2C (not two cents)

11th October 2009

Text

null value exception (updated 10/12)

today is National Coming Out Day 2009. Sam wanted me to donate my fb status to her cause. it would have read: My Name ” is gay. It is National Coming Out Day and I pledge to have heartfelt conversations for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender equality.”

i feel pretty bad about not doing it. fb isn’t exactly neutral territory and i don’t want to kick up sediment. at the same time i’m making snarky comments about women and pastries with niko and john on twitter, and i’m unconcerned about any potential fallout there. either i worry less about losing john and niko, or i believe they love me more than my fictive family on fb. i don’t think i want to consider those options too closely.

i’ve been thinking a lot about the protocols of networks. (i’ll skip all the theoretical parts because i’m the only one who thinks this stuff is interesting.)  i’m free to make any choice. yet the outcomes of those choices are constrained by the choices of the people with whom i’m connected. i posted a fb status about losing and DG, and a girl from my gradeschool days, a woman who thinks of herself as one of my older sisters even though i haven’t seen her in more than 20 years, took it upon herself to jump, half-joking, to my defense. first, he isn’t someone i need to be protected from, and second, i wasn’t unhappy, i was playing with him. of course, he already knows both of these things.

her motives aren’t really to protect me but to try to re-establish (reinforce?) a social order and a hierarchy where she was important and loved. of course, i still value her. i loaned her my prom dress and helped her sew straps on it because she, like all of our sisters, was obsessed with modesty. i couldn’t lose her without losing them all, and then losing my sister, and then JJ’s family and then it all comes apart. possibly it would make the holidays easier though … :)

i don’t think i could lose john and niko. and shan and cara. and scribe and solace. and all the zombie slayers whose autumnal fest i’m missing. if all the words that have passed between us didn’t break us, precious little will. if anyone knows anything about the process of becoming, it is them. and that is why, actually, they’re so different than the fb people i grew up with. because those people from 20 years ago are almost exactly as they’ve ever been. they don’t know much about the struggle and the pain of finding your own path, whether you had to go to Leeds or culinary school to get there from here.

of 20 years ago, there is no going back to that place. it is behind us by decades of iteration. but that does not mean that she and our sisters won’t try. they’re the forces of protocol who wish to return us to a past that never really was. or wasn’t for me. i supposed they enjoyed, ok, i’m stopping here because if i have to think about church camp or volleyball or singing, the anxiety will choke me.

in this present, Sam and I are ride-sharing in the same direction. i should tell her that. at least we’re on our way together to get new tattoos. :)

i’m wandering. i had a point. it was about the thousand little steps between who i was and who i am. how it’s not a straight line. and along the way i passed over, around and through the paths of others. the way our fates are intertwined whether i wish it or not. how i can only travel so far with each choice before i have to negotiate the space with the choices of others. so, i can’t change my fb status to say that i’m gay and that i pledge to have heartfelt conversations for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender equality. and Sam likely knows i can’t because she’s caught in the same web of choices.

but it does have me thinking about whether or not i should, at this juncture, reconfigure my friends. all of this remembering my audience and parsing my words is exhausting. and i get tired of serving as a place holder for people who take more than they give.

update 10/12:

Sam has this to say:

I half expected people to freak out here & that is quite all right with me. The point of coming out is to live your life in truth. I’m  still working on that part. It’s a difficulty. To say that self-awareness has been the biggest struggle of my adult life would be an understatement. There’s a lot of guilt & denial & blame & anger… I’ve known since I was little way before we even met but I just couldn’t define it. How could I-growing up in a seminary & I was utterly boy crazy!