This post was submitted on Tell a Story. Isn’t it time you told your story?

I came out to my mom when I was 15 and have lived more than half my life as an openly gay man. I used to have to tell my “coming out story” a lot, but today, it is only on first or second dates with men that the topic even gets broached. Voices get lowered, the tone gets serious, The Story gets told. Every openly gay person has one, and the elements are nearly universal: a deeply held secret is revealed, hearts are pounding, there’s anxiety, uncertainty, acceptance, rejection, drama, relief… So archetypal, so predictable.

I have a problem with the “coming out story,” namely with the fact that it divides a life into a “before” and an “after”. Why do the gays *have* to have this divisive story, and what if they don’t? Must identifying as queer require coming along with a struggle, and such a particular struggle at that? The problem is not even so much that the reasons for even having to “come out” as same-gender loving should be abolished (do lefties have to come out??); rather, it’s the fact that the “coming out story” is only the beginning of the “gay story,” which many gay men happily live out. This includes coming out, first same-sex kiss and sex, freedom and experimentation in college, madonna-britney-gaga, the clubs, the pride parades, the perfect body, the material possessions, the booze and the drugs, and if you live in the right state the wedding and kids. You know — one of those stories that perpetuates the commonly accepted roles for people in society.

During my junior year in college, I was very involved in two queer student organizations, organizing Out Week, Pride Week, weekly support groups, political actions, parties, the works. I was affectionately known as the “Gay Grandpa” amongst my peers. I was the embodiment of The Gay. It was after one of these events that I finally declared that I was retiring from being gay, that I was keeping my boyfriend but was otherwise done with this identity label and all the work that went along with it! My queer friends knew what I was referring to and congratulated me; my straight friends kept asking me whether I was becoming straight, to which I answered, “No way! That’s even more work!”

Living my own story has been a big theme in my life, and by now my “life story” is too complex to retell. I do use labels like “gay” and “queer” to position myself in society, and I’ve surrendered to the fact that growing up with this identity trait has constituted predictable and common struggles for me in my life. But these days I’m fond of saying that “I grew up gay” — and that my true coming out story begins in a hospital on a stormy winter night in northern Germany where my mom’s contractions are intensifying along with the snow outside…