October 11^th is National Coming Out Day. Since learning about this over a year ago, I’ve had it in my mind to reach out to some of the most talented and interesting publically ‘out’ folks I know in Seattle. Below are the responses – from some of my favorite people in this city – to the question: What does National Coming Out Day/coming out, in general, mean to you?

I hope you find the responses as heart-warming as I did.

–Jake Uitti

I came out to my mother when I was 17 years old in an old Chinese restaurant in Butte, Montana that was literally over a hundred years old. I ordered the Szechuan Pork, mom had Mu Shu, and clearly she was the last to accept the fact. “Well, your father and I have discussed it,” she said, surprising me not one bit. “And we don’t think you are. We think it’s the CROWD you’re hanging around with.” After my hysterical, tear-stained belly laughs subsided a bit and I could catch my breath, I assured her that no, if there was any corrupting influence in my group, the responsibility was absolutely my own. And then I looked over her shoulder and caught the eye of the sexy waiter from the Uptown Café just up the street with whom I had arranged a completely inappropriate dalliance just the week before. He was coincidentally sitting right behind us. We shared a small, secret smile, and then, my belly laughs started up again… My CROWD. Right. Honestly, woman. – Adrian Ryan, Stranger writer, The Homosexual Agenda

Although sometimes it seems I shot out of the womb with a boxy build, bad attitude, and a cat under each arm, I wasn’t always like this. Out, I mean. With my cats and my rancor for gender norms. Actually, I’ve never liked cats, or sports, or folk music. I’ve never had really short hair and my best friends have generally been straight guys, so already I came out sideways into the dyke world. 1995. I was 19, two girlfriends down (starting on a third), my mother told me: “Don’t teach children, or have them; don’t be around children, that’s all I care about.” My siblings weren’t to know. Two steps out, one back in. The closet is a tricky place. My father I told two years later, thanks to Ellen DeGeneres. Dad: “I don’t think perverts should be on prime time.” Me: “I’m one of those perverts, Dad.” There was talk of feet in mouths. And then the church. I could meet people there. Meeting people has never been a problem of mine.

I’m always coming out. Sometimes as queer, sometimes vegetarian, sometimes as Gold Star, sometimes as thinking some dude’s hot (I’m not bi or even curious, but can appreciate good form). Sometimes I come out as orphan, having been disowned. Sometimes I come out as loving women, sometimes as loving more than one at a time. – Elizabeth Colen, poet

If I told you how many times I’ve come out in my thirty-one years on this planet, you might not believe me. First at age six to myself. Then to my sister eleven years later, sitting at the Big Boy Diner in Walled Lake, Michigan, shaking like a fucking leaf. That coming out experience remains the best because my sister was nothing short of amazing for how she listened. Coming out to parents, family, and friends, particularly those from my evangelical background, has been, and continues to be, nightmarish. That I am officially out and proud in my adult life doesn’t mean I get to stop coming out. I am an extremely feminine lesbian, one who “passes” for straight, which means that straight people do not suspect me, and, often, gay people do not believe me. The most recent coming out hurdle has been differentiating my role as “gay” (a sexual orientation) from “queer” (and what are you gonna do about it?). So much of the equality conversation today revolves around traditional values and customs, as though we must revert in order to move ahead. All this talk about marriage and babies and joining the military—I understand the desire for these things but prioritizing them feels a little like dancing to our own denigration. There are other equality-related issues—lack of protection under the law, a disproportionate number of bullying-related suicides, the fact that you can be fired for being gay in twenty-nine states and for being trans in thirty-four—that deserve our undivided attention. Dear Gay People, this is my coming out story: I don’t care to cozy up to an antiquated idea of happiness, particularly one that has oppressed and excluded me. I woke up like this. I was born this way. My queerness is a gift that allows me to perceive, love, create, and battle differently, and I won’t for a single second be taking that for granted. – Piper Julia Daniels, W.A.S.H. founder

I’d say I’ve come out three times – at 14, when I told my mom and friends I like women, at 26 when I wrote a newspaper article about being a feeder, and at 27 when I dated a man. Oddly the most dramatic reaction I got was to the last disclosure—my best friend spit beer all over our table at the Redwood, then bought me one so we could drink a toast to love. This is partly because of my gender presentation, I think—I don’t come off as someone whose physical intimacy with a man would surpass a firm handshake. National Coming Out Day always makes me think of a Savage Love column involving a man with plans to hire a disabled friend a prostitute for his 18^th birthday. Dan Savage’s response was something along the lines of, “Have you spoken to your friend about this? Do you even know if he’s straight? What if he is asexual? What if he would prefer to have sex with a picnic table?” I think this is the ideal attitude towards sexuality in general. Coming Out Day is necessary, but I wish it wasn’t. I would like to live in a world in which there are no assumptions about sexuality and the notion that gender identity resides solely in peoples’ junk is a thing of the past. As someone who considered sexually “exotic,” (to put it as positively as possible,) a proverbial picnic table-fucker, I would describe the evolution of my sexual knowledge as a transition from an idea of sex as one thing: “When a man and a woman really love each other, etc,” to a realization that sex is anything and everything. Even in art—a favorite professor once told me, “A poem is always a place to fuck.” What sex really is, I think, is less an act than a property of matter, whose manifestations are potentially infinite. Hopefully Coming Out Day is a step towards a continuous open dialogue about that. – Sarah Galvin, poet and current cover star for City Arts Magazine

The “coming out” always felt like a ridiculous and violent affliction on my being. Or, maybe a circus act. There was always this unnecessary cycling through a million emotions, butterflies & bile rising up into my throat before the big reveal to this friend or that family member or that stranger or that straight boy I wanted to bag. It felt really unnatural and unfair that I should have to put myself through such bullshit and then have to deal with whatever reaction whomever was going to have to the “big news”. And it felt even more unfair and ridiculous that I should have to go through this process multiple times instead of say, doing it in one big press conference or media blitz or Oprah a-ha couch moment. There would of course be these tender spaces of really beautiful support, you know, the friend telling me, “I love you no matter who you’re shagging.” Then there were these other comically painful moments like the one where I was suddenly thrust into the role of psychotherapist for a friend who completely fell apart, convulsing and crying adult-child tears all over me because according to the scripture drilled into her as a youngster, I was definitely going to hell for not wanting to shag girls; and hell for you who are unenlightened, is supposedly pretty horrible. This was apparently either in the bible, or told to her directly from God’s mouth to her ear. In any case this event made me wonder if I should just kill myself, or at very least, find out if there was some kind of abomination-sin rinse equivalent to the shampoo one uses to get rid of lice. I never found this product but I’m looking into a patent; I’m certain there’s a market.

Other noteworthy moments include but are not limited to: That time my hippy-musician-potentially-polysexual-male-identified cousin told me, “Whatever you do, just don’t give up on pussy.” Meow. Then of course there was the classic, Father finds gay porn in the house and sugar-sweet son denies that it belongs to him moment. (Glad no one dusted for fingerprints.)

The fact of the matter is that, for me, coming out is a thing that shouldn’t even be a thing. Whether in silence or the shadows, or the sacred privacy of my closet in the morning when I’m picking out my fabulous gaydrobe for the day, I should feel confident in knowing that when I walk out the door, I’ll be respected and safe and have a seat at the table just by virtue of my being. I should not be forced into grand gesturing and political statements because a few queerantagonistic-transanagonistic-heteromaniac-fascists think they run the world. I mean, who really runs the world? The President? The Oligarchy? The Plutocracy? Girls? Beyoncé?

No person should ever be caged by sexual or gender shame because of someone else’s idea of normal. We should all be allowed to celebrate the natural blossoming of our bodies, hearts, and minds. So I will come out, or be out, or drag out, or sing out as necessary. By any and every means. Dramatically and sincerely. In a scream or in a whisper. Buck naked or dripping in glitter… If it means that someone, somewhere knows that they are not alone in this man-made war on self-expression, sexual freedom, and love. – Okanomodé Soulchilde, singer and performance artist, Glamazon Warrior

Last night I watched William Wyler’s film of The Children’s Hour based on the play by Lillian Hellman. If you don’t know the play or the movie, think The Crucible meets Spring Awakening (read the play! it isn’t just a musical!) and The Bad Seed mixed with some melodrama, the breathy wonder that is Audrey Hepburn, and the steamy streaming eyeballs of Shirley McClain.

Plot quick-take: young rebel girl accuses two ladies running boarding school of having a lesbian affair. Rebel girl tells rich grandma, all the girls get pulled from school, women left to rot lonely in their once lively home-for-girls. Shirley McClain’s character confesses to lesbian feelings and takes her life just before Grandma can come and beg forgiveness.

The play was scandalous in 1934 when produced as play, daring when re-mounted in the 50’s, and surprisingly still stirs the soul. Or, I’m just gay. Or both.

Articulating why the play is still moving to me – I was a gay kid in Indiana, I understand how outsiders feel, I sympathize with someone the victim of narrow-minded group-think – feels cliché. Cliché because it feels so obvious, explored, and tired to all and me.

Maybe this is a residual form of emotional strategic repurposing – transmuting my outsider experience as a gay kid into something normal, tired, and outdated so that I may put it aside and avoid standing out – or maybe its because we live in a new age where being an LGBTQ teen is much easier. Or both.

Any outsider who has overcome adversity of any kind cannot and should not set the story of that success aside. To do so is to alienate one’s self and others to come, and puts into danger the progressive environment from which the impulse to set aside could even be considered, imagined, and introduced.

Despite my attempts to consider coming out of the closet as “no big deal,” being a gay man raised in the Midwest defined entirely who I am and explains almost every one of my artistic choices up to this point.

Despite confidently knowing from the age of reason that I was attracted to the same sex, and despite rationally planning to tell my family at exact age 18 with a very measured approach (I cooked my father and mother grilled cheese and tomato soup – a comfort food – and sat them down to a special dinner for the event), categorizing and hiding parts of my inner life from my family will forever define how I relate to them and them to me.

Despite my pride in the progress of the LGBTQ movement and belief in the inclusion to come, I can’t deny my pride in rebel brothers of past and a fear for the dangers of “normality” in the land of tomorrow.

Happening upon The Children’s Hour just days before National Coming Out Day (which I didn’t even know existed until asked to write this, demonstrating to reader and writer alike a need to step up) may have been a little gift from the “you liked Sweet Charity, you might like” gods of Amazon.com.

Or perhaps a homo-ancestor whispered sweet somethings into my ear to point my gaze gratefully to the past. Or both. – Andrew Russell, theatre-maker and the Producing Artistic Director of Intiman Theatre in Seattle, WA.

I was coaxed out of the closet and will be forever grateful.

In the fall of my freshman year in college, I was invited to hang out with three of my male dance major classmates. They were already close, having attended high school together in California, and were surprisingly open about being gay. I, however, was routinely deflecting questions around my sexual orientation, pretending not to be attracted to anyone (very hard to do at 18) and sublimating my sexual energy into dance. It was exhausting and stressful.

My new friends sensed I was gay but that I was terrified about sharing it, so they staged a sort of gay intervention.

After a drink and some casual banter, the conversation took a surprising turn. One by one, they all spoke intimately about being gay, sharing detailed experiences about attraction, dating, love and sex. Afterwards, one of them turned to me expectantly and said, “So Marc, what’s your story?”

With my voice (and entire body) trembling, I told them about my singular sexual experience with a fellow male high school student while on tour with a ballet production. It was the first time I’d ever spoken about my attraction to men.

When I finished, one of them looked me directly in the eye and said, “Cool”. I looked around the room and each of them smiled an understanding smile. Years later, they admitted to having a homosexual agenda that night.

Perhaps because of intense bullying in junior high, the aftermath I’d envisioned to coming out was terrifying. The longer you go without sharing something important to you because of fear, the worse the imagined consequences of that sharing become.

If you are grappling with being gay, I encourage you to share it with someone who makes you feel safe. You will be transformed. If you are already out, be there to create a safe space for someone who is struggling. They will be forever grateful. – Marc Kenison, aka Waxie Moon