coming out day

It was a day in my life that even today, I remember as if it just happened a few minutes ago.

The bar was located on the corner of Craig Street and Forbes Avenue in the Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh. This neighborhood housed the University of Pittsburgh and butted against my neighborhood of Squirrel Hill.

During the day the bar was an unobtrusive brown brick building with no name on the rusty red door and an address atop the door that could only be read by standing directly in front of the building. There were no windows and at night the only noticeable feature was a bright red bulb hanging directly above the door.

The bar was called The Holiday and it had been for at least three decades THE Gay bar in Pittsburgh. The Holiday was the hub of s social life had by Andy Warhol, and many more men. The Holiday had been known to be the 1:30am stop for fraternity boys at Pitt who had little luck receiving oral sex from their coeds and who had to get off before heading for bed.

I had considered the fact that I might be Gay, considered be the operative word because had I openly admitted to myself I was Gay I would then have to deal directly with it. I had encouraging information from the talking heads of the day that homosexuality was just a phase, just a guilty pleasure, just a bad habit one could, with great effort get over. Many a maven on everything Gay at the time said one might want to make an attempt to act on it and one might find out that the perversion of it all might immediately change one’s mind. I was hoping I was that one and that my mind would change and this dreadful obsession would vanish.

So one Thursday early evening a few weeks before my birthday I decided after a few nights of consternation and internal chaos to bite the bullet and by God visit the Holiday Bar to prove that I was among all things in my life, not Gay.

It was 7:07, the time still embedded in my mind because I remember looking at the Timex watch on my wrist and thinking it should have been a whole lot darker outside at that time. There had been a dozen parking spaces located a few feet from the entrance to the Holiday Bar, but I felt it wiser to park two blocks up a steep hill so if anyone driving down Forbes Avenue thought they recognized my car they might think I was taking classes at Carnegie Tech the other major university located in the Oakland neighborhood. I knew people speeding down Forbes hill would certainly see my car parked on the street and I wanted to make sure they never even considered I was headed for the Holiday Bar.

The first trip down the hill from my car to the Holiday bar took no more then three minutes, but as much as I knew I wanted to enter the bar, I also knew that someone anyone would be driving on Forbes Avenue slow down to see me entering the bar and would be shocked and disappointed. So to avoid any anguish on behalf of some person who would spy me intending to enter the bar, I passed the entrance and walked two blocks south.I was in front of the Carnegie Library stopped, looked at the traffic on the street, recognized no car or driver and then proceeded to take the same path back to the bar. Realizing that there might be drivers heading from Oakland to Squirrel Hill and not wanting any of them to be shocked in finding me entering the Holiday Bar, I walked past the entrance and did my climb the two blocks up the hill toward my car. I walked up the hill down the hill past the bar at least 20 times and the next time I looked at my watch it was 8:20. I was getting nowhere fast.

After at least three conversations with myself, one grand dissertation with myself about just walking to the door opening it and entering the fucking bar, one angry lecture about why this was so hard, I found the strength, courage, fatigue, momentum motivation bravery to, without thinking about what I might be doing walk to the door open it up did not look left or right and entered the Holiday Bar. I still remember three things as I walked inside the bar. My heart was beating so fast I thought I would have a heart attack and the paramedics would find me dead in the Holiday, the exhilaration of finally crossing the threshold of the front door being so overwhelmingly satisfying, and the fact that now I was inside the bar how would I manage to leave.

It was 8:30 pm on a Thursday night at a gay bar in Pittsburgh, and like almost any bar on a Thursday night, Gay or Straight, this bar had one bartender, one drunk patron singing to the juke box and a guy at the end of the bar who was falling asleep in his beer. By standing inside the bar I had come out!

It is National Coming Out Day in the United States. For some it is reason to celebrate, for some a day to pine and ponder, for some a day to say phew, so glad I got that over with and for some a day they wish they could find the courage, resolve, rational, reason or rhyme to acknowledge. For some it is a day in which a milestone once so distant so fearsome had been reached. For some it is a useless excuse to share something better left unopened, untouched unmentioned.

I am the same person I was before I came out but a more honest person perhaps. I am a man who among other trials and tribulations, good deeds bad habits, Gay. I hope one day there is no longer a need for a Coming Out Day knowing that just being yourself without any announcement is good enough.