The Second Coming (Out)
In my last post, I talked about my coming out process. To sum it up: A year after returning from my mission, I was more disheartened than ever that I couldn’t faith my way into heterosexuality. Instead, I decided I had no other choice than to finally talk about my gayness — to “come out” for the first time.
The thought of coming out was just about the scariest thing to me at the time. As a gay person growing up in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and studying at Brigham Young University, I wanted nothing more than to fit in. I didn’t want to stand out – to come out. There appeared to be no benefit to it, only risk. Perhaps even rejection. It seemed easier to spend my life hiding behind my privileged white, perceived straight, maleness. After all, that’s the person the Church is designed to exalt, name, title, worship, respect, and deify. There is no “guidebook” to navigating mortality or eternity as a sexual minority within the LDS gospel. It was (and still seems to me) a blurry path with blurry options and a blurry afterlife. So blurry, in fact, that I wondered how coming out would do me any more good than keeping my “gay side” under wraps. Yet, it was undeniable to me that even at my most spiritual — two years as a missionary — I couldn’t stop my gayness from being there. It wanted to come out, and I had to finally accept that it was a part of me I couldn’t healthily suppress any longer.
I started slow by coming out to friends and family. I kept a running list for a while until I lost track of who knew and who didn’t. Finally, after stretching the process out over four years, it seemed I was done. Everyone I cared about had finally heard it from me or someone else that I was gay. It felt like a rebellious act to come out, and every time I spoke the words “I’m gay” it broke the cycle of self-gaslighting that I had gotten used to. I didn’t have the ability to affirm and accept myself when I first started, so it was nice to lean on others until I got there on my own. In fact, cornering my loved ones to let them in on my secret started to lose its effect. I felt balanced for the first time, no longer in need of anyone else’s approval or affirmation, even if it was satisfying.
I was ready to exist proudly and let others figure out my sexuality for themselves, if that was important for them to know. But, I quickly learned that coming out was just the first step to many on my way to self-healing. Once the air had been cleared with my public declarations, I took a look around and — to my surprise — there was so much more leftover to come out with. As it turned out, accepting and voicing my identity was only the beginning of the delayed process of sorting through the rest of my trauma from growing up gay in a straight person’s world and an anti-queer religion (wording borrowed from Alan Downs’ “The Velvet Rage”).
The first time I noticed there was more work to be done was when I graduated BYU and moved in with my parents. I had no interest in attending their family ward, but their bishop declared himself “officially” my leader and wanted to meet with me. In our one-on-one, I came right out with it and told him that I was gay and had no plans to marry a woman, but that I still didn’t know what that meant for me and the Church. Somewhat surprised, he bore his testimony about the blessings he had witnessed since marrying a woman and raising a loving family. It was too little, too late, as I was not to be testimonied into hetereosexuality. I told him he could expect to see little of me that summer but thanked him for his time. A few hours later, he sent me a lengthy email referencing just about every talk that had ever been issued by General Authorities on the topic of homosexuality, twenty in total. He ended his email by saying: “All that the Father has will be given to you — if you but endure to the end and are faithful.” I never responded.
My mother and I got into a long conversation about where my faith stood. I told her I didn’t believe the Plan of Salvation could be true as it was currently laid out. I said that I had tried and failed too many times to fall in love with women, but it simply was not in the cards for me. I was gay, and I didn’t believe that the Plan made a healthy or desirable space for me. My mother listened to me lovingly, but this was uncharted territory for us. The last time we talked about my sexuality or my faith was a year after my mission when I first came out to her and my dad. It had been five years since then. “I don’t think any of us really know what the Plan looks like,” she said this time around. “There’s so many possibilities, I don’t think you’re trying hard enough,” she told me. I could have let the statement waiver in ambiguity, but I wanted her to say what she really meant. “Do you mean I’m not trying hard enough to be straight?” I asked, pointedly. “Well,” she muttered, “yes, perhaps.” It truly felt surreal to hear her say that. “Sexuality is more complex than any of us realize,” she defended her reasoning.
It was like a previous version of myself had hijacked her thoughts to gaslight me all over again. The internal verbal abuse I put myself through for years was now being spoken out loud by my own mother. “You’re wrong,” I said defiantly. “It’s not any more complex for me than it is for you and dad. If you can know you are undoubtedly attracted to men, I can know it, too.” All at once, it was clear to me that I had come so far past the need to peer at my life through an LDS gospel lens. Watching it play out right in front of me in the form of my mother attempting to stretch the Plan of Salvation opened me up to just how long I had lived among the blurriness. It triggered an anger in me about the Church that I had never felt so strongly before. Even though I had mulled over her same thoughts about the Plan once upon a time, and had spent years grasping tightly to the reasoning she whipped out, I had also learned through countless painful faith scenarios that it was not true. I was bitter that I ever depended on it, and resented that it was now so easily dribbling out of the mouth of my parent. I knew in that moment that even though I had come out, I had so much more to sort through, my faith path included.
As much as I learned to love myself for being gay, coming out hasn’t fully healed me from all of the trauma I’ve accumulated over the years. Every now and then — like in a heated conversation with my mother — it crops up like the aftershocks of an earthquake, leaving me to reel once again from a thing I thought I had come out of. Trauma remains, but there is no more hiding from it in the closet. My mother has since become one of my greatest advocates, but at the time it seemed I was staring at the beginning of what would become my second coming out.
You may have heard the phrase before. Some define the concept of the “second coming out” narrowly as the process of announcing a departure from the Church following a coming out experience. Some have described this experience as being far more contentious among family than coming out as gay. While leaving the Church did end up being part of my second coming out, it can also be so much more than just a confession of church dismembership. I’ve found it to be, in addition, a constant discovering and healing of every habit and rationale I nursed in order to hide, suppress, fit in, coalesce, agree, or protect myself over the years from inconvenient truths about myself and rejection from others. Coming out the first time was a necessary but momentary thing; my second coming out will continue to be a much longer project.
It came up again when I first started dating men. Following the shaky summer living with my parents, I got a job and returned to Utah to rent an apartment in Salt Lake City. I felt free to finally pursue my “gay lifestyle” without observation or a looming conversation with my mother about the Plan of Salvation. At 27, I already felt behind the curve when it came to dating, but I was focused on my excitement to start.
I matched with a guy on a dating app and we immediately hit it off. He asked for my number and I blushed — no one had ever asked for my number before. Our conversation moved quickly past the superficial as we planned our first date: Meet at Café Rio before going to his place where we would have our dinner and I would meet his dog.
The night before, all I could think was that I would likely have my first kiss. My first gay kiss. I was excited at the thought that I’d be committing such a rebellious act – I would be acting on my sexuality for the first time in my life. I expected there to be fireworks and butterflies, nerves and intensity.
The day of our date, I was seething with anticipation as I drove to meet him in person for the first time. He was taller than I expected, but just as cute as his pictures. We ordered our food and I followed him back to his place where we slowly ate our salads and I got to know his animal best friend. All of the talk of work emails and customers felt like foreplay as I waited anxiously for a sign that things would turn physical. I was filled with anxious anticipation as the conversation slowed. I asked if I could kiss him and he said yes, which sent my stomach twirling. As we leaned in, my mind rejoiced. “I’m kissing a boy for the first time,” I celebrated as I enjoyed the moment. My heart felt like it was going to jump out of my chest. Nobody told me rebellion would feel this good.
It wasn’t long before the slight taste of Cilantro Ranch House Dressing on his lips brought me back to reality. The flavor shocked me into analysis mode:
“Was he liking it? Am I supposed to use tongue? Do I keep my eyes open or closed? Did he have something more in mind when he invited me to his house tonight?”
The final thought made me nervous. My anxious heartbeat changed to panic. I wasn’t sure if I was ready for anything more than my first kiss. I never agreed with the Law of Chastity that it was universally better to wait until marriage to have sex. My lack of belief still didn’t stop me from pausing when faced with the opportunity as I assessed my own comfort. I didn’t even think to state my expectations before the date. He didn’t even know he was my first kiss.
I slowed and so did he. We pulled away and I put on a smile, hiding the windstorm of thoughts going on behind it. He invited me from the table to his room. Despite my rapid panic-induced heartbeat, I wanted to know what it would be like to explore more. I wanted to know what I was comfortable with based on my first-hand experience, not by the standards laid out in For the Strength of Youth. I was enjoying myself for the most part, so why stop now?
I followed him upstairs, scanning the scene for clues on how this would turn out. As things got heated, the anxiety I had pushed down started to well up again. As much as I was enjoying the evening, my panic progressively distracted me from being in the moment. I could feel my body start to shut down. My rationale kicked in again:
“Have I gone too far too soon? Should I have listened to my panic before and kept this at the table? I barely know this person, and now I am on his bed.”
Overwhelmed and anxious, I stopped things from going further. We cuddled for a bit before I announced that I was leaving. We put our shoes on as he escorted me downstairs. I grabbed the remains of my sweet pork salad and walked out the door. I replayed the night in my mind: “Did I do something wrong?” I wondered. “Did I make a mistake in coming here tonight? Is he expecting me to come back? I’m nervous to try this again.”
I got in my car and my hands started to shake as I put the key in the ignition. I pulled out my phone to plug in the directions to my apartment and realized I felt … nothing. I didn’t want to call him again, but I didn’t feel bad about what we had just done, either. I only felt … empty. I wanted to feel excited after my first kiss, but it turned out not at all how I expected. I wanted there to be fireworks and butterflies, but instead all I could think on my drive home was that I had my first kiss at 27 and I was possibly bad at it.
All of the feelings I had for him prior to our date dissolved as I reflected on the evening. Walking into it, I had high hopes that it would go as I fantasized. I didn’t plan on it being underwhelming. Regardless, it was over now. The permanence of the experience set in and I immediately felt regret, not for making out with him, but because I felt so unprepared for it. “Why did I wait to kiss a boy until I was 27?” I thought. “Why didn’t I do that in college, or in high school?” I became regretful thinking about my belated, unsatisfactory experience. “Why did I keep myself from this for so long? Why did I let other people tell me what to do?”
I had gotten it in my head that kissing him would be the only appropriate rebellious act to make right 27 years of actively trying to not kiss any man. It would be, in a way, the thing that would break me free from years of sexual self-suppression and an internalized sense of general sex negativity. But my first kiss couldn’t do all of that. The fireworks and butterflies didn’t last long before they triggered panic and regret. It didn’t roll back the clock and erase the series of mixed messages I carried when it came to sex. It was still true that no one had ever talked to me about gay dating and sex. No one educated me about the ways anxiety can manifest during sexual intimacy, or prepared me to know how different it would feel to be with a person in real life versus in my head. Of course, it wasn’t their fault to have kept that information from me — it was just their religion. While I didn’t feel ashamed, I did feel jipped to have my first step out of the closet still be so wrapped up in a past that I, once again, thought I had come out of.
It’s been years since that night and I’ve continued to sort through the ways in which I’ve held onto trauma from the closet. Coming out as gay didn’t immediately make me great at being forthcoming about my innermost thoughts and feelings. Leaving the Church didn’t suddenly undo years of mixed messaging about my self-worth. And kissing a man for the first time at 27 didn’t instantly imbue me with 27 years of dating and sex experience. But, all these things have been necessary experiences that challenged me to sort through the clutter leftover from living in the closet, even though I’m not there anymore.
The second coming out will look different for everyone, I’m certain. But there’s nothing more imminent than the deep cleaning that comes after coming out. With the right help, it can be the healthy reprogramming that enables new growth and a new coming out.
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