Epiphany

Someone online asked me the other night if I wished I weren’t gay. No, I don’t wish I weren’t gay. But I used to.

It took me forever even to classify myself as gay — or at least it feels like forever — because although I knew I liked guys, I wasn’t sure how I felt about women. My attraction to women is not zero; I find women aesthetically pleasing, even attractive. Yet I don’t feel that spark with them that I do with men. With men, I feel pure electricity.

But I did fool around with a woman once.

I’d known her for nearly two years. She and I had become good friends, because we clicked; we were both from New Jersey, and I’d drive her back home from UVA sometimes. She played the piano, which is a skill that impresses me, and we were both interested in classical music. But there were always unresolved emotional questions between us. I was never really sure what was going on here.

In January 1998 I drove her back to school after a monthlong winter break. I was in my second year of law school, and she was in her final year of college. It was still a couple of days before the masses started returning, and we had nothing to do, so we went out to dinner and then rented a movie and took it back to my apartment. My two roommates hadn’t come back from vacation yet.

My bedroom had a double-sized futon, which easily folded up into a couch, so we sat there in my bedroom on the couch and popped in Woody Allen’s “Bullets Over Broadway.” Just sat there in the dark, watching the movie.

And then, towards the end, stuff started happening.

We’d somehow moved closer together on the couch. I was 24, and I had never really done anything with a guy, let alone a girl. Her hand was on my arm, and then my arm was around her shoulder and she was sort of leaning against me, and then the movie — of which I’d long lost any awareness — ended, and the credits rolled, to the tune of Cole Porter’s “Let’s Misbehave.” I was sitting there on the couch, my arm around a girl, my heart beating faster, listening to the words, “They say that bears have love affairs, and even camels… we’re merely mammals… let’s misbehave!” It must have been a sign.

Her pants stayed on, and the only thing her mouth touched was my mouth, but other than that, we did lots of exploring. For me, it was exciting primarily for its novelty; I’d always wondered what a woman would be like. But except for the novelty, it didn’t really do much for me.

I didn’t let her spend the night — I drove her home. A few days later I told her — through e-mail, real classy — that I valued our friendship and I wanted it to stay that way. She wondered why, but she let it be, and we stayed friends.

It didn’t end my confusion, though. I still didn’t know what I was. Was I gay? Was I bisexual? Was I straight and merely repressing my feelings for women because I was scared of them? And after all, if there was any possibility that I could feel something for a woman, what right did I have to pursue men?

It was only about three years ago — several months after that movie night — that I realized how silly this all was. It hit me in an epiphany on a summer afternoon. That summer I was working my way through Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way, getting in touch with my inner artist and my deepest desires. One of the exercises was to write about your ideal day. Somehow I found myself writing about leaving work on a Friday afternoon and driving up to Litchfield, Connecticut, where I’d meet up with my boyfriend at our weekend home. I think we had a dog or two. I was writing this and felt so happy, so wonderful, and something just opened up inside me. Why now? How do babies know when to be born? It was just time.

I suddenly realized, none of the confusion matters! None of this matters. I don’t have to “prove” my sexuality to anyone. It’s not a math problem, it’s not a court case. Very simply: This is what makes me happy. I don’t have to wait for someone to give my emotions and feelings the respect that they deserve. There’s already a person who can do that, and that person is me. For the first time, I could really see a happy future for myself.

Over the next several months the closet doors flew off. (Except with my parents; that came later.) My last year of law school was the first year I felt truly out. I told my friends, I wrote articles in the school papers, I started dating, I started having sex. It was terrific.

I’ve really come to like being gay, or perhaps I’ve just become comfortable in my own skin. Which is good, because it’s the only skin I’m ever going to have.