…told someone else.
I hadn’t planned to tell Keith — ever. I didn’t even know him well. We’d dated once. It had been a total disaster.
I’d dated his best friend, Jon, for a while, and it ended amicably. We’d been much better friends, but I hadn’t heard from him in a very long time and because that happens in university, I thought maybe our season had passed. Keith said Jon had moved to Australia with his new girlfriend.
I told Keith because he was the first person I had seen since hiding away in my huge summer sublet apartment for a couple days.
He asked, “Anything new?”
I said, “I’m gay.”
Two weeks later I got a phone call, from Jon. He was back in town, and wanted to chat. He was single again.
We met in the waterfowl park after dark. We didn’t get caught by the “duck police”, as we called the solitary warden who patrolled the park at night. We sat quietly on a bench.
He told me Keith had told him about me. He started to talk like he had to come out himself. I encouraged him. It hadn’t been easy for me but it had been worth it.
Jon said, “I just want to meet some one, and be happy.”
I said, “You’re a nice guy, you’ll meet someone.”
“That’s the problem,” she replied.
We lived together for two years while she and I came out. Her coming out was harder, more obvious, and more fraught with shrinks, doctors and hormones. Mine was the gentler coming out of finding new friends, new memes, new ways.
Both were successful and totally worth it.
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