National Coming Out Day

October 11 is National Coming Out Day. Though I have long since come out to everyone who matters to me, I still reflect on having done that, especially with my parents. That ranks as one of the toughest decisions I've ever had ot make, though in retrospect it seems to anti-climactic now. In honor of NCOD, I thought I'd share with you the story behind my coming out to my parents.

After I had my first lesbian experience at age 15, I was petrified that I might be a lesbian. After that night, I spent the next couple of days agonizing over the fact that I might be gay – I didn’t want that. As I went learned more about those aspects of sexuality, of course, I became comfortable enough in my own skin to embrace my bisexuality, at least internally. I sure wasn’t about to announce it to the world, though. Not then. Even though I didn’t really care about what others thought of me, I still knew that there was a stigma attached to being something other than straight. A dichotomy, much.

Only within the past two years have I come to the realization that it is terribly common for teenagers to question their sexual orientation as they progress through adolescence. I would give anything to go back to my days as a freshman and have that knowledge. I often wonder what good I could’ve done at my school had I understood just how pervasive these feelings are, and been able to channel my experience into something positive that might have helped others deal with it. Would I have felt comfortable being out as a bisexual in high school? I think I would have, though I don’t know if I would’ve been a force for change. I was not really a change agent in high school.

I was one of my school’s Alpha females, and therefore relatively immune to the slut-bashing and back-stabbing that afflicted other girls. Not that some people didn’t refer to me as a slut (what girl has gone through high school without being called a slut by someone?), but as an opinion leader and one of the more popular and gregarious females, the slut term would not have alienated me from friends and others like it would a girl who was not in such a position and/or didn’t spend a lot of time in the social circles that permeated the hallways. Had I been out, would things have been different?

I do think that, had I been out as a bisexual it might have elevated the discourse about the subject of differentiated sexual orientations in my school. Today, I would relish such a role. I cannot honestly say that I would have then, given my mindset at that time of my life, however. To this date, my old high school does not have a Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA) club or organization. I guess as a Bible Belt school that probably should not surprise me, but it does.

After my public kiss with Nikki, word circulated about “us” but, although we spent a lot of time together in school and outside, it never reached the crescendo of a full-blown rumor. I suppose there were simply too many others to focus on at the time (my graduating class alone was about 350 people, with almost 1,600 in all four grades). There were people who were rumored to be gay or lesbian, but it wasn’t a subject that was discussed, except when someone was taunted or harassed. I have to believe the presence and availability of a GSA would’ve helped some people on both sides of the spectrum deal with that in a much more mature manner.

Regardless, I have expended quite a bit of thought about what could’ve been. A waste of time, perhaps, but I am trying to takes steps now to help those who might be in just such a position today.

My own coming out story is not terribly painful, certainly not as much as what many face. Not long after my sexual interlude with Nikki I confided in my sister – we had always been very close and shared just about everything with each other. Though I didn’t know it at the time, she, too, was going through a questioning process (she also later came to grips with her bisexuality). She was very accepting, and I’d expected no less.

My fascination with female-female sex led to my “coming out” with a vengeance to some of my friends. Kelsey was the first beneficiary of that by way of my “seduction” of her, and through her and Nikki, on to a handful of other girls at school. By the time I had graduated from high school, I had been responsible for providing ten other girls with their first lesbian sexual experiences. Some of them I know considered themselves bisexual, and one went on to be lesbian the last I’d heard. None of them came out publicly in high school, though. It was a secret shared among and between those of us involved.

Coming out to my parents was another story, however, and it turned out different than I ever imagined it would. Nikki and I remained close friends in the years following our sexual encounter on New Year’s Eve. It was not uncommon at all for us to come home and jump in the bed and spend the afternoon enjoying each other until about time for my parents to get home. It wasn’t something we did every day or even every week, but we did do it fairly frequently. We were best friends, and as best I could sense, we never outwardly showed any differently than any other pair of good friends.

In May of 2004, my parents were out of town on a business trip, and Nikki spent the weekend over at my house. As usual, we spent the entire time laying out sunning ourselves and swimming in our pool. On that particular Saturday, we had sex in just about every conceivable position, on every piece of furniture, and in every way imaginable. To this day, it still ranks as the day on which I’d had the most non-self induced orgasms (seven, to be exact). At one point, as we lay next to each other, Nikki asked me if I thought we might be soulmates. As I stared into her eyes, I thought to myself that is the perfect explanation of how I feel about the closest friend I’d ever had – just….perfect.

Though I’d had sex with a number of girls, I’d never given any serious thought to dating one or becoming involved in a romantic relationship with one – it just never crossed my mind. Neither of us had ever brought it up. With this question, though, Nikki moved our relationship into uncharted territory. Our relationship had that intensely deep, honest, emotional, rhythmic and connected pulse that exlemplified what I’d felt a perfect relationship between two lovers should have. In that moment, I knew that Nikki and I shared a unique bond – one that I wanted to pursue as a part of a legitimate, public couple. Nikki agreed. Since we were graduating from high school, being publicly seen as a couple would not be an issue – not there anyway. Our parents might be another story, however. If we weren’t going to hide our relationship it was going to be necessary to come out to them, and neither of us was looking forward to it.

We elected to tell my parents first, and decided that we’d do it over dinner sometime that week after they’d gotten back. As that day approached, I rehearsed over and over in my mind how I wanted to break the news to them. I conferred with friends, both “real” ones and some online about how to do it. Anyone who has ever made the decision to come out to his/her family knows that angst that you endure as you try to decide how to tell them, when to tell them, how they will react, etc. I was perhaps more nervous about this than just about anything else I’d ever done.

I asked my mom if I could invite Nikki to dinner with us, and she said of course. Nikki spent almost as much time at our house as I did lately, and she pretty much had a standing invitation to participate in anything we did as a family. She’d become like another daughter to my mom. I don’t know if she picked up on the oddity of me asking if it’d be acceptable to come to dinner this time or not. As we sat down to dinner (low-fat lasagna, salad, and garlic bread – yummy!), I could sense that Nik and I were both showing our nervousness. Though only subtly, it was still palpable.

Finally, I worked up the courage to just spit it out. “Mom, dad, I need to tell you guys something important. As you probably know, Nikki and I have been very good friends for a number of years. I think you ought to know that it has progressed to more than just….friends. She is, like, a real girlfriend, like a boyfriend would be.” As they stopped eating to absorb the information, I added, “I like both boys and girls; I’m bisexual.” My parents looked at each other for a second, and my mother stated, “I think we just kind of assumed that you two were that close for a while now.”

As I processed that information, it occurred to me that she was telling me that they had known (or at least believed) that I was bisexual for at least some period of time. [They knew I wasn’t a lesbian because I’d had several boyfriends.] After some conversation, my mother finally told me that she had just assumed for the past few months (since my previous boyfriend had moved) that Nikki and I were a couple, since we’d spent so much time together. I was relieved and shocked at the same time. Relieved because, obviously if they thought we were a couple and hadn’t voiced any issues with it, they must’ve felt comfortable with it. Shocked because they’d never even hinted that they thought we were together that way. We had not acted any differently than any other pair of best friends insofar as I could tell. As much as I pride myself on being able to read others, I had to wonder what kind of signs we’d been giving off that allowed them to detect what was going on. Of course, in reality, we weren’t an official couple until that past weekend, so whatever those signs were, they were misread to a certain extent. By that time, Nikki was already working as a dancer, so we even wondered aloud to ourselves later if they had picked up on that. We decided that they hadn’t though. Hopefully. Heh.

Throughout the evening’s “conversation,” my father never really uttered a word. And to this day I’ve never discussed my bisexuality with him directly. I honestly don’t know if he’s totally comfortable with it or not. My mother allowed that they’d had conversations with Nikki’s parents about us being so close to one another. As it would turn out, when we went to talk with them, they, too, had suspected for some time that our friendship was more than platonic. Fortunately for us, they also appeared to be as accepting of Nikki’s bisexuality as my parents appeared to be. Nikki and I have each had conversations at length with our respective mothers about it, and both have been extremely supportive in every way possible. I sometimes cry thinking about that. It could just as easily been the other way around.

After dinner that night, Nikki and I went out back and embraced for several minutes, crying with each other, and relishing the fact that we could now be “real.” We didn’t have to hide our feelings for each other any longer in our own space, our own homes. I can’t begin to tell you how incredibly freeing and how intense this was. In the end, all of the anxiety we went through debating about whether to tell them, how to tell them, how they’d react, etc., proved to be for naught. And, thus far, we have yet to encounter anyone who knows about us who has expressed any sense of disgust or disapproval about it. Not that it would matter – our relationship exists for us, not anyone else. A big “fuck you” to the politicians and others who’d deny us the right to marry into that relationship if we wished to go that route, though. Someday, soon perhaps, that will change.

I lament the fact that coming out, generally speaking, is much easier for girls than it is for guys. I think we all know why it is like this, and I won’t go into it right now. But, suffice it to say, that is a double standard that we could use a lot less of (along with many others). Coming out is rarely easy, but doing so in my case has been a freeing experience. I wish that were the case for everyone. The fact that it isn’t is what keeps me from suggesting to everyone that they come out, even on National Coming Out Day.

Technorati Tags: sex coming out bisexuality sexuality National Coming Out Day