Coming Out: Queer in Kentucky
Tags: Nonbinary, LGBTQ, Coming Out

Being queer in Kentucky was seldom an issue for me growing up… or so I have repeatedly tried to convince myself.

I was openly some form of queer or another since I first realized my attraction to women in middle school. As is true for many, my understanding of my identity has changed and the language I used to describe myself has shifted, but it’s always been something I confidently proclaimed to those in closest proximity to my life and that by and large was accepted openly. My friends, family, and partners, most of whom are either allies or queer themselves, have always known. What aggressions I encountered were scattered, mostly inconsequential, and perpetuated by people who mattered little. Those I loved most were there for me from the very start and that was what counted.

I held these facts in such high regard that I often forgot some of the harm caused to me because of who I am.

It’s safe to say I have a complicated relationship with coming out.

My high school experience was briefer than most, cut short in the wake of abuse and a neglectful school administration. A classmate had been infatuated with me from the time we first met in middle school, an obsession in which my repeated rejections were met with increasingly hostile responses. I was stalked, threatened, assaulted, and berated ceaselessly, and though the harassment started long before I first was openly queer in my school environment, this aspect of myself furthered the longevity of his abuse. The fact that I wasn’t a woman and wasn’t exclusively interested in men challenged his attraction to me in a way that he found enraging.

Downplaying the ordeal has become so much a second nature that I find it difficult to even call it what it was. I’ve convinced myself that though it caused me a great deal of trauma, ended with me dropping out of high school and taking out a restraining order against him, that I was still lucky somehow…

In the end, it was condemnable by everyone I encountered, even casual observers. My diminished sense of security throughout the entire ordeal was dampened by what felt like everyone I knew rallying in my defense. I had a support network that stood with me both during and in the aftermath. It seemed like I had it all despite the circumstances, and I know without those people there supporting me I might not have made it out alive. None of that changes the fact that the harm that was done was immeasurable. A part of me is still broken.

From then on being publicly out became tricky for me. It was never the same. Taking the steps to be out and proud and not just out in a hushed sense to my loved ones felt daunting. I’d take the jump digitally, make a post on Facebook, and then delete it the next day or minutes after, sometimes I would even deactivate the entire account after contemplating for too long the potential repercussions. As a result, I’ve had many iterations of “coming out”, most of which were short-lived and often followed by genuine flashbacks to the abuse I faced in high school.

There are too many moments to count that tipped the scales from my unyielding openness about my identity as a teenager to my cynicism as a queer adult, unwilling to out myself without knowing with absolute certainty there were no risks involved. As I grew older and experienced increasingly overt forms of discrimination, I began to wrap my general appearance up in a package of stylistic aposematism. If I looked goth enough or sounded angry enough people would leave me alone before they ever found out about the soft spots under my armor. It was a more palatable way to be left the hell alone.

It seemed as though a few choice location changes and my unceremonious entry into adulthood brought with them a degree of homophobia and transphobia that I was thoroughly unequipped to deal with. Beyond the fact that it was legitimately triggering and my body was still processing trauma, I also was simply not used to bigotry as the norm. It had always been condemnable when I was growing up. Then, somewhere in between, it was like a flip had switched and my exposure to bigotry that was borderline lauded after broadened significantly.

For a long time, I fell into a deeply troubling routine of just presenting myself as cisgender and heterosexual for the sake of flying under the radar. If people didn’t ask, I was a cis straight woman, and if they did ask I would shrug. This strict regimen of denial was deeply unfulfilling for someone who wasn’t actually those things and deeper than that it was hurtful and slowly eating me alive.

Consequently, the internet became my only outlet to express myself in any real sense. It was there that I first learned the term “nonbinary” and then that after years of boxing myself into binary labels, I found something that actually made sense. The abundance of knowledge and access to a thriving queer community gave me peace of mind about who I was, but I also found myself continuing to isolate out of fear. It was a double-edged sword. The more I learned more about myself, the more I felt like people wouldn’t understand me and the more reclusive I became about my identity. I began to live a dual life.

On one hand, I had a Twitter presence almost entirely built atop the fact that I was nonbinary, bi, and ready to draw blood at the first sight of bigotry in my mentions. It was the only place that the intricacies of who I am and what I believe could include the liberatory queer part. My persona there was so staunchly defensive of my identity that many of my long-time followers were shocked to discover I wasn’t out offline. Frequently I’d receive messages from fellow nonbinary people sharing how I had helped them come out to their parents or to partners, how my words had impacted them greatly and inspired them. I could feel a piece of me wither every time it happened. I felt deceptive somehow and it can’t quite be called bittersweet, but I wondered in a way that often befouled the celebratory moment how I could influence people so positively when on the other hand, my identity was a secret.

It was clear that whatever energy I was putting out online betrayed any sense of reality and the truth that the number of people in my real life aware of my gender and sexuality could be counted on one hand. Offline my life was incomparable. I wasn’t the nonbinary icon living my day to day life authentically and refusing to back down in the face of adversity, I wasn’t what most had chalked me up to be. I didn’t don “they/them” pins or correct my close friends about my pronouns even when they knew. Instead, I silently accepted misgendering and didn’t breathe a word about who I was even when it was actively challenged. At work when the patrons of the small veterans’ bar I tended would try to talk politics with me I’d merely reply that I was apolitical or uninterested and when I heard talk of trans people or gay people, I’d look the other way and mind my own business even when the conversations hurt me. In truth, I was afraid and had been afraid for a very long time.

Being nonbinary isn’t the easiest to understand. I frequently found myself feeling alone and isolated simply because the only place I found the acceptance I desperately wanted was online and not with the face to face friends that I felt less and less close to. These are all the things that halted me from simply saying “hey, I’m a bi nonbinary person” even if the question of my safety never came up. I began to wonder what the point was if those chosen few I was out to couldn’t give me the decency of being gendered correctly. I began to feel resentful of the people I loved and began to isolate further. The obstacles between me and authenticity felt too stacked to evade. For some reason, I missed the simplicity of having no fear in expressing myself the way I somehow did when I was 15 and felt invincible in spite of how that ended for me.

By the time The Post came into my life, I was thoroughly shut down as a queer person. I crawled back into the closet and armed it with as many locks and barricades as possible, only coming out to a few friends and on Twitter where I felt safe. Landing a job at a private veterans’ bar was a necessity and a consequence of my less than fortunate circumstances. Divorce left me stranded with only the clothes on my back and the basement of my mom’s house as a refuge. At the time it wasn’t my first pick and I wasn’t overly excited to be working there but my mom was the hiring manager and it gave me an in at a point in my life where I desperately needed my own source of income. At the end of the day, it was a job and it was surviving, and philosophically it was getting back on my feet after leaving an abusive relationship where having a job in the first place wasn’t something I had autonomy over.

I eventually came to thoroughly enjoy my time there. The Post brought with it a different kind of comforting monotony that became a safe haven for me during many hardships.

Working at a private bar meant most of our patrons were regulars and they were regulars with stories and quirks and flaws. The Post was the most human experience I’d ever found in a job and I loved that about it. There was no corporate sludge or script to follow. There was just me, my regulars, and booze. I came to match faces to drinks, and days to how busy I’d be, I left my private life at home with expert ease and my unconventional nature was just enough that it was endearing but not quite weird enough they thought to question deeper. I had found the perfect balance of calculated safety measures between me and my much older customers and they took care of me like family.

It was hard coming to the conclusion that I needed to leave The Post behind, but my chronic pain reached a point where bartending was no longer something I could do while also taking care of myself. Ultimately, I put in my two weeks after almost a year working there and resigned to the fact that for both personal reasons and matters of my health, I would be saying goodbye to my family at The Post.

In the interim, I was still struggling with the fact that my identity was a secret and that as I made new friends and new family, many of them had no knowledge of who I really was. I didn’t want it to be that way and I could feel another Facebook post announcing who I was and what I believed in burning at the tips of my fingers, desperately waiting to be set free so I could drop the weight down for someone else to carry even if just for a moment.

On January 12th I did exactly that.

In a jokey Facebook post, I announced, “Hey I’m coming out. I’m bi, nonbinary, polyam, an anarcho-communist, and probably a witch, most definitely a bitch, and also not going to be quiet about it anymore. You can read it, accept it, and move on or we can fight in the Denny’s parking lot. Your choice.”

The post, unexpectedly given the content of my half-way between a mental breakdown but still very on brand posting, garnered love and support from both family and friends. Some already knew, but many didn’t. My mom, who “heart” reacted the post almost as soon as it went up, later told me that she had to google some of what it meant but that she was very proud of me and loved me no matter what. The comments were full of similarly on brand jokes in return but it was overwhelmingly positive and I had done that hard thing (again) and felt like this time it would stick.

Then, for the first time in my many iterations of coming out, I forgot I had even written the post.

When the incident first happened at work, I had no clue how my coming out could have anything to do with it. It seemed, to me, like an annoying, humiliating, and unnecessarily hostile encounter with an old fart picking a fight for no reason. My confusion surrounding it was entirely genuine and I innocently questioned why it was always me who had to deal with these people at their weirdest.

That day at work had started slow, as most Tuesdays are. The maximum number of people in the canteen capped out at five and I made the executive decision to invite my roommate and their boyfriend out to have a drink and chat in the meantime. Slow days like that tend to be particularly taxing when my depression is at a high point, having friendly faces at the bar soothed my mind at my worst.

When they arrived, things seemed normal. I got them their drinks and Allen immediately paid his tab, tipping too generously while I sheepishly accepted. Dillon started a tab and I held their credit card behind the bar while they drank their drinks and chatted. There wasn’t much else to do. The other patrons in the bar came up for their drinks in slow waves and I wiped down the bar and tossed empty beer cans in the trash. It was that familiar, comfortable monotony I had grown so accustomed too and if it weren’t for a few bad apples it likely would’ve remained that way.

My friends weren’t there for much longer than ten minutes before one of the regulars, Jeb, rudely butted in to their conversation to say, “Are you members? If not you need to finish your drinks and leave.”

At first, I thought it was a joke. It was the bar’s longstanding policy as was clearly written in our bylaws that the bartender on duty and any member had the right to sign anyone else in as guests. They had every right to be there in plain writing. Despite knowing this, I still rushed to shoot a text to my mom to double-check. She quickly asserted what I already knew and remarked that Jeb’s behavior was odd (and frankly annoying). With this in mind, I opted to just ignore his request that they leave and I continued my job as usual. There was no disruption by them being there.

However, Jeb still stood up defiantly and demanded once again that they leave now that they had finished their drinks. I interjected, asserting that they were my guests and that it was our policy that I could sign them in.

Jeb huffed and said “Really, you want to go over my head?” arrogantly waving a finger as if he ran the place and once again demanded that they leave. He angrily explained to me that they weren’t members and therefore had no reason to be here even though our policy said otherwise, then pointed to me to yell that I was not even a member despite the fact that, as a bartender, I still possessed the authority to sign others in.

At this point, even Dillon, familiar with our bylaws, interjected to say that they were my guests and that they had every right to be there per the bylaws of The Post.

Unconvinced and growing angrier, Jeb pressed on, threatening to call the police, pretending to be on the phone even though he hadn’t actually called anyone.

At this point I was flustered and more concerned about further escalation on Jeb’s part, still frantically texting my mom about what was transpiring. Not wanting there to be any other issues and under the advice of management, I told Dillon and Allen to leave, letting Dillon know that I would take care of his tab since he was unable to pay as a result of Jeb’s uproarious and inappropriate outbursts.

Meanwhile, my mom was on her way to the bar, unable to finish the dinner she’d been making that Dillon and myself had planned to go to after my shift but were now unable to because of the incident at the bar. She left in such a hurry that the noodles were still left in a pot on the stove, and by the time she returned home they were swollen and inedible.

I served three other patrons, trying to hide the fact that I was now crying, and eventually hunkered down in the bathroom with the door locked. I could hear people coming in hoping to be served, listening to them remark upon my absence but I was too angry to leave, shaking and crying while I sat on the edge of the toilet seat messaging my friends a disgruntled apology for Jeb’s behavior and anxiously awaiting my mom’s arrival.

Eventually, after I was absent for some time, Beth, both a bartender and regular, came to the locked bathroom door and knocked. A part of me wanted to ignore it. I didn’t want to let her in, especially having watched her sit and do nothing as I was thoroughly humiliated. She continued to press, stating that I had to let her in and eventually I relented, hoping to get whatever talking to I expected over and done with. Instead, she came in, saw that I was crying, and hugged me, apologizing for what happened. The touch was unwelcome and my figure in her arms felt small and feeble, enough to sink a sick feeling in my stomach like knots but I let it happen.

It was difficult to speak through sobs and before I could state that I was fine and just needed space, she re-explained to me that it “really was just our policy” (it wasn’t) and was sorry that my friends were made to leave.

I angrily retorted that it wasn’t our policy and that even if it was it didn’t give Jeb the right to behave the way he did, presuming a role of authority he did not have, demanding people leave, and humiliating me the way he did in front of the entire bar.

Beth agreed but it felt thoroughly performative.

My concern that she was just here for the latest gossip and not to really offer me comfort was confirmed when she, in the sweetest voice she could manage, said, “Jeb is just rough around the edges, that’s all.”

I wanted to laugh in her face, but I waited quietly until she left, sighing with relief at her agreement to take over at the bar until my mom could arrive.

It felt like hours of just me sitting there trying my best to breathe through the sharpness of my anxiety, cooling my nerves by counting the tiles below my feet and listening in on the animated conversations outside of the bathroom. I knew Jeb and company were still outside, something that filled me with a deep sense of dread and perturbation at having to face them again. In retrospect I would’ve been well within my rights to ask him to leave himself, however, things were hectic, difficult to parse, and through the haze of my discomfort it worked out for the better that I didn’t.

Eventually, I overheard their goodbyes and the distinctness of the door closing behind them.

Shortly after, my mom arrived.

Listening from the cramped space of the bathroom, I could hear her talking with whoever was left in the bar and by the time she came into the bathroom where I was still shaken I had managed to suck up the last of my tears, the small bathroom trashcan now overflowing with tissues. My body trembled as I stood to talk with her, the anxiety having worn off into a wave of slow-burning anger, more manageable and at the very least leaving my cluttered brain with enough room for me to carry out a coherent conversation.

After explaining my side, my mom revealed to me that Jeb and Beth both had claimed to hear me announce to my friends upon arrival, “Are you here for your free drinks?”

I balked.

The statement alone was entirely out of character for me. I knew that The Post was a business and I knew it would be thoroughly inappropriate for me to offer free drinks to people just because they were my friends. The Post where I worked, like all American Legions, was a non-profit organization. Funds to the bar not only just kept the lights on, but they also went towards helping veterans who were often of an older demographic and disenfranchised after the end of their service, an unfortunate cycle that left many veterans homeless and without access to proper healthcare when the VA failed them. The Post was a safe haven for those people. It was an accusation that wasn’t just outside of the realm of my character, it was outside of the realm of my morality.

My mom still pressed on about the accusation, asking if it was possible I said it as a joke or if something else I said sounded like it might be similar. I assured her repeatedly I said nothing of the sort, and that both Dillon and Allen were patronizing the bar like anyone else, that Allen’s receipt was in the register and Dillon’s tab still behind the bar but that the only reason it wasn’t paid was because of Jeb’s interruption and infringement on their evening.

I could see that she was now becoming angrier at the situation, realizing the lie they were spinning about the turn of events. We continued to discuss, clarifying with one another on various details of the event, and when she was satisfied she understood clearly, she exited to tend to the bar.

Once I was calm I did the same, eventually taking my leave and making the twenty-minute drive back to my apartment downtown.

I later learned that Naomi, Jeb’s fiancee, had also sent my mom a text, seeming to have threatened legal recourse because it’s against the ABC (Alcoholic Beverage Control) laws of Kentucky to hand out free drinks and “those boys left without paying”. The infantilization of all of the adults in this situation is not lost on me. My mom found it laughable, knowing that there was proof on camera and in the register that my friends’ drinks were either paid for or intended to be paid for. The receipt from Allen’s purchase was available in the register and Dillon’s tab was still written down behind the bar. It was an empty threat and a continuation of the lie they were attempting to spin about what had happened when they realized their first attempt at defaming me wasn’t good enough.

What bothered me so much about the experience was that it didn’t make sense. It felt distinctly targeted at me but I couldn’t think of any reason as to why. The people at The Post were my second family, I took care of them and they took care of me, I was disliked by few and loved by many of my regulars. For just a moment of bliss, it seemed completely random. My coming out post was a faraway thought that hadn’t even crossed my mind until my mom called me for later inquiry that night.

Over the course of her conversation, I could hear that something was nagging at her but that she was hesitant to reveal. A part of me began to grow suspicious that something related to my personal life away from The Post was being dragged out from Hell to torment me… Unfortunately, I was correct.

A few days prior she was texting Beth about how I had put my two weeks in at The Post, it was a casual conversation in which she remarked that, fortunately, another bartender was going to be taking over in my place so Beth wouldn’t have to work any of my days until they could find a replacement.

Despite the positive tone of the message, Beth quickly texted back “No it’s not fortunate”.

My mom was confused until that same night Beth went on a rant, my mom surmising by now that she was drunk, talking about how she was so sorry if my mom was mad at her.

Still confused my mom pressed on, “Of course not! Why would I be mad at you?”

Then Beth revealed that she had shared a post with my stepdad, Andrew, something that I had shared on Facebook, overly apologizing to my mom saying she “felt like any parent would want to know” and that she “would never be hateful”. My mom, still confused and by now very curious, waited with bated breath for what post she could possibly be referring to…

Of course, it was my coming out post.

My mom told me then that she, out loud and alone in her car, announced “cunt” and felt a twinge of anger but played it off flippantly like “Oh, that? Yeah, I already knew.” and that Beth proceeded to have a conversation with her about how she too had a difficult child and that it was so hard to be a parent.

At the time during the conversation, the news didn’t feel quite as crushing. It was like receiving it in a daze. I remarked how bitter and weird people were sometimes, annoyed that my trust was betrayed the way it was and that Beth, the one who had the audacity to come in and comfort me in the bathroom, was the one who outed me in the first place. My realization that I wasn’t friends with Beth on Facebook so she couldn’t possibly have seen the post on her own was delayed. The only person I was friends with on Facebook who was in contact with Beth was Naomi, Jeb’s fiancee.

Suddenly, like a dramatic movie reveal, it all clicked into place. The incident at The Post was no longer a freak event, and Beth sharing my post around was no longer an isolated incident of homophobic maliciousness and workplace harassment. I felt my face become red and hot, tears threatening to slip over if I let myself get any angrier.

After my phone call with my mom ended, I burst into tears. It was so hard to imagine someone being so cruel as to violate my privacy in a way that directly compromised me in my place of work. I felt like all of the armor I’d built up around myself had been chipped away. Now I was just the soft fleshy bits, easy to penetrate, easy to hurt. Everything I had made for myself no longer felt stable. I thought about all the times I’d served people, all the times I’d taken their orders, talked with them, listened to their stories and their lives, and it felt wasted and dishonest. I felt like a liar even though I was just omitting facts about myself to stay afloat and stay safe. I wondered if they’d think I was a liar too and if they’d hold it against me the way others had. I suddenly never wanted to show my face at The Post again.

I hastily jumped over to Facebook to unfriend Naomi and any other person in my friends list who might potentially abuse the information I shared there. The smoking gun was the fact that Naomi had already unfriended me.

Whatever bothered her so much about me coming out as queer, she felt the need to screencap and share around to others. At first, I hoped maybe I had been spared and that the coming out post had just reached Naomi’s circle, but as things developed over the course of the next few days, another bartender reported that Beth was brazenly sharing my post with patrons in the bar. The bartender on duty asked her why it even mattered to her, to which Beth allegedly replied: “Well, have you seen the post?”

My sense of security was shattered repeatedly, it felt like a wound in me was trying desperately to heal but was reopened every time I discovered some new and heartbreaking detail about how I was outed and the group’s unsavory behavior. Multiple times I found myself hovering over the “Delete” button on Facebook debating whether or not to just take the post down like I had a multitude of other times in my past attempts to address who I was but ultimately couldn’t bring myself to do it. It had already been screencapped and shared around between people I served every day I went into work, there was no point.

Whatever Naomi’s intent was in sharing my post, I know that the outcome was me being outed to a multitude of people for whom it was, plain and simple, none of their damn business. I know it then led to Beth trying to out me to my mom and stepdad who already knew, and I know it led to Beth sharing it around to bar patrons like she was pointing out an exotic animal at the zoo to gawk at. I also know it led to Jeb targeting me in an unnecessarily hostile incident. The more I think about it the more Jeb’s outburst feels like “great, now they’re bringing their freak friends around here” and the angrier I get dissecting every moment.

Aside from all of that, intent be damned, I know that it took whatever sense of safety and joy I felt going to work at The Post and shit all over it. I had seldom felt more unsafe and isolated than learning that my coming out to friends and family was taken by an outsider and used against me, used as an excuse to humiliate me, and used to turn me into a target. All of my good memories at The Post and with Jeb, Naomi, and Beth felt sullied.

There’s an entire wave of negative thinking I find myself caught up in, contemplating all of the possible outcomes had my life been ever so slightly different. I wonder what would’ve happened if my mom wasn’t as supportive as she is, if she were a virulent homophobe who used this as an opportunity to outcast me from my family. Had this been the case, who would’ve supported me when I was humiliated at work? Surely not her. Who would’ve listened to me cry on the phone about how scared I was after having been outed? God forbid if I still lived with her and I was outed by Naomi being a snake and Beth being a snitch. I think of how 20–40% percent of homeless youth are LGBT+ and how incidents like this are exactly what leave so many queer teens and young adults without homes and without support, and worse than that I think of how incidents like this are exactly what leave so many queer kids dead.

In another life, Beth’s gossip game of workplace harassment could’ve killed me.

A part of me still never wants to return to The Post, another part is already filling out my membership form so it’s official and looking forward to back up bartending in the future. I don’t want to let this defeat me no matter how broken it’s made me feel. If there’s anything I can say that I’ve learned about myself through this, it’s that the status quo may scare the hell out of me… but it will never stop me.

(Some names have been changed to protect the privacy of people who should’ve protected mine)