Day 4 – The first person you came out to and that story

I suppose everyone’s “coming out story” tends to be the first person they came out to, don’t they? Anyway, whether it is or not, as somebody said to me rather huffily once, “coming out is not a linear process.” You have to come out to yourself first, probably – and then start inflicting your pride or shock or shame or whatever you feel at that stage, on to your world, to varying degrees.

The one I tell is one I have told so often that I am completely and utterly and totally sick of it – in fact these days I can just supply a link to it – but I won’t. I’ll tell you that I was 21 or so, on a separate continent to my mother and that I drank the better (worse?) part of a bottle of Stoli and phoned her. And then I made her guess. What an arse I was. It went something like this:

Her: You’re not pregnant are you?
Me: *hysterical laughter*
***paaaaaaause***
Her: Are you a lesbian?
Me: (sobered up fast) Yes.
Her: Oh! Do you have your very own closet? Is it pink?

That’s the story I have told proudly ever since.

It never even occurred to me that I would get a negative reaction actually. I have a gay stepbrother (yo stranger!) and I was brought up never to feel superior to anybody, to know that “different strokes for different folks” was a good thing to remember and so although I was as nervous as the proverbial cat on a hot tin roof, it was more an English sort of repression/embarrassment than anything remotely to do with my sexuality.

That’s almost twenty years ago now and so I have many, many coming out stories.

Thanks to  fuckyeahlgbt for the 30 day queer meme.