Too Gay

I took a queer studies course in the spring of 1999, my second semester in college. My brother and I had recently both come out to our parents as gay. I was starting to date other queers. I went to drag shows. I wore a rainbow necklace I had bought at a pride festival. If someone had asked me then how out I was on a scale of 1 to 10, I would have said 11.

During the last weeks of my queer studies course that semester, someone did a presentation on what it means to out yourself. And while the topic seems a bit on the nose, it was a great talk. This person spoke about the work which would go into actually, truly outing yourself to everyone every single day. Cashing a check at the bank? Better take time to inform the teller of your sexual identity. Getting a pizza delivered? You would have to hurry to talk about your queerness or maybe flash your rainbow pride somethingorother while you handed over the tip.

No matter how out you think you are, you likely aren’t truly out to everyone. Which is to say, our “outness” is relative.

The next time I was in school, when I went back to get my MBA in 2013, I also felt super out and proud. But this time, it was a result of contrast: in my class of 80 Professional Accounting MBAs, I was the only person who was openly queer.

I had thought about this probability a lot as I considered going back to school: this type of graduate program was going to be about fitting in and working hard to get ahead. The work ethic I had in hand, but I was fairly certain I was going to stick out like a sore thumb: gay, vegan, in my 30s, and with an undergraduate degree in English. But the longer I worked in banking and thought about my future, the more I was certain getting an MBA was the right graduate degree for my professional goals. The personal details would just have to sort themselves out.

And they did, for the most part. Some classmates hassled me openly, while other likely said things less openly, but I persisted. Most importantly, I graduated 18 months later with a job offer from a professional services firm that I was very excited about.

But as I entered my new career with a new organization in a new state, for the first time in my life, I felt myself dialing back my queerness. I tried to not wear any shirts or ties that were too flamboyant. When I was at a client and someone noticed my wedding ring, I would use gender neutral pronouns to talk about my spouse. While I never lied about having a husband, I did not proactively volunteer this information. I tried to limit my hand gestures. I looked at news feeds in the morning during football season to find out which team had won, in the event my co-workers wanted to chat about it.

I did this all of out fear: I was the breadwinner for myself and my jobless future-ex-husband and I. I had taken on student loan debt to go to graduate school and I was not getting any younger. This new career absolutely had to pay off. And while I was confident that, in time, my stellar professional results would balance out any reservations my employer would have about my queerness, I was terrified of having doors closed on me early on because I didn’t “fit in”.

My fear was not based on the place I had moved (Columbus, OH has a bustling, lovely LGBTQ community), but was based on the conservative nature of my line of work. The professional services firm I work for has a work force of approximately 2,500 people. It does have a LGBTQ alliance group, but the membership is small (approximately 30 to 40 people). The office I work in is one of the firm’s larger offices, with a headcount of about 200 folks. Of these 200 folks in my office, I am the only openly gay person I know of.

I might have continued down the path of diminishing my outness, but two things happened that changed my mind.

#1: I went to my office’s holiday party for the first time. When I showed up with my husband and went to talk to people I worked with on a daily basis, they acted like they did not know me and walked away. Everyone on the team I worked with at the time coordinated to sit at a table, but when we approached, there was no seat for us. People wouldn’t make eye contact.

I was shocked by this experience, but it taught me a valuable lesson: despite all of my attempts to “tone it down” or live life with one foot in the closet, I was already perceived as so outrageously different people did not want to be seen making so much as polite chit-chat with me and my husband at a social function. I was sacrificing being who I was at work for nothing.

#2: I started dating Basil. While my first husband had been cautious about public displays of affection, Basil is not. One of the things I noticed when we first started dating is how Basil would put his hand on the small of my back when we walked around doing every day activities: shopping at the store, standing in line at the coffee shop. When we walked down the street, he always wanted to hold my hand. These small gestures made me feel so attractive, so desired.

I am now embarrassed to admit that when we first started dating, I was hesitant at times to return or continue these smalls PDAs. When I transitioned and started living life as a gay man, long before changing careers made me wary of being out, I was already well steeped in the horror stories of gay men getting threatened, harassed, and beat up in any number of places for just simply being gay.

Between these two things happening, I suddenly became aware of the extremity of my self-censorship. I was ashamed of my cowardice at work. And my choice to be less out at work was bleeding into my private life. I couldn’t be prouder to have Basil as a partner, and I would be a fool to let fear continue to influence how I interacted with him in public or private.

So, I decided to change. I stopped using the gender vagaries at work when talking about my then boyfriend and future husband. Basil bought me fabulous purple shirts and french collared shirts and sparkling silver ties, which I delighted in wearing to clients. I stopped dropping Basil’s hand in public and instead spent the energy I used to dedicate to being afraid to enjoying time with the loveliest man I had ever met. I started carrying the gayest lunch bag ever (pictured above) to the office. I found other teams at work that were more welcoming and interested in all of my various uniquenesses and started spending more time with them.

Basil and I continue to go to office parties and functions together. Sometimes it goes great, but other times we face the same behavior I experienced at the first holiday party I went to with my ex-husband. But Basil and I will keep going, because we are not going to change who we are to spare someone a minute of discomfort as they learn how to talk with the first openly gay couple they have knowingly encountered.

So there may still be times where I won’t always out myself to the barista at the coffee shop or the person bagging my groceries. But this will no longer happen because I am afraid to be myself. It will just be because they did not have time to notice all of the fabulous details that make me who I am.