No apologies
Originally published in Prism and Pen in Medium.com on Nov. 3, 2023
Saying out loud who you are, as obvious as it might be, can dispel the notion that you’re trying to hide who you are. For instance, I may present in some ways as gay (which I am). These might be ways that I can’t or won’t control, but reveal that I don’t conform to the stereotypes of a straight American man.
For instance, maybe I can’t quote the latest football stats and can’t tell a Cardinal from a Raven. Maybe the faintest lisp and an exaggerated hand gesture will give me away. My body, my cultural preferences, and my disinterest in “masculine” pastimes can betray me.
All that is bullshit, of course. I can pass as straight when I need to. I know how to play the game, having done so for many decades. But sometimes I choose not to.
So now across those many decades I’ve come to actually tell people that I am gay. It helps to discharge the tension or cool the hostility people might otherwise have toward me if they suspect that I’m a gay person. Raising someone’s suspicions is no way to make a friend.
I tell them, here I am a real, live gay person who’s not afraid or apologetic about being gay, so we can engage with each other in a “normal” way. They might, it’s possible, call me names or clobber me. I at least come away thinking better of myself for having been upfront and honest about who I am. I can get over the hostility, but I can’t as easily get over evading my own nature. St. Peter denied Jesus three times and later regretted it mightily.
I did have once my own St. Peter experience. It was an encounter with a man who said he liked to kill things. He was talking about animals, but I got some strong negative vibes that he might lump me in the animal category too. He asked me flat out if I was gay and I strongly, vehemently (like a straight man would) denied it. He left it at that. The cock had crowed three times and I felt shitty about myself.
One other time, actually some years earlier, I had a different experience with two guys on the street who held me up, saying, “Give us your money, faggot.” I told them it takes one to know one and they clobbered me. I did learn the lesson then that discretion is the better part of valor. But in the encounter with killer, discretion left me feeling like I had lied to myself, more than to him.
It was important somehow, someway to learn how to be less apologetic about how God made me and bulk up on ways to defuse threatening situations without getting mauled. This method, I should say, is not usually necessary with women, just with men. There are exceptions of course with women, but I’ve never crossed paths with one where I felt a threat of violence.
Basically, what I try to do is just insert into a conversation some subtle reference to my being gay, but something that shows me as being in sync with who my conversant is. I’m by nature too introverted to be too in-your-face with someone I don’t know.
For instance, if I’m meeting someone new and in the course of an easy conversation he alludes to his wife, I will go out of my way to contribute to the narrative to say something about my partner. Often, I’ll see that microsecond pause in the conversation stream that says my conversant is recalibrating. But almost always it passes and we go on.
By the way I’d like to dismiss the notion that telling people that you’re gay is pushing a gay agenda. “Please, I’m not anti-gay, but I wish they wouldn’t flaunt it.” And likewise, it’s not to be construed as coming on to someone, which in American masculine culture would be a threat. It’s sharing, as simple as that.
In my mind the premise that it’s better to show your hand explains the reasons for why some people declare themselves, even when their “who-ness” is perfectly evident. They describe aspects of themselves that might be readily obvious or could be reasonably construed. “Hello folks, let me introduce myself. I’m a Black lesbian with natural hair, medium complexioned, and looking to lose a little weight.”
These words of hers are not superfluous. They are assertions about her own identity, and likely intended to be informative of her politics and of her social mores. There’s always more to “hear” from the words coming out of someone’s mouth than the literal meanings of those words.