Out of the Question
By: Clemon Courtney III
I sat in my mom's cozy living room, my temples taut with fear and doubt. Mom lazied contently in her favorite chair, feet propped up to better enjoy her evening with The Real Housewives of...Somewhere. We’d just had dinner at The Cheesecake Factory, and I’m sure she thought our meal at the underwhelming chain restaurant would be the highlight of the night. I'd obsessed for over a year about the perfect way to deliver unwelcome news, and I knew one thing: I damn sure wasn’t doing it at The Cheesecake Factory! A year’s worth of planning fled my thoughts in panic as I tensed on the couch opposite her, my mind teetering between willing myself to say the words and thinking I never would. Suddenly, I got the bright idea that this moment shouldn’t be dire or dour. Hmmm...what's the most celebratory way to do this?
"Mom," I started timidly, "you know how we can talk about anything?"
"Yeah," she answered, preoccupied with channel surfing.
"You know how I'm always giving you good fashion...and...styling...and decorating advice?"
"Yes," she shifted her eyes from the TV to meet mine with a furrowed brow.
"Congratulations,” I announced like she’d won a gameshow prize, “you have a gay son!"
Yes, that's exactly how I came out to the most important person in my life. I probably should’ve prepared a speech.
I asked her if she had any questions. She did! Her first 3 were “are you serious?”
The next question was surprisingly easy: "When did you know?"
I was 6 years old. "I kissed a [boy]! I liked it!" The kiss wasn't weird, but I distinctly remember the weight of realizing I couldn't tell anyone and trying to scour any memory of it from my mind. That I’d heard my family hurl the word "sissy" at gay men ever since I could remember probably had a lot to do with it. I wasn't very clear on what a sissy was, but I was quite sure I didn't want to be one. Growing up hearing the contempt for queerness in the voices that nurtured my own taught me very early to deny and explain away my attractions and carefully curate a set of socially-acceptable, manly performances so no one would know who I really was. Boys never snap their fingers to their favorite songs. Boys never put their hands on their hips. Boys never ever think other boys are cute...unless there’s something very wrong with them! Over time, I convinced myself that I might forget who I am, and I'd have a beautiful life with a beautiful wife and forget that I was my most authentic self at 6 years old.
Since I'd dated women exclusively for 30 years (and because my mom REALLY wants grandchildren), her second question was a bit more pressing: "Aren't you attracted to women...at all? Are you sure you aren't bi?"
This question comes up a lot--from family, from friends, from people I've literally just met in a bar! It's very bizarre. After a standup set, I've had women flirtatiously accost me and inquire, "is that a character you're playing onstage? You don’t seem gay. Like, seriously, how gay are you?” It’s a question I’d put a lot of pressure on myself to answer until one serendipitous conversation.
The summer I came out, I was compelled to go to Chicago PRIDE. Even before I came out, I loved PRIDE parades, but they can be...extra. Good extra, but still. Escaping the sensory overload of revolutionary self-acceptance and looking to charge my dying phone, I ducked into a thankfully mellow pub and sat near two middle-aged queer men. They warmly greeted me with a “Happy Pride” and eagerly insisted that I scoot closer when I told them it was my first PRIDE out. They looked like charming negatives of one another: one, a black man with a lightining-white beard and skin like lacquer; the other, a white man with a salt-and-pepper beard and a winning smile. Their features were different but their advice on being out was the same: Don't worry about living up to any labels, including any I'd previously applied to myself. “Give yourself time to figure it out,” they advised. I couldn’t help but admire these men and the calm self-confidence they exuded in their queerness. I decided to take their advice and run with it, and it has since proven invaluable. So...no, I'm not exactly sure I'm not bi and, more importantly, I don't have to be.
As my conversation with mom continued, I eventually worked up the courage to ask her a question: Want to see a picture of my boyfriend?
This was a huge step for me. Because I'd waited so long to come out, I knew I'd face unique challenges, but I didn't expect one of the biggest would be my own homophobia. I was so uncomfortable saying the words "my boyfriend" that I forced myself to drop them into conversations with strangers to get used to it. When he and I walked around my neighborhood, my internalized homophobia would silently flare up if he'd carry a men's handbag or wear his favorite Converse with the rainbow shoelaces. Those signifiers of his queerness loudly broadcasted my own, and I hadn't spent nearly 30 years closeted because I loved the gay parts of myself. Fortunately, watching 12 seasons of RuPaul's Drag Race has made me comfortable being as gay as I damn well please because "if you can't love yourself, how in the hell you gonna love someone else?"
To mom’s credit, she indulged me, glancing distractedly at the photo, and she muttered something about him being cute. Baby steps.
My mom's shock waning, her next question was an expected one: Why didn't you tell me sooner?
This is another question I've gotten many times, from best friends to casual acquaintances. So allow me to answer it as clearly as I can. Maybe I didn't tell you because I had to tell myself first. Maybe I didn't tell you because I've heard the occasional slightly homophobic remark from you and it lowered my opinion of you. Maybe this expectation of coming out is absolutely exhausting because it often centers how straight people receive LGBTQIA+ people instead of simply letting us be, and we know for a fact that we would never, not once, ever, have to talk to y'all about our orientation if we were straight!
The living room had fallen silent, but I knew that her most important question was yelling with a megaphone from the back of her mind. She sternly set her lips and began very delicately “Clemon, I just want you to be honest with me. Were you ever molested?”
My mom used to think that all gays had been sexually abused. I couldn't be happier to be living proof to her that this anti-gay myth is just plain wrong. This myth is infuriating because it provides a scapegoat that "turns" someone queer instead of accepting that we're born queer. In retrospect though, I think at the root of her question are two other, more powerful parental questions:
"Did I do something wrong?" or "Is this a result of my failure to protect you?" Nope. No way. Never. Honestly, 4 years out from this conversation, she’s just now starting to believe my answers to these questions.
My mom is a notorious crier, so the most surprising part of my coming out is that she waited until the end to cry. Through tears, she demanded a hug and warbled, "I love you, and that will never change. You know, I was just so surprised. You've always done everything so perfectly." And that's really stuck with me. Maybe the idea of being "perfect" for other people is why it took me so long to be good to myself, why it took me so long to ask and truthfully answer many of these questions.
Questioning my queerness has definitely destroyed any notion of neat perfection. The past 4 years have been intense, messy, and confusing, but they've been real. I've realized that I deserve to be all of me, that I don't need to get a perfect dismount in queerness (or anything else), that and sometimes the most honest answer is "I, honestly, don't know."
I can answer “yes” to the only question that really matters though: “Are you happy?”
Clemon Courtney III is the founder of writing services company The Write Place. He’s lived in Shanghai a staggering 16 years and loves every grey hair that’s come with it. He shared a version of this story on the Unravel stage on March 25, 2021. He is also featured on Season 1 of the Unravel podcast in the episode titled ‘White Noise’ - you can search ‘Unravel Storytelling’ wherever you get your podcasts to hear more from Clemon!
Story Edited by Clara Elizabeth Davis