The closet
I’ve been thinking a lot about the closet lately. One of the things that started me thinking was Miss Anthropy’s interview question to me, “What movie character would you most like to have an affair with?”
It struck me that there were many years when I would not have answered that simple question honestly: first to myself, then to my friends and family, and finally on this public web site. If I hadn’t overtly lied, I would have ducked the question.
That’s silly, of course. Why should I want or need to duck the question, just because I would answer “Colin Farrell” instead of “Angelina Jolie”? It reminded me how often when you’re in the closet that you have to modulate yourself, keep yourself within certain fake boundaries that exist in your own head. It’s exhausting. But you keep doing it, because it’s all you know. As always, the known is more comforting than the unknown.
It’s extremely hard for many straight people, who think being gay is no big deal, to understand the hold the closet has on you when you’re in it. The same goes for some gay people who’ve been out most of their lives; the reaction also is, what’s the big deal?
Believe me when I tell you it’s a big deal.
I know how bone-crushingly hard it is to come out, and I would never sit in judgement of someone who can’t (or won’t) do it. I *was* that guy for many years. But I’ve also come to realize that in the final analysis the closet hurts everyone: the person in it, their friends and family, and the society at large. How much pain should someone have to endure because they’re not what our society calls “normal”? How sad is it that their friends and family don’t really know them? How much of the turmoil we’re currently experiencing over gay issues would instantly evaporate if every gay person were out?
I would use this space to encourage people to come out, but I also know that these things only come in their own time. “No one can tell you what ‘The Matrix’ is,” and all that. I just look forward to the day when our society has changed enough that that decision itself isn’t such a big deal.
