My Coming-Out Story, Part Five

Note: If you have not already done so, be sure to read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4 of my coming-out story so this part will make sense a bit more.

My Coming-Out Story, Part Five: Not Exactly as Planned (Conclusion)

I had a plan. Perhaps it wasn't perfect, but it certainly seemed workable.I had a plan. Perhaps it wasn't perfect, but it certainly seemed workable. I was returning to the city of my childhood--Los Angeles, California. My cousin was to be married, and I was the piano player for the wedding. So, my parents (who had recently moved to Kentucky) and I would have the opportunity on the Monday after the wedding to sit down and talk. I knew they wouldn't be happy about my coming out, and I was prepared for the questions and emotion that would come, or so I thought. At the very least, I anticipated that we would have a profitable discussion, where I could explain to them that I wasn't going to start dressing in drag and having public sex, but rather I was just going to be honest about who I am.

We all gathered in southern California around mid-week. Friday night was the wedding rehearsal and Saturday the wedding. My parents and brother joined me on Thursday for a day at Universal Studios, and we had a great time together. According to my plan, we would have the wedding events on Friday and Saturday, a nice day to relax on Sunday, then on Monday I would have "the talk" with my parents. Then, even if it was difficult, I would fly back to Illinois on Tuesday morning, and life would be good.

But it was not to be so. Friday evening, we had the wedding rehearsal and dinner. Our entire extended family on my dad's side gathered in the church building to walk through the events of the next day. I sat up on the stage playing the romantic piano melodies I had prepared, trying not to be too obvious as I looked at the hot friend of the groom who was in the wedding party. Eventually, they came to the point where they were going to discuss the vows and charge to the couple, and all the other non-musical items of the service. So, I decided to step off the stage for a bit and sit next to my mother, who was just watching off to the side.

As we sat there and chatted a bit, my mom asked how things were going at church. Now, if you have read the previous sections of this story, you know that church is a big deal to my family. My parents' primary reason for moving to the place they now live was the church they attend. And they had visited my church in Illinois on a couple occasions and loved it. However, they had no idea that I had been kicked out of the church for being gay and that the pastor had treated me shamefully. So, it was not an unusual question for my mom to ask, but it certainly was undesirable timing.

I tried to delay the answer at first, telling her that that was something I was planning to talk to my dad and her about after the wedding events were completed, and that it was a discussion that would take too long to begin right then. Rather than calming her, though, she became concerned and started pressing me further. So I said that I would explain everything on Monday, but I wasn't planning to attend that church any longer, and I planned to move to Chicago the next month. But I said I didn't think that my cousin's wedding rehearsal was the best time to discuss this.

Now, what happened next is the strongest example I have ever seen of a mother's intuition. Keep in mind that my parents, to this point, did not know of my strong attraction to guys. Even when I was forced to return from Europe (see part 3 of this story), they thought it was because I had violated the missionary agency's pornography policy. But sitting there in that church, my mother turned to me and said, "Are you gay?"

If there is one thing I cannot do well, and which I hate to do in the first place, it is to lie to my mother. When I was in elementary school, I lied to my mother once and said I ate the apple she gave me at lunch when I had actually thrown it away. It bothered me so much that I couldn't sleep that night, and I woke her up in the middle of the night to confess and apologize. I have said many times that, if it were not for her opposition to my sexual orientation, I would have the perfect mother.

So, I said, "Yes, I am gay."

Oops.

I knew that coming out would likely be an emotional experience. I anticipated my parents being upset, but I envisioned it happening in a hotel room where we would have privacy and a discussion about it. I planned on both parents being there, because they do a good job of keeping each other calm in strained situations. But I never planned for this.

For a moment, my mother went silent. Her jaw was very tight, a look I had seen before when she was very upset. Her eyes started to appear moist. Then, attracting a lot of attention from our entire family standing around the church sanctuary, she stood up quickly and left the room. Hoping to calm her down, I followed her outside and tried to talk to her.

What happened next was a couple hours of pure emotion coming from my mother. She was crying almost the whole time, trying to convince me I wasn't gay, that I shouldn't move to Chicago, that I was going to ruin my life. She was so upset that, within a few minutes of each other, she made both of the following statements:

• "You will die of AIDS before you are 30."
• "You will grow up to be a lonely old man."

The two of us missed the remainder of the wedding rehearsal and the entire dinner. And even worse, we were in the corridor between the church building and the dining hall where the dinner was held, so all of our family members walked past us seeing my mother crying and our intense discussion.

The following couple months were pretty rough between me and my parents. I moved to Chicgao in October, by which time I was often not answering their calls because I couldn't handle the crying (of both parents) and pressure all the time. Finally, in the early part of November, my mom asked me if I was going to be with them for Thanksgiving. I told her that, if the trip was just going to be four days of them trying to convince me not to be gay, I could not handle that. A couple days later, my dad called, and I saw the first very small step my parents took toward calming down. My dad told me that he knew they had made it very clear what they thought about my sexuality, and their opinion had not changed. However, he said that, more importantly, I am their son whom they love, and they would not bring up the subject again.

Thanksgiving was very tense and uncomfortable, but they kept their word. Then Christmas was slightly better, and each visit afterward has improved. Three years later, I have seen my parents make amazing steps that I never would have imagined. They still hold to their belief that gay sex is sinful, but they are much less dogmatic about so many other things. They no longer believe I "chose" to be gay or that I am gay because they were bad parents. They realize that I'm not out on the weekends participating in S&M drag gangbang orgies. They don't make my "sin" to be somehow a big sin worse than all others. They have met a number of my gay friends and are thoughtful in their comments about issues that we discuss. And they have kept their word and have not gotten on my case about it ever since.

After moving to Chicago, I did not attend church for nearly a year, but then I found a church that seemed to have a good balance. As time has progressed, I have found it to be a very welcoming church and actually look forward to services there. I know I'm in the minority when it comes to gay guys and religion, and I must say I find it very hard to be critical of gay guys who want nothing to do with religion, because it seems most religions don't want anything to do with us. But for myself, I have found it to be a source of encouragement and stability, and hopefully people can see in me someone who is working on a balance in faith and sexuality, someone who takes my faith seriously but doesn't take myself too seriously. And most of all, that I will be a person of faith but never of judgment. I think that church should be a place where people go because we realize we are not perfect, not because we think we are. My attending church is a statement that I know I have things to improve on, not a statement that others are worse than me. Perhaps if more church people understood that, we would have less antipathy between the gay and religious communities.

As for me, I'm probably still a little messed up in the head. My friends could vouch for that. But coming out was the first of many important steps that I have taken to be real and who I need to be. It's still a process, for sure, but I am at a point where I can honestly say I hold no anger toward those who have wronged me in the past, nor do their opinions and judgments hold me back from being myself. Hopefully, I will continue to live in a way that will show the critics that stereotypes are distortions of reality, and a gay man can indeed be someone who is kind, self-disciplined, and someone worth calling a friend.