Lessons from Coming Out in 1976

The author in France at 17

In September 1975 I was 17. It was my French mother’s lifelong dream that I spend my senior year of high school in a lycée in France, living with relatives and becoming bilingual. But she hadn’t counted on a having a gay son, and a very precocious one at that. During my junior year I’d developed a circle of gay friends (through the Drama Society, of course), and we’d been taking weekend trips into the city to visit the gay bars, so by the time my plane took off for a year in Montpellier, I had a well-developed secret life that I had no intention of discontinuing.

Within a few months in Montpellier I had found straight roommates — distant cousins — in the center of town. I asked them if they knew any gay people, and they introduced me to René, a 28-year-old social worker. I seduced him that very night, and soon afterward I moved in with him.

Then my mother announced that she was coming for a visit. In advance of her trip, a cousin in the states decided to tell my parents that I’m gay; my mother’s reaction was, “Tell me it isn’t true. Tell me it isn’t true.” When she finally wrote to me for the first time since my arrival in France, she asked for my forgiveness for the delay and proposed that I see a psychotherapist upon my return to the States. (I declined and sent her Laura Z. Hobson’s Consenting Adult to read.) My father reassured me of his unconditional love but cautioned that I…