i'm coming out
I decided to expand on the piece I wrote while at the Okoboji Writer's Retreat. This is my coming out history.
2001
“I think it’s best if we don’t speak again.” That was the last thing my mother said to me standing on a street corner in Rogers Park, Chicago, IL. I had come out a few months prior. I knew my mother was racist, sexist, and homophobic—but I didn’t think she would really think that way about me—her only daughter. Her youngest child.
I stood in silence. No tears. No protest. Just looking into the face of the woman who told me that she willed my existence into being. The woman who sang to me, read to me. The mother who beat me so soundly when I was 6 years old that DHS came to examine my body for signs of abuse. The mother who slapped me across the face for spilling some melted butter when I was 13 years old. The mother who I idolized as the smartest, most beautiful person in the world.
1980-1981
In the spring of 1980, I was 6 years old and the movie Little Darlings came out. The movie was a story about how a bunch of horny teens at summer camp wanted to lose their virginity to Matt Dillon. It starred my favorite actors Kristy McNichol and Tatum O’Neal. Since my mother’s frontal cortex had not yet fully developed, and child rearing was much less delicate than it is now, she took me to see Little Darlings in the theatre. I would go on to watch everything that Kristy McNichol was ever in. If there was a teen magazine with her in it, I bought it. When I was an adult, but also before I came out, my mom bought me a birthday present—an 8x10 glossy Little Darlings promo photo of bikini clad 17-year-old Kristy and 16-year-old Tatum. For my birthday. Before I came out.
Later the same year I saw Little Darlings, my mom and not-quite step-dad, Stephen, and I moved into the downstairs apartment of a giant house on a boulevard just one block off of one of the busiest thoroughfares in my home town. The house had angular bay windows, a second story with corners like castle turrets, and siding that was painted a dark and mossy green so saturated in color that it looked luscious and velvety despite being made of wood.
That September, for my 7th birthday, my mom threw me a party. It was the epitome of birthday parties. A core memory producing birthday party. In retrospect, I wonder if she went all out on this party because not long before the party Stephen had to have a talk with her about her beating me for some transgression that my six-year-old brain was completely unaware of—perhaps she thought a party would balance the blows.
The guest list for this epic birthday bash included their friends from St. Ambrose, Ken Goodman from our synagogue, some of their friends’ kids, my best friend and her neighbors, my aunt and some cousins from my dad’s side, my brother who lived with our dad, and select classmates from my 2nd grade class Peter Schebler and Angela Chavis. My mom and Stephen even convinced a friend of theirs named Larry, aka Bobo the clown, to dress up and entertain my guests. After Bobo’s performance, my mother, having used a recipe found in one of my Childcraft books, made homemade playdough enough for all the kids at my party. She doled out mounds of dough to the kids seated on the floor of our living room—each with their own page of the Quad City Times laid out in front of them to catch the inevitable mess we’d all make.
I sculpted a bust of Ziggy—my favorite comic strip at the time—while deep in conversation with a girl from my class, Angela Chavis. She was very tan and from El Paso, Texas. She had what sounds in my memory like a thick southern dialect. On that glorious birthday party day, with Angela in attendance, I was transcendent. I had the biggest seven-year-old-crush on her. I remember telling my mom that I didn’t want my best friend at the time to sit by me at my birthday party. I was going to sit next to Angela. My mother could not understand why I would be so rude to my best friend. But, my mother also made sure to take a picture of me and Angela sitting together deep in conversation, pudgy fingers kneading the homemade playdough, talking about whatever silly little thing kids talked about, smiling and focused only on each other.
After we finished our sculptures, we all went outside to the front yard to play Red Rover and Farmer in the Dell whilst my mother fired our masterpieces in the “kiln,” a.k.a. our oven in the kitchen.
1981-1984
In 1981, my mom and step-dad finally married. We moved into an even nicer neighborhood, and next door to my friend Peter who I hadn’t seen since the year of the epic birthday party. He was a quirky kid: he voluntarily practiced his saxophone daily, he was super into Legos and Star Wars and Star Trek; he watched MASH on purpose; and he had a little toy organ on which he even learned to play the MASH theme song. Not only was Pete into a bunch of things I liked (except that depressing old people show), I understood and resonated with his particularity. When he ran home to watch MASH, I ran home to do workbooks or read.
Pete and I were often playing around the neighborhood along with the across-the-alley-neighbor, Jeff. I make up that my mom hated that I spent the majority of my time with two little neighborhood boys ripping and running like a “heathen.” She had a habit of calling me a heathen and uncouth and talking about whether or not I was clean enough. I thought I was just being a kid. I still had the same best friend as I did when I was turning 7, but since she was 2 full years older than me, she had started talking about boys at summer camp and her bra size. Don’t get me wrong, she was a great friend and we had so much creative indoor fun. Making audio tapes and listening to music and making prank calls. But with Pete and Jeff, I could run around, swing make-shift light sabers, build laser blasters out of legos, and throw rocks, and climb trees, and get into the occasional scuffle. It was frankly more fun to me, regardless of the consequence of my mom criticizing my lack of couth.
In some ways, I think my mom tried to shame femininity into me. That same year I was peak uncouth running around with Pete, my mom got me a book and made me take a class, White Gloves and Party Manners, at Northpark Mall. For several Saturdays, I went to the mall and learned how to set a table properly, eat with the right utensils, walk with a book on my head, and sit like a proper young lady (knees together, legs crossed at the ankles). When there are rules or instructions, it’s my default to follow them to the letter, even if I think the instructions or rules are stupid. I like doing things “right.” I left that class with a near perfect understanding of the mechanics of the proper way for girls to walk and sit, confidence in which fork to use and when, and the realization that how I was was clearly NOT how I was supposed to be.
1984-1988
Just before my 7th grade year, we moved again. I became friends with the neighbor across the street. Brandi was a girl. Like a real girl. She had two older sisters. She wore makeup and used hairspray and just looked like how I thought girls were supposed to look. To be clear, I never like liked her like I did Angela Chavis or Kristy McNichol. But I enjoyed Brandi’s company, she liked music, and she and her dad really just treated me like family.
When Jr. High School started that fall, I quickly learned that there was a new set of external expectations about how I was supposed to be. Because I started school almost two years early, I was the youngest in my class by almost two years, so when my 7th grade classmates were trying out make up at each other’s houses after school, socially, I was like a 5th grader still wanting to play with the neighborhood little kids after school. The new social expectations for me as a girl in this season were particularly hard. The thought of getting boobs and wearing a bra literally terrified me. I remember telling my mother that I thought maybe it was because I must have an “inordinate amount of testosterone for a girl.” I was also a bit of a nerd. I feel like being around Brandi taught me how to act like a normal teenager. I learned how and carried those lessons into young adulthood, but it was an act. More than just those inadvertent lessons, when it was just the two of us hanging out, she was so accepting of me and my quirks that I quickly became attached to her. We spent practically every day together for all of Jr. High and even stayed extremely close into early adulthood.
That winter, my mom and step-dad hosted a New Years Eve party, and Brandi came over to help us get things ready. I was knelt in front of the window seat in the dining room, and my job was to pour melted butter over the mountain of Chex Party Mix in the bowl in front of me. I didn’t realize that the metal bowl that the butter was in was hot, so when I lifted the bowl to pour, I immediately dropped it because it was slippery and burning my hands. My mom, hearing the commotion and my shout, flew in from the kitchen enraged. She screamed at me, called me an idiot for spilling the butter, and then slapped me.
Not long after that incident, one of the other single most happy memories of my life happened. My mom suggested that I have a sleepover with Brandi at our house. My mom made snacks and popcorn and root beer floats (I kept my ice cream and root beer separated though). After music and games, laughing and talking, my mom turned off all the lights, got a flashlight for spooky effect, and read Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Raven” to us. Brandi and I still talk about that sleepover almost 40 years later. Best sleepover I ever had.
That was the last house I ever lived in with my mom. By 8th grade, my mom and Stephen separated. They divorced when I was in 9th grade. In 1988, the summer after 10th grade, my mom moved to Chicago, and I was on my own.
1990
My mom bought me two tickets to an Indigo Girls concert my Freshman year of college.
My sophomore year, I started playing rugby and played until I graduated in 1994. I think it was 1992 when I made the Midwest Select Side team and traveled to Madison, Wisconsin for the camp. It was on that trip that I first came out to myself, secretly and silently, in my head.
1999-2000
I was living in the college town of Cedar Falls, Iowa as an underemployed single mother working part time at a sports bar. One night while out with a friend at a completely different-but-kind-of-the-same sports bar, our server started talking to us about rugby, and it turned out she was on the university’s women’s rugby team. One thing about rugby players, no matter your experience or skill level, we always seem to find each other and have an immediate bond and rapport—particularly women’s rugby players. From that 5 minute conversation, I did not hesitate to immediately join the UNI women’s rugby team that week. I thought I was pretty good in the early 90s. This team was stacked and packed with the beastliest (in the best possible way) ruggers. We annihilated our competition at every match. At each kick off, our team captains would yell, “what’s the score?” And everyone on the field would yell back, “ZERO ZERO!” The score was usually something like 67 to 0.
My first year playing at UNI, we traveled to a tournament in Illinois, which was close enough to Chicago, so I invited my mom to come to the game. That tournament would be the first time she’d seen me play. I hadn’t lived with my mother since I was about 14 years old, and even though I was 26 at the time, a mother myself, and a divorcee, when I spotted my mom, I immediately sprinted to her with the enthusiasm and excitement of little kid. I couldn’t wait to give her a big hug and show off by picking her up. which I’d been doing since high school. It was kind of our thing. The embodiment of “Mom! Look what I can do!”
So, I was running towards my mom, and as I got closer, the giant smile on her face slowly melted to something like a grimace landing in an expression of gritted teeth outlined by lips hardened into a grotesque caricature of a smile. As I reached to hug her anyway, because that’s just my mom. She made a noise that was supposed to sound like a laugh and with an expression that let me know that not one thing was funny, she said, “my my, aren’t you………BUTCH.” That last word came out like she was cussing. Outwardly, I laughed it off, and reminded her of the thing I always said about testosterone. Inside…I wondered how in the fuck I was supposed to make rugby ladylike.
It wasn’t long after I started playing rugby at UNI that I met the person who would become my first girlfriend. She was tattooed, pierced, with a shaved head, and everything about her was the opposite of what I thought being a “girl” or “woman” was supposed to be. And that’s why I immediately fell in love with her. She was the first person that I didn’t have to act with. I didn’t have to pretend about anything.
Since I’d graduated college in 1994, my mom and I talked about once a month on the phone. It was not uncommon for me to think about her and the phone would ring with her on the other end. Or I’d call her and she’d tell me that she was JUST talking about me to so and so 30 seconds ago.
On one of our calls after I’d started dating my girlfriend, my mom told me about a recent trip she had taken to Key West. My girlfriend was in my apartment at the time, so I put my mom on speakerphone so she could understand me better through hearing my mom in action. My mother told me that she loved Key West except for all the “rainbow flags up all over the place.” She said she didn’t understand why “those people” had to be so open and “signaling each other” with the flags. She was much more crass than how I’m describing it…she also used the homophobic f-word a few times.
What’s also true is that when I was a kid, one of her best friends was Ken Goodman from our synagogue. He was gay. Sparklingly, fabulously, and undeniably gay. Of course, that’s not something she ever said to me as a kid, but when I look back…he was fucking g.a.y. My Aunt Ellen, Stephen’s older sister, was bisexual. Again, no one ever said that, but it was just known in the family that Ellen could be with a woman or a man. I’m nearly 100% certain that her best friend Jan K. was a lesbian. My mom had gay friends for practically my whole life.
So, when I called my ex-step-dad-who-was-still-my-dad-Stephen in 2000 to tell him that I was in love and the person was a woman, he responded, “......and?” I wish everyone reacted that way. He could not have cared any less about her so-called gender and was concerned only with whether or not I was happy, if she was good to me, and if she was good to my kid.
Eventually, I had to call my mom to tell her about the person I’d been seeing. We were getting serious, and I couldn’t play the pronoun game anymore. I don’t know what exactly I expected from her. I knew it wouldn’t be good. But I also had hope that it wouldn’t be awful. So when I finally told her that the person I’d been seeing was named Jasmine and yes a woman, she said that she didn’t want to talk about it and hung up.
I didn’t speak to her or hear from her until…
2001
Some months later, I was in Chicago and I reached out to my mom to let her know I was in the city and to see if she wanted to meet at her apartment since we hadn’t spoken since the “phone call.” I hadn’t stopped hoping for her unconditional and consistent love and approval. I thought if she would just meet up with me—and have a conversation, see how well I was doing, and how happy I was, see that I’m the same me I have always been, her Baby Rae—maybe she’d at least start talking to me again.
She agreed to meet on the street a block from her apartment. She walked up like she was approaching a stranger to ask for directions. Her whole demeanor was empty. Robotic. Formal. She didn’t even have a negative comment about my hair, which she usually did. We talked for only a few minutes. She asked me what I wanted. I said that I wanted to talk about her not speaking to me since I told her I had a girlfriend. She said that she didn’t want to talk to me about that or anything else. I asked why she couldn’t just accept me even if I was dating a woman. I tried to tell her that me being in a relationship with a woman did not change who I was, and if she was paying attention, that it was part of who I always have been. She replied, “I think it’s best if we don’t speak again.”
I stood in silence looking at her. And then she walked away from me.
Thank you so much for sharing this, Rae! I hope you feel alive and true after this powerful story! ♥️♥️♥️
POWERFUL. Thank you for this, Rae.