Coming Out Part One
This blog is one part fun, one part therapy really. So I suppose that the coming out story is a useful one, since it is pretty crucial to who I am (and who I am not really). But I don’t really have one coming out – does anyone?
So, coming out, part one.
It is 2003, I just started a graduate programme at a great university in London where I’d come to do my PhD. I am dating a lovely girl, lets call her Lovely Girl, because she really was. Now, deep down I have always known that I was, shall we say, different. This is what I find confusing. I always enjoyed women. I had great sex with women. I liked (like?) girls. But I also always knew that I fancied cock. I suppose that is the best way to put it. I shall elaborate this in a post to be titled “My Gay History” or something like that a bit later on.
Anyway, inside me there is this urge, upon which I have not acted for a very long time. I wrote off the early urges as adolescence. But now at 24 adolescence is pretty over and done with. Anyway, Lovely Girl has a bloke who is her friend and is gay. He is a nice chap and I can’t remember his name now, which I guess is pretty sad. I have no idea why I did what I did. But here is what I did:
Lovely Girl is over at mine in the shower. I pull out her mobile phone and get Nice Chap’s number.
One Friday/Saturday, I call Nice Chap. I bluff about mis-dialing or something. Anyway, he does not know me, but thinks he might. All those hazy nights clubbing. He is out, so I head to this straight bar near Embankment to meet him.
I arrive. I flirt. My brain says “NO! NO”.
I get more drunk. We go back to an after party.
I flirt with him more.
My brain SCREAMS “NO!”
I pull him. We end up and mine, and rather terribly he sucks me off after which I pass out and fall asleep. So rude. But that is the way it is.
So, of course this is all going to hit the proverbial fan really quick because I stupidly established that I knew Lovely Girl.
Short of it is Nice Guy has a breakdown and runs to Lovely Girl to tell her what happened. I was thinking, Ok, I’ll just break up with her, I need to deal with this “issue”.
Lovely Girl is not happy. She is hurt. But she is lovely. I think it is because she is Candian. They are all lovely I think those neighbours to the north.
So the relationship ends. Of course. But she only tells ONE friend and totally gives me the time to deal with everything. That was lovely. We are facebook friends now, but I so can’t bring myself to write to her. I really should. There could not have been a better person on the planet to screw over. I don’t say that comically. What I did was really mean, but it had to be done. It BLEW (no pun intended) the doors off my world. I had to confront me.
So I am very depressed for ages. I want to throw myself under a tube train. I am really close to it really. I keep thinking, there goes the political career my parents have groomed me for and that I have wanted and worked for. No one will elect a fag. My friend Gorgeous, a girl from college who coxed by boat (stop it with the dirty thoughts) back when I rowed, is there to see me through things. I come out to her first. She is bi. Straight really, but with bi-tendencies. Anyway, she is as lovely and Lovely Girl. She stops me from throwing myself under the train. I call her my Angel. Actually, we shall call her Angel, not Gorgeous. She is a Gorgeous Angel though, so hot – smart (she is doing a PhD at Columbia University) and she is hot! Angel cares for me.
I listen to a lot of Natalie Imbruglia’s White Lillies Album. The song Hurricane becomes my theme. My life is so fucked up.
I call America and speak to mom.
Me: “Mom, I’m gay”
Mom: Silence.
Me: “Mom?”
Mom: Silence
Me: “Mom? Are you there?”
That is all I remember?
I do remember bits and feelings?
Understanding, coupled with why? how?
A belief, this is all experimental. You’ll grow out of it.
I remember some time later telling my mom: ” you know, you’re really not reacting the way I expected.”
Mom: “What did you want a friggen parade?”
About the expectations – my parents are centre-left. They are professors. They have gay friends. They voted for Clinton. My mom loves Hilary. But still….no parade.
I said: “Don’t tell dad!”
Mom, of course, told Dad.
Dad did not talk to me about this. We talked, but it was like the big elephant in the corner. Finally, he asked about my “friend”. He said he wanted to protect me and that people were terrible and that if I was sure this is who I was he would support me. But he did not want to rush things.
All in all, my parents were rather good with the whole thing. They are in their mid-60s so they are not young and we are a very catholic family. Liberal yes, but still very catholic. Ignore the contradiction. I can’t get my mother to explain it to me, so if she can’t no one can.
Now, my sister was cool with this. Sister was studying at Oxford for an MA for the year, so both of us were in England. This was great. I have to say, I have the most beautiful, intelligent sister on the planet. She amazes me always. I love her to bits. I used to hate her when I was 14, but I think that is normal. She kept copying everything I did. She always wanted to “steal” my friends, now I understand what a form of flattery that was. So we are very close.
Now, sister M found out from Obsessed, my on again off again girlfriend. After the coming out we were on-again. Safe harbour and all that. But I told her of my bisexuality, she was cool with that. Sort of. Not really, but she wanted to be. It was odd. Anyway, I told her I wanted to tell my Sister on my own terms when I wanted to. So what did the bitch do? Went to Oxford to see my sister and spilled the beans.
Sister as not happy. Nothing to do with the gayness, but she said “I am your sister. I love you no matter what and I find out you are gay/bi whatever from Obsessed.
She then pointed out she was wearing a scarf and under that scarf she hid a hickey, a hickey from a girl! No, she is not a lesbian. I would have to disown her if she was. But she played around a tad. In the end the decision was “I like cock” – well, I can’t argue with that.
So that was the Coming Out part one, the Family.
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