Comin' Out Shootin'

Snow has come early to Teton Valley. Long, vigilante clouds stretch across both sides of the valley, their thick grey coats puckered and heavy. In the off chance the clouds move away from the lip of the horizon in the last couple of days, we see the Peaks blue hue is hidden behind scratches of white. October is early for such changes, even in a place where winter lasts for nearly nine months out of the year. The temperatures, usually in the mid fifties, dropped below freezing yesterday. Our overnight low was 17 degrees. It shouldn't really come as a shock to anyone that this weather has plans of its own. Between the considerable number of natural disasters spread throughout the world--shit that just normally doesn't happen in such rapid succession--and the composite picture of a world gone mad (wars and wars and wars aplenty), I am sure nature has better things to do than play nice with the humans. That is like wondering why God didn't help your high school basketball team win, even though you prayed really hard in the locker-room at half time.

As a result of the weather, I busied myself in the house; I cooked and cleaned. Waiting for my parents to get back from Mormon church, I wrote in my journal, read, played some stupid Faceplace game, browsed job boards and then ate lunch. While my dad watched football, I picked up my Old Testament. Since moving home while on the job hunt, I've decided to read the OT for several reasons, least of which to actually come closer to God. I am in First Kings: Solomon, the king most known for his gold temple, for 700 wives and 300 concubines has just died. His replacement is wicked. In one particular verse, the idolatry of the people reaches a fevered pitched when even they become unconcerned that the "sodomites" are entrenched in their cities. I then remembered it was National Coming Out Day. Across the country, thousands of men and women were involved in the tenuous challenge of confession, of verbal mastication, of letting loose the hounds of hell upon suspecting and unsuspecting parents alike. The local news gave the annual march on Washington about two minutes. Even the Weather Channel focused on the event longer than that.

Wishing those folks well, I went to my bedroom to continue reading Jose Saramago's, DEATH WITH INTERRUPTIONS. The novel begins with death, a very literal figure, taking time off. The results are hilarious, profane, heartbreaking, and very political. In one harrowing scene, a family must sneak their two dying family members, an old man and a baby boy, across the country line so that they may finally taste the finality of death (death has continued her work in all the countries except the one in which the story takes place). The overlying metaphor got me thinking about life, ironically.

With thousands of people marching on Washington for equal rights, I wondered what would happen if everything just stopped: no more marches, or parades, or committees, or organizations, or political fund raising dinners, or political referendums, everything. What would change? What new face of the homosexual would emerge? What new human? Saramago writes: "you say metamorphosis and move on, it seems you don't understand that words are the labels we stick to things, not the things themselves, you'll never know what the things are really like, not even what their real names are, because the names you gave them are just that, the names you gave them." There is something here.

I've watched people come out. I've been there for that moment, that little pebble descending until it becomes a boulder tearing up the underbrush, until finally, it crashes through the webbing of our lives and lands with a sigh at our feet. For some the load is light, for others heavy. But to name it, to give it life--whatever it might be--is something individual and reverent. I am not opposed to National Coming Out Day, but more and more it has started to feel like National Secretaries Week, or Columbus Day. Once we figure out our secretary's a bitch, or that Columbus, well, you know, rhymes with fenocide...then the wind just goes out of things. Far better to be the parent of your own decision, of the process of naming, of claiming, of bringing to life.

Happy National Coming Out Day!