Coming Out

Partners and families sometimes arrived on the AIDS ward too late to say goodbye, or camped out in rooms, waiting for the last breath. Some parents came not knowing why their son was in the hospital, and would be worried and confused as the doctor informed them of the diagnosis.

It was often left to the patient to tell them he was gay.

There were times, after someone came out to their parents, that the response to me, mostly from moms, was that she already knew. I’d listen politely as they told me how and why they knew, but I was disappointed in them. I felt it was their responsibility to have let their child know years earlier that it would’ve been okay to come out sooner.

“Do you remember Danny,” they could’ve said.

“He told his mom he was gay and she thanked him for trusting her,” they could’ve said.

“I told her I’d feel the same,” they could’ve said.

I remember the day I came out to my mother.

She’d driven us all home from the beach, and as I laid in the side yard working on my tan, knowing I was returning to USF the following day, I really wanted to tell her I was gay. I wasn’t sure how she’d react, and kept rehearsing what I was going to say, and possible responses if she got angry or sad. I was imagining so many different scenarios and getting increasingly anxious.

“Just tell her,” I told myself. “Tell her!”

I laid back and closed my eyes.

“Do you want something to drink?” I heard her ask.

I sat up and looked at her.

“No,” I said. “I’m fine.”

She was drying her hands with a dishtowel. The sun was behind her and I could hear some kids coming down the alley, a car slowing for the stop sign on the corner.

“I’m gay,” I said.

The next few seconds stretched out like a really long rubber band.

“I like men . . .” I said, “I mean boys, other boys, like me,” and then wished I could take it back.

“I’m homosexual. I’m a homosexual,” I said.

After all my practicing and rehearsing, that was the best I had.

I couldn’t see her face, but watched as she quietly twisted the dishtowel in her hand.

“How do you know?” she asked.

She seemed to be crying, but I couldn’t tell for sure.

“I just know . . . I don’t think about girls the way other boys do.”

Oh God! Where were all the perfectly formed explanations I’d been working on for so long?

She stood there in the heat of the late afternoon, fifteen feet away from me, trying to grasp what I meant, and I could tell, she needed a moment to understand.

She needed some time.