Sissy

by Jacob Tobia

  As we sat down to talk, I remember feeling at odds with myself. Coming out to her was simultaneously the most rational and irrational thing I could do. It made no sense. It made perfect sense. I had to get out with it. Sitting on a couch in the coffeehouse, I told her I knew I was gay, that no one else knew, and that I just needed to tell someone.

  Looking back on that moment, I can’t begin to imagine how hard this was for her. I can’t imagine what I would’ve done if, as an adult, in Cary, North Carolina, in 2004, I’d had a twelve-year-old come out to me. But somehow, Jamie knew what to do.

  I saw her demeanor soften. I watched as her face shifted from anxiety to confusion to pity and ultimately settled on a quiet look of love.

  “Have you told your parents yet?”

  “I’m not ready to tell them. I don’t think I’ll tell them for a while. I just don’t think they’d be ready to hear it. They’d probably think it was a phase or something.”

  “That’s okay, Jacob. You don’t have to tell them until you’re ready. You don’t have to tell anyone until you’re ready.”

  A pause.

  “I’m not quite sure what to tell you. I can tell you that you’re not alone. I can tell you that you’re going to be okay, okay?”

  Another beat. It felt like hours.

  “Have I ever told you about my friend Pete? We met in college and are still in touch every now and then, and he’s gay. From what I know, he’s happy. There are other people like you out there.”

  I thought I would start crying, that this would feel like catharsis, but instead I just felt blank. It was more like shock. It seemed that, at least for a while, things were going to be okay. I tried to respond to her, to say something back, but I just sat there, stunned.

  “Why don’t we pray on it? It’s what God calls us to do in times of trouble.”

  Jamie took my hands in hers.

  “Dear Lord, I thank you for the light that Jacob brings into this world, for all that he is and for all that he will become. We ask that you bless him and guide him along his journey, that you comfort him and walk beside him down this road. We also ask that you give Jacob the wisdom and love to be courageous, that, through him, others may learn of your love for them. Amen.”

  “Amen.”

  I sat there, gently shaking, eyes dry, hugging myself. Jamie scooted closer and hugged me, too.

  “Why don’t we head back to church?”

  “Okay.”

  And then:

  “Thank you, Jamie.”

  When people ask me about when I first came out, I generally tell them about coming out to my parents. I often overlook this experience, overlook my time with Jamie. Perhaps that’s because it feels like it doesn’t count, because I didn’t tell the rest of the world until four years later.

  But I don’t think that’s really why. I think it’s because this story, my first coming out story, doesn’t match the template of what coming out is “supposed to be.” It’s too quiet, too devoid of drama, filled not with rejection or chaos—or with glitter or rainbow streamers—but with a quiet, trepidatious sort of love.

  Or perhaps it’s deeper than that. Perhaps, in my heart of hearts, I know that some moments are too sacred to be recounted without context.

  Following this talk, I wish I could say that I had everything figured out. I wish I’d internalized what Jamie had said and ended the self-hatred, the self-loathing. In fact, it took years for me to process, to digest what she’d said, to take the love she’d given me and make it my own.

  What coming out to Jamie really did was give me permission to be patient with myself. I’d done it once. I’d popped my head out of the closet and said, to someone who was very important to me, “Hey, I’m in here, just wanted to letcha know,” then immediately ran back inside and shut the door. I’d poked my head out of my shell just long enough for my weird snail-y eyes to see the garden around me.

  If Jamie had told me being gay was sinful, that I was doomed to hell, I likely would’ve been galvanized to come out to everyone right then and there, just to prove her wrong. If she’d told me that I needed to talk to my parents about this right away, I would’ve panicked and cried and felt trapped in my secrets.

  But her gentle love—her affirmation that I was on a journey and had to give it time—allowed me to give myself the permission I needed to take things slowly. Her imperative, to practice kindness and be gentle with myself, was very different than what I’d heard about the closet. I didn’t have to figure it out just yet. I didn’t have to have all the answers. I wasn’t on a deadline to throw a Pride parade or make a Coming Out YouTube Video™ within the next two weeks. I didn’t need to tell everybody right away. And I didn’t have to leave my church family while I figured out who I was.

  I’d grown up being told that secrets were dirty, were mean, and I thought I must be dirty and mean for keeping my identity secret. I thought that being in the closet meant I was necessarily a skeleton. From Jamie, I learned that secrets aren’t always closets; sometimes, secrets are cocoons, and we are butterflies. Sometimes, secrets are shells, and we are snails. We have to take our time, grow in our secrets, make a home in them, build our wings cell by cell. Sometimes, our secrets are precisely what keep us safe. It’s okay to go back into our shells when we’re frightened. It’s okay to draw into ourselves when our safety feels impossible. There is no need to come out of our cocoons before we are ready. It’s okay—in fact, it is most natural—to let our metamorphoses happen at their own pace.

  With the understanding that my secret didn’t make me dirty and that I was simply mid-metamorphosis, my relationship to God and to my church grew deeper, more fervent. I doubled down on my commitments, spending anywhere from ten to fifteen hours a week at church, between handbell choir, youth group, Sunday services, Sunday school, and choir practice.

  During that time, my queerness, my difference, still weighed heavily on my mind. It wasn’t that I thought I was a sinner or anything. On television and in the newspaper, I’d heard lots of people say that “homosexuals” were destroying the moral fabric of our society and were sinners who were gonna burn in hellfire. Or whatever. But I knew none of that was true. First off, I knew that global warming, wage disparity, war, racism, patriarchy, and corporate greed—not homosexuality—were to blame for the fraying moral fabric of our society. Second, I knew that all those dudes on TV who spent so much energy talking about how nasty homosexuals were either secretly wanted to get it on with other dudes or were just jealous of our innate ability to match fabrics.

  In my own head, I was crystal clear that Jesus didn’t hate me because I was gay. Jesus was wayyyyyy too chill of a dude for that, and also Jesus hung out with hella prostitutes and weirdos, so he’d be like, “Sure, homos, come hang out too! We can all walk on water! Have some wine!”

  I knew God didn’t hate me for being queer. But that didn’t mean I didn’t hate myself for being queer.

  I was just so mad about it. I hated that I was different. I hated that my life didn’t make sense and that I couldn’t just want what other people wanted. I hated that I had to bother with this whole coming out business. I hated that I couldn’t just ask a girl to the dance like all my other friends. I hated that I felt constantly uncomfortable around groups of guys. I hated that I had to deal with other people’s bullshit about my identity.

  God didn’t hate me for being gay, but I sure as hell hated God for making me gay. And hating God imposed something of a barrier on my spiritual journey. It would take four years for that barrier to eventually fall. But don’t worry, you don’t have to wait four years. You only have to wait until later in this chapter.

  * * *

  —

  Thank Goddess for Jamie. She saved me years of agony. She made it so that coming out was no longer some moral crucible. Instead, I could appreciate it for what it was: a logistical and public relations nightmare. I
was able to approach this whole “how do I tell the world that I’m a faggot goddess?” thing with a clear, strategic, neon pink mind.

  The first decision I made was that I didn’t need to hurry. I’d heard from a lot of different sources (the internet, which by sixth grade I had) that a lot of times, when kids came out as gay too early, people were liable to just sorta dismiss it. Moms would say things like, “Little Timmy, you’re not gay! How could you know something like that? You’re only twelve! It’s probably just a phase. Oh, Timmy, stop pouting about the fact that I dismissed the entirety of your identity. If you keep pouting like this, you’re going to be late for gymnastics practice. Oh gosh, now you’re all upset. You know what? We can listen to the High School Musical soundtrack in the car while you put on your tights—would that cheer you up?”

  From my research (what I read on the internet), I determined that the best age to come out was sixteen. When you’re sixteen, you’re probably old enough to be taken seriously as a proto-adult, and according to my sources (what I read on the internet), you’re definitely old enough to start dating and messing around with other guys. So sixteen felt like the perfect age to do this thing. I was like Hillary Clinton circa 2011. All I had to do was wait four years and bide my time before I could announce my candidacy for president. How hard could it be?

  As it turned out, waiting was excruciating. Not so much in the “I feel alone in the world and no one understands me” sort of way. Mostly just in the “oh my god I want to kiss boys so bad and I can’t” sort of way. For those four years, my sexual frustration was profound. I masturbated eight thousand times a day.

  But luckily, that always gets better when you come out, right? That’s why you never hear about sexually frustrated gay men, and you certainly don’t hear about sexually frustrated gender nonconforming or trans people. Once you come out, you just like, get a sex life handed to you, right?

  Right?

  Anyway, at a certain point, the pressure became too much. Two years into my four-year probationary period, I got tired of waiting. I had to tell someone that I was, for sure, 100 percent running for Gay President. I had to declare my intentions. And I had to hire a campaign manager before they committed to another candidate.

  For my campaign manager, I chose my best friend Paige, the one who loved art and glam rock and David Bowie and cool gender nonconforming drag queens on Myspace. Paige was functionally gayer than I was—she was pretty much my gay best friend—so coming out to her wasn’t scary, per se. I knew she wouldn’t reject me. I knew she would likely be thrilled.

  I was only hesitant because coming out to her represented a security risk, a gap in my firewall. I was not worried in the slightest about what she would say when I confirmed her suspicions. I was only worried that she would accidentally tell someone else, that it would spread like wildfire and might make it back around to my parents or my friends at school or the old ladies at church before I could tell them myself. In campaign terms, Paige could be a leak in my public relations plan. I wanted to tell Paige and a few other people that, yes, I was running for president. But I wanted it to be off the record. I wanted to give my parents the exclusive when the timing was right.

  What was remarkable about coming out to Paige was just how unremarkable it was. She doesn’t even remember exactly when it happened. I, of course, remember it clear as day. We were walking around in the woods behind my house, and we sat down to take a breather on the trunk of a giant fallen tree. This was one of my favorite trees on the entire planet. It’s almost completely rotted by now, absolutely covered in termites, but it was my favorite place to spend time as a kid, so it was special that Paige and I went there.

  Seated on the tree, legs akimbo, I took a deep breath.

  “Paige, I want to tell you something. There’s not really a way to preface this without giving it away, so . . .”

  She stared deeply into my eyes, knowing something juicy was coming.

  “I’m gay.”

  She sat quietly for a moment as a smile spread across her lips, cresting to a full-on toothy grin. She was thrilled. Her eyes shimmered.

  “Jacob, this is the best. Does anyone else know? I’m so excited for you! Oh, you’re so awesome!”

  She threw her arms around me in a bear hug. We hugged for what must’ve been a minute, not crying, not shaking, but giggling. We couldn’t stop laughing. It had been so obvious to both of us, and now it was out there. And it was fun. It was electric. It was exciting. We had a secret—and the fact that I’d told her first meant our friendship was that much more riveting, that much more complex, that much more iridescent.

  It was the fairy-tale, indie-movie-style coming out that every queer or trans person deserves, but not everyone gets. As far as popping my coming-out-to-friends-cherry goes, this was a slam dunk.

  Paige honored her word. She kept my secret off the record. And now, whenever I was frustrated or upset or boiling over, I had a pressure-release valve, a way to blow off steam. I knew I could last the two more years until my sixteenth birthday.

  * * *

  —

  Well, there was one other time I came out before I turned sixteen. As I waited to make the big announcement, I found myself breaking the silence in a letter. To, of all people, Jon Stewart.

  On June 6, 2006, Jon Stewart did an interview on The Daily Show with conservative pundit Bill Bennett about his new book, America: The Last Best Hope, Volume I. During the interview, they got into a big argument about gay marriage, where Jon eviscerated right-wing opponents of same-sex marriage, disemboweling their arguments in the way only Jon Stewart could.

  I remember how formative this interview was for me. Back in 2006, when most public figures and politicians alike were still reticent to endorse same-sex marriage or stand up for the LGBTQ community, watching Jon Stewart—a straight dude—defend people like me felt earth-shattering.

  Let’s be clear, though. Today, I couldn’t give two shits about marriage as a political issue. Part of that is because, in my adult life, I am perpetually single, so weddings make me grumpy and I am bitter. Especially cute gay weddings. We get it, Charles and Ian, YOU’RE MADLY IN LOVE AND YOU BOTH HAVE GREAT PECS. That doesn’t mean you have to rub your perfect love in our faces, okay? (Though you’re welcome to rub other things in my face, just sayin’.)

  But it’s also about the principle of the thing. Ask any feminist scholar and they will tell you that marriage’s history has always been, at best, sketchy. It literally used to be a property arrangement, a contract, wherein women were the property. And today, even at its most meaningful, it’s often just an excuse to spend ungodly amounts of money on flowers and to force all your femme friends to buy dresses they’ll never wear again. I don’t need a wedding to do either of those things. I will spend too much money on flowers any day I want, thankyouverymuch. I will spend half a month’s salary on a vintage flapper dress if I damn well please.

  Personally, I think the government shouldn’t sanction marriage for anyone, that the government should only provide civil unions—for straight and queer couples alike*—and that you should go to a mosque or a synagogue or a church or whatever if you want to get married in front of God. I don’t like the idea that government names any relationship that it sanctions a marriage. Feels to me like a violation of the whole “church and state” thing. And on a movement level, I feel like marriage was a distraction from bigger queer and trans issues like employment discrimination, access to public facilities and services, gender-identity-related healthcare, and hate violence, to name a few.

  All that being said, I’ll probably still get married to someone someday, even though I’m sorta meh about the whole institution. But I’ll only do it to make my mom happy. She doesn’t say it out loud, but I have a sneaking suspicion that she super wants me to get married and, like, do the whole wedding thing. I figure staging a solid wedding is the least I can do after she literally 3D-printed my b
ody.

  But back in 2006, marriage mattered to me greatly. Not because the institution was important to me—I was still years away from having a serious romantic partner*—but because marriage was the vehicle through which the world debated the worth and humanity of queer people. People who were “opposed to same-sex marriage” were not overly concerned with marriage. Their distaste for same-sex marriage was only a derivative symptom of their primary condition: the cold, hard fact that they disliked queer people and did not believe we deserved happiness, community, family, or respect.

  Marriage was a mirage, an illusion that clouded the minds of so many, obscuring the real question we were debating as a country, a question that continues to be debated today: Are queer and trans people worthwhile?

  According to Jon Stewart, who was basically the face of the resistance circa 2006 and who I may or may not have had something of a crush on, the answer was a categorical “of course queer people are worthwhile.” Not only was I worthwhile, I was “part of the human condition.” In my impatience to come out, my impatience to start fighting back against all the idiots on television who said that people like me were immoral or bad or villainous, hearing Jon Stewart stand up for me was pivotal. It made the waiting easier. Advil in the face of a searing identitarian migraine—it couldn’t fix it per se, but it certainly helped dull the ache.

  So, the summer after eighth grade, I wrote this letter to thank him. And to let him know that I’d be more than happy to be a guest on his show. (Jon, if you’re reading this, that offer still stands, by the way.)

  June 7th, 2006

  Dear Jon Stewart,

  I know you will probably never read this, but I would really like to thank you for your defense of gay rights during your interview on June 6th. It is really nice to have someone advocating gay rights who isn’t wearing a thong and dancing around in the street.* As an in-the-closet teen of 14, the world is already difficult enough for gay people, and we don’t need closed-minded s***heads making it worse. As an aspiring actor or politician* you are definitely a role model for me, changing the world through comedy, what a great way to do it. Man, you SERVED that guy. Did he not see what you did on Hardball? I wouldn’t show up if I had to debate you!