What if the lowest point in your life became the beginning of your greatest personal transformation?
Coming Out of the Closet I Apparently Wasn’t In
Coming Out to My Parents—When Everyone Already Knew I Was Gay
I was terrified to tell my mother I was gay. There was just one problem: apparently everyone else on Earth already knew.
When I was seventeen years old, my mother discovered I was gay.
I say “discovered” because that’s how it felt to her.
To everyone else?
Not so much.
Apparently my homosexuality was less of a closely guarded secret and more like the Hollywood sign.
You might not be staring directly at it, but come on.
It’s right there.
I Thought I Was Fooling Everybody
Here’s the truly hilarious part.
I genuinely believed I was passing as straight.
I had evidence!
I dated girls.
Lots of girls.
And why wouldn’t girls date me?
I was semi-popular. I made good money for a teenager. I had my own car. I was polite. I was fun.
And I was not hideous.
That’s important.
I wasn’t standing around the high school cafeteria begging women to help maintain my heterosexual cover.
Girls actually liked me.
Many of them knew I was gay.
Apparently that information was considerably less important to them than it was to me.
Because I was a pretty good date.
I had money.
I had transportation.
I knew how to have fun.
I knew how to dress.
Actually…
Let’s discuss that last one.
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Exhibit A: The Jumpsuit
At Boy Scout camp on Catalina Island, I wore a hunter-green, Steve Austin-style one-piece jumpsuit.
So far, we’re still within the outer limits of heterosexuality.
I suppose.
But I tucked the pant legs into knee-high maroon suede moccasin boots.
At Boy Scout camp.
On Catalina Island.
My Scoutmaster apparently contacted my mother and suggested that perhaps next year Jon-David might enjoy something the other boys had recently discovered:
Blue jeans and hiking boots.
Mom.
Honey.
There were signs.
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Exhibit B: Aunt Dee’s Wedding
Then there was my aunt’s wedding.
For this occasion, I selected a brown sharkskin suit.
Not satisfied with merely wearing brown sharkskin, I paired it with a white collarless blousy shirt.
Unbuttoned approximately to my navel.
Around my neck was a paisley kerchief.
Held in place with a gold ring.
Then I got onto the dance floor and did the Twist.
And the Mashed Potato.
For hours.
By myself.
At a family wedding.
And somehow my mother was apparently sitting there thinking:
That boy is going to make some lucky girl very happy.
Mother!
What did I need to do?
Enter the reception on a swan?
Aunt Dee and Mom
Exhibit C: The Voice
Then there was my voice.
My voice never really changed.
There was no dramatic adolescent morning when I woke up sounding like James Earl Jones.
No.
I continued sounding like…me.
To this day, if I call somebody who doesn’t know me, there’s a reasonably good chance I’ll hear:
“Yes, ma’am?”
I’m 63 years old.
I’m bald.
And I still occasionally flip hair that hasn’t been attached to my head in years.
I just did it.
So did everyone know I was gay because of my voice and clothes?
Of course not.
A voice doesn’t make someone gay.
Clothing doesn’t make someone gay.
Neither does dancing alone at a wedding dressed like the fifth Jackson.
But in my particular case, people had apparently assembled the available evidence.
And reached the correct conclusion.
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Even the Guys at the Gas Station Knew
Remember, I also worked at my father’s Shell stations.
I could work on cars.
I did lube-oil-filter services.
I got dirty.
Sort of.
Because if I got an oil spot on my Shell uniform shirt, I changed into a fresh one.
And after working on a car, I washed my hands.
And cleaned my fingernails.
Thoroughly.
Apparently the men I worked with weren’t exactly fooled either.
Years later, when the story of my mother’s shock came up, people who’d known me back then had essentially the same reaction:
Your mother didn’t know?
Aunts.
Uncles.
Family friends.
Friends.
Coworkers.
Probably the mailman.
Everybody knew.
Except, apparently, Mom.
To Be Fair, I Was Trying Very Hard to Convince Her
This is where the joke gets more complicated.
My mother wasn’t stupid.
And I don’t actually believe she was completely oblivious.
I think there was something else going on.
I gave her an alternative story to believe.
I dated girls.
I talked about girls.
I brought girls home.
And Mom loved some of them.
She imagined one of those girls eventually becoming my wife and the mother of her grandchildren.
I knew that.
And I didn’t want to hurt her.
So every girlfriend became another little piece of evidence supporting a future my mother desperately wanted to believe was possible.
Maybe Mom saw the jumpsuit.
The boots.
The dancing.
The voice.
The hair.
The mannerisms.
The whole spectacular Jon-David production.
And then she looked at the girlfriend standing next to me and thought:
See?
Everything’s fine.
Denial can be extraordinarily creative when it has good material to work with.
And I was supplying material.
Then My Mother Did My Laundry
My actual coming-out story did not involve a carefully planned mother-and-son conversation.
There was no:
“Mom, can we talk?”
No tender pause.
No meaningful soundtrack.
No Hallmark movie moment.
My mother was putting away laundry.
She opened my sock drawer.
And for reasons known only to mothers and the FBI, she decided to inspect some socks that were already rolled up.
Inside them were letters.
From my boyfriend, Chuck.
They were love letters.
We were seventeen.
So perhaps “love letters” requires some qualification.
Chuck was an excellent writer.
A very descriptive writer.
An extremely hormonal writer.
Let’s just say these letters contained considerably more anatomical specificity than:
Dear Jon-David, I miss you. Love, Chuck.
Mom read them.
All of them.
So technically, I didn’t come out of the closet.
My mother found the paperwork.
Welcome to the Family Ambush
When I came home from school, Dad was already there.
My younger brother had conveniently been removed from the premises.
Mom was seated and prepared.
Dad looked uncomfortable.
There was an ottoman positioned across from them.
Apparently I had an assigned seat at my own trial.
I sat down.
At first, I didn’t even know what they’d discovered.
This is because there were several possibilities.
I’d recently skipped class to go tanning.
I was making fake IDs.
I’d attempted to bribe a teacher.
I’d altered a grade on a report card.
There were two cases of beer in my car.
I was planning a party while my parents were away.
So naturally I’m sitting there thinking:
Which crime are we discussing?
Then Mom threw Chuck’s letters into my face.
Oh.
That.
And Suddenly It Wasn’t Funny
This is where my funny coming-out story stops being funny for a while.
My mother wasn’t simply upset that I’d kept something from her.
She was horrified that I was gay.
She believed Chuck had somehow influenced or manipulated me.
She thought something had happened to me that needed to be corrected.
And I was scared.
Not because I’d suddenly discovered I was gay.
I already knew who I was.
I was scared because I realized my mother wasn’t going to accept my answer.
So I did something unusual for teenage Jon-David.
I stopped trying to bullshit my way out of trouble.
I told the truth.
I told my parents:
I’m gay.
And:
I’m in love with Chuck.
There.
I’d said it.
I thought Mom would be disappointed about the grandchildren.
I thought she’d be upset.
I thought we’d fight.
Then I thought eventually she’d understand.
What I wasn’t prepared for was being told, essentially, that the truth I’d finally found the courage to tell wasn’t true.
That’s What Hurt
Looking back, this is the part that matters to me.
Coming out isn’t merely telling somebody your sexuality.
It’s saying:
This is something true about me.
And when someone you love responds by saying, No, it isn’t, they’re rejecting more than a fact.
They’re rejecting your authority to know yourself.
At seventeen, I didn’t have those words.
I just knew I wanted my mother to believe me.
I wasn’t confused.
Chuck hadn’t turned me gay.
There wasn’t a repair needed.
This was me.
The same kid she’d raised.
The same kid who worked with his father.
The same kid who dated girls.
The same kid who made her laugh.
The same kid who drove her crazy.
The same kid who wore maroon knee-high moccasins to Boy Scout camp.
Especially that kid.
Maybe Mom Knew More Than She Could Admit
Age has made me less interested in prosecuting my mother.
I wonder now whether her shock was actually shock.
Maybe it was fear.
Maybe she’d seen the signs and pushed them away.
Maybe every girlfriend reassured her.
Maybe she believed what she needed to believe because the alternative forced her to imagine a life for her son that frightened her.
This was around 1980.
The world was different.
And shortly afterward, AIDS would make that world terrifying in ways none of us yet understood.
None of that makes her reaction okay.
But understanding someone isn’t the same thing as excusing them.
That’s one of the lessons this memoir keeps teaching me.
Listen to How I Killed My Mother
How I Killed My Mother is a memoir podcast about mothers and sons, depression and hope, family and forgiveness, caregiving, spirituality, humor, death, and the uncomfortable business of discovering who we really are.
The podcast also became the foundation for my upcoming memoir, How I Killed My Mother.
This isn’t a story about having all the answers.
It’s about what happened when I finally started asking myself the questions.
If you’re standing at the bottom of something right now, I can’t tell you how long your climb will be.
I can only tell you that I’ve stood at the bottom, too.
Climb with me.
— Jon-David
Coming Out Didn’t Make Me Gay
That’s another thing I understand now.
I wasn’t transformed during that family meeting.
I didn’t become someone new when I said the words.
I was simply finally telling my parents something that many people around us already understood.
Coming out didn’t change who I was.
It changed what we were allowed to acknowledge.
And perhaps that’s why coming out can be so powerful.
A secret creates two versions of your life.
The life you’re living.
And the life you’re allowing someone else to believe you’re living.
Eventually maintaining both becomes exhausting.
Truth collapses them back into one.
Sometimes painfully.
And Mom, Seriously…
If you’re listening from wherever you are now, I have one final question.
Really?
You were surprised?
The voice?
The hair?
The girlfriends who knew?
The dancing?
The sharkskin?
The paisley neckerchief?
The knee-high maroon suede moccasins at Boy Scout camp?
Mom.
I love you.
But Helen Keller would have nudged you and whispered:
I think Jon-David might be gay.
And if there’s an afterlife—and you and I have certainly had our experiences with that subject—I hope you can finally laugh about it.
Because I can.
It took me years to understand something that seventeen-year-old Jon-David couldn’t possibly have known:
Coming out wasn’t my admission that I was different. It was my demand to finally be believed about who I already was.
— Jon-David
More From How I Killed My Mother
In How I Killed My Mother, I tell the considerably messier version of my coming-out story—including Chuck’s letters, my mother’s reaction, my father’s silence, and what happened when my parents decided their gay teenage son needed professional help.
It’s a memoir podcast about family, forgiveness, identity, grief, humor, spirituality and what happens when the relationships we thought were finished come back demanding another look.
Listen to the podcast and join my mailing list at HowIKilledMyMother.com (Scroll Down) for new stories, bonus material and updates about the upcoming memoir.
And if you’ve ever had to tell someone something about yourself that you thought they already knew, you probably understand:
Sometimes coming out isn’t revealing who you are. It’s finally refusing to pretend nobody can see you.
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