Life in the Closet
Aug 30th, 2007 at 8:56 pm by Susie
My baby brother, who happens to be gay, celebrated his birthday today. He’s been out of the closet for about ten years and he’s a lot happier because of it.
Even when we were kids, we kind of suspected. But as the years went by, and we never saw him with a woman, he always insisted he was straight.
“Look, I don’t care one way or another,” I finally told him. “I just want to know who to fix you up with.”
“Who asked you?” he said. (I had to admit, he had a point.)
My father wondered, too. He asked my oldest brother what he thought. “Gee, I don’t know, Dad. He lives with another guy, they bought a little dog together and they vacation in Key West. What do you think?” he said.
Telling my father was the biggest hurdle for him, I think. But Dad handled it well. All he cared about was whether anyone was going to hurt him for being gay, which is how you’d hope a father would respond.
We already had older gay cousins; there was no novelty. It was truly not a big deal, except we were happy he was finally comfortable enough to be who he’d been all along.
I’m sorry Larry Craig doesn’t have that kind of life. I’m sorry he still feels he has to pretend, and I’m angry that he takes his self-loathing out on other gay people by supporting legislation that treats them as less than equal.
It’s all very sad.
It’s nice about the cousins. One reason to hope that homosexuality runs in families is that, as people continue to uncloset, gays will have someone in their own family to compare notes with.
The irony is that the Craigs of the world condemn themselves to sex in airport men’s rooms–yuk!