Coming Out pt 5: Car rides

God it's been really long since my last one of these. I apologize. It takes me a while to write these

So as of Christmas day of my junior year in highschool, my brother now knew I was gay. So far, the world kept spinning.

The next day, my older sister and I left town to drive out to our extended family. They live about 6-7 hours away. My goal was to come out to her sometime during this window. Actually, it only took us till when we were just out of town. We were talking about how fun last night was, so it felt pretty natural for me to start talking about what happened when our brother and I went downstairs to get a soda. She was pretty shocked. Not upset, just surprized. Apparently, she'd been friends with a number of gay guys over the years, but they had all been extremely stereotypical. I was the first guy she knew who didn't act like that. She started asking me questions. A lot of them were about how long have I known and stuff like that, but many of them were checking to see if I just supress my "gay" qualities, such as feminine behavior and personality, etc. Lately, she's been getting better at it, but she still makes the occasional assumption about me. I think she just assumes that I'm the exception to the rule. Maybe I am, but I'd like to think that there are way more masculine gay guys out there than she realizes. Anyway, she didn't disown me, the car didn't swerve, we just talked about it for awhile and then moved on after she asked all of her questions.

I've heard people warn that you should never come out to someone while they're driving. For safety reasons, I can understand the logic. I mean, if they're extremely surprised, then they might jerk the wheel or something. Besides that though, I feel like a car is the most natural place to come out to someone. I think the biggest reason is that there's no risk of someone else barging in on you; for instance, when I came out to my brother, if I had stalled for much longer, my sisters probably would've barged in wondering where we were. Another reason is that you don't have to maintain eye contact. At first, I had a lot of trouble coming out to people and looking at them directly in the eye. In a car, the eyes are on the road.

My sister and I spent a few days with my extended family (none of whom I came out to on that particular trip) then returned home. A couple weeks later, I decided to come out to my dad. In order to prevent myself from chickening out last minute, I told my dad the night before that I had something important to talk to him about. I was planning on talking to him alone at home, but the next morning he offered me a ride to school. My school was a 40 minute drive, so it was going to provide a lot of time for us to talk. Still, I was unprepared to talk about it this early.

We started driving and he immediately asked me what was wrong. It took me a couple minutes to get my thoughts together. Even though I knew I had my brother and sister for support if things went wrong, I was still terrified. I wasn't able to tell my dad "I'm gay." Instead, I said "I think I'm gay." Why did I say it like this? In my nervousness, I stuttered, and adding the word 'think' helped me get through saying it. I wish I hadn't though. He took the fact that I said "think" as a sign that I wasn't entirely sure, that this was a new thing that I was experiencing. I kept trying to explain to him that I was sure, but he wouldn't give me the benefit of the doubt. I think he believed me, he just didn't want to.

He started asking me lots of questions. I remember some of his first questions were "Are you sexually or emotionally attracted to boys?" I answered first sexually, then emotionally. "How long have you been sexually attracted to boys?" I think I stopped him at this point. I asked him to start saying men instead of boys. Asking me about my attraction to "boys" made me feel like a pedophile.

All this time while we were speaking, I cold tell that my dad was breaking on the inside, and that says something. My dad has a decent poker face when it comes to hiding his real emotions, but you'd be able to tell he was breaking even if you didn't know him well enough to see through his mask. It wasn't that he had a problem with homosexuality though. A little bit of background on my dad: he grew up poor and had to work his ass off through life in order to be as successful as he is. He made a promise to himself that he would work as hard as he possibly could to make sure that my siblings and I lived with as little hardship as possible. Finding out that despite all of his efforts, one of his kids had to face some terrible stuff without my dad even knowing about it must have been hard to deal with, especially that he had absolutely no idea how to handle this situation. He desperatetly tried to regain the position of people the "experienced parent who knows what to do."

He asked me to "keep this under wraps" for a while. He told me not to tell my older brother or sister, and he especially not to tell my mom. This told me a number of things: he thought that he was the first guy I came to and therefor my main emotional support, and that he was just as afraid as I was that he wouldn't be able to stand up to my step-mom if she reacted badly.

I never expected that by coming out to my dad, I would be more concerned with his emotional well-being than my own. I didn't have the heart to tell him right then and there that my brother and sister already knew. His self-esteem as a parent was already damaged enough for one car ride. So, I decided that for a while, I would let my dad play the role of protective parent so that he would get some of his security back. I felt guilty about lying to him though, but I would tell him the truth soon.

He let me out of the car at school and reassured me that he still loved me and that everything was going to be okay, and I thanked him. I was glad that I now had his support, but I now especially terrified of how my step-mom would react, since I now knew that my dad wouldn't be strong enough to back me up.