26

That sign has been hanging over my desk for a little over two years now. I put it up there shortly after I had broken down and finally admitted to myself that I was gay. I felt that if I didn’t tell anyone, I would soon go back into self-denial. At the time, the only person that I felt I could come out to lived up in Mount Pleasant which was hours away. Sara once told me that if a certain friend of hers (not me, by the way) ever came out, she would still be friends with him. So I contacted her and said that I was going to come up and see her and that I had something that I had to tell her. The 26th was the day that I was going to do it. Since it was a couple of days away, there was still a chance that I could change my mind about the whole thing. I wrote a big 26 on a piece of paper and stuck it above my computer to get me to commit.

In the early morning hours of the 26th, I borrowed my mom’s car and made the trip up north where I finally told the first person that I was gay. I made a choice and once it was executed, I could never go back. Since then, I have never lied to myself by thinking I was really straight.

The next day, I told someone else. Within a few months, more people knew and by fall, my sister did too. It’s been slow and filled with some very tense and awkward moments. Some of it was really bad and yet, a lot was also good.

I used to think of 26 as being connected with my death somehow.* In a way, it was the death of a personal deceit.




No, I did not rip that from the movie, 23