by Chely Wright
Anne Marie just hugged me and told me that she was sorry I was forced into telling her that way, but that she loved me and just wanted me to be happy. The party was winding down, so we headed back to Chuck’s. When we got back, Kristin passed out. While she slept, I went downstairs to join the others and learned that she had spent much of the evening telling my friends about our relationship. I felt clammy and flushed. Chuck hugged me and said that everything was going to be okay.
Kristin’s out-of-control behavior continued. I realized her frequent absences always seemed to coincide with meals. If I did get her to sit down to dinner, she’d pick at her food and say that she didn’t feel well. When I questioned her about the behavior, she finally admitted that she purposely avoided eating so that she could get drunk more easily. She also revealed that she was bulimic; she starved herself during the day, then went home to binge. She had been making herself throw up for years. Kristin said that if we agreed early in the day to meet at 6:30 p.m. to go out to a restaurant, she would say yes but know from the start she wasn’t going to show up. She also admitted that she often dropped plans we’d made if an offer to go out drinking came up. Drinking was the only thing that kept her mind off food. “I hate everything about who I am,” she said. “Everything.”
A few weeks later, I was on the road in California when Kristin called me from Nashville and announced that she had broken up with Bobby.
I had no idea what she was talking about. She had told me about her dark days with Bobby but had said she ended the relationship around the time we had gotten to know each other. But their relationship had continued, and she had decided to end it, leaving Bobby—who had had no idea about her relationship with me—devastated and confused. He began sending Kristin e-mails, begging her to give him another chance but also, at least initially, urging her not to fear her sexuality. Once I got over my shock, I read these e-mails and urged Kristin to at least respond to some of his questions about how she felt. After she had kept him in the dark for so long, it seemed to me, it was the least she could do.
Kristin ignored Bobby’s pleas. I feared that further angering Bobby would provoke some kind of action against her—and me. And it did. Soon he was sending e-mails to others about Kristin’s relationship with me. These anonymous e-mails began finding their way to Kristin’s boss, then to country star Ricky Skaggs, then to her mother and father and to two journalists at the Nashville Tennessean (who, fortunately, were personal friends of Kristin’s so they kept the information to themselves). The message was clear—Bobby wasn’t going to be ignored, even if it meant exposing me to avoid it.
Bobby sent me some of Kristin’s early e-mails from before she cut off all communication with him. In them she told him that I had been flirting with her and that she had been ashamed of the idea of being gay or bisexual. She told him she was curious enough to try to take things further with me, but that nothing long-term would ever come of it because the thought of being gay disgusted her. She did not tell him that she had initiated our relationship.
Although I had by this time revealed my sexuality to a small circle of trusted people, I had continued to carefully guard my secret. It had been a risk to let Kristin in. But when her feud with Bobby engulfed me, I begged her to confront him. “You need to reach out to him and stop this,” I told her. “You need to fix this situation. Please, be a grown-up and clean up your mess.” But she did nothing.
Still, I didn’t walk away from Kristin. I cared for her, despite all the headaches she was causing me. I knew too well what she was going through, and I wanted to support her. I was really unhealthy myself, though. I was trying so hard to save her rather than focus on making my own life healthier. I knew that the only way I could be healthy was to stop hiding and running from the fact that I was gay. But saving myself, in those terms, was not an option. So I continued to try to save her. I convinced myself that I had chosen Kristin over Julia (perhaps I had) and if I let the relationship between Kristin and me fail, it would prove that I had made a mistake in leaving Julia. I was bound and determined to make it work, and it didn’t have much to do with Kristin. I was a closeted woman. If I broke it off with Kristin, I’d have no chance of having partnership and love. It’s difficult to find people to date while you’re in the closet. I took what I could and tried to make the best of it.
Even though we lived around the corner from each other, the only way Kristin could truly speak freely was by calling me on the telephone. Despite her reckless behavior that outed me to my friends, she was worried about her friends and neighbors discovering our relationship. She rarely invited me to her home, and if she did, she asked me to park my car far enough away not to arouse suspicion. When I complied, it made me feel full of shame. The progress I had made in coming to terms with my own identity over the years had been significant, but I didn’t stay away from Kristin, destructive as the situation was to my well-being.
Fear was overtaking me again. I was seeing just how big a bombshell my secret was. I’d never doubted my reasons for hiding, but now I knew for sure I wasn’t just being paranoid. Having someone package up my secret and anonymously mail it to others in my industry in an effort to destroy my reputation and my career validated my hiding all those years. The anonymous mailer wasn’t spilling the beans that I was a little bit pigeon-toed or that I got two speeding tickets in one week back in 1991. No—he knew that my being gay, if revealed, could hurt me in profound ways. The realization that Kristin had recklessly given Bobby the ammunition to exact his malice on me was terrifying. My continuing to see her made it worse.
My Dad
I decided in the fall of 2005 that it was time to come out to my dad. I didn’t want to, but I needed to. Hiding causes all kinds of problems. When someone doesn’t have all of the information, or at least a fair and reasonable amount of it, problems pop up. That had been happening with my dad and me.
I had made a habit of not answering my phone, especially when the person who was calling was someone who didn’t know my secret. Every time my dad would dial my phone I’d let it go to voice mail and then call him back when I was ready. It was too difficult to make up a lie or omit the truth so frequently.
For more than a decade I’d spent all of my free time and most of my holiday time with Julia, and I got tired of making up little lies about what I was doing when a phone call came in. So I’d wait until a weekday, when she would be at work, and then I’d return calls. The trouble with my policy was that my dad was busiest during the week, and when I would call him back he was unable to talk. Months would go by without actually having any kind of real conversation, and it was driving a wedge between us.
One day I was at my house when I returned a call to my dad. It was a weekday during work hours, and I hoped to be able to just leave a voice mail on his cell phone. Instead, he picked up. “Hey, kid! Where the heck have you been?” he asked, in a light and playful tone. I was used to his making remarks that the father of a grown and busy woman might make, the usual repeated requests to call him or come see him more often. “I know, I know, Pippy. I’m just always so busy. I’m sorry,” saying what I always said. That’s when he said that he wanted to talk to me about something. I got a sick feeling in my stomach and I said, “Okay, what’s going on?”
He said that he was very confused about why we hadn’t been close the way we used to be, that it really hurt his feelings and that he wanted to have a better relationship with me. He asked if there was anything that he’d done wrong; was I angry with him? He said he was sorry for whatever he’d done. He said that his second wife, Verna, whom I love and like, had encouraged him to just ask me why we didn’t have a closer relationship.
I told him that he’d done nothing wrong and that I wanted to have a closer relationship with him too. I explained it away as best I could to make him believe me, going on and on about how busy I was and how I didn’t have time to talk to anyone. I promised I would try to do a better job of making time for him. He seemed to be appeased with my rea
sons and excuses, and I felt momentarily relieved. I knew that I’d done nothing more than put a Band-Aid on a gaping flesh wound.
During the next few days and weeks, I felt a tugging at my conscience and wondered how long I was going to do this to my dad. I’d come out to my sister, Jeny, a year before that, in September of 2004, and it had proven to be a good thing in my life. But coming out to Jeny and coming out to my father were two different things.
In basic terms, my dad is a country boy—raised on the farm in rural Missouri, dropped out of school in the eighth grade, joined the navy as soon as he could.
I’d always been afraid that he would not understand my being gay. There had been jokes and stories told at the dinner table my entire childhood that were derogatory toward gays. I didn’t feel safe enough to confide in anyone in my family or in my life for so long, and my father was no exception.
When I was a little girl, I loved having my dad’s approval. Now that I was a grown woman, his endorsement was still important to me. I’d always made him proud and I knew it.
My folks had had so much fun helping me with my career. When I moved to Nashville and was on my own and making it happen on a much bigger scale, their pride grew exponentially. There wasn’t a soul back home who didn’t know that Stan and Cheri’s little girl had made it big. How could I ever ruin that for him? I guess part of it too was that I wanted to protect him from an uncomfortable, embarrassing situation. I would often wonder what it would be like for my dad if his friends or his coworkers found out that I was gay. They’d always been excited about my fame and successes, and they’d all put my picture or my calendar up in their shops and barns. What would that be like for my dad? Would he be ashamed of me?
I suppose that way down in my heart I thought he would. So I did what a lot of gay people choose to do—I decided to spare him. It wasn’t fair of me, but that’s what I did.
Weeks went by and I stopped being consumed with worry about the conversation with my dad. I simply made a commitment to myself to do a better job of calling him.
Not long after we’d had our phone conversation, Kristin’s ex-boyfriend, Bobby, had restarted his e-mail campaign of terror, and this time he seemed to be gunning only for me. I was not going to have Bobby be the one to determine how and when my dad would learn about me.
I was headed back to Missouri to do a show in a little town called El Dorado Springs, which happened to be my dad’s boyhood hometown, and I decided to come out to my father. Dad called to tell me he would be at the show. I told him that I’d love to see him.
The night before we pulled into El Dorado, I didn’t sleep well on the bus. I was scared and I wondered if I’d have the nerve to go through with it. I got up early, had my oatmeal, and went for a long walk. When I got back to my room, I sat nervously. I didn’t make phone calls and I didn’t turn on the TV to distract myself. It seemed like the longest afternoon of my life. There was a small General Electric clock radio on the nightstand next to the bed, and the little red digital numbers seemed to struggle too.
My father arrived at my hotel room at around three o’clock, typically the best time for us to visit when I was on the road. It amused him to watch me transform myself during the hair and makeup process.
Dad knocked on my hotel room door and I let him in. “Hey, my little Pippy!” I said with a shaky voice. I didn’t see Verna with him, and he told me that he’d decided to come by himself because there was going to be a lot of be-boppin’ around backstage and out in the crowd too, since this was his old stomping ground. I could tell he was excited about the evening to come. He gave me a hug, though, sent from Verna.
I began to tremble before the door to the room closed behind us. I think I offered him a bottle of water. He asked me in that playful voice of his, “So what’s been going on, kiddo?” I didn’t hesitate—I didn’t make small talk at all. I said, “Dad, I need to talk to you. I need to tell you something.” In what looked like slow motion, he bent his knees and without even looking to see where he was going to sit, he sat. I sat next to him on the edge of the bed.
He was turned toward me at about forty-five degrees, and I was turned toward him at the same angle. I had planned so carefully what I was going to say. I’d practiced such an elegant, calm, informative, and confident speech in the days that led up to that moment. But instead, my face just contorted and I began to cry. I began to do the kind of crying where you can’t speak. He had a really frightened look on his face, but his fatherly instincts kicked in and he hugged me and held on to me. He was patting my back and the back of my head. He said, without pausing for me to answer his rapid-fire questions, “It’s okay. You’re okay. Are you? Are you okay? You’re not okay? What’s wrong? Are you sick? Do you have cancer? If you’re sick, we’ll be okay. We’ll get through it.”
Even if he had let me answer, I couldn’t have. I pulled back from him, just enough to see his face, and he was crying too. He had never, in the thirty-five years of my life, seen me so unable to gain my composure. I looked him in the eye and knew that it could very well be the last time those eyes of his would see me this way. I stared down at my hands and slowly dismantled an already soaked Kleenex. I stuttered and stammered. I’d never had a problem putting words together from the stage or in a conversation to articulate my thoughts and feelings, until that moment.
“Dad, there’s something that I need to tell you. It’s something that I’ve needed to tell you my whole life and I haven’t done it because I’m scared. I’m scared that you’ll be disappointed in me or you’ll be mad at me or you won’t want to call me your daughter anymore. It’s something that I’ve known my whole life, and hiding it has caused me incredible pain for a long, long time.” With a great pause and noticeable hesitance, he said, “Okay.” I took a deep breath and blew it out like a weight lifter does when pushing a three-hundred-pound barbell away from his chest. “Dad, I’m gay.” I looked up at his eyes. He said, “You are?” To which I replied, “Mmm-hmmm.” He said flatly, “Okay.”
I wondered then, and still wonder, what was going through his head at that moment. He was confused, and that didn’t surprise me at all. I was prepared to answer whatever questions he might have for me. He asked me, “What about those boys you dated—what about them?” I explained to him that I tried so hard to love them the way that they loved me, but I just couldn’t. I told him that they didn’t know that I was gay and that I’d hurt some of them pretty badly and I felt horrible about it. I also told him that I’d prayed to God since I was a little girl to change me, to make me normal, and that no matter what I did I was still gay. I shared with him the struggle I’ve had in my professional life to keep my secret.
Right when I felt like he was understanding what I was saying, he’d ask a question or make a comment that made me realize that it was going to take more than two hours to explain it all. “But, Chel, you’re so pretty. You could date most any guy you wanted.” “But, Squirrelly, are you sure? You like wearing dresses and stuff. You really don’t look like that kind of person—you know, a gay person.” I nodded and said that I understood his thoughts but I was certain that I was gay.
Then, after the initial shock, he got a little angry with me for keeping it from him. He said I’d cheated him out of knowing me and being closer to me. “Why on God’s green earth would you not tell me this until now?” he asked. I didn’t want to answer. He pressed on. “Why?” It broke my heart to do it, but I reminded him of all of the jokes about gays and the poking fun at gays that I’d heard from him and my entire family, not to mention from everyone in my little town of Wellsville, Kansas.
He buried his face in his hands and sobbed. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry—I’m so sorry.”
Now I was the one consoling him. “You didn’t know, Dad. It’s okay. I’m not mad at you about it. I know you didn’t know.” He hugged me really hard. I became a little girl again, wanting and needing his approval. “Do you still love me, even though?” I asked. He grabbed me by the shoulders
, looked me square in the eye, and said, “Honey, I don’t still love you even though—I love you because.”
He went on to tell me some things that I have always felt from him but had never heard him say. He actually said that I was and had always been one of the best friends he’d ever had in his life and that he had always admired me for so many reasons. He told me that he didn’t adore me just because I’d gone on to reach my dreams in country music. He said that all of that was pretty neat, but the reason he adored me so much was because of the person I am—kind, compassionate, and just good.
When I imagined coming out to my dad, I didn’t envision that there would be a portion of the conversation like this. He said that he wasn’t quite sure that he understood it all, and I told him that was okay.
He took his ball cap off his head with his right hand, and with that same hand scratched his hair and rubbed his forehead. Then he said to me, “All I know is this, kiddo—if you try to be something in this life that you’re not, you won’t be very goddamn good at it.” He pulled his cap back down on his head. “You know it?” “Yes, I know it,” I said.
He left the room, headed out to find the bus and the guys in the band. I took another shower to cool my flushed skin and to get my body temperature down to a normal range, then I got into hair and makeup. I felt weak and strong all at the same time. I was relieved, but I was nervous about how my dad would digest the news over the next few hours.
That night we had a great show there in the city square of my dad’s hometown. There were several thousand people in attendance, and my dad was the real star. I called him up onstage and the crowd went crazy. He grabbed the mic from me and told the audience how proud he was that Chely Wright was his daughter. No one knew, in that crowd or on that stage, what he was saying, what his words meant—but I did.