with, and it's killing me from the inside, because that was the happiest time of my life and the people I trusted the most deliberately went out of their way to kill it, and they succeeded. I can't understand, even after all this time, why they did what they did. It's as if they were trying to punish me from the time I was a really little kid. IT wasn't just my being gay- I think it was also jealousy. But I'm not sure.

If there is one piece of advice I can give gay youth, it is this: if you have to ask yourself if your family is ready to hear the news, then they're NOT.

[Ms. Toad]

9. I was very fortunate

I was very fortunate - I did not realize I was gay until I was 25, so I had a good long time to "objectively" review the commentary and reject it. My first same gender love was not so fortunate. She knew when she was 4 that she was different and internalized a lot of the derogatory comments made to her. For the first few years of our relationship she kept setting arbitrary dates by which I would leave her (because, of course, same gender relationships are flawed because of their very nature).

We celebrated our 28th anniversary last fall (our 15th anniversary of having our marriage taken under the care of our faith community, and our 5th anniversary of our legal marriage in a couple of months). We have raised a delightful daughter to the age of 19, and look forward to a few more decades together!