a guide to coming out: a love story that is often a horror tale
by Douglas Messerli
Bruce Glawson (director) Michael, a Gay Son / 1980 [documentary]
Another friend advises him to
also be to prepared for the worst. When he told his parents, his father wept,
screamed, and sent him out of the house, eventually even disinheriting him. He
hasn’t seen his family now for more than 2 years. He feels that perhaps their
worst fears were based on some vague notion of a gay lifestyle as opposed to
his actually being homosexual. He wished he have revealed to them that while
obviously he may share different views from them on many issues, that he still
carries with him a great many moral values and responses to life that he was
taught at home.
A third, older friend, a man
who fearing his homosexuality, first tried out psychotherapy and marriage,
finally coming to realize he would not find happiness until he came out of the
closet and admitted to himself and his family who he was. His parents were dead
by this time, but he had to face his two teenage sons who maintained rather
macho ideas about life; but as he had done with other issues as they were
growing up, he was able to work it out with them and help them to understand.
The assessment of all of Michael’s
friends is that coming out must be done on the gay individual’s own terms and
at a time when he feel’s comfortable and ready to reveal and discuss the
issues.
I must add, since I have long
represented these pages as being “my queer cinema”— relating as I do throughout
my own experiences with those of world cinema, television, video, and filmed
drama and opera—I will take time out to observe that while my personal coming
out was relatively easy, I too received a very negative reaction when I
revealed it to my parents.
As Michael describes his youth, I mostly
ignored my homosexuality for the first 20 years of my life, discussing my
personal feelings and fears with no one, until one day when considering how my
views of religion, politics, and other issues differed radically from my
parents, I also admitted to myself that I was gay, even though I had never
actually had a sexual encounter. I visited a psychologist who asked just two
questions, how did I know I was gay? I was vague, suggesting I just felt it, I
knew it from within. He then asked, had I had any sexual experiences?, and when
I answered that I hadn’t had sex with either gender, he responded that perhaps
I should go out and try it to see if I was truly a homosexual. I did. I loved
the experience. And that was it.
Knowing my father’s homophobic
terror, I waited several years to tell my parents, long after my now husband
Howard and I had met and been living together for nearly a year. Only when I
moved with him halfway across the country from Wisconsin to Washington, D.C.
did I finally decide, upon his urging, to tell my folks.
They were visiting us in that
capital city when at the dinner table, I admitted what I simply presumed that
by this time they must have long-ago perceived, that not only were Howard and I
friends but that we were a couple. My father, after only a few seconds of
silence, got up from the table, called out for my mother to join him, and left
the house, driving that same afternoon back to Iowa.
Unlike the young man above, I
had long before left my family home, and there was no money to inherit. And
just as Michael’s friends concurred, I was comfortable with myself and happy
with who I was, which helped me from being overwhelmed by their initial
rejection. Besides, I was already living in a life-long relationship that is
still active today after 55 years.
It took three long years before my mother and
father were able to even speak about it, and my father to his last dying breath
was never comfortable about my sexuality, seeing it evidently as a stubborn
decision on my part, a choice of lifestyle instead of realizing that I was born
that way. It’s not that he didn’t question that possibility, evidently; my
sister having remembered that upon their return from that Washington, D. C.
visit, she overhead him querying my mother whether an accident that she
suffered shortly before my birth might have been responsible for my
homosexuality. But clearly he had determined later in his mind that it was just
another act of rebellion, as statement of one of my many different choices of
values outside of those he held dearly. On in his deathbed he described me, in
relation to my siblings, as “the stubborn one.”
In Bruce Glawson’s short
documentary Michael first tells his sister Susan, “who was quite positive and
very accepting.” When he tells his brother Frank, however, “he took the thing
very badly.” Nonetheless, he determines to come out to his parents, sitting
them down after supper and telling them he was gay. Michael summarizes it as a
rather frustrating experience. While his father reacted quite negatively, his
mother primarily attempted to simply to “keep the peace,” he reports. He was
not “disowned,” but he describes it somewhat as if nothing at all had happened.
“There seemed to be a conscious avoidance on their part of talking about it.”
The
first time I saw this film several years ago, I sat in total frustration. How
could I present the logic of family members ardently speaking out against their
homosexual kin simply as a reporter, especially when I was writing for what I
presumed would include mostly LGBTQ readers. I wondered, should I simply
attempt to objectively present the document as such without any personal
commentary. My attempt to do so left me exhausted, totally frustrated, and
actually angry, particularly since the social worker hardly entered into the
conversation to suggest where the family members’ viewpoints were utterly mistaken
or even foolish. Accordingly, this time around I chose to see this fascinating
dialogue as a model case of what hundreds of young people attempting to explain
to their non-violent families that they were gay might encounter in coming out,
as well as how they might begin to answer some of the well-meaning if ignorant
assumptions usually attending any family’s homophobic fears. I have tried to be
careful in my commentary, however, not to tread too harshly on what are the
Collins family’s obviously heartful statements. Afterall, they were open enough
not only to discuss their feelings with their son and a social worker but to
allow it to be filmed. If they were still living today in 2025, I am certain
that they would not be arguing the same things they were in 1980. At least I
hope not.
If I have spent far more pages
on this small documentary than I might have intended it is because of the
importance of such events in the lives of most LGBTQ individuals. Truth is
necessary for living one’s life with respect, no matter how that truth is
received. It is no wonder that the “coming out” story was one of the earliest
of genres of openly gay cinematic works and is still by far the most popular,*
with literally hundreds of variations, each story being a personal revelation
of how we queer individuals came to the realization of who we are and dared to
share it with others close to us. Surely, it is the most radical act that any
of us will likely perform, declaring, speaking out, and justifying our very lives—something
most heterosexuals will ever imagine as necessary.
Michael responds that it sounds as if he has
somehow let his family down in terms of the kind of life that he is leading.
His father agrees, that he
feels precisely that.
Michael continues that
perhaps it means that he will be distanced from the family, his mother again
interrupting to maintain a kind a vague status quo, “but you’ll always be our
son, Michael. I’m sure your father doesn’t mean anything like that.”
His sister reiterates that
Michael is a very good person and wonders why her father is putting so much
emphasis on sexuality.
“Well, maybe, maybe Michael
is a very good person, but Michael is hurting us now.”
His
sister counters that he is perhaps choosing to be hurt because he doesn’t agree
with his son’s sexuality.
Frank again brings up the
mistaken notion that it is not his sexuality that is so terrible, but his
choice of lifestyle.
I wish I might swoop down
into this family and remind them once again that being gay is, first of all not
a choice, and secondly is not a “lifestyle.” But clearly in 1980 even Michael
could not fully argue that important issue properly.
His sister continues the
concept of choice, suggesting that if her brother chooses to be gay that’s
fine. The important thing is what is like as a person.
Frank, in complete denial,
argues that his brother is not a homosexual, his sister arguing that is
precisely what is telling him, that he is. “How can you deny him?”
The social worker probes
Susan, saying that it’s clear and that she loves her brother and cares for him
and that she’s accepting. But she wonders what else she feels or has learned
about her brother’s homosexuality.
Susan admits to simply being
afraid that he’ll have different friends from those he has and that he will
live a different lifestyle—that word again, as if being gay meant necessarily a
complete change in behavior, without explaining what they even mean by “lifestyle.”
Not having mutual friendships, she’s afraid that they might “just lose touch”
and move away for them, losing the closeness and love they always have had.
I might suggest, of course,
that such separate paths occur to all growing siblings. Does she share friends
with Frank, or does she expect that they should share the same friends all
through their life? Had I been the social worker, I might have questioned the
presumption of permanently shared friends or even wonder about the intensity of
such a sibling relationship.
Michael argues that in
telling them he was gay, he wanted his family to further know who he was as a
successful, happy person.
But next comes the far too
common displacement of homophobia, Michael’s dad describing it as a social
phenomenon, something that will be shameful to the neighbors. The father puts
this idea forward quite clearly: “Michael seems to have forgotten completely
the type of life we live in a small town. His mother and I the other day at a
church social, realized for the first time Michael was not asked about, [the
usual question being] How is your son Michael doing?”
In short, he argues for the
social consequences, which as the social worker points out, are very real for
such community-dependent figures.
Michael gives the most logical answer, that he
is not at expecting that his father and mother will have to tell all their
friends and neighbors that he is gay.
But, inevitably, in such provincial thinking
that shifts the subject immediately to the fact that their will be no
grandchildren, which Mrs. Collins very much wants.
In 1980, of course, the idea
of a gay man adopting children or, more obviously, the possibility that he
might marry, was not even something imagined. The real question here again is
what is the focus of their love, the son they bore or their loss of
grandchildren and a future defined by the continuation of their familial blood-line
represented by a familial clan. Did they bear a son so they might participate
in a tradition of tribalism or because they wanted to share their lives with
another human being? Is he perceived primarily as a link to their larger
designs or a person whose own life is of interest and value apart from an
imaginary eternity represented by a genetic line of offspring? And course, we
are left with the question of what this has to do with the neighbors. Certainly,
they cannot imagine that their only possible subject of communication might be a
discussion of a married son’s life and their grandchildren.
They put it quite differently,
suggesting that he is cutting himself off from a much larger experience, that
of having children. For them the gay life is extremely contracted and will get
narrower as he grows older. His father is afraid that he will become what he
often encounters in court, an older homosexual who is in trouble with the
community.
One does wonder what on earth
he might he be talking about? Police perhaps arresting men who visit bars or
have been caught having public sex? Is that what he imagines his son will
become? Surely this view belies his statement that he knows his son.
The brother, again unable to
comprehend anything, cannot imagine why someone “would turn into a homosexual?”
He does believe that you’re born with “it,” “like a disease inside you.” He
believes it to be “something picked up along the way, that, uh, you’re tempted
by sexual urges.”
He argues that he knows these things as well but that he rebukes them
because he is a responsible person who is loyal to his family and the society
in which he has grown up.
Yet, arguably, this is a far
better view than another common belief that if you are possessed of such a
disease you need to call in a kind of exorcist such as a quack psychologist or
conversion therapist to cure it.
You can see, however, in
Frank’s argument the horrific consequences facing gay people only a few years
later when it first appeared that there actually was a gay disease named AIDS.
Becoming HIV-positive was almost a reiteration of the beliefs held by someone
like Frank.
One also has to subliminally
wonder, what “same feelings” has Frank been tempted by. Is he hinting that he
is closeted? But then, being closeted for someone like Frank might represent
what he imagines as dealing with things in a responsible manner. Where,
incidentally, is his wife in this discussion. Presumably spouses were precluded
from this discussion, along with Michael’s lover Jerry, about whom we shall
hear more later.
The social worker does
somewhat agilely turn Frank’s fears back upon himself, asking him what does
Michael’s homosexuality, his brother’s admission that he is gay, say about
Frank?
The brother can only admit
that he finds it very frightening.
Michael asks the
million-dollar question: “What’s frightening.”
And Frank suddenly spills it
out quite bluntly, if it’s a disease, can he himself catch it? “It’s very
frightening. It’s very frightening. If, if you’ve made this, this choice to, to
lead…that the life that you lead? I mean, that, that could have happened to me.
I suppose maybe it [might] happen to, to some of my children. I don’t know what
the problem was in the way you grew up, maybe in the way I was as an older
brother to you, that somehow I didn’t give you enough, enough I don’t know
what, so that you would be able to overcome temptations that I, that I see as
being present in, in life.” His stuttering confession makes it clear that he
identifies with the disease which could, or at least might have spread
to him or can be “caught,” ultimately, by one of his own sons.
The social worker points out
that as Frank spoke, his mother grew even more tense, she admitting that she
does worry about her son. “I remember when you were small and I keep wondering
what I could have done differently, I don’t quite understand. I thought I
treated you the same as Frank.”
This self-blaming, so
typical of parents and siblings encountering a gay family member, again relates
to what my own parents feared, that being gay was a kind of disease or
psychological condition which they transmitted to their gay son or daughter.
The inability to perceive sexual differences simply as genetic exceptions or as
an in-born propensity leads mothers, in particular, to conclude that they are
somehow to “blame,” as if blaming were even necessary. One might see queerness
(a word not used by this seemingly polite family of 1980) as some native tribes
believe it to be, as a gift, a special difference that is beneficial—as it in
fact might be perceive if in their detestation of difference itself and their
worship of so-called “normalcy” they personally and the society as a whole
didn’t put up thousands of barriers to such gifted, special beings, creating
laws that make gay acts criminal, producing precisely the seemingly disorderly
older homosexuals of whom Mr. Collins has in his practice seen far too many.
Once again—but perhaps far
too seldom—Michael momentarily intervenes: “I don’t want any of them [he might
have said “you,” but clearly he’s mentally distancing himself from his family
at this moment] to feel as if they’re guilty for what’s happened or, or that
they’ve done something wrong or that they could have done something different.”
Susan also attempts to talk sense. “Well,
I’m sorry dad. It’s not a sickness.”
“Certainly, it’s an
incapacity.”
“That’s the way you…interpret
it. Like something has gone terribly with Michael. And I feel that just isn’t
so.”
The father is now even more
furious that Susan “encourages her brother to believe that nothing has gone
wrong.”
“I’m not encouraging, it’s
that I accept him and there’s difference.”
The mother again attempts to
wash over the subject, arguing that Michael and his father simply don’t listen
to each other. But now comes the terrible waiver, Mrs. Collins arguing that the
father loves his son so deeply that he would pay money for Michael to get a
cure.
The social worker speaks up,
calling Mrs. Collins out for speaking for her husband about his love. She
wonders if Michael hears the same thing. Or can perhaps Mr. Collins truly
explain why he is so upset? She suggests that perhaps Michael doesn’t hear or
recognize the same love that his mother keeps talking about.
Frank attempts to interrupt,
suggesting it is Michael who has pulled away from them, but the social worker
thankfully quiets him.
The social worker recognizes
his deflection, commenting that “I’m not asking for your judgment of his
homosexuality. I’m asking what you feel about him learning that this is his
lifestyle.” Of course, there’s that word again. Being gay is a natural way of
being, I repeat, not a chosen lifestyle. But we await his answer, wondering if
he can now even use the word “love.”
“Well, Michael, I feel a genuine alarm that as
your mother can attest, keeps me awake at night. She also knows we have gone
together to see a psychiatrist on your behalf. We have his assurance that you
can be cured, but the cure begins with resolution as all cures do.”
The worst answer possible. He
not only has betrayed his son by seeking out a “solution” without including
him, but clearly is only able to deal with his son if he is not the same
Michael who is trying to express who he actually is.
Yet the social worker plods
on, asking the father not to speak about his son’s homosexuality, but about
him.
His answer is a killer, but
perhaps also an admission that he, in fact, does recognize that homosexuality
is a reality, not a costume to be put on or taken off. “I can’t separate his
homosexuality from my son now. And Michael knows that. A time will perhaps make
me understand a little more, perhaps acceptance is out of the question so far
as I can see.”
In his dreadfully polite
manner, he, like the father Michael’s friend describes, virtually disowns him:
“We can’t expect to see Michael at home on family occasions. Michael yes, but
with his lover? That’s not part of the family.
My parents liked Howard, but
he also felt ill at ease in their home, and visited my parents only once after
my coming out, although they did visit us, at which times my father, a loyal
and loving monogamous being, acting out in a ridiculously macho way I’d never
before seen him perform, pointing out all the beautiful girls he observed on
the street, as if to emphasize all the daily failures her perceived in my own
loyalty and love of my same-sex companion.
Susan tries one last time to
correct her father’s antediluvian beliefs: “You mean you’re not going to
accept, you’re going to…Michael is welcome in our home?”
Once more the social worker
tries to get the father to tell Michael what he is actually saying. She asks
Michael to say what he’s hearing.
Quietly the son who should by
this time have left the room in outrage in my opinion, answers, “That he wants
me to change.”
“No I don’t want you to
change, Michael, but you have changed though.”
“Your mother keeps saying that he loves you.
Do you feel that he does?” queries the meek group monitor.
“Just from what you said, I
feel you’re concerned about me.”
“I don’t love you Michael? Love
is more than concern. Concern is part of love.”
After a rather long pause,
Michael answers: “I just didn’t get much feeling of love from what you just
said…that the only thing that you can see in me is only that I’m gay and not
the rest of the part of me. And that you refuse to accept that, that gay…part
of me is, can be healthy and happy.”
Asked to express his feelings,
Michael responds with a grand understatement: “I feel a bit rejected, I guess,
angry, uh, upset.”
As his friends had warned him
from the outset, it is important no matter what happens that those who are about
to come out have friends to return to who can love and hold him if he’s in
pain. Michael explains, after the family meeting, that despite the discomfort
they all felt, he’s still glad he told them, as we watch him and his cute
boyfriend Jerry throw rocks at the water, play tennis, and lunch with friends
on the grass.
*To my
knowledge I am the first one to posit the idea that there are two quite
specific versions of the queer coming out genre, which I have labeled as
versions A and B. In version A—which began in 1946 with Curtis Harrington’s Fragment
of Seeking and continued in works such as Kenneth Anger’s Fireworks (1947),
Harrington’s Picnic (1948), Gregory J.Markopoulos’ Christmas, USA (1949),
Markopoulos’ Swain (1950), Jacques Demy’s Dead Horizons (1951), Willard
Maas’ Image in the Snow (1952), and John Schmitz’ Voices (1953),
and ended with Markopoulos’ Twice a Man (1963) and A. H. Rose’s Penis (1965)—generally featured a man lying on a narrow bed who
dreams of or actually is being chased by a woman which involves a series of
adventures which end in his abandoning his would-be female lover, often through
a symbolic death, and results with a new sense of self and in Rose’s film an
actually reclamation of his penis. Obviously the adventures the central figure
undergoes involve homoerotic and sometimes openly sexual encounters with other
men. This admission of homosexuality is shared only with the audience of the
film, most of these works being shown only to knowing gay audiences; as many
such as Anger and others noted during that period there was “no other to
come out to.”
I have long suggested that, along with a
few other works of the early 1990s, the first true version B films, the “coming
out” movies we now know, were Simon Shore’s Get Real and David Moreton’s
Edge of Seventeen both of 1998, with some nods to earlier works such as
Richard Kwietniowski’s Love and Death in Long Island (1997), Hettie
Macdonald’s Beautiful Thing (1996), and Mitch McCabe’s Playing the
Part (1995). In the two works from 1998, the central characters not only come
to terms with their homosexuality, but ultimately share that realization with
family and friends, the character in Get Real announcing it to his
entire school and the student’s parents. In writing the above essay, however, I
would not have to revise my previous comments to argue that this documentary
work, Michael, a Gay Man is actually the first example of the coming out
film version B. Perhaps there are still others which I will later discover.
Los Angeles, October 3, 2025
Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (October 2025).
