On the Coming of Out

It is still odd to us here at Glass­dog World Dom­i­na­tion — per­haps because our goal is world dom­i­na­tion and we want to dom­i­nate every­one so any par­tic­u­lar one’s self-identity is pretty much beside the point — that the anachro­nis­tic con­cept of declar­ing one’s sex­u­al­ity is still some­thing wor­thy of a “thing.”

In other words, why is it that one set of per­sons has to declare this, and another set doesn’t? Does one declare one’s eye color? No, one does not. Does one appear on Time Magazine’s cover under the head­line, “Yep, I’m left-handed!” No, one does not. And yet.…

It would appear that a “major celebrity” will be declar­ing his or her sex­ual pref­er­ence on Peo­ple Magazine’s cover story this week. It will be dou­bly sur­pris­ing if it turns out to be Ricky Mar­tin declar­ing, “Yep, I’m straight!” but we sort of doubt that’s the “major celebrity” because he hasn’t been one or the other for a few years. Rumor, and Gawker, has it that the celebrity in ques­tion is Chely Wright, to which our only response is, “Who the hell is Chely Wright?”

Maybe the answer to that ques­tion is “some chick who’ll do any­thing for pub­lic­ity because no one knows who the hell Chely Wright is.” Or how to pro­nounce her name. Is it ‘Shelly’ or ‘Chelly?’ Maybe it’s Kelly? What­evs. Roll eyes.

Back to the point, such as it is. When do we get to not come out any­more? Maybe it’s when gay mar­riage is also okay, and by gay mar­riage we mean two gays get­ting mar­ried. To each other. And not, as some would pro­pose, one gay mar­ry­ing a non-gay because that’s legal, and or one gay mar­ry­ing another gay of the oppo­site sex.

Is it okay to refer to gays as ‘gays’? This is all so confusing.

Com­ing out pub­licly is a right of pas­sage for the gays, or did you already know that and it was point­less to tell you? And if you didn’t know that, per­haps you should come out! Com­ing out means that you gather peo­ple together in front of a mag­a­zine rack and present them with a color head­shot of your­self smil­ing, but not smil­ing too much (which is gay), and then stand there while they take more pic­tures of you and fan­ta­size about you hav­ing sex with some­one who looks kind of like you, only not as attrac­tive, because if they are as attrac­tive (or, scan­dal!, more attrac­tive) that’s too gay. Then they feel all funny inside and hug you and say “we sup­port you no mat­ter what!” because this is kind of like con­fess­ing that you spend your lonely hours drown­ing pup­pies or feed­ing shit to babies.

After com­ing out, you have a cou­ple of weeks of blessed free­dom, finally able to ogle all those hot asses you couldn’t ogle before because they were attached to the wrong peo­ple. Oddly, the hot asses are all the same no mat­ter who they’re attached to, but it’s only when your eyes travel up the bod­ies that trou­ble hap­pens. Those first two weeks are like the lives that peo­ple who aren’t forced to come out are like. It’s weird and awe­some and you real­ize in those days what your life should have been like all along, whether you came out or not.

Then buyer’s regret set­tles in and you start to real­ize that noth­ing at all has changed, you still don’t get to actu­ally go to bed with the hot asses and now you’re not just lonely, but you’re also sad because before you had all these peo­ple you could’ve secretly fucked but now that you’re out and they’re not, you can’t even be seen with them (until they come out, too).

Imag­ine, for a moment, that you’re Tom Cruise.

Stop scream­ing!

Okay, now imag­ine that some­one has accused…

Stop scream­ing! Please!

Imag­ine… you’re going to scream again, aren’t you? It’s okay, it hap­pens to every­one in this sit­u­a­tion. Imag­ine that you’re so far in the closet that you have to sue peo­ple who even sug­gest that you might come out one day. Now imag­ine that you’re Katie Ho… you’re going to scream again, I just know it. You’re Katie Holmes and you’re mar­ried to Tom Cruise and…

Well, all this scream­ing is just killing the mood.

“That’s what she said!” Ba bim boom!

Nev­er­mind about Tom. Just for­get him. Pre­tend, instead, that you’re Ricky Mar­tin sit­ting across from Bar­bara Wal­ters and she just asked you in front of TV cam­eras if you’re gay. This is your moment. This is the oppor­tu­nity. This is the time when you can finally face up to the truth and stop being scared of what oth­ers think and the fact that your career is over after the words leave your mouth.

What do you do?

Fact: You can­not be pulled out, you have to come out. No mat­ter how many peo­ple step for­ward and tell all that they slept with you (but never, curi­ously, whether you are any good at it) it’s all okay until you say it. You can be seen romp­ing on secluded beaches wear­ing a Speedo with your “per­sonal trainer” all sum­mer long, but until you say it your­self, that shadow of a doubt means you’re still straight and, there­fore, still “okay.”

Remem­ber the shit-eating babies.

Any­way, best of luck to whomever snags that Peo­ple Mag­a­zine cover. You’re in for two weeks of amaz­ing fun, and then three months of regret, and then obliv­ion. And com­pared to almost any­thing else, it’s the obliv­ion that sucks.

Stop scream­ing!