“Why did you choose to be gay?” read the first question. “Is it easier to be gay or straight?” read the second, both written on the same piece of paper in steady, loopy printing. The penmanship belonged to the young woman that was standing in front of me in the library of the junior high I had been invited to speak at about Queer Activism by Brendan Van Alstine from the Pride Centre of Edmonton. She was standing across from her friend, who had dragged her and the duotang that the questions were written in to come up and speak with me after the presentation. They looked mature for their age, the type of girls that would have been able to buy cigarettes at the IGA back in my day and maybe even gotten into bars like the Purple Onion without showing ID. As the girl who had written the questions stood there, I could see both the slightly shy, humour-filled, local slo-pitch champion she could become while also seeing the long-suffering, forever quiet and angry adult she could also find herself being. Her questions were not random curiosities; they were requests for advice, her hand reaching out for guidance.
Her dyed hair told the story of a girl already experimenting with who she was, how she looked and how she wanted people to see her. Being back in a junior high, I quickly regained the hideous, youthful technique of being able to determine whom the cool kids were. It was obvious from their bravery that these girls were not cool. They were the girls that were invisible to the boys and the ones that the “cool” and “want-to-be-cool” girls watched from across the classroom, slightly envious yet terrified of their independence. While I am sure it was an act of impromptu heroism that lead the friend to bring up the young woman and her questions, I think it was also an understanding that there was nothing to lose by having the questions exposed to the two nice gay guys at the front of the room and everything to lose by not taking the chance. She was a good friend.
I read the questions. I didn’t know what to say. I am not a therapist, trained counsellor or a social worker. But I am a gay guy who gets to write, make art and do gay stuff for a living, so while I felt under qualified to answer her questions I also understood that I was able to let her know that everything could be OK. She wasn’t asking me the questions because I was an expert—she was asking me because I was gay and open about it. I had come into her world, announced and bragged that I was gay, and she was able to see that the earth had not opened up and swallowed me.
Other kids throughout the presentation had raised their hands or called me over to their seat to ask similar questions about why I had chosen to be gay. All of them were also girls but all of them had asked the question in a detached, confident way that made it seem more like they were acquiring knowledge than dipping their toe in the water for the first time or stepping on to a ledge. Each time I answered swiftly, ”For me it was not a choice—I have always known I was gay and I think I was born that way.” Upon seeing the question written deliberately on paper I realized that from the young woman and possibly from the other girls and other times in my life the question being asked was not why did I choose to be gay but why did I choose to tell people I was gay.
If you have never thought about it or it’s been a while, you‘ve probably forgotten how gripping the question is of whether or not you ever have to come out. In that time before you come out, when maybe you have found a way to justify your desires and possibly even found a way to have your needs met it seems totally realistic and preferable to keep the secret. During that time it seems possible to compartmentalize your desire and so makes it easier to think that you can choose to silence your true sexuality. It is at this time that you are unable to see how your sexuality flows into every part of your life and that by stifling it other areas suffer. On some level the young woman in all of her radiant junior high awkwardness already understood this. By asking the questions, by already confiding on some level to one trusted friend she had begun to want more for herself. She was asking me in that moment if it was worth it to keep going.
After what must have seemed like an eternity for her but in truth was no more than five seconds, I looked up from the paper, slowly smiled, gained her eye contact, and said the only thing I knew to be true, “It gets easier.”
She smiled back, her face relaxed, both of us feeling somewhat relived. I wanted to hold her hand, give her a hug, but at that point the room seemed so small and both of us so big. We were radiating. I grabbed some literature that Brendan had brought from the Pride Centre that I knew had the centre’s web address and gave it to her. She took it, nodded her head, smiled. She said nothing back, looked down at the paper. I said it again: “It gets easier.”
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