I sometimes wish that I had a single coming out story, that one day I stood up in front of the SMC, shouted that I am a gay man, and magically the entire campus would hear. Pure fantasy, but the truth is that no LGBT individual has only one coming out story. In our culture, you are heterosexual until proven otherwise, and for this reason, coming out is something that happens over and over. In the past week alone, I have come out to three individuals. In the past month, nearly two dozen times, and in the past year and half, easily hundreds.

The first time I came out was to myself during the summer after my freshman year of college. It took me all summer to grieve the loss of my false heterosexual identity. I was supposed to grow up, marry a pretty girl, have a nice sized Roman Catholic family, become a teacher, run for public office, retire, and become a full time scoutmaster for my grandchildren. You do not often think about how those last three life goals are predicated upon the first two, until they are no longer available to you. Once back at college, I had finally convinced myself that I was not heterosexual, that I liked boys, and that I could still have that life, it just would be a little more difficult than I first imagined.

Now that I knew that I was gay, I had to find a way to tell others. I knew I had reacted well to my own coming out, but how would my friends, my sisters, my parents, my grandparents, or even my uncle who was a Roman Catholic priest react? This question consumed my mind for quite some time. I had no worries about my friends, they were all “queer” (read: strange) in their own way.

Talking about being gay was another challenge. I was certainly not ready to wear a rainbow cape and start commenting on every cute guy who walked past, but how else could I be out? I couldn’t just say: “How is the chicken today at Gordiner? Good? By the way I am gay.”

So like any true geek, I created a game of chance. I asked my two best friends to pick a number between one and 200. If they guessed a number divisible by seven, I would just say it. This was silly, stupid, but surprisingly effective. By the time most of my friends did guess a correct number, they were intensely curious as to what I was doing. It also had the benefit of committing myself to the action, and giving me time to prepare. I had no reason to be afraid. At the same time, I had no reason not to be afraid, so I was petrified. I was exposing myself and giving people a way to hurt me by rejecting me when I needed them most.

The first two people I knew I could trust were my two best friends, two straight males I knew since freshman year. One day I was in their dorm room standing outside of the closet with the TV muted behind me. On the second guess, one of them chose 14. I told them that I am gay. They both smiled, one with his goofy grin, the other with his more serious smile. They both tell me that it is okay, that it changes nothing. There is a pause for a second, then they tell me that the Village People were on the TV behind me. So there I was literally standing right outside of a closet with the Village People right behind me as I came out for the first time to others. Could you get any more surreal?

I am really glad my coming out story is humorous and usually gets a few laughs. I am also grateful that all of my coming out stories have been positive, even to my uncle the priest. There are far too few of these types of stories in the LGBT community. Too many of my friend’s lives have been screwed up by the fact that they are capable of loving another person of the same gender. In this sense, I am truly fortunate.