Leaving the Closet Door Open-ish

There are no hard and fast rules. Sometimes I do it straight out of the gate, sometimes I delay. Some of the people closest to me have had to wait years, others it’s never actually been said, but it’s known. Others, I’m sure, have no real idea at all.

            I operate on a strange sort of dichotomy: on the one hand, it’s something I will be completely open and candid about. On the other, I dance through half-truths and vagueries, dodging direct contact whenever possible. On the third (yes, three hands the magpie has, and many more, so watch your pockets and your secrets, dearies), I will attack viciously and thoroughly anyone who takes it out of my control.

            I read this thing about the repetitiveness of it, very humours. Mostly accurate. And that’s the thing: you have to do it over, and over, and over, and over, and many more times over. Forever. Maybe that’s where the dichotomy comes in. The wanting, sometimes, to just have a break. To not do it. To live in that moment where I am just like everyone else (as much as anyone is like anyone else, anyway).

            That and my abhorrence of labels – not just this one, but all of them. I shrink away with a hiss and a sneer (think Nosferatu as the sun comes up) any time one even threatens to attach itself to me.

            But labels are unavoidable. They’ll get slapped on you whether you like it or not, so you learn to cope.

            Recently, I had to do it again. This was one of those delaying times. I knew, inevitably, it would either have to be spoken or lied about, and lying is not an option. I sat back and watched and waited, and many, many times on a daily basis resolved to just get it over with only to shrink back at the last second. I told myself this was silly. I told myself there was nothing to worry about. I knew that, but knowing is different than feeling, and even when knowing you are completely sure, there is that niggle of doubt. That little voice that whispers what if that makes you hesitate. I wanted to protect this new, unexpected and precious thing that had fallen in front of me from the potential disaster of speaking the truth.

            And here you will say, well, if soandso doesn’t accept you for who you are, then what is there to protect? But those of you saying that will never have been in that position. You will never have had someone you trust, someone you love, someone you respect, someone you admire metamorphose into a crude and ugly creature wanting to tear you limb from limb for something about you that has always been there, they just didn’t know. Once you have that, you learn to fear even the ones you trust. You learn to be wary. And you learn the desperation of wanting(needing) acceptance at any cost.

            But that is the past, and this is the now. The now was not like that at all. The now was kind and practical, and Well, of course to my fumbly explanations. It was the first, the hardest, and the best of what I know will be a series of repeated exchanges, with all the new people gathering in my life. Most will not be so direct; I dislike labels, remember, and it is an incredibly difficult thing to work into casual conversation.

            But this one needed to be, deserved to be. So I put on my brave(ish) face, and walked back out with that unexpected and precious thing not only intact, but moreso than before.

(Oct 11 was National Coming Out Day [internationally recognised, mind you; words, people, words and meanings], which I did not know when I initially wrote it. Yay me for being inadvertently topical. I also almost didn't post this as it's two weeks in a row I've been unaccountably mushy. Just means next week I'm going to have to eat someone alive.)

Double-Consciousness and Identity

I've reached one of those phases of thought where there are too many things running parallel and not enough outlets to get them all out. I keep coming back, though, to a quote from W.E.B. Du Bois, though:

It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity.
 

I've been reading his work lately, one of those things I always thought I should read that, and then through the fortune of university reading lists, I actually did. There are a lot of great quotes in Du Bois writing, a lot of relevant quotes, but his perspective on living with a sense of double-consciousness, double-identity, of being The Other and Not-Other at the same time, resonated in particular with me. Much of my life has been spent on a fairly haphazard quest of finding a place to fit. I've found a few that come close, a few that I could make myself comfortable if need be, but in the end there is always that nagging sense of displacement and not-belonging that tumbles my life back into suitcases.

I am most wholly American when I am nowhere near America, most likely, I think, because my audience lacks a side-by-side comparison so by virtue of accent and birth, the lable sticks unquestioned. As an expat I get told frequently that my actions, ideas and perceptions are "very American"; in my own country, however, I am more often accused of being "un-American". In truth, inside or outside it, I always feel like an outsider. The longer I spend away, the more I want to go "home" (a very loose term that is only used to the extent of "that place I came from"). The longer I'm there, the more I realise the truth that everyone who has ever left home and gone back knows: the act of leaving irrevocably detaches you, changes you, and even if you return for good, you will still be one who has left and gone back, not one who has simply stayed. After spending nearly half my life wandering across the Atlantic, both and neither feel like home; the only time I have ever felt that sense of "going home" that's usually associated with childhood haunts and fond memories is stepping into an airport terminal. If there were a way to live poised somewhere over the Atlantic, that would probably be the place for me.

I'm an American, an expatriate, a Southerner (which could be said is almost a "national" identity in itself), and, according to a joke between a friend and I, even an alien (a joke inherited from my father, ironically, since it drove me crazy when he said it, but also a play on the no-longer-PC term). But do any of these things actually say anything about my identity as a human being? I remember, several years ago, driving to work and being stopped at a light behind a car that had a bumper sticker that read: "Be American! Stand up for America!" For the five minutes or so I sat behind this car, I pondered what that meant, and by the time I reached work, I still didn't have any conclusions. So I asked my boss, who is a fairly intelligent and knowledgeable man, though he didn't have any better ideas. To this day, I'm still not entirely sure what the writer of that bumper sticker really intended to convey. In my mind, all you have to do to be an American is be born there. The make-up of that country is so fluid and diverse, pinning it down to anything more specific inevitably results in huge chunks of the population falling well outside the pale.

At the same time, while acknowledging and accepting my national identity as an American, I also have to acknowledge that I am not American. I can't be. By virtue of some of the other labels ascribed to me, I am not equal to other Americans. I'm not entitled to the same legal protections or level of healthcare. I don't have the same assurance of safety from harassment and discrimination when it comes to civil rights, employment, or even walking on the street or into a shop. So how can I be an American if I am also told that I must complacently accept that I am inherently less?

This is by no means solely the arena of the queer community. It's not a matter of queer vs. not-queer because the L, G, B, T and Q can't seem to thoroughly unite themselves, and have their own forms of isolation and discrimination. Even those groups who have attained legal equality still find themselves shoved back by persistent social inequality, whether it's their race, religion, sex/gender, or something else entirely. It amazes me sometimes how thoroughly determined humanity is to fracture itself into so many divisive little groups, instigating hate and fear over some of the most ridiculous and inconsequential traits. It amazes me quite often how determined humanity is to hate, to be angry and spiteful, and to take great pride in that.

I suppose this peculiar sensation of double-consciousness is one of the things that makes me wary of - okay, stubbornly opposed to - attaching labels to myself. Why should I accept a label that will not accept me back, or will only accept me under certain conditions? More importantly, why should I endorse a viewpoint that will only perpetuate the reduction of my self to a single word, a broad generalisation that chafes and pinches in all the wrong places and dilutes the right ones to a bland homogeny? Why should anyone?