I took a deep breath. I had never spoken the words out loud and I began imagining what my voice would sound like saying them.
“I think I’m gay,” I blurted. “Actually, I’m pretty sure I am.”
The car filled with a brand of silence that sounded like my mom biting her tongue. I already knew what she wanted to say: that I was too young to come out, that many of her closest friends were gay so I might just be emulating what I had seen, that I didn’t need to be gay to like sports or have short hair.
I wasn’t even old enough to stay home alone. What did I know? Under her unspoken rebuttal to my proclamation, I felt a tinge of fear at what it would mean to her if I did turn out to be gay. I recalled the angry dissenters at the pride marches, who looked disgustedly at my mom like she was ruining me, imposing a “gay agenda”. They chanted slurs at us as if to tell my mom: “You are disgusting and your poor, defenseless child will grow up to be disgusting too!” They looked at me with pity: “It’s not too late for you; you don’t have to succumb to the influence.”
I had been raised in a community of lesbians and progressives and, while I lived in the “real world”, at home I was immersed in gay culture. My parents’ friends were happy, successful people, in loving partnerships–with members of the same sex. Perhaps that had skewed my perspective and I needed to give it more time. Maybe she was right and I didn’t need to be gay just because I was a good athlete who liked wearing boys shoes and cutting my hair short. Maybe the protesting homophobes were right and, despite all of the evidence my parents had presented to the contrary, it was wrong to be gay and I should try not to be.
I fell into the shame that comes with adopting an identity that people look down on with disgust, one that would undoubtedly make my life more difficult. As we cruised the highway in silence, I could hear doors slamming—I would never be able to marry someone I fell in love with, I might not be able to live safely in certain places, to have my dream job. The thought that I would be “subjecting” my future children to the life of fighting to belong that I had been born into hit heaviest. Until this point, I had been queer by association, not by choice. If I came out as gay, that would change.