Big Gay Closet

You know how when you came out, a few of your friends said, “Yeah, I always suspected.” or, “I totally knew”?

Joe McElderry’s story beats that. Someone hacked his Twitter account and posted messages indicating he was gay and had been “living a lie.” The 19 year-old was stunned, but then found himself thinking that it might just be true. A couple weeks later, and he’s come out.

“It was always the case at school, really. I’d had girlfriends. I kissed loads of girls and I kissed one boy last year. I just thought, ‘Is this just not what everybody does – experimenting, at this age’? I never thought anything of it.

“It’s not fair on the boy I kissed last year if I talk about him. It was just before X Factor and it was nothing serious. It was a peck of a kiss while I was at college. I just thought, ‘What happened there? That was pretty nice’.

“It didn’t trigger anything in me at all. I didn’t feel anything. I just thought, ‘That was strange’.

“When I was doing X Factor I genuinely thought I wasn’t gay, and then I kind of just got to the point where, actually, maybe I am.

“Now I can get on with the rest of my life and move on and be comfortable.

“There’s always been speculation about me so I’m kind of used to it.

“I thought I wasn’t gay, so I thought it was just part of the job with all the speculation.

“So I just let it go over my head and got on with it.

“It eventually sunk into my mind. Genuinely, I just assumed I wasn’t gay. I was so young I never thought any more about it.”

from The Sun

It occurs to me that I’ve never come out over the phone. It makes sense, because I hate talking on the phone. It’s an inconvenient social phobia for someone who has friends and family on several continents, but there’s something about talking on the phone that drives me crazy.

I think it requires more attention than any other means of distance communication. With Instant Messaging, you don’t have to give your undivided attention to have a good conversation. Nor do you have to with email, or text. In real life you have to, but the person is right there in front of you, and their attention is likely to be diverted by the same things that distract you.

But the telephone? They can usually tell when I’ve been distracted by something else but they have no idea why. And if I’ve managed to disguise my lapse in concentration, I’ve still missed what was said, and the telephone doesn’t afford me the luxury of a re-read.

So I’ve never come out over the phone. I have, however, come out by email, IM, Facebook, by letter, and in person.

How many ways have you come out?