The first person I ever came out to was a fellow first-year at UVA named Kirk.
Well, technically, the first person I ever came out to was a therapist. But that doesn’t sound quite as glamorous, and anyway, we all know that therapists don’t count as real people. They’re just ciphers.
So, Kirk was the first real person I ever came out to.
It happened in the spring of my first year of college. April 1992. Spring always did weird hormonal things to me. The warm weather and the chirping birds always made me want violently to rip off the layers of detritus and expectation and well-behavedness that I’d built up, and become all Bacchic and lusty, and draw outside the lines, and play in the mud.
I’d known about Kirk for most of the year. In the fall I’d been in this first-year theater group, an ambitious production of “Sweeney Todd.” We had a party one night in October, and at the party, one of the guys in the group happened to mention that his roommate was gay. I’d only known of one real live gay person before — a guy at my high school (a guy who now reads this blog, actually!) — so when I heard there was yet another real live gay person out there, my ears focused in. So this guy had a roommate, named Kirk, and Kirk was gay. And apparently, Kirk was also a playwright. I was a budding writer myself — I’d even tried to write plays — so hearing that he was a playwright made him seem that much cooler.
The idea of Kirk ran as an undercurrent through my first year of college. There was lots I had to deal with that year: getting over homesickness, getting used to living in the United States again, being a northerner among a bunch of southerners, trying to figure out what my major was going to be. And on top of that, I had this vague idea that I had some demons to slay.
I knew I was gay, more or less. I’d written the magic words in my diary a week before going off to college: “I’m gay.” But I was too scared to act on those words, or even to tell anyone about them.
To hear about this totally openly gay guy named Kirk — who had had plays produced in Richmond — and who was cute (I’d seen his photo) — and, finally, who was my age, to boot — well, I was in awe of him.
And I’d never even met the guy.
It wasn’t until the spring — when the snow melted and the birds chirped and the hormones raged and I wanted to bust out and go nuts and have fun — that I finally decided to deal with it.
In the middle of March, after six months of dancing around the issue, I came out to my therapist.
Several weeks later, I finally met Kirk. I met him because I wanted to meet him. I’d been thinking about him for weeks. And on a rainy Saturday afternoon in early April, I met him.
I’d actually seen him the previous night. That semester I was in another first-year show. We were doing “Damn Yankees.” I’d seen Kirk in the audience at one of the performances, and I was thrilled.
And now it was Saturday afternoon, and it was drizzling outside. I was standing on the balcony outside my Howard-Johnson-esque dorm, staring out at the field below. And then I saw Kirk walking to the bus stop.
Be spontaneous! It’s spring! You want to break loose! Start living!
So I did.
I ran into my room, grabbed my pale green Gap rain jacket, and ran out the door, hoping I’d get to the bus stop before the bus came. I had no idea where I was going. I had no idea what I’d say to him, if anything.
When I got to the bus stop, he was standing there. I walked under the bus shelter and pretended to scrutinize the bus schedule. I couldn’t believe I was standing right near him. I was so nervous. I wanted to say something to him. But what the heck was I supposed to say?
“Good job in the show last night.”
That was him. He said that. To me. He was speaking to me.
He spoke to me! Not only that, but he recognized me!
I couldn’t believe it.
I thanked him. A conversation began. The bus came. We got on. We were the only people on it. I sat in the seat behind him, feeling like a criminal. I told him that I knew his roommate and that I’d heard he’d written plays. I told him I was interested in writing plays, too. I asked for advice. He said I should read some Tennessee Williams. His voice was high and resonant and down home southernish (he was from central Virginia). And confident.
He got off at Alderman Library, so I got off there too. We talked for a few minutes more, and I decided I’d go to Newcomb Hall and read the newspaper. We said we’d see each other around, and we parted ways.
Incredible. I was ecstatic. I’d grabbed the moment, I’d been spontaneous, and I’d succeeded wildly. I’d actually met Kirk. And he’d spoken to me! It was the most amazing experience of my life.
The next day, Sunday, I saw him again. I’d been watching a movie in Clemons Library. As I was bringing it back to the front desk, there he was. We said hi and we talked for a little bit.
And then the next day, Monday, I saw him yet again! I was walking to University Singers rehearsal and he rode by on his bike, coming back from class. I yelled to him. “Kirk!” I yelled. He saw me and he waved.
I’d actually yelled hello to a gay guy. With all these people around.
I’d never met the guy, and then suddenly I’d run into him three days in a row.
And that was just the beginning.
We had our Singers rehearsal that night. Afterwards, several of us went to eat dinner, as usual. I happened to be eating with a female friend of mine, Rita, who was in Kirk’s dorm, and they knew each other. And of course — while we were eating, Kirk appeared.
She called him over, and he sat with us. Oh my god oh my god oh my god. I was eating with him.
It turned out that Jesse Jackson was speaking at UVA that night, and they were both planning to go see him. I decided I’d go, too. I mean, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity. I didn’t care about going to see Jesse Jackson so much as I cared about going to see Jesse Jackson with Kirk.
The three of us — Rita, Kirk and I — went to Cabell Hall. It was packed, and we sat in the highest row of the auditorium. The Reverend came on stage and spoke and gesticulated and raised the roof and told everyone to Keep Hope Alive. And we all chanted those words with him. Keep Hope Alive. Keep Hope Alive. Keep Hope Alive.
The speech ended. We all milled out of the auditorium, dizzy with youthful idealism. Rita was on her way to the library, which meant that Kirk and I were going to walk back to the dorms together. Oh. Wow.
It was a warm spring night. We walked and talked. We didn’t even talk about being gay — the subject never came up. He didn’t know I was gay, I assumed. And he hadn’t mentioned that he was, either. But I knew.
Still, we didn’t talk about it. Instead, we talked about playwriting, and creativity, and pursuing goals. We were interrupted at one point by two girls who knew him. They talked and laughed with him for a bit and then disappeared. Kirk knew everyone.
By the time we got back to the dorms, I was entangled in his magic. I even told him that he made me feel “untethered.” That was the word I used. Untethered.
He wanted to give me his number. He pulled out a pen and told me to give him my hand. He was going to write his phone number on my hand.
That was just too much for me. If he’d written his phone number on my hand I would have exploded into a million pieces. So instead I had him write it down on a Post-It note.
Over the next few weeks we hung out several times. We became friends. It turned out we were going to be living in the same dorm the following year. Not only that, but we’d be right across the hall from each other. I was so excited.
One afternoon he finally referred to the fact that he was gay. “So I’m taking this aerobics class, and I’m the only guy in it, and my suitemates are all like, ‘Dude, lots of hot box!’ and I’m like, ‘you guys know I’m totally not into that.'”
I laughed nervously.
On the night of the last day of classes, a balmy night in late April, we were on our way to see this openly gay drama graduate student perform a one-man show downtown. As we drove along in Kirk’s broken-down station wagon, we talked about the guy and how he was gay.
“So what’s it like?” I said.
“Being gay?” said Kirk.
“Yeah.”
He started telling me how it wasn’t really that big a deal, that other people seemed to make more of a deal out of it than it really was. As he talked, I listened and nodded. We were still talking about it by the time we got to the theater. We went inside and sat together at a two-person table. I sighed. A long, drawn-out sigh.
“Life… is complex,” I said.
“You know, you should just admit it. It’s a lot easier,” Kirk said.
He knew.
I froze. My face began to turn red. My heart began to race.
And then the show began.
I was filled with nervous energy for 90 minutes. I don’t even remember anything about the show.
After the show, we went on a vehicular odyssey around Charlottesville. First we drove back to his dorm so he could pick up a book. Then we had to drive to some guy’s house so Kirk could return some sort of car-related item. Then we drove out to the woods.
We sat there for over an hour, sitting on the ground in the dark by a creek. It was a warm spring night. Words poured out of me. My childhood, my first crush, my fears. I’d never told anyone about all of this before.
A car appeared, crunching the leaves and twigs, its headlights blinding us. We were no longer alone. So we got up and left and drove around some more. We went to a diner. He pointed out two lesbians that he knew. We left the diner and walked past a couple of cops. I got nervous.
We got back in the car and drove again. I finally got up the nerve to tell him I was kind of attracted to him.
Unfortunately, he told me that he was only interested in much older men. He had a thing for daddies. Well, so much for that. But at least I’d told him what I felt.
At the end of the night he dropped me off at my dorm, and we hugged.
Final exams came. Kirk finished his early and was leaving. I knew I’d see lots of him next year, but that was next year. The long summer lay ahead. I panicked. I was going to have to go home to my parents, home to northern New Jersey. I was going to be there for three and a half months.
“You’ll be fine,” Kirk said. Knowing that I lived in the New York City area, he said, “You’re in the fucking gay capital of the world.”
It was a rough summer at home. I had no friends. But I went to the Village alone for the first time. I went to a gay bookstore for the first time. I read “A Boy’s Own Story” by Edmund White and “The Lost Language of Cranes” by David Leavitt. I called up a gay helpline. I wrote to Kirk. I even called him once. We talked for about an hour.
The following fall, we lived right across the hall from each other. He took me to my first gay bar. He took me to my first LGBTU meeting. I voted in my first presidential election, for Bill Clinton, who promised to change the world for gay people. I came out to a few more friends that year. I took a playwriting course. I borrowed lots of Kirk’s porn.
The following summer I came out to my parents. I was 19. They weren’t happy when I told them the news. And neither was I. I shouldn’t have told them yet. I wasn’t independent enough. My mom adamantly told me that she couldn’t accept it, and at that point I couldn’t live with their unhappiness. My survival was at stake, so I told them that maybe I was mistaken.
I went back for my third year of college. My social life was completely different now. I was living in a different dorm and I’d joined the Glee Club, which I’d planned to do for a long time. Life was great. I was making all these new friends — none of whom knew my secret. I wasn’t gay anymore. Now I was asexual. And I was having such a great time in my new life that it didn’t matter. I didn’t come out again for good until I was 24.
I saw Kirk once over the last two years of college. Just once. We ran into each other at the beginning of my fourth year. I’d been writing articles in the school paper, and in one of them I’d mentioned, in passing, my attraction to women. I wondered if he’d seen it. Our conversation was very short.
That was the last time I ever saw him.
Why am I writing about Kirk tonight?
Because his first book just came out. And I bought it today.
I always knew Kirk would go places. I mean, he had plays produced when he was 16. After college, he had a syndicated column about gay life for a while; it used to appear in a bunch of gay newspapers around the country. He was the editor-in-chief of Virginia’s local gay paper for a couple of years. He also wrote a story that appeared in Best Gay Erotica 1999.
But it wasn’t just that. If you’d known Kirk back then, you’d have known he was going places, too. He was wildly bright and creative. He was confident, and cool, and funny, and sexy, and hot, and charismatic. He took no shit from anyone. He knew who he was, he knew what he wanted to do, and he knew how to do it. He worked hard. And he knew how to meet people — he was magnetic. He sent a script to a well-known Broadway actor after seeing his show, and the actor called him back and told him how wonderful it was, and they struck up a correspondence. Christ — there was even a closeted, troubled, middle-aged, married gay professor at UVA who used to confide in him, for fuck’s sake. Kirk just had this way with people. And he probably still does.
I haven’t seen Kirk in years, but he’s a god to me. All gay people have a narrative of how they came to live openly gay lives, how they came to accept themselves. All gay people have an important person who helped them. Or more than one person. We tell our stories over and over, to ourselves and to others, until they become mythical.
My story, my own gay creation myth, will always begin with Kirk, one of the most amazing people I’ve ever known.
And now he’s 28 years old and his first book has been published. It’s a memoir of being gay, up through the end of high school. That’s Kirk. He’s done so much living that he can write 230 pages about being gay up through the end of high school.
Publish a book in your 20s and you will be known forever as a wunderkind. David Leavitt, Michael Chabon, David Foster Wallace.
Publish your first book after your 20s and you may be praised, you may get great reviews — but you will never be known as a wunderkind.
I bought his book tonight at the Oscar Wilde Book Shop in Manhattan. (I thought it would be good to patronize an independent gay bookstore.) The clerk, a young woman, rang it up for me and smiled. “This is a really funny book,” she said.
“Yeah. I went to college with him, actually,” I said. “He was the first person I ever came out to.”
“Oh, wow!” she said.
After I left the store, walking along the streets of Manhattan again, I wanted to cry.
This was supposed to be me. When I was a kid, I knew I was going to achieve. I knew I was going to do amazing things with my life. I knew I had the talent.
But Kirk has accomplished so much more than I have.
Kirk is who I’ve never had the courage to be. Even though I’ve tried. Or at least I’ve wanted to try.
I want to have done what he’s done. I want to be as kick-ass about life as he is. I want to have his confidence. I want to have his drive. I want to have his focus. Why did I take the conservative path? Why did I go to law school? Why was I so careful? Why haven’t I focused more on my writing? Why haven’t I grabbed what I know is within my reach? I’ve got talent. I know I can write a book. Or even a syndicated newspaper column. I know it. Having this website for the past 11 months has shown me what I can do. Years of writing journal entries and university newspaper columns and theater scenes has shown me what I can do. Other people have told me I can do it. Even my parents have told me I can do it.
And people wonder why I haven’t done it.
God dammit, why haven’t I done it?
Fuck that. I’m gonna do it.
