"Coming Out - In the Beginning"

“So many times I wanted to tell him…”

Originally published on Yahoo 360, September 3, 2006

I recently came out to my soon to be eighty-seven year old father. For about a year now, I’ve been testing the waters and dropping subtle hints to certain others in my family, namely my teenaged niece and nephew that things with me are not necessarily what they’ve assumed. I’ve grown very tired over these many years of keeping the life I’ve not really lived yet desired a secret. In deciding to come out to my father, I realized that our relationship had transitioned just as with my mother and I in her frail elder years. He was now looking to me for guidance and support. And although I’m willing to take up that burden, I didn’t think I could keep up the façade of “normalcy” when he comes to live with me as I expect will soon happen.

As I discussed with my father the possibility of him coming to live with me and as I expressed my sincere, but somewhat reserved love and concern for him, I was swept up in a fit of fierce emotions and out of the blue I began to explain in compassionate terms how what he knew of me was not what it seemed. As I expected, he was quite shocked, but he did not react as I had always believed and feared he would. Mind you, my father and I really only had a relationship until I was thirteen years old. Then, after my parents divorced, although he maintained a relationship with my other brothers and sisters, I was rejected by him. Though we live in the same city, I saw him on only three occasions between 16 and 40 years old, and one of those was my mother’s funeral.

In telling my father of the realities of my life, it took a few hours to share the truth of things that he seemed genuinely surprised to learn about… I started at the beginning with the day I first knew as a little boy that I was different. Then I took him through all those events that he thought were one thing but were really all together something else. He seemed very bothered that he’d not realized at the time, but of course I pointed out that I’d become a wonderful actor over the years and that no one really knows the truth of me that I haven’t told... Save what I’ve written here and what I’ve told those I’ve been in love with, my father now knows more about this part of me than anyone else.

It was quite cathartic to tell my father all of what I had to say. Though it was difficult, because we are not close and he’s been so far removed for so many years, it was much easier to tell him than I believe it will be to tell some of the others in my family. Yet I am planning to tell them all by the end of the year, just not in the level of detail that I shared with my father. Although I could probably rely on my father to share the news with the others (I didn’t ask him to keep it between us), I will tell them all in the hope that I might be accepted as the same person today that I was yesterday. In thinking of what I’m going to say to the others, I thought to myself, “Why tell them now, after all this time?” But then I thought, “Why not…?” Shouldn’t they know how hurtful some of the things I’ve heard them say and do have been to one they profess to love and care about. And, if for no other reason, just to get it off my chest. I don’t want to have to lie and pretend anymore.

I’ve been a rather open book here on these pages and that’s what I was with my father. I poured out the contents of my heart, both the good and the bad, so I’ve decided to share my “Coming Out” story here too. I’ve decided to start from the beginning, just as I did with my father a couple of weeks ago… It will be a bit of what my “Secret Life” has been like over these last four decades.

As a young boy and later as a teenager, I was always afraid of what my father’s reaction would be to the news that I was different in the way that I am. I knew about myself as early as age five when in kindergarten an incident occurred that would define most of my life from that day forward. I was an odd boy, I was smart and I liked to talk and tinker with things… At playtime, I didn’t want to roughhouse with the other boys, instead I liked to build walls around myself and then have lively conversations with imaginary friends. As it turned out, there was another boy like me in my kindergarten class and when we discovered one another, we became inseparable.

One day as my little friend and I sat behind our wall talking, he asked me to pull down my pants and show him my behind. I remember to this day how I felt when he asked me that, I liked the thought of it; and although I was as ignorant and as innocent as the driven snow, somehow I knew he was asking me this in a sexually curious way. I remember being quite excited and thinking no one would see as we were behind our little wall of cardboard blocks, so I did it. What happened next I’ve also never forgotten; it’s as fresh in my mind at forty-two as it was at five. Of course the teacher had no problem seeing what was happening behind our little wall, without even hearing her coming, I felt her roughly grab me up by the collar with the most abhorrent look on her face that I’ve ever seen.

My teacher dragged me out to the middle of the floor with my pants falling down in front of 30 or so other little boys and girls. At that moment, I think I must have felt what Adam and Eve felt when they realized they were naked before the Lord. The teacher literally shouted at me to pull my pants up and the look of utter disdain on her face which was mimicked by all the other children seemed to say that I was some kind of wicked beast, less than human. I was terrified and ashamed, although at the time, I didn’t understand why this simple act seemed so heinous to my teacher. I remember how horrible the looks on everyone’s faces seemed to me. The teacher sat me in the “punishment chair” in the corner and then left me there alone to cry.

My teacher went back to her desk and wrote a note and then came over and pinned it to my shirt telling me in a harsh and gruff voice, “Don’t touch this note, it’s for your mother.” It was then, as I sat with tears streaming from my eyes that I wondered what would become of me. I’d never been treated that way by anyone and as I pondered why, in the thoughts of a five year old, I had my first inklings that there was something “wrong” with me. I sat in that corner alone and crying for what seemed an eternity as I listened to the other children laugh and play and whisper behind me. By the time school was dismissed, the little note was quite tear-stained. My older brother appeared at the door as he did everyday to walk me home, but today, the teacher called him to her desk. I heard her explain to him about the note on my shirt, that it was for my mother to read.

Unlike in all the days that had gone before, my brother didn’t hold my hand on the short walk home. He didn’t try to comfort or console me either; I felt so alone that day. We walked home in silence save the whimpering that came with the trail of tears I left behind me. When we got home, my mother was standing at the kitchen sink and she turned when she heard my crying. My brother pointed out the note and when Mother reached down to unpin it, a tremor ran through my body; for the first time in my recollection, I was truly afraid. I watched as Mother read the note and it was then that the same look I’d seen on my teacher’s face washed over my mother’s; when I saw that, I was crushed and so afraid I could hardly breathe. But then in an instant, Mother bent down and swept me into her arms and held me close. Mother carried me to her rocking chair and sat with me there rocking and telling me, “Hush, don’t cry.” As she laid my head on her breast, I cried until I could make no more tears.

Just as I began to feel safe, and normal, and human again, Mother sat me on the end of her knee and said to me, “You must never do that again, promise Mommy.” Well, I promised and she held me close and I thought all would be well. But then as she rocked me, a terrifying thought came into my mind that renewed all my fears. And as tears came again, this time in a torrent of fearful emotions, Mother asked what was wrong. All I could say was, “Daddy.” I remember how afraid I was as I thought about what he would do to me… I honestly thought at the time he would kill me. My father was very much from the old school of “spare the rod and spoil the child…” We children endured some merciless whippings that today are called “child abuse.”

Father was a very strict disciplinarian and keeping up appearances was important to him; without understanding why, I knew I’d brought a great stain to the grand illusion of our “happy family” that my father would not bear. Mother knew without saying, what my fears were and that they were potentially very real. But she just held me even closer and said, “Don’t cry anymore, Daddy doesn’t have to know, this will be our secret.” And with that, my tears and fear subsided for a time and it was in that moment that my “Secret Life” began. When I came out to my father on August 15th, I asked him if he ever knew about what had happened in kindergarten. He confessed that my telling him was the first he’d ever heard of it. Mother had kept my secret for 35 years; and I’d kept it for another two.

March 8, 2009: Just as I thought, my father did eventually come to live with me in my home... He's now living in a supervised long-term care facility for Alzheimer's patients. I visited with him today and we talked briefly about the day I came out to him. Sadly, he doesn't remember much of it, but I will never forget it.