Coming out

Coming out

Written by Danny Lemos

I remember staring at the phone. “Should I or Shouldn’t I?” I must have gone back and forth for almost 10 minutes. My twin brother and housemate at the time had conveniently forgotten to tell me he had sent our mother and father a letter in which he told them he was gay. He had also conveniently taken off to the Russian River for the weekend, knowing his letter would arrive at our parent’s house on Saturday (you could trust the mail to be on time in 1983). The call came and I was home to answer it.

“Is your brother alright?” My mom’s voice shaking with emotion. I assured her he was fine, tanning poolside up at the river. After promising to have him call home, I hung up. There was no discussion or questions “Had I known?”, “What about you?” You would expect them after one twin comes out, but not from my very catholic mother and father. And so I stared, realizing that there would be no better time than the present. I dialed back, “Mom?” I started, “You know that thing about David? Me too.” There was a split second of silence, and then my mother called back over her shoulder “John! You owe me a hundred dollars!” That was my coming out moment. The conversation continued about the how, and the why and my father protested he hadn’t known. “What about the time you caught me behind the couch with Carlos and we were both in our underwear?” I asked my father. His silence was enough, he’d known. My mother countered that I might not be welcome in their house if I was doing “that”. I countered that it would be a shame but I would survive not coming home, if necessary (My dad told me later that he knew she was bluffing).

David was the first to come out, followed by me, then my brother Tom came out to me when I drove down his very long driveway only to catch him in my high beams kissing some boy up against the garage door. I was mortified. I had the same reaction my parents had with me. It shocked me that I could be out there but when it came to my little brother I was upset. To this day I don’t know why I had that reaction. Perhaps it was because he was the last person in my family that I could imagine being sexual, let alone homosexually so.

By the time the baby in the family summoned us all into the kitchen at my parent’s house, I thought I had seen it all. Larry announced he was also gay and my parents’ reaction was surprising, “Oh Larry, we knew.” When he asked how they had known, my mom’s response was legendary “You wanted Kenneth Cole slip-on loafers in 5th grade.”

Yep, coming out became a once-a-decade thing in my family with four of the brothers coming out. When my mother dramatically announced at a church function where we were all present, “Oh WHY did the Lord give me four gay children?” Larry had his revenge.

“So you could redecorate”, he said, bathing us all in the laughter of her friends and churchmates. Humor saved the day.

In having so many other family members come out of the closet, I learned a lot about myself, I learned a lot about my siblings and a lot about my parents. For me, coming out was the most truthful thing my family has ever done.