The view from our seaside room in Mexico easily trumped most sights I'd seen as a 14-year-old from Wisconsin. It was late at night and my mom and I were talking a little about nothing in particular. She prodded me about one of my friends, Kristin. "Would you ever be interested in dating her?" she asked.
My throat constricted. A soft ocean breeze blew, drying out my eyes. My first thought was to worry about ruining our vacation in Mexico. If I came out now it could make for a very awkward week. I took a leap of faith and told her: I'm gay. My upper body tensed and burned. As I came out to her, my shoulders literally fell. She hugged me. I wept. I looked at her face. There was a tear. Only one. And then, looking directly at me, she said, "I still want to be a grandmother," lightening the mood.
That's the last time we mentioned it for quite some time. The vacation went on unaffected.
Four years later, I still hadn't mustered the courage to come out to my father, who was divorced from my mom. Any sexual discussion had been made taboo when I asked him, as an 11-year-old, how people have sex. His only response: "It's a very filthy thing, Blair." That effectively closed off future conversation on that topic.
So I took the coward's way out. Senior year of high school I came out to my dad and most of my extended family via the city newspaper in a long article on the front cover. The editors wanted to run an article about my activism work at my high school and I viewed it as a simple yet effective way to "notify" my family.
My father was dead to me then. I hated him. He'd done nothing horribly wrong, but as an alcohol with anger issues, he hadn't done much to curry my favor.
He'd never laid a hand on me, but he hadn't bothered to give out positive remarks, either. As I grew into my own person, my dad didn't know how to handle it, which is understandable… his father had never taught him how to love, preferring choice phrases like "everything you touch turns to shit."
The day the issue went to print, I was sitting in AP Psychology when my mother, a teacher at my school, pulled me from class. "You'd better watch yourself," she said. "People might throw a brick through our window. You could get beaten up. I have to live here, I can't leave for college in the fall." Her voice broke as she finished the sentence and started to walk away.
That was the first time I'd thought about how my actions would affect my family. It had all been about me, my activism and my coming out. Me, not my family. I messed up. Everyone in my immediate family had grown up in this town, a small community where last names meant something and people liked to gossip.
However, I still didn't call my dad to tell him, to warn him. The night my coming out notice was distributed through the city via that newspaper, my dad was out drinking. A guy heckled him, saying something like, "Your son's a faggot." My dad vehemently denied it. He hadn't seen the article yet. When my slanderer produced a copy, my father punched him in the nose.
My father doesn't know I know this story ( my grandmother keeps me well-informed ) , but it meant a lot to me. In his own way, he was standing up for my name.
Having him read that I was gay in a public newspaper, in hindsight, was a pretty shitty thing to do. It was simple, it was quick, and it made me feel a lot better at the time. But it hurt his feelings. He would never say that ( sober, at least ) —but he doesn't say a lot of things. You can just tell.
My dad and I recently talked about my coming out, a full three years after the article went to print. It was a three-sentence conversation that ended with him saying, "I'm not crazy about the idea, but I'll love you no matter what."
Born and raised in Janesville, Wis., Blair Mishleau is a senior at Columbia College Chicago, majoring in digital journalism. He spent last semester interning in London, this past summer working in Manhattan and is now back in the Midwest to finish his degree.
