FEATURES

HIGH GEAR/APRIL 1977

COMING OUT TO STRAIGHT FRIENDS

By MITCHELL MENIGU

I mark my full acceptance of myself as a gay man with my decision to come out to straight friends. Most of my closest straight friends live outside Ohio and had to be told through letters. We had formed our friendships in student days or through working together. tenacious in holding on to people I value, but most of the relationships I am talking about had lain fallow for seven or eight years.

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The period in which there was almost no contact was a matter of my choice. I ignored invitations to visit; I stopped answering letters. I later realized that I was very likely causing my friends pain and making them. wonder what they had done to alienate me.

But I had not been able to continue the game that I had invented for my relationship with them. I had pretended that I was straight but not ready to "settle down." Because It was an act, one which I thought could result in disaster if not well performed, I worried constantly about the image I was projecting to them, about whether the me that I feared they would reject showed through the face l prepared to meet theirs. I could not make that face my own, nor could I go on performing the role forever. Being myself seemed then not to be a choice, and the result was my denying myself the emotional support of people with whom I had shared important experiences in my past. I was to learn later that they too felt denied by me.

male friend, I felt more reason to fear rejection. I was afraid he would reinterpret and misinterpret our past association. We had been students together and then worked together. His wife and I were close enough as friends to have emotional arguments occasionally. I had driven them and their first child west when they moved away. He and I had looked forward to our annual meetings at professional conferences, but part of my withdrawal had been ending my attendance at the conferences. We had continued to write to each other, but when their invitations for me to visit them in

I mailed the letter before I

could change my mind. As days passed,my anxiety about being rejected grew. Finally, one night I heard my friend's wife on the phone reminding me that she was not one to write letters but telling me that he would soon write and that she wanted me to know that "We love you."

I recently had the opportunity to discover the answer to that question when he visited me for several days. I was determined that he meet my gay friends. who, more and more, form the core of my social and emotional life. The first night he was in town, I took him to the gay bar where I have many friends and acquaintances. It was his first experience in a gay bar; he had been curious, he said, but had felt it wrong to go to one to observe people merely to satisfy his curiosity. Although he later told me that he had a strange reaction the first time one of my friends walked in and greeted me with a kiss, he came to accept and approve of honest expressions of affection between the gay men and women at the bar. Noting my especially strong attraction to one of the friends I had introduced him to, he warned me, after observing us, that I would most likely not get the satisfaction I want from that relationship, something I knew but have not yet the distance to accept.

Later, I had several gay friends at my apartment on two occasions so that he could know more fully what constitutes the substance of our, relationship. Before he left, he indicated that the visit and our conversations had raised his consciousness about gay

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people. As I drove him to the airport, he told me that he had come on the visit uncertain about his feeling about my life but was leaving happy with my life style and especially about my deciding to live it in spite of what I might have feared that others could think. When we parted, we put our arms around each other's shoulders. It was only later that I realized that at one time I would have feared doing that lest someday my meaning might be misunderstood.

The letter I have been referring to was only the first of several that I wrote in succeeding months. Not one has received a negative response. My straight friends have thanked me for sharing myself so fully with them. I feel that I have gained too, not only in regaining meaningful associations, but especially in my conviction that my openness has made these friends more conscious of and sympathetic to concerns of gays. Perhaps I was always wise in my choice of friends. I had decided I had nothing to lose except phantoms if I were open. I was right. I urge other gays to do as I have done, not only to enrich their own lives but to serve the whole gay community by affirming support for us among straight people.

GAY COMMUNITY CENTER ACTIVITIES

GAY COMMUNITY CENTER OF CLEVELAND will be opening its doors on May 1st to serve YOU.

Following are some suggestions for activities at the GCCC. which do you like check and mail in this page, or call the Hot. Line number 321-6632.

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When I had written, I had tried to say everything by saying as little as possible. The letter I got in response reveals that it might have been confusing, but my friend's letter was without question the answer I had hoped to get. He wrote: "I think I understand what your letter indirectly reports and you must be assured here and now of something that you could have accorrectly assumed all along; it..Swimming

The first person I presented the truth of my gayness was a woman with whom I had worked who had taken another job out of town that enabled her to pursue more fully her concern with the Women's Movement. I wasn't very apprehensive about the effect of my revelation on her because not only was she committed politically to ceptance of people as individuals, but also I knew she had friendships with other men and women who were known to her as gay. Still, when we met on one of her visits here, I felt somewhat breathless as I told her of my anger about reactions to the I Matlovich case, anger based in my empathy with his situation. It was freeing to be able to share my feeling with her. Twice since then I have stayed in her home and felt it easy to be myself fully. We share many cultural and political interests. Discussing with her the ways in which the Women's Movement and Gay Rights Movement share goals and the ways in which they at times conflict is always stimulating. Because she is a political person, she has urged me to be more of an activist in supporting gay causes.

When I wanted to reestablish a relationship with a straight

their new home in Western Canada became increasingly insistent, I simply ignored their letters until no more came.

The letter I wrote to explain

my long silence and reestablish or fully end our relationship served a double function. I used it also to come out to my supervisor at work, a woman of incredible warmth and emotional openness. I had no fear of her reaction, but how to reveal my gayness to her seemed to me to be a matter of avoiding awkwardness. After I had written the letter to my old friends, I took it to her and asked, "Would you mail this if you were Me?" She read my cramped handwriting with total attentiveness and finally looked up with an expression that conveyed complete acceptance and said with a smile, "Mail it." She added that if my friends were the people I seemed to think them to be, they would respond positively and that if I had misjudged them, it was just as well that I know that.

makes no difference to the way

we feel about you; the qualities for which we love and respect you have nothing to do with what you describe as the mask you offered us...Let it be known simply that we are curious about the turn your life has taken, sympathetic with the directions that will bring you happiness, and eager to resume what I've always valued as an easy-going, uncomplicated relationship. You must of course come up to see us."

I accepted the invitation immediately and paid the visit about six months later. It was a pleasant time. We reminisced about the past and discussed matters related to my being gay which I had never expected to talk about with him. I described my life and wishes for the future, but I wondered whether he would be so accepting if he saw my life first-hand.

.....Parents of Gays group .....Arts and Crafts workshop ...Poetry Readings ......Library ......Dances/Parties

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....Bicycle trips Legal services

.....Talent shows .....Folk dance group .....Outdoor camping .....Film and lecture series .....List other suggestions here

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GAY COMMUNITY CENTER OF CLEVELAND ACTIVITIES Box 6177, CLEVELAND, OHIO 44101