Coming Out

I seldom like retelling my coming out story. I suppose I recounted the events so many times at age fifteen that, nine years later, I've exhausted the story's potency; and frankly, it matters less and less to me as time goes on. As I've gotten to know the world a bit better, I've come to realize that coming out has less meaning as an adult. And there is certainly an increasingly distant relevance to society: as The Closet fades into history, many children seem to feel less compelled to declare their sexuality in the matter-of-fact nature that previous generations were confined to, and some might say, slave to. This is the byproduct of progressive social assimilation, for better or for worse; the boundaries between sexualities are less distinct than they once were. Gay spaces in big cities-- once the bastion of freedom for closeted queers-- appear to be decreasing in density. It's no coincidence that even the term "queer," and all of the ambiguity it connotes, has risen in prevalence at the same rate these gay spaces are diminishing. But maybe that's a monologue for another day.

On the personal side, I've found that my sexuality is more complex than the confines that the "coming out" story entails. Sure, I declared my sexuality-- not all too proudly but with a sheepish nervousness-- but is it such a definer that my life should be marked in periodized epochs, like those of today's Gregorian calendar?  Think "Before Coming Out" and "After Coming Out," and then think about what other things I've "come out" as, perhaps less definitively. Urbanist? Devil's Advocate? Long-Winded Narrator?

I prefer to think that the stories of my life, and all its queerness, paint a picture of me that matches the complexity of my character. In the messy mosaic of Stan that is under eternal construction, it is these stories that I carry with me with more weight than any Coming Out story I have or could have had...


There is the story of my 11th grade science teacher who called me after class to have a chat. She and I got along on an appropriately sarcastic common-ground, her being not older than 34 years old, and I often felt that she and I had a special comedic connection. After class, she fumbled through her disorganized book bag as she spoke in a vaguely hushed tone.
"You ever listened to Erasure?" she asked, as she pulled out an unmarked CD-R. She handed it to me before I could even answer "no," in the way an amateur drug dealer might slide over the goods: a touch of suspicion that it would be received well, but an underlying confidence that the drug was potent and worthwhile. Did I want a taste of this dangerously addictive 80's musical substance? She assured me I would love it, perhaps even with a wink, and my 15-year-old self had no idea exactly how much this club pop band would influence my energetic, if not outdated, dancing style.
Erasure was my gateway drug to a world of disco dance obsession that consumed my entire Junior year.


There are the stories of countless boys and girls who interrogated me about my sexuality throughout the school day. Every day after the last bell, I walked through the incongruously grand Classical arches of the over-crowded and under-funded Woodrow Wilson High School. There, leaning against the cheaply-imitated Corinthian columns, groups of guys and gals mocked my decidedly ill-fitting pants and flamboyant shirts, often paired with the shrill interrogation:

"Ain't you gay?" 

For the first two years of high school, I would either clumsily flee before they had time for more questioning, or later, I would egress the campus by means of alternate routes.
That question, "ain't you gay," was one not born out of genuine curiosity but out of maliciousness and mockery, and they knew they were hitting a soar spot. It took me some time to realize that what they were really saying was, "ain't you gay yet?"
After I "came out" and gained a bit more confidence, I learned how to answer that question properly. I started with "Yes!," then, "Fuck yes!," then "Yes! And...?" Once I arrived at that last formulation, I found that these guys and gals had no response. Some of them even started smiling and nodding in approval of my defiance, like I had passed their test of will. Soon enough, these kids were so bored with my confidence that they didn't even acknowledge me anymore, and a small part of me missed the attention.


And then there is the story of the first boy I ever kissed. I met him on a gay youth chat network, and he was the bad-boy older 17-year-old of my naive dreams; he was a Senior, I was a Junior, and one can only imagine the instant adoration I had. We met on a gay youth chat network online, and went on our first "date" at a pizza joint on 2nd Street, the only lively place I could think of for hip single daters in Long Beach. The conversation was predictably awkward and stilted, and all I wanted to do was kiss him smack on the lips, right in front of everyone! I of course didn't, and waited for some clear signal to move ahead with my agenda, but the signal never came. Even as he drove me home, I nervously concocted every possible phrasing I could think of to ask if I could "go for it." We stopped in front of my dad's house, the car double-parked on Bayshore Avenue, and this is where I learned the age-old key-fumbling trick. Waiting for the inevitable, I stalled for time by shuffling my collection of mostly useless keys. He got the signal and pulled me in for a lip-lock that lasted for all of ten seconds, and my heart seemed to stop for a minute. I don't think I stopped grinning for a few more hours after that.


After all the internal turmoil, the endless conflicts in my head about my identity and sexuality, clarity came to me one morning, about one week before I officially "came out." I had been battling the forces of my desire, at least on a conscious level, for some months, trying to comprehend how this new layer of wanting would fit into my idea of a cliche suburban future: wife, kids, private property, white picket fence and all. I kept attempting to assess my queerness with an eye of reformation, as if I could logically rework my homosexuality into a heterosexual equation. This was by far the deepest source of anxiety for me at that time.
One morning, in the early break of a Saturday sunrise, before I had even opened my eyes, I thought to myself, "I want to kiss a man today." The words were so clearly formed I almost said them out loud, and for some reason it registered a level of honesty with myself that I had never come to terms with before. I had no more questions for myself in that moment, because a statement like that answered all the previous ones.
This was, in the chronology of my life, the moment that I allowed myself to be queer. It was a moment of such profound honesty and momentous decisiveness that it shook me for the rest of that day, and I hold this moment very dearly to my heart.
The only disappointment is that I, in fact, never did kiss a man that day.