A Coming-Out Story

Clockwise from top-left: Justin Aaberg, Asher Brown, Ryan Halligan, Tyler Clementi, Seth Walsh, Billy Lucas, Zach Harrington.

I came out at the age of 25, after three failed relationships with girls, after months of regularly weeping myself to sleep, after seeing my future self in the abysmal drunkard that wrote the journals of John Cheever, after typing up and posting in visible spots in my apartment signs that read, for example, You will never, ever amount to anything real. Not ever. And you will always be unhappy., and after a night when I didn’t so much sleep as stare at the ceiling, feeling my body fall and fall and fall into the mattress. It’s a boring story. I tell it only because today has been designated by the powers that be National Coming-Out Day, and this feels to me to be a more productive way of observing the occasion than donating my Facebook status.
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