This Week’s Column
"Do you think she'll recognize me?" the voice behind me said.
I turned, and there was Mrs. R, a woman whose kids I had babysat all through high school. The speaker was Mrs. S. – I had babysat for her a few times, too.
It was the first time I had been to my hometown since my mom had moved from it, a year ago. Now my mom was back in town and so was I. I should have expected to see people I knew – after all, I had lived in our sleepy suburban village for 18 years – but somehow I had felt anonymous and safe.
"Hello!" I chirped. I asked about her kids – adults, now, and my contemporaries. I had always liked Mrs. R. and her family. They had been good to me, supporting my writing as I was growing up, making me feel like I was valued and appreciated (and, by the kids, maybe loved.)
That support was important in a place where I always felt like an outsider, where the teenage rituals of opposite-sex dating seemed like customs formulated on another planet. It was adults like Mrs. R. who made me see that my particular take on the world, expressed through writing, could be respected by others.
But then came the inevitable question: "Jennifer, what do you do for work?" Mrs. R. asked.
This is something all of us answer, all the time. But to me it can seem a time bomb, because it outs me. I dread the long silence when I say, "I'm features editor of 365Gay" or "I'm a columnist in the gay press."
A social creature, I will go to great lengths to avoid that silence.
This should all be second nature. I've been happily out for 16 years. As a columnist, I share details of my life with strangers, every week. I've outed myself to strangers, in fact, on subways, while traveling in foreign countries, at job interviews, and once, memorably, at a deserted gas station in the middle of the night. I consider myself to be openly gay in all aspects of my life.
Yet "What do you do?" Mrs. R. asked, and I froze, aware of my mother standing at my shoulder, of the expectations that came with growing up in my WASP-y, white-bread town, of the pressure I had always felt here to be "normal," which meant playing tennis and golf, commuting into the city for a job in finance, law or medicine, and marrying a husband.
"I'm a writer," I said, and she lit up.
"Oh, how wonderful! You were always writing. Where do you publish? Are you published?"
I do publish. I've made my life from writing since 1994, and yet I felt shy, worried. But about what? After all, it wasn't as if Mrs. R. was still a regular part of my life, or someone I needed to impress. And I shouldn't have worried about embarrassing my mom – I was out to all of her friends.
I know that this is layered and complex for me. A couple childhood neighbors of mine stopped speaking to me – and were cruel – when they learned I was a lesbian. We are vulnerable to those we grew up around; they knew us when we were still un-formed, when our worlds were confined to our families and our neighborhood and the casual heartbreak of school. I know that in my conservative hometown, gayness is not yet accepted.
So instead of saying where I worked, I said something vague about how I wrote about politics, travel, theater, religion.
Then my mom broke in.
"She just wrote a story for the Village Voice!" she exclaimed, happy for me, proud of me.
"And what's it on?" Mrs. S. asked. Mrs. R. looked expectant.
"The new lesbian," I said.
There was that long silence. It seemed to stretch all the way back to childhood.
I cleared my throat. "It's a good story," I said awkwardly.
"Well," Mrs. S. said, "We've got to get going. It was so good seeing you!"
"It is wonderful that you are doing what you love," Mrs. R. said.
I felt defeated. I had not been brave, but had outed myself anyway. Worse, I was a coward in front of my mother, leaving her, I feared, with the impression that I was ashamed of being gay, when the opposite is true.
It could have been a teaching moment. Instead, it was a reminder that it is still difficult to be out, that it is still a struggle. That at times, we fail in doing that very thing we ask others to do – accept ourselves fully the way we want people to accept us.
Hometown Acceptance
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
