Behind My Rainbow Closet Door – My Coming Out Story

“I kissed Gina in my dream,” eleven year old me says to my mother. Gina is a girl from school. It is 1975. The Stonewall Riots erupted six years earlier and it’s been two years since homosexuality came off the American Psychiatry Associations (APA) list of mental illnesses. Of course, I know none of these things. I’m eleven. Nor does one girl kissing another in a dream mean they are gay. Spoiler Alert – this eleven year-old girl is gay. She just doesn’t know it yet.

Is my mother aware of these two significant events in LGBTQ history? Unlikely. Does my dream alarm her? Hardly. She dismisses my nocturnal canoodling as nothing to worry about. I’m not worried. I shared it without shame or hesitation. I’m curious. Girls don’t kiss girls in the same way they kiss boys. But in my dreams, I do. Fourteen years after telling my mother about kissing Gina in my dream, I will say to her “I’m gay.” She doesn’t remember me sharing my dream. But I do. The memory and the brief conversation never left me.

“When did you know you were gay?” I will be asked this question throughout the years. I don’t know. When I dreamt about Gina? It’s not as if a bell goes off announcing to any of us “You’re straight. You’re gay. You’re trans. You’re queer. You’re lesbian. You’re bi.” It wasn’t about “the knowing”. It was about my own understanding and acceptance of myself; embracing myself even if society rejected me. Everyone’s coming out story is different. This is mine.

No Longer Dreaming

I am sixteen years old when kissing a girl moves out of my dreams and onto my lips. I have boyfriends in high school but the feeling following this illicit girl kiss wasn’t the same as when I kissed a boy. The anticipation of being in her company is amplified with her. I maintain a clandestine relationship with this girl while we also date guys. Why not? Nothing permanent can come of our relationship. It is 1979. There is nothing normal or mainstream about same sex relationships. There are no public role models. No gay characters on television. We are eighteen years away from the Ellen DeGeneres the person and the character she plays on television coming out as gay.

My high school girlfriend heads off to one college and I to another. We maintain a long-distance relationship while arranging a couple of visits to each other’s campuses under the guise of friendship. Gay is a snarky epithet used to denigrate others. I’m not that. Not at all. I just happen to love this one girl. I want to be like everyone else. I want to fall in love and live happily ever after. And that can only be with a guy, right? Anyway, I can’t be gay. I’m Catholic. It’s a sin. I can’t live in sin and go to heaven. We all have a cross to bear. In second Corinthians Paul speaks of a “thorn in the flesh…a messenger of Satan” that harasses him. This is my thorn. I must overcome it. Or I can ignore it. I do the latter.

I rush sororities the spring of my freshman year; pay a small fee, go to the rush parties, drink their beer, and eat their food. It will be cheaper than a weekend of partying at the local bars. I don’t want to be in a sorority. I consider them snooty and elitist. But there is one group of young women who I find completely down to earth and neither of these things I thought sorority girls are supposed to be. I can see myself as one of them. I put in a bid to join their sisterhood. That spring I become an Alpha Delta Epsilon sister.

Looking For Me

I live in New Hampshire that summer with my high school girlfriend. My parents are disappointed I don’t return home. They miss my company. But I can’t go home. I would suffocate under the weight of my secret.

I return to campus in the fall. I am full of too much bravado. It’s my wall. My fortress. It keeps me hidden. Allows in only those I want and keeps others out. Go to class, study, party, sleep – repeat. I let my guard down with some of the other young women in my sorority. I will spend the next several years living off campus with several of them. Life challenges each one of us in different ways. Our backgrounds and back stories are different. We all are coming of age, struggling to tear out of cocoons and grow into adulthood in the sanctuary that is Geneseo, New York. I experience the freedom of being “out” to them. Deep friendships form. I am gay. They are not. They don’t care. They have boyfriends. I have a new girlfriend. My high school flame is extinguished and replaced with a college crush. I feel normal with them.

I have my first full-blown panic attack walking to class one morning. I’m consumed with anxiety for weeks while waiting for the next attack that will make me feel like I am dying. It’s hard catching my breath. Falling asleep or getting a beer buzz are my two reprieves from the constant near suffocation I feel. I tell no one. “Be strong and be in control, Elaine.” I go see a campus counselor who draws my secret out of me and gets to the source of my anxiety, my inner conflict over my sexuality.

I go to my first gay bar – MC Compton’s in Buffalo, New York. My girlfriend found it. I don’t know how she did. It’s the 1980s. No Googling. No internet searches. One must pierce the veil of privacy to find gay gathering places. You slip into the matrix and a new world opens. The scene overwhelms me. I feel like I have a flashing neon sign over my head alerting every other patron to this fact. It is terrifying and exhilarating. Woman dance, talk, flirt, and buy each other drinks, existing in this sanctuary for a few hours before emerging back into the world, invisible.

Two Lives in One

Much to my parent’s disappointment, I will spend the next two summers living off campus and taking classes. This arrangement keeps me closer to my girlfriend who lives in upstate New York. We see each other and we date men. I don’t like it, but it’s the practical thing to do. We can’t live like this forever, can we? I’m looking for my happily ever after that looks like everyone else’s. I’m one date and one man away from that reality, aren’t I?

One young man is different from other young men I have known. We have great conversations. I genuinely enjoy his company. I bring him home to meet my parents. They adore him. They are hopeful for us. He thinks he has found his forever in me. But there is something missing. I tell my mother that I don’t lust him. There is no other way I can explain it to her. She tells me that sometimes that takes time. There isn’t enough time in my life in my life for that to happen.

My girlfriend floats the idea of moving to Florida. Her sister made the trip. There are jobs and sunshine. My student loan payments start in twelve months. I have that long to become self-sustaining. The idea sounds good to me. We pack up my car. I’m an enigma to my parents. I met the perfect man and have a college degree in hand. I should be going down a different path to begin the next phase of my life and yet I’m running away to Florida without a plan. They don’t understand yet that I’m breaking free. They don’t understand that is the plan. I’m going twelve thousand miles away to be fully me. I am not running away. I’m running toward something.

Free To Be Me

We get an apartment. We find jobs. I’m an English major with dreams of being writer, but not a starving artist. I land short term job assignments through a temporary service and bar tend for money. I get a job with the Tampa Tribune taking classified ads over the phone. It’s not exactly the type of writing I want to do. I see an ad for Progressive Insurance (before Flo was on the scene) and land a job processing insurance forms.

My student loan payments will begin soon, and I haven’t landed a solid job. I’ll need more cash flow to survive. I meet with an Army recruiter to join the Army reserves. I can serve my country and close the cash gap. When my recruiter goes through the standard questions and asks, “are you a homosexual,” he answers it for me “no” and checks the box. I never have to say a word. I never have to lie about it as part of enlisting.

There is a military police army reserve unit in Tampa. That’s what I will do after basic training. I’m going to be an MP. A weekend warrior. I go to the processing center for my physical but I am one inch too short to be an MP. My recruiter wants me to pick something else right on the spot. There is an army reserve transportation I can enlist in but I am too disappointed. I need time to think about this sudden development and leave the processing center without making a final commitment. That week, I end up in the management training program at Progressive Insurance. This changes the trajectory of my career and my life. I forgo military service.

The move to Florida is paying off. Me and my girlfriend find the gay bar scene. She finds other women. We argue. We make up. It’s a cycle for a while. Eventually, we break up. We move apart and move on. I rent my own apartment. I embrace the gay community I find in Tampa Bay. They embrace me. I fall in love.

“I’m Gay”

I edit so much of my life out of my long distant conversations with my parents. I want them to know me. All of me. I want them to know I am in love. I can’t be their closeted daughter and achieve this goal.

My mother is in counseling to work through feelings that surfaced after her bout with breast cancer. She likes her counselor. I ask if I can talk with him the next time I travel to New York to visit. I am ready to come out to my mother and want his help. She arranges an appointment without asking any questions. It’s easy talking to this stranger. He shares that my mother suspects I’m gay.

We agree I will tell her. He reassures me she is ready. It’s what I wanted to hear and now I want to leave his office. “I’ll tell her over lunch.” He stands. “I’ll go get her.” I want to run out the door. I don’t want to do it here, but he knows that when I leave his office so will my courage. He disappears into the waiting room and returns with my mother. In an instant, my entire life will change. My relationship with her will never be the same. I begin crying uncontrollably. My mother drops to her knees in front of me and cradles my hands. “What is it? You can tell me?”

“I’m gay.” These two word stagger out of my mouth. It is the most consequential sentence I will ever say to her. As she cradles my hands she bows her head and says, “I was afraid you were going to say that.” She fixes her gaze back on me and tell me, “I love you.” She will share over lunch that knowing I struggled with this secret for years is what causes her the most pain and regret. She was right there and yet I was alone. This retrospective look provides painful clarity: the perfect boyfriend who wasn’t perfect for me, staying away for the summers during college, and my move to Florida.

We talk to the counselor about telling my father. It’s a conversation I don’t want to have with him. His reaction is the one I fear the most. I fly back to Florida. My mother will tell him the following weekend and bring in my brother and sister-in-law for this family meeting. I’m anxious all weekend imagining the scene at my childhood home. My mother calls me that Monday afternoon. “Your father is going to call you when he gets home from work,” is all she shares.

The phone rings two hours later. “Hello.” I brace myself for the rejection I’m expecting. “Elaine,” his voice is soft and caressing. “I have loved you from the first moment I looked at you and held you in my arms. I wouldn’t trade you for any daughter in the world.” I learn that he spent the weekend in the basement by himself absorbing the news. I had spent years coming to terms with myself. It took him a weekend. There were no “buts” attached. His love was unconditional and without judgment. He spent the next several days making sure that everyone is our large extended family knew. There would be no secrets. No shame. When he told his mother she said, “I know.”

This man I sometimes feared and butted heads with became my biggest advocate. My parents joined PFLAG (Parents and Friends of Lesbian and Gays). My father joined me in Washington D.C. in 1993 for The March on Washington for Lesbian, Gay, and Bi Equal Rights and Liberation. This Marine turned police officer proudly wore a bright pink hat with the word “Pride” stitched across the front to West Point football games, while golfing, anywhere it could be provocative, just daring any gawker to say something to him.

Hello, I’m Elaine

My family’s reaction was the not the norm. The unconditional love, support and acceptance shown to me by my family was different from the coming out experiences of many of my friends. Some didn’t speak with their family for years. When things thawed between them, it was just between them, not the partners in their lives. Their partners were excluded from family celebrations and holidays. It was rejection I never experienced.

Today’s world is different from the one I came out in. Part of my coming out was coming out to friends and co-workers and neighbors. The “coming out conversations” are a thing of the past for me. No more editing my words to disguise who I am. I’m not hiding in plain sight any longer. I’m out. I’m me. I’m Elaine.

Featured image by Nadine Shaabana on Unsplash

This story is also published in Prism & Pen, an online publication amplifying LGBTQ voices through the art of storytelling.