A Little Push out of the Closet

Steel Mills, Small Towns, and Stereotypes

Every coming-out story needs a little context.

Mine begins in Western Pennsylvania, between Pittsburgh and Erie, in the part of the state where coal mines, steel mills and small towns shaped the landscape and the people who lived there.

If you’re a movie enthusiast, imagine growing up at the intersection of The Deer Hunter, Coal Miner’s Daughter, and Flashdance.

My dad was a lifelong employee of United States Steel, raised on a farm outside Butler, Pennsylvania. My mother was a housewife, the daughter of a police officer from Meadville, who somehow always managed to squirrel away a little cash for her bingo nights without Dad noticing.

This is probably not the family background you’re expecting for the coming-out story I’m about to tell.

Hollywood’s Version of Home

Christmas, Courtship, and Consequences

In the world I was from, being sent to college in the 1990s meant you were expected to exit with two things: first and foremost a spouse and, secondarily but also preferably, a degree.

Landing a spouse was the headline. The degree was just supporting documentation.

So when I brought a young woman, Barbie, home for Christmas during my senior year, there was nothing casual about the introduction. Her presence alone was practically an announcement of matrimonial intent.

And yes, her name really was Barbie.

It was a big move for her also. The plan was to have Christmas lunch with my family, then cross the state to Philadelphia for dinner with hers.

Lunch went reasonably well. Everyone smiled politely, conversation stayed safe. There were the usual pleasantries and awkwardness that come with introducing someone important to your parents at that stage of life. Nobody threw anything. Nobody cried. By all appearances, everything was proceeding according to plan.

Then, sometime after lunch, my dad called me into his den.

Dad, the Den, and Denial

My dad’s den was on the second floor of the house, his cherrywood desk positioned in front of a large window overlooking the front yard. Brass eagle drawer pulls decorated the desk, a Tiffany lamp perched precariously at one edge. The desk faced the window, which meant his back was to the doorway. And me.

When I walked in, he didn’t turn around. He was in the middle of paying bills. Two adding machines on the desk, paper rolling out of them, two checkbooks and a pile of statements in between them.

This immediately concerned me. Being summoned into my father’s den while he was doing bills usually meant one thing: I had spent too much money.

Once when I was 14 and housesitting for the summer, I “borrowed” dad’s car, loaded it up with half the swim team, and drove to New York to see Simon and Garfunkel in Central Park. I completely got away with it until a collection of New York City parking tickets arrived in the mail and landed on that very desk.

Apparently, you have to register a car and give them your actual address. That conversation did not go well for me.

What now? Had I bought something I shouldn’t have? Had Duquesne’s tuition doubled again for my final semester? What could possibly require a Christmas Day financial inquisition?

“Hey, Dad. What’s up?”

Without looking up or turning around, he started.

“Son, you can’t marry that woman. You’re gay.”

Silence.

If I have ever had an out-of-body experience, this was it. It was as though his words had knocked my soul in two. I remember feeling as though I had taken two steps backward out of my body. I could see myself standing there. I could see my father sitting at the desk further away. I was somehow both the person being addressed and a spectator watching the scene unfold.

I couldn’t speak. My mind raced but couldn’t process what I had just heard. Did he just say I was gay? was all I had time for before he broke the silence.

“On some level, you must know that, right?”

Oh. He was serious. And suddenly my brain began frantically reviewing the evidence. There had, admittedly, been a guy that summer.

His name was Tim. In a plot development that would become increasingly inconvenient to my heterosexual narrative, Tim was also Barbie’s roommate. But I had an explanation for that.

Whatever had happened with Tim was something I’d needed to get out of my system. I’d done that. The system had presumably been cleared. And now I had a girlfriend.

Problem solved.

At least, that was the argument I’d told myself hundreds of times. I certainly hadn’t expected to have to defend it to my father on Christmas Day.

“I’m NOT gay!” I heard myself say.

And for some inexplicable reason, to lend an air of unmistakable masculinity to this declaration, I began flailing my arms like one of those wacky waving inflatable tube men advertising discount electronics on the side of the road. Realizing my hands were perhaps protesting a bit too much, I planted them firmly on my still-swaying hips. Then, for one final flourish of heterosexual conviction, I stomped my right foot.

My father never turned around, but I could feel him rolling his eyes.

“Look, son. Just give it some thought, will you?”

And with that, the conversation was over. Dad went back to the bills. Apparently, he considered the matter settled. I, on the other hand, had just been handed the most complicated homework assignment of my life.

Downstairs, Barbie was waiting at the bottom of the staircase, looking up at me expectantly.

Five Hours on the Pennsylvania Turnpike

After rushed goodbyes, Barbie and I piled into the car for the roughly five-hour drive across Pennsylvania to her family in Philadelphia.

She fell asleep.

Immediately.

For the entire trip.

Under normal circumstances, I might have been annoyed. On this particular Christmas afternoon, her timing was impeccable. This left me comfortably alone. Just me, the Pennsylvania Turnpike, and the increasingly difficult task of proving that my father was wrong.

At first, I was indignant.

I can’t believe Dad thinks I’m gay.

Where would he even get an idea like that?

Okay, fine. There had been Tim. But lots of people experimented in college, didn’t they? That certainly didn’t mean they were gay.

Besides, I had Barbie. A girlfriend. A perfectly good girlfriend that I just took home to meet my parents. Case closed.

We continued east through fresh mountain snow when another thought arrived: there was that small matter of Tim.

Not so much what had happened between us, but the inconvenient fact that I still had feelings for him. Surely that didn’t mean anything.

Did it?

I mean, yes, we’d had a romantic summer together. And yes, I missed him. And yes, if I was being completely truthful, I’d probably have preferred spending Christmas with him. But that wasn’t proof of anything.

Was it?

More Pennsylvania passed, the part that was mostly cows standing in fields watching cars and 18-wheelers race by. Barbie slept as I continued my own cross-examination.

My airtight defense was beginning to fall apart. What had started as an emphatic denial had gradually become an admission that a summer romance with a very attractive guy, one I still had feelings for, might constitute somewhat more than circumstantial evidence. By the time we approached Philadelphia, I could no longer ignore the verdict.

Oh my God, my dad was right.

I was gay.

Not experimenting. Not going through a phase. Not getting something out of my system.

Gay.

And the strangest part was the revelation didn’t entirely surprise me. It was more like finally realizing something I’d spent years thinking would just go away on its own. This would have been the perfect time to stop, reflect, and begin figuring out what this meant for the rest of my life.

But the sun somehow seemed to set earlier that day.

We were approaching our exit. Barbie was waking up. And in a matter of minutes, I would be sitting down to Christmas dinner with her family, who were expecting to meet their daughter’s perfectly normal and heterosexual boyfriend.

I had just figured out who I was.

And now I had to pretend I hadn’t.

The Final Straight Performance

I spent the next few days with Barbie and her family performing what I now think of as the final act in a play I had been in, somewhat unknowingly, my entire life.

I had spent years trying to become the person I thought everyone expected me to be: the blond-haired, blue-eyed championship swimmer, the fraternity guy, the guy with the pretty girlfriend who would eventually become his wife. I had the casting, the costume, and the supporting actress. Everything was going according to script.

Except now I knew I was acting.

Before Christmas, I hadn’t really understood that I was playing a role. Now I was painfully aware of it, and unfortunately, there was no understudy waiting in the wings to take over. I would have to make it through the next few days, deliver my lines, smile for the family, and somehow avoid revealing that the leading man had just undergone a rather significant character development.

At least I could see the curtain coming down. After a few days in Philadelphia, we headed back to Pittsburgh, where New Year’s Eve awaited.

New Year’s Nerves

We were seniors at Duquesne University and finally over 21, so New Year’s Eve was supposed to be a proper night out with friends from my fraternity and Barbie’s sorority. Joining us were three of my closest friends from high school: Jen, Rosslyn, and Lisa. They were beautiful, had been cheerleaders and pom-pom girls, and we’d been inseparable for years.

Barbie was not thrilled. She knew something was wrong between us but couldn’t quite put her finger on it. Having spent several days watching me become increasingly distracted, she was understandably suspicious of my enthusiasm for a night out with three beautiful women. Eventually, she announced that she wasn’t feeling well and didn’t want to go.

I suspect she was expecting me to play the devoted boyfriend and volunteer to stay home with her. Unfortunately, the devoted boyfriend had been having something of an identity crisis since Christmas. I saw an opportunity to spend the evening with the people I most desperately needed to talk to, wished her a speedy recovery, and fled as fast as I could.

This did not improve the situation at home.

The Surprise Was Mine

At the club, my friends immediately sensed that something was wrong. They’d known me for years, and apparently I wasn’t doing a particularly convincing job of pretending everything was normal. Throughout the evening, they kept asking what was bothering me. I repeatedly insisted nothing was wrong, which only made them more determined to find out.

Eventually, I realized I had to tell them. These were three of my closest friends, people who had known me since high school. If anyone was going to understand, surely it would be them. Still, I was terrified of what might happen when I finally said the words aloud. I gathered them close enough to hear me over the music without screaming and announced, rather ominously, that I had something important to tell them.

Their expressions immediately changed. The questions came flying. Did I have cancer? Was I dying? I frantically assured them that I was perfectly healthy, which didn’t seem to do much to calm their growing concern.

Finally, I took a deep breath.

“I think I’m gay.”

They stared at me in complete shock.

This was not the reaction I had hoped for. I had spent the last several days preparing myself for the possibility that my friends might reject me, and now all three were looking at me as though I’d just announced something utterly incomprehensible. After what felt like an eternity, Jen finally broke the silence.

“Wait.” Jen stared at me for a moment. “You didn’t know?”

Now it was my turn to stare.

“What?”

“You didn’t know you were gay?” she repeated, slowly and deliberately, as though I were waking from a decades-long coma.

I couldn’t quite understand her question. Wasn’t I supposed to be the one delivering the shocking revelation?

“Of course you’re gay,” Rosslyn and Lisa chimed in, reading my expression and, apparently, astonished that this required clarification.

It quickly became clear that the shocking news wasn’t that I was gay. It was that I had somehow managed to reach my senior year of college without realizing it. They explained that they’d known for years and had simply been waiting for me to tell them. It had never occurred to any of them that I genuinely hadn’t figured it out myself.

We eventually returned to dancing, but a song or two later, I realized I had several follow-up questions. For starters, exactly how long had they known? And who else knew?

“Oh, everyone knew,” Lisa replied casually.

I assumed she was exaggerating, but she wasn’t backing down. Our friends knew. Their parents knew. People at school knew. Obviously, my own parents knew.

Apparently, there had been a rather extensive information-sharing network operating throughout Western Pennsylvania, and I was the only person who hadn’t been included on the distribution list. I was still trying to comprehend the scale of this conspiracy when something Lisa had said finally registered.

“Wait. Your parents knew?” I stammered, still absorbing what she’d said.

Jen looked at me as though I were an idiot.

“Remember when we’d have sleepovers, and it would be all us girls … and you?”

Of course I remembered. Those sleepovers were some of my favorite memories from high school.

“Do you think our parents would have let your brother sleep over?”

Oh my God.

Of course they wouldn’t have. My brother would never have been invited to a sleepover with a house full of beautiful young women. Yet somehow I’d been welcomed without a second thought. It had never occurred to me to question why.

The realization was both enormously reassuring and mildly humiliating. Apparently, an entire community had figured me out years before I had managed to figure myself out.

In hindsight, I suppose there had been clues. My instantaneous and inexplicably passionate devotion to Madonna probably deserved deeper and deeper investigation. And then there were my childhood Halloween costume requests. One year, I wanted to be Wonder Woman. Another year, Dolly Parton. Express Yourself indeed, Madonna. Clearly subtlety was not one of my childhood strengths.

My parents generally indulged me when they could. Occasionally, they would claim that a costume was “sold out” and steer me toward something slightly less likely to get me beaten up in an adjacent mining town. At the time, I took these explanations at face value. Looking back, I suspect they were navigating a delicate balance between letting me be myself and protecting me from a world that wasn’t always welcoming.

Looking back, what struck me most that evening wasn’t how everyone had known. It was how little they cared. My closest friends weren’t upset, disappointed, or uncomfortable. If anything, they were relieved that I’d finally figured it out.

And I was beginning to feel something I hadn’t expected when I’d walked into the club that evening: relief.

For the first time since Christmas, I wasn’t trying to prove my father wrong, or convince myself I could become somebody else. I was simply me.

Barbie and the Bad News

After the enormous relief of telling my friends—and discovering that they were far more confused by my lack of self-awareness than by my sexuality—we continued celebrating New Year’s Eve. Rather enthusiastically, as it turned out.

We returned to the fraternity house sometime around three in the morning. I said goodnight to my friends on the sidewalk and stepped through the front door, where Barbie was perched on the staircase landing overlooking the entrance. Judging by the look on her face, it was not going to be a particularly happy new year.

As far as she knew, her boyfriend had abandoned her on New Year’s Eve to spend the night drinking and dancing with three beautiful women. She had correctly sensed something was wrong between us, and, in hindsight, my decision to go out without her hadn’t exactly inspired confidence. She accused me of having an affair.

I assured her that wasn’t the problem. And then I explained exactly what was.

Of all the conversations I’d had since Christmas, this was understandably the hardest. The only hard one as it turned out. My father had made his announcement. My friends were already treating my revelation as ancient history. But Barbie was the person who had actually been dating me while I was figuring all of this out. She had good reason to be upset, and I’d hardly given her a graceful introduction to this new reality.

There was no way to make the situation painless. Still, once we began talking, some of the things that had puzzled her over the past several days started to make sense. She eventually told some of her friends, who, in keeping with the increasingly tiresome theme of my coming-out experience, weren’t particularly surprised either.

Apparently, the only person I’d successfully convinced of my heterosexuality was myself.

Barbie and I would eventually find our way back to being friends. But first, there were a few more pieces of my life to put in order.

Marsha, a Meal, and the Missing Piece

After the late night and an emotionally exhausting conversation with Barbie, I barely slept. Nevertheless, I was awake early the next morning, knowing there was one more person I urgently needed to tell: Marsha.

Marsha had become my closest friend at Duquesne. She was practically an honorary member of the fraternity, organizing our parties, keeping everyone in line, and generally making sure we didn’t kill ourselves in the process. She had also been a hairdresser before college, a skill she continued to exercise on me and various fraternity brothers who obviously couldn’t be trusted to maintain our own appearances.

Marsha was one of those people whose opinion mattered enormously to me. So I called her and said I had something important to tell her. Whether she sensed what was coming or had already heard the gossip, she seemed remarkably untroubled by the prospect of a serious conversation.

“Why don’t I throw something together for dinner and you can come and tell me here. Besides, you need a haircut.”

This was classic Marsha. Whatever personal crisis I might be experiencing, there was apparently no reason we couldn’t address it with food and grooming.

When I arrived and finally told her I was gay, she did her best to look surprised. Unfortunately, I’d spent the previous evening discovering that pretty much everyone I’d ever met already knew. My tolerance for theatrical astonishment was wearing thin. I rolled my eyes.

“Marsha, you don’t have to pretend to be surprised.”

“Oh, good. Because I’m really not.”

Then came the explanation.

“I’ve been trying to tell you it’s okay to come out for the last four years!”

Four years. My entire college career had apparently been one long, unsuccessful intervention. Marsha hadn’t been waiting for me to reveal some shocking secret. She’d been trying to reassure me that there wasn’t one. And then, somewhere between the coming-out conversation and the haircut, she brought up Tim.

Yes, that Tim. Barbie’s roommate. The guy I’d spent five hours on the Pennsylvania Turnpike debating my feelings for.

Marsha thought I should call him that very day. More than that, she was certain he’d be happy to hear from me. I was considerably less certain, having spent the intervening months trying to convince myself that our summer together had been some kind of temporary diversion.

But Marsha was right about that, too.

Tim and I reconnected and went on to date for years. In fact, he and I are still best friends to this day. Tim even played a role in introducing Barbie to the man she would eventually marry.

So Barbie got a husband. I got a boyfriend. And everyone else got the satisfaction of having been right all along.

Marsha remained one of my closest friends for the rest of her life, until we lost her earlier this year. When I think back to that New Year’s Day, what stays with me is how completely ordinary she made something that had seemed so enormous to me. She offered to make dinner, cut my hair, and help me find my way back to someone I cared about.

She didn’t need a speech about acceptance. She’d already spent four years trying to tell me I had hers.

Discovery and Discussions that Never Happened

Whenever I tell this story, the question people ask is: What happened when I went back to my dad? Did I tell him he’d been right? Did we finally sit down and have the heartfelt father-son conversation everyone assumes must have followed?

Nope. We never discussed it again.

That’s not who my parents were. They weren’t the kind of people who sat their children down to have long conversations about feelings. The conversation in the den was unusual precisely because my dad had said something. He had decided there was one thing I needed to hear.

So he said it. Then he went back to his adding machines.

As far as he was concerned, the subject had apparently been covered. And once I’d figured things out for myself, I didn’t feel a particular need to reopen the discussion either.

Later, after my parents had divorced, my mother once asked whether my being gay might somehow have been because of something they had done—or something they should have done differently—as parents.

I told her it was all Dad’s fault.

She laughed.

That was about as close as our family ever came to a formal examination of the subject.

What my parents lacked in lengthy emotional conversations, however, they more than made up for in their everyday behavior. There was never a conversation in which they announced that it was okay to bring a boyfriend home. They just started expecting me to.

It was always a question of when I was bringing whoever I was dating home for Christmas, never if. There was no announcement about sleeping arrangements, no solemn assurance that my boyfriend would be welcome, and certainly no special ceremony recognizing this new development in family life.

Whoever it was at the time was invited. We came for Christmas. Life went on.

Coming Out, Courtesy of Dad

Most coming-out stories begin with someone finding the courage to tell the people they love something deeply personal, not knowing how those people will react. Mine worked almost entirely in reverse.

By the time I figured out I was gay, my friends knew, their parents knew, and my own family had apparently known for years. Even the people I’d been most nervous about telling seemed more surprised by my ignorance than by the revelation itself.

The great irony was that I’d spent years trying to become the person I imagined everyone wanted me to be, without realizing that the people closest to me had already accepted the person I actually was.

They were simply waiting for me to catch up.

My dad just happened to lose patience first.

He didn’t wait for me to come out to him. Sitting at his desk on Christmas Day, surrounded by bills and two adding machines, with his back to me the entire time, he came out for me. And he was right.

It just took me 300 miles of the Pennsylvania Turnpike to figure it out.