Happy Lesbian Visibility Day!

That time Melissa Etheridge complimented my outfit.

Happy Lesbian Visibility Day, friends! I wrote you a little essay on this, the annual celebration where us lesbians take our corporeal form and walk amongst the mortals of the world! Don’t rob any banks today! Wait until next week to start back on your crimes!

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Several years ago, on the GLAAD Awards red carpet, Melissa Etheridge reached across the little rope line that separated the stars like her from the media people like me. She gently took the tie I was wearing between her thumb and forefinger, smiled into my eyes, and said, "I love this tie." I chuckled affably, humbly, sweetly, confidently. Like, "This old thing, Melissa Etheridge? Well, thank you." 

I wished her and her wife a good night at the awards show; she hoped for me that the press got a plate of food too; and then she was off to the next interviewer. I stood there smiling like the professional I was supposed to be, swaying slightly, blinking way too fast, assessing the next batch of celebrities coming down the line. After a few seconds, I backed away from the red carpet and darted into an empty hallway, sinking down against the wall and mumbling, "Don't hyperventilate, don't hyperventilate" at myself. It was an instruction for present day me. The closeted lesbian teenager who grew up in rural Georgia in the 1990s, the one who's still wearing a flannel shirt tied around her waist, banging around inside me like an emo ghost, had already passed out.

I'd spent most of high school driving around with the wind whipping through the cab of my little pickup truck, over and over every backroad in the rural Southern town where I grew up, scream-singing "Come to My Window" to deal with feelings I didn't understand and couldn't even really acknowledge. I didn't know I was gay and I didn't know Melissa Etheridge was gay and I didn't know that song was gay. It was just a kinship between us, somehow, a silent understanding between me and a rockstar about precious aches and the endless hells that we could take, about secrets that only show up at night, and love that no one else understands. The difference between me and Melissa Etheridge was that she didn't care what they said or what they think — and I super, duper, duper cared about what everyone in the whole entire world thought about me. I was 16 years old and I couldn't imagine ever even feeling at home in my own body.  

When I first realized I'm gay, I spent about two years, every day after work, walking back and forth past the Gay & Lesbian section at Barnes and Noble. If you could call it a "section." It was two rows, total, on a bookcase that also included Metaphysics, Philosophy, Occult, and Psychology. I'd start in the Religion section, which was ten full bookshelves, and then gliiiiiide past Gay & Lesbian, and then browse the Children's section, which was a wonderland of whimsy, then baaaaack past Gay & Lesbian to Religion again. I probably owe Barnes and Noble several hundred dollars for the path I wore into that carpet with my endless pacing.

The first time I got the courage to shiftily make my way to the Gay & Lesbian shelves, my eyes immediately landed on a giant honking encyclopedia of a book called, like, The Everything Book of Lesbian Sex and it scared me so bad I didn't even go back to the bookstore for a month. If lesbian sex required 800 pages of knowledge, I was doomed! It wasn't like I could sneak that book out between Persuasion and Mansfield Park at the checkout counter. It was bigger than a stack of Bibles!

I'm one of those anxious perfectionists who feels like I have to know how to do everything exactly right before I do it out loud, so I was convinced I needed to know the whole Lesbian Sex Compendium before I ever even held a girl's hand. I needed to know all the gay books, all the gay TV shows (of which there were, like, three, total, at the time), all the history, all the culture. I needed answers to every question any straight person could ever ask about being gay because I was going to be the first gay person in all my friend groups, and in my family, and I wanted to be an exemplary ambassador. I decided I would learn one piece at a time, and once I got that piece just right, I'd implement it. And then I'd learn another piece, until I was fully and perfectly homosexual.

This was ridiculous because everything about me was already loudly, stereotypically lesbian. I have always walked like an obnoxiously cocky boy. I talk too loud and too fast and laugh too unabashedly to be a demure Southern woman. I have opinions about everything that I'm never shy to share. I grew up playing all the sports available to me. I'm exceptionally competent. I take charge. I don't second guess myself. I'm ambitious. My keys are attached to a carabiner. And wow yeah I've had a lot of very intense and emotionally devastating relationships with straight girls. 

My family and friends let me know I was being silly in my pursuit of gay perfection, the same way I was being silly staying in the closet. All of them already knew I was as gay as a window.

Yet, despite all of that, I was still terrified to become the visibly butch lesbian I already was inside my heart. I never wanted to put on a skirt or dress again, for the rest of my life. I wanted to wear oxfords and big leather watches. I wanted to wear polos and button-downs. I wanted to own three dozen blazers. I wanted to chop off all my hair. And most of all, I wanted to wear neckties and bowties. My wife is the one who knew this, before I even expressed it out loud, and so ties started showing up as little accent presents on my birthday and at Christmas, on Valentine's Day and as congratulations. And, well, of course I wore those ties because my wife gave them to me and I loved them and I loved her. 

I wore my ties just out with her at first, on special occasions. To Broadway shows and anniversary dates. To Christmas parties and birthday dinners. And then I wore a blazer and a tie to a comic con panel I was on. And then a suit and bowtie to my dad's wedding. And then a suit and tie to a dance party. And then a suit and tie and vest for a photoshoot. I acquired so many ties, my wife bought me a tie rack. A whole tie rack! Slowly, slowly, slowly — very late in life, some might say; some, but not me — I started looking like the kind of soft butch I'd always wanted to be. 

My wife is the one who bought me the outfit I wore to those GLAAD Awards. I texted her about it as the red carpet was winding down. 

"Melissa Etheridge loved my tie," I texted. "The pattern and the fit and the fabric even! She touched it! I think she was thinking about buying one for herself! She smiled at me extra about it! She said I LOVE YOUR TIE. Melissa Freaking Etheridge!" 

My wife texted back, "Well, she's right! You look hot as hell! Handsome and beautiful!" 

"You really think so?" I asked. 

She said, "I really, really think so." 

I was 40 probably. Four decades on this earth and I finally looked and felt like me.

I could feel teenage me keeling over again, this time more from swooning than from shock. I could feel that creeper me from Barnes and Noble in my early 20s, the one who was too scared to even touch a gay novel. I laughed at myself, loosened my celebrated tie, took off my suit jacket, and shook out my shoulders as I packed away my notes and my recorder. Dinner was free but I'd already gotten what I came for. I pulled my phone out of the back pocket of my slacks and walked toward the lobby of one of New York City's fanciest hotels. 

"I love you," I texted my wife. "I'll be home soon."