Before the Closet Door Opens
BY A.J.
Shame sounds incredibly distinct over the phone.
It’s laden with a sudden hush before the confession, filler words, and extra pauses. Crying also sounds particularly distinct over the phone. It’s heavy, creates rhythmic ruffles, and words come through as fragments. Over the past summer, I spent ten hours a week at the front desk of an HIV/STI testing and prevention agency, fielding questions in-person and over the phone. Most interactions were never this weighted. They were usually about testing hours and what floor we were on – but on the occasion, I would get one of those calls. ‘I think I might be positive. I need to get tested now.’ ‘My partner just told me this morning - I might have it.’ ‘I need to talk to someone right now. Can someone help me?’ I started at the organization in June of 2018. I mark that month and year because exactly one-year prior, I was watching fifteen billion coming out videos a day. I specifically remember June of 2017 from the pews of an LGBTQIA+ non-affirming, conservative church in St. Louis. My mind was steeped in ideologies of purity culture and the “holiness” sexual shame. One year later, I was riding my bike into a row of rainbow flags and blessing the condom bowl as part of a sex-positive ethic. I felt like a clown in crisis, continuously asking myself how I ended up there – how on earth did I choose this particular field of work, this agency of all St. Louis organizations to spend my summer with. In hindsight, the reason why I picked the site wasn’t that I was comfortable there. It was precisely the opposite. I wasn’t proud. I didn’t know how to acknowledge my sexuality much less the idea of sexuality as a whole. But I was curious. I was curious about what it was like to be proud. About what it was like to be honest – what it was like to be free. The courage to be curious was mustered a year after I first came out to a friend. It took a full, complete year. American media often advertises coming out as freeing and pride as authenticity. The notion is beautiful but to me, completely un-relatable. I didn’t come out to be authentic. I came out so I wouldn’t self-destruct with a secret. I make this distinction because it shouldn’t take the risk of self-destruction to make a decision to come out in the same way that it shouldn’t take an HIV scare to get tested or to understand the basis of HIV transmission. However, often there is a clear power that keeps us from pursuing our truth and wellbeing, and I believe that a primary barrier that separates us from knowledge and health is the fear that arises from shame. It is precisely the power of stigma. The concepts of fear, shame, and stigma are difficult to parse through. I’m sure there is an academic that can define them for us but I don’t remember them in definition – I remember them in memory. I remember fear as the feeling through my fingers when I picked up the phone to call my mother and tell her that I’m gay. I remember shame as the way my voice sounded when I called her about the gay conversion book she had sent me. I remember stigma in the way she cried over the phone when I told her I wanted to be out openly after coming out to her for the third time. When someone calls in a panic, I would say, “Okay. [Pause] Okay, I’m going to connect you with someone right now.” There was almost always an audible exhale before the quiet, ‘Thank you.’ My job was never to provide health advice because I didn’t have any. My job was to share space for a moment. It was to be present as a voice on the other end before any concrete steps were taken or any decisions were made. I’m not sure why I was ever fortunate enough to share that space with so many individuals. It is a rare privilege – not a right – to be allowed into the highly vulnerable, heavily stigmatized aspects of a person’s being. My story as it stands is not about a future solution to de-stigmatize queerness and sexuality but about confronting the ramifications of stigma right now. I’ve had to redefine pride and sex-positivity for myself in reference to homophobia and purity culture – not because I desire for internalized homophobia and sexual shame to persist but because they will always be reference points for the way I understand my sexuality. I think about the last year and a half of coming out and about the one thing I wished for the most. I didn’t wish for a pill to make me straight and solve my queerness. I wished for a voice on the other end that wasn’t going to hold judgment, a voice that could hold space for my shame as well as the rest of me. I wished for presence. I can only plead that for those of us who want to stand by someone who is confronting fear and shame from stigma, your presence is powerful. Your presence is enough. To the people who recognize this story, thank you for listening to me, for standing by me, and for holding space for me. I hold so much gratitude and love for each of you. To the people who recognize this story in themselves, you are fully beautiful and beautifully resilient. I am so proud of you. |