Speak Out: How Did You Come Out?
Coming out is something gay people have to do all the time, whether through small, intimate conversations with friends and family or via a magazine cover or television interview. It can be scary, liberating, exhausting, and uplifting all at once.
What it can also be is surprising, weird, and hilarious. These hilarious and weird coming out stories were exactly what Reddit user wren314 was interested in when they made the post “What’s your interesting or bizarre coming out story?”
Wren314 kicked off the post by sharing his own story, saying he accidentally came out to his parents at the age of 14. He had been Skyping with a close friend, and he ended up admitting to his friend that he might be gay and that he liked him. While his friend was cool with it, he had forgotten to do one crucial thing.
He writes: “I hadn’t fully closed my bedroom door and when my friend asked ‘have you told your parents?’ I responded ‘Oh NO, not yet, I couldn’t tell my parents!’… MY MOTHER WAS WALKING PAST THE DOOR…I shit a brick.”
Other Reddit users also chimed in. User Brotip560, for instance, shared how he came out to his family one by one. He first came out to his brother, who ended up keeping his secret for years. It was emotional when he came out to his mother, but the easiest and most hilarious coming out he ever had to do was with his dad.
He shares: “My dad was arguably the easiest. We were out on a miniature golf course and I went with him to get hot dogs while mom and brother found a seat. He says I should go talk to the woman standing at the end of the stand. I said ‘She’s not really my type, dad.’ He grunts and turns his head for a few seconds. He then points at a guy nearby and asks ‘He your type?”’with a giant cheesy smile. I then made a joke that I liked my guys a little beefier. It wasn’t as awkward as I thought it’d be.”
Meanwhile, user Fagronomic had only intended to come out to his brother and ended up coming out to a lot more people than he had expected.
“I got all drunk and couraged up, called him, and started letting it all out, drunkenly, unaware that he was in a car full of his friends with me on speaker phone,” he writes. “I finished my little spiel, expecting some sort of response from my brother and instead got a round of cheers and applause from an SUV full of drunken straight snowboard bros in Colorado.”
Less amusing and more bizarre is user Btd030914’s experience. He shares: “My mum went away for the night when I was 16, I went to a local gay bar for some cock, she came back and reported me missing to the police, I had to confess what I’d been up to. It wasn’t a fun experience.”
There’s a lot more stories in the Reddit post that are well worth checking out!
But we also want to hear from you, Adam4Adam readers. Do any of you have a bizarre or interesting coming out story? We’d love to hear about them! Share them in excruciating detail in the comments section below!
I picked up my mother from work. I told my mother that we will pass through Castro District, the gay mecca/area of San Francisco.
My mom asked me “isn’t that the gay area? Are you gay?”
I replied “yes mother, I am”
Then my mother exclaimed, you’re LIS!
I laughed and asked, what does that mean?
She said, “Living in Sin!”
“Aren’t we all?” I replied. I laughed it off.
Curiously, my mom asked “so you pay gays to have sex with them?” In the Philippines, the gays rent gay for pay men to do it with them.
I told my mom, “no mom, they pay me to have sex with them.” We laughed.
When the family was eating dinner that same night, my mom blurted out to my dad, “your son is gay!”
My dad said, “if I know youre gay, I’m going to kick you out of the house!”
Then my mom said, “just kidding, we were testing you.. Twas a joke.” I laughed so hard.
Suffice enough to say, its more confirmatory than coming out coming out.
My dad was a public servant. He always loved to be stationed at Castro for Pride and Castro Street Fair because of the food. My siblings marched with me at Pride. At 8th street dispersal area, my parents waited for us (and they have a picture with Gavin Newsom)
Gentlemen:
I never ‘came out’ except between my mother’s legs. I was always myself…regardless of time and place.
I was born in 1946 and it was a time when virtually no one had any real perception of ‘Homosexuality’ except the local hairdresser, clergy, nurse, English or Music teacher or fashion designer…I knew of the Fashion Designer because my mother had a ‘couturier’ who designed and made her clothing.
I was at the ‘USMA’ and was still myself…neither calling attention or disavowing attention: I was part of it all and enjoyed it all. Yes, there were ‘those’ who asked:” Nathan, you have a ‘girlfriend’ to which I answered, “No, I do not,” but was quick-to-add, that “I do not have a ‘boyfriend’ either.”
They chuckled and got-the-message. I met a cadet whom I took a-liking to, but already knew of the outcome, if we were caught: Court-Marshal and a Dishonorable Discharge. That was the reality of it and so, what intimacy there was…was off campus and out-of-uniform.
We had our ‘moments’ but they were serendipitous and expeditious: there just wasn’t any time during the school-calendar-year, and when summer came, he went back to the mid-west and I went back to New Port, Rhode Island.
Perhaps, I came out…the first time I kissed him? It certainly was the first ‘kiss’ and it wasn’t the last.
In ‘In-Country’, I fell in love with the Major but it was unrequited as he had Wife, Children and Rank…and I came a distant fourth. We both, always knew, that he would never ‘cross-the-line’ and I would ‘never-make-the-first-move’.
In the end, he was killed in “hostile ground action via small arms fire.” and came back ‘horizontal’ and I came back ‘vertical’.
I have always been myself; thus, I have always ‘been-out’; I just did not broadcast it and the ‘General-Public’ left it alone and I was left all alone.
No one needs to ‘come-out’ any more…just be yourself and the world will come to understand, by ‘default’ when you neither mention a female or are seen with a ‘female’. Default serves a distinct purpose and should, therefore, be allowed to do it…for its intended purpose.
For-the-sake-of-completion: when I went to Arlington National Cemetery, last Thanksgiving Weekend, I saw his wife’s name affixed to his ‘Tombstone’ with her atop of him. In the end, she rests with him and I will rest in the cemetery of The USMA.
Nathan
Nathan.
Your story was absolutely beautiful!!
My sincere condolences to you, that your “Buddy” was killed in action. I’m unsure how the Military Graves work, but it would be beautiful if one of the Graves on either side of your Buddy was available, and you would be able to claim it as your final resting place beside him.
God Bless You Nathan.
Leo:
I have a choice to be buried either within Arlington National Cemetery or The USMA. However, his wife is atop of him and I would not interfere with his and her right to lie together; they were husband and wife.
Since I am a graduate of The USMA, I have the right and honor to be buried within its cemetery and that is my wish.
If there is life-after-death, we are all together in spirit. I do appreciate your kind words. There are quite-a-few of us who lie within Arlington National Cemetery and The USMA Cemetery. I visit them when I do.
Nathan
Stood up, put one foot in front of the other, and walked out the door.
That was easy……..
I did not “come out” because I was never “in.” I had boyfriends in high school back in the early 1970s. I attended my senior prom at a posh east coast boarding school with a boy. Everyone knew that I was gay since I was pre-pubescent. As a result, I have never understood the whole “coming out” thing. But I am aware that my experience was extremely unusual, especially for that era.
I was married for 2 years already in 1994 and been living in the US for almost 6 years then. My mom was still back in Manila at that time. I met a beautiful man and fell madly in love and had to divorce my wife and be with him. The wife part was easy as she kinda wanna breakup and go back home to Manila to live the easier life of being a household princess anyway. But mom was about to visit that summer to meet my wife for the first time and when I broke the news to her that I am divorcing my wife to be with a man, she didn’t quite understood. She said by why was I so different from the gay guys who fix her hair or design her dresses?!?! That takes a while to explain but the conversation ended with saying: “Oh ny son, but how about all these beautiful jewelry I bought for your wife, especially the necklace made from a strand of beautiful south sea pearls I personally handpicked?“. And I responded with “Don’t worry about it. It would look fabulous on me! And if not, Dan would be bedazzled by then as well!” Dan was the man in my life at that time. Needless to say, we all finally met that summer and my mom asked us the most embarrassing questions about how two guys do it in the bedroom! She asked if we play rock, paper, scissors to decide who do what that night! I think she died many years later without a full understanding but she loved Dan like he was the better son!!!
Your Mom sounds like a incredibly wonderful woman. And full of so much love for you and Dan.
May she Rest In Peace.
I started doing other boys and girls my age when I was in 8th grade and I’m just mean enough that even though people knew I was doing guys they were too chicken to cross me, so it’s always been known. In high school, straight guys were oddly unthreatened by me. We just did our team football and everyone knew. So no BS coming of age quivering lip coming out story for me.
For me it was in Paris. My younger sister was an exchange student in Sweden. We were meeting in Paris to head home. I was having this wild thing with a photographer from Belgium. when my sister came, i knew I couldn’t hide it, so, I told her I was gay. She said, “yeah we know” BOOM!!!
“Coming out is something gay people have to do all the time…”
No, no one h-a-s to come out. It’s a personal choice. Some guys feel the need for everyone to know; other guys are discreet. It’s an individual’s right to own their sexuality.
Militant gays demand it, however. They argue that everyone who is born gay somehow owes it to those who came before them and won gay rights. “You were born gay. Pay the bill.” It’s nothing more than form of social pressure that is on the same level as homophobia and bullying.
Militant gays are responsible for intolerance toward gay people. They have such hatred in their rhetoric that people tune out to being tolerant.
I completely agree with you Hunter.
It’s an individuals right to keep their life Discreet, just as others individuals right to let whomever they want to know about their sexual identity.
Well when I was 17 and on my way home from work one night I pick up a guy and fucked him in the back seat of my car The next morning my mom seen foot prints on my ceiling of my car and wanted to know who was the girl I had Her being Catholic and I didn’t lie I said it was no girl no woman Now you tell me That was the end of that discussion
Ahh Coming out..that’s so 1980’s. I just live my life, don’t feel I need to announce what makes my dick hard. So presumptuous to think others are interested.
I was around 25 and had a disastrous date with a female to the Chicago Auto Show….she drove. It was a daytime date….and I was happy when she dropped me off. Then I received another phone call from another female and we were going to hook up at the pub around 10PM. Waiting for the second date to occur….my work called me in for a big problem…so I had to drive from the ‘burbs to Loop lakefront….and fix the problem. On the way home down the Eisenhower I stopped in Forest Park and went to the Hideaway….and was picked up and taken to a hotel by a 6foot4 hairdresser. Finally I knew what I really wanted.
My father caught me with my best friend. We had been fuck buddies for over a year. I was swallowing his cum.
Bottom line—my family disowned me and I was kicked out of the house.
Been on my own ever since. The buddy that I had a relationship slipped into smoking grass all the time and eventually died from heroin addiction.
My family are all religious right fanatic and made it clear that I’m dead to them. I made a new life on my own.
Jockfan, I’m so sorry your family did that, they are the losers. I bet you are a great guy and I wish you the best. I am not out and like some of the older guys in here were just born early on when sexual preference was a big deal.
Some day in the future ‘sexual preference’ will be accepted just like how our country has accepted racial differences in the last several decades. After all, men have been intimate since the Ancient Greeks and the Romans.
Mine is a bit weird but turned out great. I cd on occasion and was talking with another t-gurl. She asked if I was on Facebook. I told her no and she told me I should. I proceeded to make another profile of me on there under my femme name. Stupid me opened it up and posted pics of me dressed to thrill. Little did I realize at the time that Facebook will ask friends on my other profile if they’d like to be friends with the gurl me. My exwife and daughter saw the surroundings in my pics and recognized the furniture and paintings in the femme pics. The ex sent me a friend request and I didn’t think much about it. An hour later, my daughter texted me and asked if I was trans. I told her no that I just liked to crossdress at times. She then asked if I had a boyfriend.
I felt totally embarrassed and wasn’t sure how she would react. She then told me that as long as I was happy then she was good with it. She said that was how I raised her to be. She’s 18 and just joined the Army guard. I have always loved her and been proud of her.
Now even more.
I never “came out”. I never felt the need to.
I’m a happy, successful 54 year old man. I’ve had a very close and loving relationship with my family. It’s really no one’s business what I do in private, behind closed doors. I decided long ago not to be a ‘poster child’ for the gay community. Being gay is only a small part of what makes me an individual. And, I would argue, there are many things more important.
And for those of you keeping score at home, I’ve experienced ZERO negative effects because of my choice to live a private and discreet lifestyle.
So for you younger guys out there reading this, just know there are other very viable options to “coming out”
Thanks for your post and much love to you!
My ex partners mother asked a question when he came out to both her and his father. Never in my life have I heard of anyone being asked this question upon coming out…first words out of her mouth were: “do you wear those pants with the ass cut out of them?” He assured her that the clothes in his closet were what they always had been. No pants with the ass cut out of them.
I decided very early in life that I was not going to be the one uncomfortable and struggling trying to figure out what to say to my parents, afterall, I was convinced they ready knew. I came out to my three sisters, one separately from the others only because of geographical challenges. She said she already knew, because I had never had a girlfriend, I play basketball like a girl, and when walking down the street I never say “wow, look at that broads ass…”
The other two sisters, I took out to eat dinner. When we were waiting to be seated a male server came up to me and said “gurl, I haven’t seen you in so long”, and gave me a kiss on the lips. We sat down and one sister asked how I knew Adam. I replied “I dated him…”
Back to my parents, who were and are still, Jehovah’s Witnesses. Yes the ones that knock on your door on Saturday morning. They condemn homosexuality. I grew up with my mother saying in Spanish as she pointed to the only openly gay man in town, “look at that fucking faggot!”
When I was thirty, yes 30, one sister traveled with my mom to visit me, about a 4 hour drive. During which my sister kept mentioning my boyfriends. My mother, upset, went home and told my father, who proceeded to call all 3 sisters and ask them if I was gay. They all directed him back to me. The next day he called me at work and said he needed to talk to me. He didn’t like it much when I told him I had people in my office and couldn’t talk and that I would call him that evening. Which I did after about 3 stiff drinks. Once I got him on the phone I asked what he wanted to talk to me about. He replied that he understood I had something to tell him, to which I replied, I understood he had something to ask me…so after a minute or so of that game, he finally asked…”are you homosexual?” I answered “yes” and asked that he get my mom on the line also. He hesitated but did ask her to pick up an extension. I tried my best to inform them that what their religion teaches them is not factual at all. I was born gay, and have never had any attraction towards women whatsoever. Keep in mind I’m Hispanic and my father was and is a bit chauvinistic towards women. Men were supposed to be macho and do manly things. My father said the most important words he has ever spoken to me my entire life, “you’re still my son, and I will always love you.” I was speechless… however I had to pull myself together because I had more to tell my parents…with them both still on the phone, I told them I was also HIV positive and had been for the previous 9 years. As I write this, I am 47 years old, and very healthy. I take my meds and my viral load is undetectable. I plan on keeping it that way!
@ Jock in La….. Your situation is sad, tragic, and being propelled by their twisted,VERY fucked up religious beliefs – religion being a big driver of more discrimination on this Earth. But whatever the reasons they disowned you is WRONG. And it’s their loss NOT to have YOU in their lives. I’d verbally slap the crap out of those low life d-bags. But you moved on and made a BETTER life for yourself. So there asshole family members. My story…The year: 1977. The place on Houston’s Loop 610, morning rush hour. I’m driving Mom to her office ( as I needed her car to use for an extra-curricular event- tutoring adopted / foster children ). We’re about halfway there -I was getting my nerve up and I say Mom : ” I’ve been dating girls for a few years now and as much as I “like” some of the girls , I also “like” guys too. Her response “Let’s talk with your father this evening .” We did and everything was fine. They said they will ALWAYS love and support me & have my back,no matter what .Some of the girls I dated in my teens were daughters of my parent’s friends and ,of course,my Mom being the planner and wanting her sons to “be happy” ( which is VERY subjective anyway/and my happy may be very different from the next person’s definition of happy), I always said I appreciated and loved her for wanting to find a good future love interest. But I said ” Mom I’ll take over now.” She just smiled.. All of the stories are affirming and insightful…
I feel that same why Hunter0500. I have some friends who believe that everyone should be out no matter what. I always get worried they will out me just to stand by their beliefs no matter what the costs to me are. I thought there was some type of brotherhood and understanding among gay men…but that is not always the case.
must tell you the story of a family who’s very good friends with me…It’s family of parents and 4 boys…the oldest boy announced just after graduating high school the he was gay…His father ordered him out of the house and never to return.. He left that night with one suitcase and never came back.. Years later the mother announced to the family that she had been secretly keeping in contact with her oldest sun.. She told the family that he was in the hospital in California dying from HIV.. The father bought plane tickets for the whole family.. His son died in his arms as he cried profusely begging his son to forgive him..
I knew I was gay from the age of 12. I was not raised in a religious home or environment, but people knew I was very different from them. We never talked about sexuality, even when it was time for the ‘birds and bees’ talk. I was not what anyone could call ‘femmy’, but I was regularly bullied at school for something I really didn’t understand. It wasn’t until I was well into adulthood at the age of 29 that I made the decision to officially come out. It was just time, and while I wasn’t in denial or self-harm over it, I just knew it was time.
I was a lover of the soap opera “One Life to Live”. In August, they featured a story about a copper who had to admit his sexuality to advance the plot. It was pretty apparent where this story would go, so I made myself an agreement. When Oliver Fishe comes out, I will too. It was silly and needless, but it made a commitment for me to not put it off for another decade. And when it finally happened, there was no drama or anything. I may as well have not done it for all the change it made.
But I’m glad of it. I became more social as an indirect result, and I got to spend two years of my life with a wonderful man who loved from the first, and those are days I would not trade for anything.
@ Ramirez, These ‘people use to’ come to my door, I gave them a piece of my considerable mind. “My relationship w/Creator is all mine, as a gay man, like most people, I’m a sinner, Jesus died for the sins of the world. He did not die for the evil of the world that is in willful denial of its mass-murders, original sins against humanities, as baring false-witnesses against them in order to make wars that create genocide/s, slavery. All the while with Bible in hand, luger in the other, while, mind you; clothed in the mock-faith of religion.
“What about; probably, ‘the first’ tribe of Jewish people-genetically, the ‘Ethiopians’ erased by the other tribes of Jews that were lighter in color, yeah, its true (Dr. Henry Louis Gates Jr.,) revealed this fact during a documentary. Everything, in the Bible isn’t necessarily so…”
I’ve said this before, nature has everything to do with homosexuality, she’s just protecting herself and ‘us’ humans actually, from our own over-populous of the world, which, btw, we clearly have already done.
My coming out was nothing special, nor traumatic, quite innocent and fun, typical 80’s style, got my own apt before I came out in “homo-heights” as the area was once called. I think my family had some idea I was gay, as I suspected as well, but being taller than most adults even, and pretty scrappy, no body bothered me really. I was so ahead of my time with being such a free-spirit, I didn’t know how, not, to be me and ongoing to this very day. Still, just exploring me as I move through my life and its phases of growth as I’m aging now and rather happily, in spite of everyone and everything. Life, is a gift you cannot keep, better enjoy it and not let anybody steal it.