Theme Song: "Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)" - A*Teens
Tonight on a special episode of Chaos Under The Big Top: The College Years... James concludes the Three-Part "Coming Out" trilogy, this time focusing on the important role of one's friends during the Coming Out process.
I've talked about my parents. I've talked about my siblings. So now you're probably asking, "What about your friends?" Are they gonna BE around? Will they LET you down again...? And if there's one message I'd like to send to anyone who's still in the closet and afraid to turn it out, it's this: Have a little faith in your friends. They might surprise you. From my experience, EACH and EVERY time I come out to a dear friend, they're almost always MOST hurt that I automatically assumed they were too narrow-minded and ignorant to accept me 100% as I am. And besides, the ones who really know me had already figured it out YEARS ago and respected my decision to tell them when I was ready.
I will tell you straight-up: personally, I totally underestimated my friends. During the latter part of middle school and most of high school, I was sooooo concerned about how other people saw me--I desperately wanted them to like me and respect me. And by conforming to the heterocentric ideal, I had managed to convince myself that I was making some kind of noble self-sacrifice--that I was protecting them. And then one day I woke and realized, "What a crock of shit! I'm not helping anybody by staying silent; I need to be out there making my voice known so that history doesn't keep repeating itself again and again, and perhaps I can help someone else avoid this type of pain and insecurity.
Like every individual color of the rainbow, everyone's Coming Out experiences are unique so I can't speak for everyone when I say, what terrified me most in high school was coming out as a single gay guy. Since I was already good friends with ALL the out gay people at my school COMBINED with the fact that I have a rule against dating close friends (at least the ones that start out that way), I knew that if I announced I was gay, I would have everything to lose and hardly anything to gain. I was already in the extreme minority (race and intelligence) and I didn't want to make myself even more of a possible target... although remarkably, I was practically never teased in school (at least, not to my face--just the way I like it). 
Up until 11th grade, I knew that no matter how much I wanted to do it, I STILL wasn't strong enough to do it alone. The closest I came was answering the question, "Are you gay?" with my stock response, "A little bit." Meaning a lot. A LOTTTT. :-D Coming out in college was infinitely easier because I didn't have all that BAGGAGE, and when I use that term, I'm referring to the fact that I lived in Pasadena for the better part of 17 years--I'd known most of my classmates since Kindergarten, and I didn't want one little "secret" to kill a friendship with so much history. And unfortunately, I know I've lost a few of them, but if my sexuality was the reason, then they were never my friends in the first place. *Shunnnnnnna!*
What has come as the biggest shock to me has been just how AMAZING and ACCEPTING the vast majority of my friends have been--even some of those conservative types. What would probably surprise a lot of straight people would be how one of the biggest groups that attacks gay people is closeted gay people. Honestly, I've felt perfectly welcome among the straights and yet feel this intense animosity from the "closet cases." I can only assume that it's their need to disassociate themselves with the community that leads them to overcompensate and lash out against their own people. Unfortunately, I've become one of the radical thinking gays and I say a lot of things that come off as "mean-spirited" and maybe even, "stereotypical," and that's why I am not the one to hold someone's hand and walk them out of the closet. They make me sick. *re-shun!* The best I can do is hope they absorb my experience and see that it's usually worse in their own imaginations.
But to end on a happy note, I just wanna reiterate what I said earlier, trust the people who know and love you. The main reason why people feel that they can poke fun at gays without any recourse is that they believe that "they don't know any gay people." And that's almost impossible. You have the chance to enlighten them by speaking up, but the longer you stay passive and cover up the real you, the harder it's going to be to come out and prevent your friends for seeing you as a lying asshole. And don't forget: you don't have to make yourself miserable just to make someone else comfortable.
PS - As a movie buff, I personally recommend that, if you're on the fence, you check out some Gay-Lesbian-Bisexual-Transgender films. Personally, I love to see happy endings for gay characters for a change, and here's a list of entertaining and uplifting GLBT films (not porn, LOL, but most gay films have at least one sex scene) I can wholeheartedly recommend: Adam & Steve, Mambo Italiano (very funny), Another Gay Movie, D.E.B.S., To Wong Foo, Ethan Mao (much better than Plata Quemada), Latter Days, Say Uncle (Peter Paige attacks the belief that all homosexuals are child molesters), The Margaret Cho Collection (No-No-No-Notorious C.H.O.), Strangers With Candy (Hillllarious!), The Talented Mr. Ripley, Guys & Balls, TransAmerica, Billy's Hollywood Screen Kiss, Saving Face, In & Out, The 24th Day (one of the most creative horror films I've ever seen), Eating Out, The Sex Monster, and Yes, I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry.
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