A Strange Encounter

After passing through an airport security operation completely run by one TSA officer, I sat down in the tiny waiting area of Manhattan Regional Airport and stared at my shoes as I tried to process all of the events of that weekend. As I mentioned in my last post, I attended the OUT & GREEK Conference at Kansas State two weekends ago. It was… fascinating, engaging, humbling, maybe even life-changing. I’m still not done staring at my shoes and processing it all though, so I’ll leave that for another post. Instead, I want to talk about an ephemeral and surreal encounter that made a perfect capstone for an already emotionally heavy weekend.

Quickly bored with my shoes and with little else to look at in the waiting area, I started to watch the x-ray images of people’s bags passing through the adjacent security area. I tried to guess what all the false-colored shapes might be, of course hoping that I would see something bizarre or humiliating. But my fun was spoiled when an old man sat down next to me and insisted on talking to me, no matter how obviously disinterested I made myself appear.

“Hi,” he said with a nod as he crossed through my line of sight to the x-ray machine. “Hi,” I responded with a polite but half-hearted smile. He sat down next to me, on the same side as the x-ray machine, and I could only think of how annoyed I was that I couldn’t look at the machine without looking in his general direction. My eyes quickly returned to my shoes, suddenly the most interesting thing in the room again.

“You go to State?”

I groaned to myself inside. I have to admit that without exception the people I’ve met on flights in the past have been interesting or pleasant, but sometimes I’m just too tired to go through the motions with these strangers. I was stereotyping this old man pretty hard. He looked to be in his sixties, and all my feelings of resentment for his generally naïve and homophobic generation began to bubble up. I was angriest that in my polite conversation with this old man, I would feel compelled to hide exactly why I was in Kansas that weekend. It’s tough to transition from a weekend of LGBT empowerment to a desire to hide in the closet. I suppose that I wasn’t afraid of admitting I was gay so much as too lazy and frazzled at the moment to stand up and be an educator for this old man.

“No, I go to Duke. I was just here for a conference at Kansas State.”

“Oh yeah. What sort of conference?”

“A fraternity conference,” I said flatly, hoping to end the conversation there.

“Oh so you’re a frat boy,” he quipped back pejoratively. I smiled at him in a “fuck you” sort of way and uttered a flat, “You could say that,” again hoping the conversation would end. Instead, he started talking about himself. He was visiting for business as some sort of consultant for the Presbyterian Church. Great, I thought to myself, he just put the P in WASP, and I bet next he’ll tell me about his wife and grandkids.

“So what’s your major?”

“Biology.”

“You know, I met my wife on my first day of biology class in college.” He went to a Methodist school.

“Oh yeah. Wow.” I said, feigning interest. I was ready to ask, “So is that the same class where they taught you that being gay is a crime against nature?” I wanted nothing more than for the plane to arrive so this old WASPy hetero would leave me alone.

Then there was a sudden change in his voice. “And 25 years later I had to tell my wife I was different, and we divorced.” Deep down, I knew where this was going, but I was momentarily blinded by the stereotypes I used to define this man.

“What exactly do you mean by that?” I asked, facing him directly.

“I’m gay,” he muttered, choking on the word. I could tell he was embarrassed, perhaps terrified. Ironically, this old man just went through exactly what I was dreading: the limbo that envelops you every time you drop the g-word on a new person, when time dilates and you await their reaction like the blade of a guillotine.

As the broken pieces of my preconceptions were falling to the ground, I felt an incredible sense of relief rush over me, and I jumped at the opportunity to end the awkwardness with a “Me too!” Then my mind lapsed to vanity for a second, and I realized that he must have already guessed that I was gay or he wouldn’t have told me at all. Is it that obvious to everyone? Do I really care?

Focusing back on our conversation, I learned that his name is Mark. He’s out to his family and they’re generally accepting of him, but his work with the church requires him to stay in the closet around everyone else (his name isn’t really Mark, by the way). Mark is 64, and when he retires he plans to publish a work of fiction that will essentially out him once and for all. (As he explained it to me, it’s basically The Da Vinci Code except Jesus hooks up with John, not Mary Magdalene).

I told him all about the OUT & GREEK conference, and I almost felt a tinge of guilt. I mean, this poor guy grew up in an environment where coming out was out of the question, where he probably didn’t even learn the vocabulary necessary to process and understand his hidden feelings. And when he finally did come out, he had to experience first hand the devastation of AIDS on the gay community. And there I was trying to sell how important it is to improve the experience of LGBTs in Fraternities and Sororities. I told him about my boyfriend of two and a half years, about being out for two years, and about being accepted in my college community and in my fraternity. Talking to him was like looking at myself in another universe. Our conversation naturally turned to how much the LGBT movement has progressed in the last 40 years. I cited the recent New York Times feature called “Coming Out in Middle School,” and told him that I feel like my own struggle to come out is being made obsolete by the next wave of gays.

He said one last thing to me before we boarded the plane and sat separately: “You know, looking back, wishing that I had come out earlier, I really have to ask myself whether I’d be willing to give up the three kids that I had with my wife.” I certainly don’t know how to answer that question, but I'm happy that I don't have to.

As I looked out the airplane window and saw the tiny airport disappear into the vast nothingness of Kansas, I resolved to stop trying to make sense of what had just happened. Instead, I simply basked in the overwhelming realization of how fortunate I am, and fell asleep with an uncontrollable smile on my face.