My Skeleton’s Closet

Weak Point

“Are you sure there’s nothing else you’re worried about?”

Secrets are like poison. Until you tell someone, they will kill you from the inside out. The worst secrets are the kind you keep from yourself—held at bay for so long until the dam finally breaks. For a week, I tell my mom that I’m having stomach problems, and it isn’t entirely a lie. The sight of food brings up long-buried thoughts that never fully digested in the first place. Fragments of memories that threaten to contaminate everything else.

“You know, if it’s not better by tomorrow, we could always try acupuncture.”

Only this time, as the car lurches forward towards a red light, I imagine a needle meeting my skin, and the words escape before I can stop them: “I’m gay.” Immediately, something inside me collapses.

I remember the tears, the loving reassurance, and then a single, foreboding question: “How long have you known?”

Asking Questions I Don’t Want Answers To  

I am thirteen years old, and I have never had a crush on a boy. Of course, I say I do. I follow the gaze of other girls and later on pretend for the sake of conversation that I understand. The internet always knows me better than I know myself, which leaves an obvious course of action: an “Are You Gay Quiz” from a debatable source. As soon as I begin, I’m already in too deep.

In all multiple-choice questions, there is the general rule that one answer is outlandishly false, one is close to the truth, and one final outlier hits the nail on the head without a doubt.

Are you now or have you ever been attracted to a member of the

same sex? Choose one. This will be important in the near future.

a) No. Never. You are one hundred percent heterosexual. You are so straight that you love One Direction, wear overpriced makeup from Sephora, and will eventually host a gender reveal party for your child.

b) There are two wolves inside of you: one wants a boyfriend. The other would date girls, too. You are bisexual.

c) Your search history includes videos titled: “How I Knew I liked Girls,” “Coming Out: My Story,” “LGBT+ Q AND A,” and “My First Pride Parade.” You rewatch that scene in Harry Potter of Emma Watson walking down the steps to the ball way more times than you should. You are a lesbian.

I press a because it sounds like what other people would want to hear and don’t think about why I didn’t consider any other options until I have considerable reason to.                

June 26, 2015

I am fifteen when the Obama administration legalizes gay marriage, and every street is a rainbow. On the news, there are images of pride parades and people cheering like they’ve been deprived of air, only just allowed to breathe for the first time. I breathe with them. A photo goes viral of two women just pronounced wife and wife—all beauty and tears and laughter. They look like they belong in a fairy tale. Later that night, in the comfort of my own bedroom, I cry because I’m just so happy for them, because I’m such a strong ally, because I can sense some deep, unnameable thing begin to grow at the thought of it. The next morning, I wake up and forget.

Never Have I Ever

At a middle school graduation party, we (the girls) play a game of “Never Have I Ever” in the hot tub. The basics are simple: if you have, you sit in the water. If you haven’t, you stay. Someone says, “Never have I ever liked anyone in our grade.” Silence. There is a collective glance, a slight movement of the eyes, before we each individually descend into the balmy chlorine. There are eighteen kids in the graduating eighth grade class of 2016, stuck together for two years or more, and any feelings for one another had little room to escape beyond the tight classroom walls, the forced camping trips, and the hotel stays at historic sights like Gettysburg and DC. I’m the last to drop. “Aww,” someone says.

“Was it . . . you know.” I think about the boy in question. He smelled weird, called me names, and each time I worked with him he always looked at her the way I did. I say yes anyway.                                    

Up For Debate

During history class, the teacher says we have to debate a relevant issue and support our views with facts. Then, on the board, he writes “SAME SEX MARRIAGE” with a question mark. As in, is the definition of marriage strictly between a man and a woman? As in, does any other kind deserve to exist? I sink deep into my seat as Bible verses go flying across the room like bullets, wondering when love became more about politics than humanity. Afterward, I hear the same people who argued in the name of God mutter “faggot” under their breaths, while the girls giggle mirthlessly at each other before commenting “DYKE” on an Instagram post.

Insight From A Stranger

At the lunch table, a girl I barely know has just made an observation that will later turn out to be true. Halfway through a conversation about who we’d want to take to the spring dance, she looks at me like she’s discovered a hint of my soul, squints her eyes, and confesses it in a single breath: “I think you’re really gay but just don’t know it yet.” I don’t know how to respond. The denial wraps around my lungs like a snake and constricts. The school bell rings before I have a chance to defend myself, loud and permanent, and the subject isn’t brought up again.

A Half-Truth

“Do you have a boyfriend?” This question, inevitably, will always return. At parties, at sleepovers, at family reunions, and in instant messages, so I’ve learned to prepare an answer that both satisfies the asker and leaves room for speculation.

“I’m not really interested in boys.”

Depending on the situation, I have a second follow-up that begins with “I’m more focused on” and ends with “school, writing, college, mental health.” I learn to change the subject.

Crush Culture

When I do get a boyfriend, he looks like a lesbian. He has short blonde hair, a feminine face, and almost exclusively wears flannel. I don’t notice him until my friend points out his crush on me. “I thought you knew,” she says, pauses, “Do you want to go out with him?” I think of all my friends and their boyfriends. They hold hands in the hallways and make out on the couch and follow the typical high school romance story. I don’t really want to think about it more than I have to, so I agree because maybe it’ll give me something to talk about. We break up a few weeks later, over a text from my end. Mostly due to the fact I couldn’t bring myself to like him in that way, and saying the word “boyfriend” out loud was just as uncomfortable as dating one.

Pretend

At some point, I hold hands with a girl on stage for a theater class.

“You’re a couple.” says the teacher, because we’re meant to be actors, and improvising is just part of life. “You’re on a date.” I remember his voice instructing the plot of a play I wanted to be real, forgetting, in that moment, about how I’ve never been a good liar.

The lights dim. The class watches, and there are a few snide comments, maybe a snicker, but I forget what they said or who they were because I was too busy staring at her. She takes my hand, and I follow the script I told no one about, the one I hoped would never end.

“You were really good,” she tells me later. “I didn’t know you could act.” I couldn’t.

The Closet as a Metaphor

The closet is a place between worlds, though not one of fantasy.

In this space, where time does not exist, I am in a constant ebb and flow

with myself, sifting through thoughts like a gravedigger searching for

diamonds among bones, desperate to prove or deny the lost and found.

Here, I exist outside my body, always somewhere far away, beginning

again in a new destination—a distant country where no one knows my name,

as a writer, or a pirate, or a thief. In the closet, I see my skeleton: tucked away

behind old flannels and a brand new pair of black Doc Martens, still unbroken.        

A List of Things That Aren’t True

1. I can’t be gay because I like this celebrity, that actor, and other men I’ll never have to date in real life. Straight girls love them, too.

2. I can’t be gay because in the future I might find the right guy like everyone says, but I don’t think I need one in my life to be happy.

3. I can’t be gay because if I was, I’d know by now. I’m too old to come out.    

A List of Things That Are

1. I live on a tiny rock floating in space called Earth, and there is no real reason for anything. Currently, I am surviving a global pandemic amid racial injustice and constant violence. On Twitter, the president likes to remind us that he knows how to do his job. Also, there is a disease that kills people if they go within six feet of each other and forests are burning down all over the country. Sometimes, we are allowed to leave the house, but not without a face mask to protect us from the deadly virus.

2. I like girls. I have liked girls for a long time. Nothing I can do or say will change this fact.

3. I don’t live in a house of homophobia. My parents are supportive. My friends are, too. I’m gay. Eventually, I’ll fall in love with a woman and everything will be okay.

PROUD

I step out of the closet quietly, with the door creaking open, the hinges still on their bearings. There is no grand entrance, no parade. Just the gentle rebirth, the ghost of anxiety silently fleeing, the need to hide from the world finally gone.

-Lara Boyle

Lara Boyle is a college student and writer currently located in Charlotte, North Carolina. When not writing (which is rare), she can be found curled up with a good book. Her work has appeared in Signet Literary Magazine.