Two Seconds
I came out 32 years ago. Last week, I came out again. And, if I really think about it, I probably came out three or four times after that.
That’s the strange thing about coming out that I don’t think people who aren’t gay necessarily understand. You don’t do it once, breathe an enormous sigh of relief, check the box and move on with your life. You do it over and over again, usually in completely unremarkable places and during conversations that shouldn’t require even a moment’s thought.
It happens at the Home Depot. At the airport. Sitting next to someone on a plane. Checking into a hotel. Meeting a new coworker. Standing at a cocktail party talking to someone I’ve known for all of 90 seconds when they casually ask, “So, what does your wife do?”
And there it is.
For the person asking, it’s an innocent question that probably registers as nothing more than small talk. For me, there’s a tiny calculation that happens almost automatically. It probably lasts two seconds, but there’s a surprising amount of information being processed during those two seconds: Do I correct you? Do I say, “Actually, my husband works as a …”? Do I just say “my spouse”? Do I let the assumption go and move on with my day? And, underneath all of those questions, there’s really only one that matters: Is it safe for you to know?
That may sound dramatic, particularly to someone who has never had to think about it, but it really isn’t. It’s remarkably ordinary. I am very happily married. I love my husband, Jeff. I love saying “my husband.” I’m proud of the life we’ve built together, and there is absolutely nothing uncomfortable to me about being gay. I spent far too many years becoming comfortable with exactly who I am to suddenly start apologizing for it now.
The uncomfortable part isn’t whether I’m comfortable with you knowing. The uncomfortable part is not knowing whether you’re comfortable knowing.
Most of the time, thankfully, nothing happens. I say, “My husband, Jeff…” and the conversation simply continues. That is exactly how it should be. Human meets human, somebody learns one additional fact about somebody else, and life goes merrily along.
But every gay person knows there are other possibilities. Sometimes there’s "the Look!"
You know, that almost imperceptible recalibration when you realize someone has suddenly moved you into a different category in their head. Sometimes there are comments. Sometimes there are questions. And sometimes those questions become astonishingly personal astonishingly quickly.
The truth, though, is that most people who ask about my “wife” aren’t trying to be offensive. They aren’t making some grand political statement. They’re making an assumption based on what they encounter most frequently in their own lives. I understand that, and I don’t walk around looking for reasons to be offended by it.
What they don’t see is that correcting their perfectly innocent assumption still requires something from me. It requires another tiny decision about how much of myself I’m going to reveal and how safe I feel revealing it. It happens with a new boss, a new neighbor, a doctor, a client, someone at the hardware store, the person sitting next to me at a bar. Life keeps introducing us to new people, which means gay people keep coming out to new people.
That’s why I think we sometimes misunderstand what “coming out” actually means. We talk about it as though it were an event in someone’s biography: “I came out when I was 25.” It sounds wonderfully definitive, like you gather everyone into a conference room, make the announcement, serve refreshments and receive your official Gay Membership Card on the way out.
If only it were that efficient.
Instead, coming out becomes thousands of tiny moments scattered throughout an otherwise ordinary life. Some are important and memorable. Most are so mundane that nobody else in the room even realizes one happened.
It’s also one of the reasons Pride and diversity still matter to me. Pride isn’t important because I need a parade to remind me to be fabulous. Pride matters because visibility creates familiarity, and familiarity has a remarkable way of making things that once seemed “different” simply part of everyday life.
I would love for a young gay kid (or, for that matter, a 35-year-old man finally figuring himself out or a 56-year-old executive casually talking about what he did over the weekend) to say “my husband” without conducting that tiny, nearly invisible two-second assessment first.
I want those two seconds back.
Maybe that’s one of the simplest ways to describe progress. It isn’t necessarily everyone waving a rainbow flag or understanding every letter, identity or experience. We don’t have to agree about everything to treat one another with dignity. Maybe progress is simply reaching the point where someone can mention the person they love and nothing in the room changes. No strange look. No interrogation. No judgment. No courage required. Just, “My husband and I…” and the conversation keeps going.
There’s something particularly meaningful about writing this from Eureka Springs, a wonderfully peculiar little town that has spent a very long time understanding that being different isn’t necessarily something that needs fixing. In fact, around here, being a little different is practically a residency requirement.
I came out years ago, and I came out again last week. I’ll probably do it again tomorrow. I suspect I’ll be doing it, in one way or another, for the rest of my life.
And I’m okay with that.
I’m just looking forward to the day when those two seconds are no longer necessary.❤️
