I am gay

It's national coming out day. I just want to make sure to say again that I'm gay. If you got problems with it--well, that's just it, you got problems with homosexuality.

I came out to my parents August of last year and my brothers know, my friends know. Many people would say thatt I'd be done coming out. But, it's not true. Every time you meet someone, you have to decide whether they know or not...whether they'll understand or not. Some people take a while--like I do--to decide, usually if I like you, you'll know soon enough. To those who I don't get along with as well, you may never know. Sometimes, it feels easier to just crawl up in that closet because it's not harsh, it's comfortable and familiar, you've been there before, you can always give up and just fall right back in.

Sometimes, I have.

In my moments of weakness--where the pressure to fall into your gender role has gotten to me--I've fallen back in the closet. Seems so odd for me to say--I don't consider myself a closet-case, yet I know that I've been back there in that closet, shut-up and smarting again from the pain that comes with one of your friends saying "I have a few gay friends, but I don't really support what they do."

I've also gone through moments of courage--moments where I've proudly stated I'm gay, or even just meekly stated "I'm gay," when a moment before, I thought I couldn't even mouth the words. When I told my parents--or every few months when my mom asks "When are you going to bring a girlfriend home?" and the moment that follows when my mom's dreams are broken again when I tell her I won't be bringing a girlfriend home--the one who I'll be bringing home will probably be taller than I am, and perhaps even gayer than I am.

I still have yet to experience a life outside of the protected world that is Soka--this warm, yet small and sometimes confining bubble where I can be andy--as idosyncratic, flippant, feminine, or asian as I want to be--many times within the same moment, even. I can do the asian thing one day, the gay thing the next, the IB (ahem, the IBS) thing the day after, and still be a Soka student. However, what it's like outside of this bubble, I dont' know if I'm ready for it.

As a child, I remember visiting one of my family's friends in a small town in Kentucky. When my family walked into a Golden Corral for dinner one night in the great state of Kentucky with our family friends--a family that happened to be white and filipino--the people in the restaurant just stared at us--even while we ate our dinner! They must have just been shocked that a Japanese family could have a nice dinner with a white woman who had two mixed filipino kids, another white daughter and the daughter's white boyfriend. I don't know if I could face that scrutiny. I may not have to experience that as a gay man. I may just never walk into a golden corral. Their food sucks anyways.