The Cyclical Closet

I lost count after the first ten, twenty, seventy-five, a thousand. I remember the first time. Driving with my sisters, one of them said, I’ve had sex with a woman. Stunned into revelation, I blurted, so have I. But she was kidding. Entrapment, and I fell for it. 

After that, I came out and that’s the end of the story. 

Except, I never stopped coming out. I came out years later when an employer asked me why I didn’t have a boyfriend. And again, when a well-meaning client tried to set me up with her cousin, Ted. A very nice guy, she insisted over my protestations until I finally and firmly said, I don’t date. The word “men” silently hung in the air between us and she never asked again.

I came out every time my mother asked how “my friend” was and I had to tell her my partner was having knee surgery and sends her love.

I came out every time I met a new person, started a new job, went to a new party. I took to wearing rainbow shirts, rainbow converse, and a lesbian feminist button on my jean jacket. 

Why do you have to be in people’s faces about it? I was asked, repeatedly, by people who bear the privilege of being the correct orientation by societal consensus. Asked by people who had never seen the fast blink of surprise on the faces of even well-meaning people when they referred to my husband and I corrected them to wife. 

I came out, I come out, I will continue to come out. 

I’m pushed back into the closet almost daily. And every day, sometimes dozens of times, I make a choice whether to come out again. The closet’s pernicious cycle pulls me back in by default. I claw my way out every time a new acquaintance at a networking event takes a sip of wine and says, I don’t have a problem with the gays, I really don’t. I just don’t think they deserve special rights. 

Fifty years old and I’m pushed back into the closet by a cashier who clucks her tongue in disapproval at the retreating backs of a male couple, then turns to me with an almost conspiratorial look before saying, I just wish they wouldn’t flaunt it. Pushed back into the closet when I’m walking with my wife and someone drives by yelling dyke, and I wrestle my hand from hers, in fear for her life more than my own.

I came out of the closet at nineteen. I came out of the closet at twenty-one, thirty-five, forty-four. Fifty years old and I’m pushed back into the closet by a kindly postal clerk who looks at my ring and says, Your husband must be a lucky man.

My wife is the best person I know. She bolsters me when I’ve lost my confidence. She’s the rock of our family, the light of my life. We laugh together and dance in the kitchen. She gets up early and feeds the pets when I hit snooze one too many times. People often accuse us, the royal us, the LGBTQIA+ population as a whole us, of having a gay agenda. My gay agenda is to be as good to her as she is to me. My gay agenda is to spend the rest of my life loving this woman who loves me beyond anything I’ve ever experienced.

But, your husband, the clerk says. I see in my mind the disapproving frown of the grocery store cashier and I force a smile. Yes, I say. Yes, he is.

-Beth Burnett

Beth Burnett has a passion for education. She teaches creative writing, college English, and early British Literature. She is also a part-time adjunct with the MFA program at SNHU and a doctoral student at Murray State University. In her spare time, Beth sits on the board of a non-profit literary organization and runs an online writing academy. Beth has published five books with Sapphire Publishing. Her sixth book, Coyote Ate the Stars, won first place in fantasy in the Writer’s Digest Self-published book awards. She recently moved to British Columbia where she lives with her wife, their geriatric dog, and a cat named Gordo the Magnificent.