The Comfortable Closet
TNG reader John brings us this post.
I sometimes wonder if I am the only queer who was happy in the Closet.
This past weekend, I was reminiscing about the good old days with one of my best and oldest friends, and during our conversation, I decided that I was able to pinpoint the year of my life in which I felt the most secure – the year in which I felt as if I was in on an inside joke about the whole rest of the world and nobody else expect me a few friends got it.
It was my senior year of college. I had just come home from a semester abroad in Dublin and got a job working in the food court of the student center. The place I worked was a pizza place/espresso bar and I was the dyed-hair, labret-pierced, hippie pants-wearing barista boy. My bosses loved me and I loved them. They had the warmth and sense of humor I’m pretty sure is only found in Italian-Americans from New Jersey, they were brothers, and one of them wanted me to marry his daughter. Several of my best friends worked there with me, and everyone else on the staff was at least an acquaintance with whom I had sat with in a circle in a dorm room passing a joint around at some point in the previous three years. I worked a lot of hours for a full-time student with a vibrant social life (about 30 hours per week).
When I wasn’t fixing up soy lattes or heating up slices of pizza for the university community, I was taking a full 15-credit load each semester. I was a political science major and a religion minor and I had finished up just about all of my requisite classes prior to my semester abroad. By the time my senior year had begun, I basically knew how to get an A in a class. Now that I am a graduate student and find myself on the other side of the classroom, I know for sure that I had figured out the formula for writing an A paper: Pick three points you want to make, write an introduction in which you state those three points, elaborate on each point in more depth, and conclude by restating what you just said. A! With minimal effort, I had a 3.9 GPA my senior year, which was easily my best performance in college.
When I wasn’t working long hours at the student center or acing my classes, I was having a lot of fun. I met my best friends in college. I am 27 now and the friends I made in college are still my best friends. While it was certainly not a lifestyle that could be sustained, I was high just about every day (sometimes while making lattes at work, and sometimes while writing those formulaic A papers, but don’t tell anyone!) and I was in a comfortable neighborhood bar full of friends about 4 nights a week. I look back on that life now and wonder how I’m not dead. Needless to say, I cannot conduct doctoral research while smoking pot, and this makes me feel like I’ve lost my edge a bit. Oh, to be a productive pothead again!
Anyway, this is an awful lot of buildup, but the kicker about all of this is that my senior year of college was also the last year of my life in the Closet. I came out to family and friends two weeks after I graduated. The uncomfortable (or at least perplexing) reality that I was confronted with this weekend when I was recounting 2002-2003 as one of the best years of life is this: How could the last year of my life in the Closet also be one of the best years of my life? How is this possible?
The first and most logical explanation for this is that I am merely blinded by nostalgia. Now that I am a 27 year-old facing down the end of my life as a student, facing the slow invasion of the sides of my head by gray hairs, and facing the reality that lots of drinking now inexorably leads to lots of hangover, I look back on my time as a young party star with a fondness only possible with the passage of time. I grant this as part of the explanation, but it’s most certainly not the whole story.
Another possibility that I think is closer to the truth is that I was actually very happy in that year of my life. Everywhere I went, I knew what I was doing. Everywhere I went, I knew and enjoyed everyone who was there. My friends (most of them straight) and I were generally not interested in chasing tail and getting laid. Our lives revolved around getting high and drinking, experimenting with various other drugs from time to time, playing games, and laughing our asses off as much as possible. We listened to good music. We were very politically aware, especially since we were a mere 25 miles from the World Trade Center and our government was on the verge of invading Iraq. In short, I had a busy, fulfilling life outside of the realm of love and sex. I had fun at work, I enjoyed my classes and was very good at getting good grades in them, and I was very engaged in the socio-political world around me. All of that was more than enough for me to be happy.
I also had come to understand that I was gay during this year, but had not yet told anyone. I had a serious relationship with a girl for most of my sophomore year, and after that, I only made half-hearted references to friends about thinking this or that girl was cool. By the time my senior year rolled around, I had stopped even pretending to have an interest in girls. I had a few discreet, awkward experiences with a couple of boys, but for the most part, I existed as a closeted, non-sexual gay person who was having too much fun to disrupt everything by coming out.
In the last months of closeted living, I felt as if the world was my oyster. There was nothing I could not do, no fun I was not having, no place I would rather be. Of course, this was not sustainable, and life has continued to be good since then only because I eventually did come out. I do not wish to go back in; I just can’t relate to the horror stories of life in the Closet that I hear from other queers. I was happy before and after I came out. I knew I had to come out to continue to be happy. But I did not come out in order to be happy. I already was.
I think we often treat closeted life as absolute hell on earth, and this was simply not the case for me. I understand that the Closet is something that needs to be overcome. It is, indeed, a living hell for a lot of people. I do not wish to minimize that or pretend that the Closet is a great place to be. And no, I do not feel comfortable sounding as if I am rationalizing the Closet as an acceptable lifestyle. I just wish to express the reality of a broader experience in the Closet. Am I alone in this experience?
first you give free publicity to the fred phelps loons, then an article about being comfortably in the closet. what’s next changing this blog’s name to the new ex-gay?
as someone who honestly feels as if he was never really “in the closet” himself, i actually totally understand this. maybe it’s because i relate to the casual drug use so much. i too miss being a productive stoner. i’ve never really totally bought into the idea that a lot of older gay rights activists advocate, that the closet is inherently bad for you and that gay people are under some sort of mandate from above to come out.
i saw, some time ago, this documentary where a stonewall era activist was complaining about some younger guys saying that they don’t like pride and they don’t see the point of it and blah blah blah, and the activist said something like “you don’t get it and yada yada yada, and are you even out to everyone you know?” i just remember thinking, why should that matter? people should be as out as they want to be, and their gayness doesn’t obligate them to you in any way.
anyhow, i kinda feel this way about high school. like i’m pressured to say it was this awful, stifling, awkward experience where i could never really “be myself” and was just forced to go along with the status quo. but it wasn’t. i’m still really close with a lot of the people i went to high school with, and goddammit if we didn’t have loads of fun. i wouldn’t go back, but i remember it fondly.
My guess, John, is that you were getting all your needs met (except maybe romantic needs) by your friends and social outlets, etc. Finding that sort of acceptance in life is probably what helped you gain the strength and confidence to finally come out. Or perhaps having such a great life and set of resources is what kept you in the closet so long. (relatively speaking, that is.)
I can imagine that maybe if your sex drive were a lot stronger and you had cute straight hippie male friends around you all the time, that year would have been a lot less comfortable.
Oh, and if you’d come out while you were studying abroad, do you think you would have had the same great senior year? How would it have been different? Better?
Perhaps it was because you felt good in your social life you felt comfortable enough to step out of the closet? And then stepping out wasn’t so bad since your great social life continued to support you.
While i know that parts of coming out were hard and while i’m sure being closeted had its tricky moments as well, I think that being confident with yourself and being in a good environment can make someone enjoy the experience more. I think it is great that you can look back and see all the positives.
My read: the super magic joke-we’re-all-in-on for me was that sex and gender are not the huge deals some people make them. What I liked best about that last year in college is thinking we’re from the future, where people don’t get hung up on booty and what kind of booty someone else prefers. You give many reasons for being happy in that year that are not related to the closet, in or out, but in that oyster-year, the oyster (for me) included being gay, straight, both, and especially futuristic: neither. My favorite thing was spending four nights a week at a bar with friends I did NOT sleep with.
@ Joe: Come on, it’s important to talk. The “OVER the Rainbow” aspect of this blog is much needed. One-size-fits-all gayness makes it hard for some people to see a place for themselves of the closet. How about letting people come out as individuals?
Put them both together: People DO have to come out of the closet so that in the beautiful future, no one has to, because there are no closets and no one cares.
@Adam – Speaking from the perspective of coming out years ago, the rationale behind being out to everyone was that the more of your friends, family, co-workers, etc. who knew you were of a sexual minority, the more likely those friends, family, co-workers, etc. would be to support you, both socially and in the polling booth. Unfortunately, that has not proven to be the case. So, I think the call to come out, IMHO, has become less strident in recent years.
I think one of the results of all those folks coming out in the 50’s, 60’s, 70’s, 80’s and 90’s has been that for those in the 00’s, it has become no big deal. (Of course, that’s mainly for the coasts. Believe me, it’s still a big deal in Anycity, Redstate, USA.)
In the gay liberation era of the 1970s, one of the questions activists asked was some variation on, “What would happen if every gay person turned blue for a day?” If everyone saw the vast array of gays and lesbians in their daily lives, the assumption went, it would be not only a shock, but one that would force straight society to confront its prejudices.
Then in the 1980s, a huge number of gay men–both the openly gay and the closeted–did turn blue. Straight society did have to confront its prejudices when AIDS struck, although all too often, AIDS re-entrenched those fears and hatreds. But the crisis did force a significant portion of gay males, especially those living in urban areas, to pull together and fight for mutual survival.
Therefore, when people say that it is necessary for everyone to come out, I think it is for two reasons: to force straight society to confront its prejudices, yes, but also to help fight for our survival.
When the students I teach are struggling so hard, even today, to find appropriate role models; when gays and lesbians are still being attacked in the streets, even in our supposedly safe urban ghettos; when boys and girls growing up in tiny towns–and suburbs, and cities–all over America are taught to hate themselves; when our history is still routinely erased from public discourse; when “faggot” is still the worst thing teenagers can think to call each other; when men and women are executed for their sexuality in this world — make no mistake, our survival and the quality of life for the members of our community is under attack.
We must try to teach straights, absolutely. But we must also stand up for our own people. Neither of these tasks can be accomplished without massive numbers of gay men and lesbians coming out. Every person for whom coming out would generally be safe must come out.
Anything less than coming out, adding your name to the rolls, and fighting for all of our lives is a selfish act.
Sure, the closet can be easier. What’s easy and what’s right don’t always match.
I think that you’re on to something very important, John. I’ve talked to a lot of people who had similarly idyllic memories of the days before they came out. The common thread I’ve found, and that you’ve brought up here in your description of the apex of those times, is this: it’s (comparatively) easy to be in the closet, especially if you aren’t surrounded by a comfortable subculture that isn’t pressing the issue.
Most of the things you identify as making that year so enjoyable have to do with knowing where you stand with the people around you, and having found the easy way out of a lot of the challenges in your life. School work had become a formula you could churn out without much effort. Your friends and coworkers were comfortable with you as they knew you, and largely reinforced your own values. Anyway, your “lives revolved around getting high and drinking, experimenting with various other drugs from time to time, playing games, and laughing our asses off as much as possible.” Wherever challenges to your fundamental ethics, way of living, or nascent sexual orientation were going to come from, it wasn’t going to be from them.
You’ve essentially described what life would have been like for your average denizen of A Brave New World. The insidiousness of this life is the comfort of it. In a world that requires a lot of really shitty striving and pushing for Queer people to be recognized as people, it would be really tempting to remain as long as possible in that pleasant prison, not needing to risk the subtle alienation that often results from coming out to peers (even progressive, chill stoner peers). I think that the cushy, well-lit walk-in Closet is, in many ways, a greater challenge than the cramped, dank, uncomfortable Closet that gives one little choice but to leave it. I, for one, am glad that you escaped.
I hope you all won’t mind if I address a couple of points made in the comments briefly.
@Michael: Interesting point about how things would be different if I came out while abroad. I think if you put a gun to my head and asked me if I would have preferred coming out earlier, I would have to say no. I think I came out in my own time when it was right for me, and before I came out, I was either unsure of whether I was really gay or I was caught up in a million other things that were making me happy. So, I’m sure things would have been very different, and maybe better, but I wouldn’t take that gamble. Like Dick Cheney and Vietnam, I had other priorities. (OK, bad analogy.)
@Adam, Kyle, Philip: I think this has shifted to a normative argument about whether individual gays owe it to all gays to come out. This is a worthwhile and, I think, very difficult question to sort through. I would like to make a distinction, however, between the normative and the empirical. Then, within the empirical, a distinction between the “how,” the “whether” and the “when.” My post was about how my experience in the Closet was not as tortured as I imagine it was for others. In fact, I was a generally happy and fulfilled person. This in turn complicated the question of whether – whether I was gay and would come out (I don’t think I was sure about either until sometime in my last year being in the Closet) – and the question of when (like Michael pointed out above, I probably would have come out earlier if I had been less fulfilled in the rest of my life).
These empirical questions, on a case-by-case basis, complicate normative assertions that individuals owe it to their community to come out. I think it is a lot to ask a late-teen/early twenties (and even older) person to definitely state their identity and make political demands on the basis of that identity. I sympathize with the notion that closeted individuals are being selfish to a point, but we also have to understand that each person’s experience in the Closet is unique. Given that empirical reality, I cannot join fully in the (normative) implication that I was being selfish until I graduated college and then ceased being selfish once I came out. That’s actually absurd if you ask me.
In sum, I think the truly generous and sympathetic way in which to help younger generations of queers is to be understanding of the various and equally worthy paths that lead one out of the Closet. Anything short of that closes off the community that we claim to support. And I say all of this with all due respect. =D
it’s not that i don’t see the merits of the argument philip, but i just take issue with you or anyone else telling someone that they “must” do something for your sake or my sake or even their own sake. i certainly agree that they SHOULD, but i think painting it this way unnecessarily vilifies those who are living “in the closet”.
look, it’s completely beyond me how anyone lives in the closet. i’ve never really done it myself, and i’m glad that i grew up in a time and place where it wasn’t necessary for me to do so. and i also recognize that the gay liberation movement in the 70s and 80s made that climate possible. but some people aren’t as lucky as i am, or as sure of themselves as i am, and to say that someone just has to get over that because kids are getting called faggots in school yards and people are being executed in iran and their gay forebearers fought so hard for their opportunity to come out is unreasonable.
Hi, John and Adam — As I think you sense on some level, John, my response was much more directed to what Adam was talking about than to your original post. That’s the danger of blog-style comment formats: as you rightly point out, arguments can shift away from whatever the original post was talking about.
Adam: We just fundamentally disagree about this. My comment wasn’t trying to change your mind, as I recognized that our positions are fully opposed, and when such a thing is true, it’s not an argument that is going to be resolved.
I’m certainly not one for telling others how to live their lives, and with the issue of coming out or not, there are so many variables that my ordering an individual person to come out is both inappropriate and futile.
So, instead, let me personalize this argument: I’m from a middle-class, suburban/urban background; I didn’t have to worry about getting thrown out of the house; I have rarely been in direct physical danger owing to my sexuality; I have the ability to speak about my life as a gay man in a way that (I hope) can have an effect on others’ lives; I have known that I’m gay for quite a while and have had the opportunity to think about that and become comfortable with myself; and as someone who works with teenagers, I occasionally have the pulpit from which I can cause straight kids to question their attitudes about gays or provide gay kids with a role model. In my situation, it would be selfish and an insult to others not to be out of the closet.
Now, I could be fired from my job without recourse because the county/school system I work in has no employment protections for gay/lesbian employees. But the way I see it, that makes it even more important that I’m out. Laws and attitudes toward GLBT folk don’t change without a whole lot of GLBT folk living their lives openly.
So yes, it would be selfish if I weren’t out when I have the power to help others by being out. This idea that we’re only responsible to ourselves and our own situations and not to others as well is completely beyond me.
i’m really not sure our positions are “fully opposed” exactly. i do agree with most points. you just use stronger language than i can get behind. just a clarification. i didn’t want to come off as though i’d read the fountainhead one too many times.
I’d like to clarify my earlier comment. I only intended to explain the rationale that older gay-identified men had for believing everyone should come out, not to promote it. I no longer accept the rationale that coming out to your friends, family, coworkers, etc. will change their attitudes and consequently the world. It may, but it just as easily may not. I’ve seen the hardening of conservative attitudes as well as the softening. I also have come to believe that the main cause for the overall liberalizing of attitudes towards sexual minority folk in the US has been due more to the media, and portrayals of gay individuals on TV and in the movies, rather than a mass of individuals coming out, rocking their families’ worlds and softening their attitudes.
Therefore, coming out – usually – is an individual choice and an individual responsibility. The sexual minority community, if one even exists, can deal with its situation with or without you. I can however accept outing someone else who is in a position of power and who is using that power to hinder the rights of sexual minorities. I’m all for outing those bastards.
What’s so hard to understand? Happy people are happy people, whatever the circumstances in their life. Yes, events or situations can make people happier or unhappier temporarily, but most people go back to their “set-point.”
I’m almost 60, and I’ve seen my friends, straight and gay, have pretty much the same level of happiness from when we were in college to now, as we are entering our “senior” years.
Read Martin Seligman or other psychologists who’ve written about happiness. While Abraham Lincoln was not quite correct that most folks are about as happy as they decide to be, most people’s level of happiness is about the same.
No one thing in life will make anyone happy, including coming out of the closet, having a lot of money, being married, winning the lottery, becoming famous, etc. The upside is that even my friends who’ve gone through the “worst” experiences — losing a partner, losing a job, having horrible health problems — manage to stay more or less as happy as they were before the event.
Thank you for this post. This is why I read this blog, for stories like this.
I’m curious about your relationships with your straight buddies. I think one of the most problematic and painful aspects of being homosexual is that it so complicates our friendships with straight men. I think it’s hard for straight men to be themselves and accept non-sexual intimacy with homosexual men in the same way that it’s hard for a lot of straight men to have intimate non-sexual friendships with women. The fact that you had such a nice circle of male friends seems to be one of the main reasons you enjoyed that period of time so much. Are those guys still around?
I mistyped. I meant to say “it’s (comparatively) easy to be in the closet, especially if you are surrounded by a comfortable subculture that isn’t pressing the issue.”
When I think about the people I know in my age group that stayed closeted the longest, it wasn’t the kids growing up in godawful fundamentalist households, the children of assimilation immigrant families, the women with mothers that just wanted their little princesses to put on some makeup and “find the right man”, or the sons of fathers who wanted to singlehandedly sire a Chicago Bears Renaissance ala 1985. These kids tended to be out, proud, and loud, either in high school or the moment they reached a safe zone in college. They had no choice but to come out; it was an issue of survival.
No, by and large, it was the kids of quietly liberal, often secular parents, surrounded by generally machismo-free, Queer-Allied peers they could sit around with and agree at each other about politics, in traditionally Queer-friendly academic fields like Performing Arts, that tended to hide out the longest. They could afford to; their daily lives offered nothing immediately threatening or offensive to their cryptic sexualities that they would have to react against. Usually there would be a couple Out people in the group already who could fulfill the Ask a Queer niche and mitigate the need for speculation about sexuality. There’s little to lose by coming out, but, from the perspective of the closeted individual, relatively little to gain, either.
From my point of view, there’s a sort of privilege implied in these sorts of closets. It’s the best of both worlds, to an extant; one gets an accepting environment where a lot of the Obviously Gay Traits one may have aren’t questioned or ridiculed, without having to feel beholden to some larger “community”, either to defend it or be expected to conform to it. Of course, it’s stunting, and a good argument could be made about the harm (or at the very least a lack of good) done to a marginalized community where people can and do “pass”. But, a lot of things that people do for fun or convenience (smoke pot, drink, leave their lights on when they leave the house, drive five blocks to work, eat Bluefin Tuna, buy clothes from Wal-Mart, vote Republican) have varying degrees of negative effects on both themselves and world around them, and that hasn’t stopped very many people from doing them. Generally, if people can get away with something, they will; fortunately, at some point, loneliness or inconvenience drives even these people out of the closet, where a lot of them have become pillars of Queer activism, and role models of mine.
I like this post, because, although it’s extremely important to be comfortable with yourself and your own sexuality (as you obviously are), it’s also wonderful to see proof that no one really has to be defined entirely by his or her sexuality. There are many more facets to personality – and to personal happiness. I receive frequent letters from gay students in high school and college, and I intend to use some of what I’ve learned from this article in future advice. Thanks for some additional perspective!
*Sigh* Reading this post really makes me want to find more gays who would enjoy the occasional trip to Stoner’s Pot Palace.
Thanks for all of these insightful comments. I feel like I need to write an entire follow-up post about actually coming out, and maybe I will.
@Colin: I love the Brave New World analogy. Very spot-on. The only quibble I have is that in my case, I didn’t have the understanding, progressive, secular parents. My parents are respectively a high school drop out and a high school graduate, very blue-collar, very religious, very conservative Republican. I grew up going to pro-life marches and I cried when the Republican lost for governor of NJ in 1989 because all the babies were going to die (I was 8). So, my family situation and the rest of my life were very much different stories.
@Richard: I very much the appreciate the “so what?” reaction. I think I’ve always wrestled with wanting to say “so what?” but not wanting to diminish something that is also important to who I am and how I came to be me. Still not sure how to strike that balance.
@golikewater: Yes, those guys are still around. One of them came out after me, actually, but the rest are all still around and still straight. I also had lots of girl friends, so it wasn’t an all-male social circle. Good mix of people, straight, gay, bi, male, female.
@Jessica: Awesome! I think your comment echoes Ursula’s (above). There seemed to be a reluctance to allow gender and sexuality to intrude on all of us having a good time.
@Mike B.: Sign me up!
I just stumbled across this thread when looking around at issues of being in the closet. I have a close friend that is in a small town and closeted, and shows me intense attraction, warm affection, consideration (not overly sexual, but more sensual than I have ever seen from a straight man), but can’t bring himself to admit he is even bi.
I want to help this young man accept himself even if he tells no one what is going on emotionally in his mind. And you just can’t ask someone to come out, come out where ever you are. You just have to show them trust and sensitivity, and try and be an example. The reason I want to help him accept himself is because he is drinking and smoking himself to death in an effort to block out the pain he feels. It is hard for me to see a stunningly beautiful young guy do this damage to himself.
He picked me out as a friend in a place he once worked. The eye contact was there and we both just did not look away. One of those classic “love at first sight” things that happen sometimes. Except when I found out he was closeted (and sex did not happen) I did not abandon him. So currently I am just being supportive by trying to set an example, and let him know he has someone who loves him and thinks he is beautiful the way he is without saying those exact words. Give him all the time he needs as long as it takes for him to open up even slightly. I am well over ten years older than he is, so he might be too young for me. But I feel there is more about this friendship than sexual attraction. We all need that friend we can talk to anytime.
This is the damage done to some of the young guys in small towns who can’t come out, or do not want to. Just thought I would speak what I had on my mind.
Leave your response!
What is TNG?
Find TNG Online
Subscribe to TNG Emails
Follow Rohan at SXSW
More...
- Cute puppy pic!Cute puppy pic!
[No Comments]
- Top 10 Anti-Gay Activists Caught Being…Top 10 Anti-Gay Activists Caught Being Gay
[No Comments]
- Ke$ha ParodyKe$ha Parody
[One Comment]
- Glee+Easter Eggs=AwesomeGlee+Easter Eggs=Awesome
[No Comments]
- Urban Legends!Urban Legends!
[No Comments]
- Shh! Glenn can hear you.Shh! Glenn can hear you.
[No Comments]
- DC Trans Coalition: Today! DCTC…DC Trans Coalition: Today! DCTC testifying before the DC Council about the DC jails
[No Comments]
- Ask me!Ask me!
[No Comments]
- That’s Gay! Awards ShowsThat’s Gay! Awards Shows
[No Comments]
- Granny DJ Rocks ParisGranny DJ Rocks Paris
[No Comments]
More in Chatterbox...Recent Coments
Most Viewed
Most Commented