we'll call it a "walk-out closet"

I came out to my mom (and, consequently, probably the rest of my immediate family).

My friend R had been poking me to do it, telling me to "take the drama down about twenty notches," but that hadn't stopped me from curling up in my computer chair and wanting to throw up at the mere thought of doing it. After all, I am the girl who spent hours creating elaborate alibies to hide her trips to Giovanni's Room (especially when it meant meeting Alison Bechdel!), carefully choosing outfits that were "appropriately feminine," even if she really would have been more comfortable going about in drag that day and calling herself Andrew, etc.

But that was precisely why I needed to do it. I was so sick of lying to everyone all the time. I was tired of holding one-way conversations with my sister while she droned on about boys without ever being able to reciprocate.

How was I supposed to appreciate and love myself for who I really am when I had to hide some of it from the people I'm closest to?

When I told her that "I think I'm gay" and then amended it to "I know I'm gay," she said she'd considered it a possibility for a few years. My sister had told her once that not only was I not going to prom, but that I didn't even like guys, and that my mom should just "deal with it."

My mom surprised me. I asked her, voice trembling, if she was going to throw me out, and she said she'd never do that. She said that she didn't approve of my "lifestyle," but that it wouldn't stop her from loving me. But when I asked her if she'd come to my wedding, she hesitated and told me that she believed marriage was a pact with god between a man and a woman.

We're working on it. I'll let her handle the gay thing before we start looking at china patterns and "hers and hers" matching tuxedos. I gave her information about the two chapters for PFLAG (Parents, Families, and Friends of Lesbians and Gays) in our area, and I also got the number for a friend's mom, just in case she wanted to talk woman-to-woman about having a gay daughter.

I guess she wasn't the only one who could use a little lesson in tolerance. Even if my family is Evangelical Christian and the official church opinion is more-or-less "homos burn in hell" doesn't mean that my parents don't think about what they hear every Sunday morning. Maybe someday she'll believe me when I tell her that I was made the way I am, by whatever forces exist out there--be they scientific or spiritual. I shouldn't expect her to start a one-woman gay pride parade, but going to PFLAG meetings is a good start (even if she says she doesn't need it).

I think that all groups, from the Judeo-Christian religious far-right to the agnostic post-genderist communists on the left, could benefit from not making generalizations. Nobody fits the ideal model held up by the mouthpieces of any and all movements (see Rev. Ted Haggard), so maybe we should rexamine whatever rules and guidelines we're struggling to follow.

If people didn't feel so shackled to (and controlled by) one tiny facet of their identities, they might feel freer to explore other possibilities, to turn their gaze from the problems they see in themselves or others to the problems of the world.

As for myself, I realize that being closeted made it nigh-impossible for me to describe myself in a manner other than just listing my sexual orientation. Now I feel like I'm free to explore not only everything else I can be, but what I can do.