by Chely Wright
When I found myself in the midst of my breakdown, I was surprised to realize that my financial security, which I once held in such high regard, meant absolutely nothing to me anymore. It didn’t matter to me in the least when I was balled up in my bed crying that I owned real estate, had fruitful investments, and enjoyed a diversified portfolio.
I began to realize that I would have been a happier person had I lived paycheck to paycheck in a tiny apartment with my dogs and my female partner, for all the world to see. For years, the thought of that had scared me, but as I began to fully take in my sad existence—and as I discovered how hard I’d worked to achieve a high mark that provided no consolation whatsoever—living an open life as a gay woman, no matter what the consequences, didn’t sound like such a bad idea.
Had I been forthcoming about my sexuality in Music City in the summer of 1989, I would never have had the opportunity to make an album—not to mention seven of them. Many who are not in my industry might suggest that I was just being paranoid and that it probably would’ve been okay for me to be an “out” gay country singer. To those who make that suggestion, I say, You are wrong. In a perfect world, that would have been an acceptable situation, but we do not live in a perfect world. I loved country music so much that I was not willing to compromise my chances at getting a fair shot at making records.
In my early years in Nashville, I was helped by many singers and songwriters who preached that success as an entertainer hinged on the ability to bend where you are able and willing to do so. They explained that to be a successful recording artist, you might sometimes have to do things that you’d rather not do—record a song that you don’t really love, appear in a video that you think is silly, or tour with an artist whose music you can’t stand. I guess I overestimated my ability to bend when it came to denying myself the freedoms of love and companionship the way that straight people were able to enjoy them. I did it for a long time, and I believed I could pull it off. But like a concrete bridge that collapses, I too crumbled. It’s not as if one day that bridge’s integrity was damaged and it just fell. It would have taken time for stress and bad design to catch up with it, but eventually it would finally collapse. That’s what happened to me. I was no longer able to sway and bend, and I finally broke.
Rock bottom. When a person gets to the lowest of lows, faces ultimate devastation, and he or she is forced to make changes in order to survive—this is called hitting rock bottom. I had hit mine and it was clear in every part of me.
I became aware of the distinction between my wants and my needs. I wanted one million people to love, accept, and approve of me. My need was another story.
Rodney Crowell called me early one day from the airport in Los Angeles and told me that as soon as he landed in Nashville that evening he needed to come talk to me. I said okay.
He told me that since he and I had begun working together, whenever he’d bump into music industry people in Nashville somebody would ask, “Hey, aren’t you working with Chely Wright?” He’d tell them yes, and often they’d say things like “She’s great,” “I really like her; she’s talented and a hard worker,” or “She’s so nice and pretty.” Then Rodney told me that usually, after people complimented me, they’d ask him in a quieter voice, “Isn’t Chely gay, though?”
After Rodney arrived back in Nashville, we sat on the front porch of my house and he confessed his self-proclaimed crime of betraying me. Something moved inside my chest. He asked for me to hear him out—he needed to apologize for gossiping about my sexuality.
On Rodney’s flight out to Los Angeles a few days earlier, he sat next to a woman who is married to someone who used to work for me, and she asked him “the question.” He said that her position was one of admiration and respect for me and that she encouraged Rodney to encourage me to be the one to step forward and come out of the closet. She insisted that I would be able to be a great example for the gay community because I was a respected and well-loved part of Nashville’s music community. Rodney told me that because she was so sincere, he got caught up in the speculation and discussion of my personal life, even though he and I had never discussed it. He regretted his participation in it because it was not respectful of our friendship.
I shook my head with understanding and compassion as his words spilled out, and although I just wanted that conversation to end and to never discuss it again, I let him say what he needed to say. My guess was that he anticipated I’d crumble into some admission. I didn’t. I had kept my secret so locked up for so long that even if I’d felt moved to share it with him then, I didn’t know how.
I should have been able to tell Rodney, at that very moment, that I was gay. I was happy, relieved, and thankful to hear him tell me how much he loved me. I wanted to break through that wall of secrecy and be folded into his arms of acceptance, friendship, and love. Instead, I stayed behind the wall I’d spent the better part of thirty years constructing, maintaining, and fortifying.
After Rodney had purged himself of what he called his betrayal of me, I thanked him for loving me enough to confess something to me that I surely would never have found out. He knew that too, I suppose, but for him it wasn’t about that. He didn’t tell me because he thought he’d get caught gossiping about me. He told me because that’s the kind of person he is—honorable.
For so many years, I’d pinned myself down in front of the jury of one million. My jury was a collection of strangers, yet I allowed them to sit in judgment of me. Beautifully, and just in time, I found myself sitting face-to-face with one friend. I knew his heart and he knew mine.
The recalibration of my brain, my body, and my soul during those painful months made itself known. I had gone from wanting one million to accept me to needing just one. A million to one—that’s a long way to travel, but I thank God I made the journey.
Choice
In 1999 I stopped eating red meat, poultry, and pork. I still eat dairy products and eggs, so this technically makes me an ovo-lacto-vegetarian. In terms of making things simpler to explain to most people, I call myself a vegetarian.
I have a friend named Susan, back in Nashville, who is a Harley Girl. She and her husband ride the big, hard-to-miss motorcycles every chance they get. She doesn’t just ride on the back of her husband’s bike—she has a bike of her own. They spend their weekends on their motorcycles and take vacations with other Harley lovers. Susan has a couple of tattoos, some body piercing, and leather clothing; Susan is an authentic Harley Girl.
I have another friend, named Garland, who is a gym rat. He hits the gym at least five days a week, and I’m convinced that if he could go without actually having to hold down a job he’d spend twelve hours a day in the gym. The only socializing he does is with his fellow fitness fiends; even when Garland is not doing cardio or pumping iron, he’s thinking about it. He abides by his self-governed diet, which dictates, according to his regimented exercise routine, exactly what to eat and when to eat it. Carbohydrates are allowed at a certain time, fats at another; he’s got to meet the mandated quota for grams of protein before the clock strikes a certain hour or he’ll turn into a pumpkin or worse.
Vegetarian, Harley Girl, gym rat. These are lifestyles, and they’re chosen.
Homosexuality is not a lifestyle. It is not chosen. One doesn’t have the choice to be white, black, Asian, tall, or Native American, and I did not choose to be gay.
Components of choice actually do exist in my story, but there is a critical delineation that must be noted. The only true choices in my story are that I chose to hide and now I’m choosing to stop lying to myself and to the rest of the world. My plans for a normal and happy life never stood a chance when I was choosing to hide. I was trying to construct a house on a faulty foundation, and although I did my best to make it beautiful and pleasing to everyone who might see, my impressive structure was built on sand, on lies.
Like most gay people I know, I watch television, listen to the radio, and scour the Internet in disbelief as the conservativ
e right spews the inaccuracy that being gay is a choice. Many of these groups, guided by uninformed leadership, believe that one can “pray the gay away.” One cannot. There are some documentary films about the ex-gay philosophy and the process of becoming straight. There are personal testimonials from people who claim that they were able to become straight, but when the filmmakers followed up with them years later most admitted that they are still gay and always will be.
These people endured incredible pressure from their families, instructors, and church leaders to be a success story, to prove that “praying the gay away” works. Sadly, whether or not they are “able” to stop being gay gets attached to their faith in God, and they find themselves in double jeopardy. If homosexuals cannot “go straight,” their Christianity is then judged and graded, rendering them a failure in their sexuality and a failure in their faith. Many later claim that while going through the classes to become straight, they made a choice not to act on their homosexual instincts, even though they knew that they were still gay.
There’s that word again: “choice.” One can choose not to act on one’s homosexual nature—for a while, but that choice will take its toll mentally, spiritually, possibly even physically, as it did with me.
Stereotypes
The first person identified as a homosexual to me was Billie Jean King. I was about nine years old. My mother and I were watching a weekend sporting event on television, and Billie Jean King was on camera, doing commentary on a tennis match. It took me a second to determine her gender. I asked my mom why that lady was dressed like a man. “Because she’s gay.” She said it without a vocal inflection that leaned toward the negative or the positive, but her answer introduced a stereotype to my young mind. If a woman dresses “like that,” she’s a homosexual. Nevertheless, on that day, my mom went on to tell me what a pioneer Billie Jean King was in her sport and that she could beat the boys at tennis.
I asked myself, “That’s what gay looks like?” My confusion and isolation escalated, leaving me just one image of a gay woman to fixate on for a long time. The next homosexual I learned about was Martina Navratilova, a couple of years after I saw Billie Jean King on our television set. I didn’t dress like them—pants suits and collared shirts—and I didn’t have my hair cut short like they did, but I wondered if I would eventually grow up to look like them. I was afraid that the way they appeared was the way that I was destined to become. It scared me because I couldn’t imagine how a woman who had an appearance like they did would ever be able to sing on the stage of the Grand Ole Opry. All of the female country music singers I’d seen on television or in pictures were in frilly dresses with sequins and had long, flowing hair. At that young age, I was very discouraged about all of it.
I knew from a young age that part of being a woman in country music meant sparkly clothes and lots of hair and makeup. One of my favorite photographers, Sheryl Nields, took this for Country Weekly. 2002.
As I look back on my years of hiding in the closet, I realize that I was struggling with my own negative and confusing feelings about gays. I recall at times being angry and frustrated with gay women. Over the past couple of years in particular, I’ve come to learn that internalized homophobia is often experienced by homosexuals in hiding.
This photo was taken in 2002. As any woman in today’s society knows, getting to the place in life where you can feel good about your body and about being sensual—well, it’s a milestone. I’m very proud of this shot. (Dean Dixon)
The gays that I projected negative judgment upon were the gays that couldn’t hide by passing as straight and the gays who just flat out refused to hide. I did resent what I saw in these people because I felt that they were in control of the definition and description of a homosexual, and I didn’t approve of the picture they were painting. I wanted them to “act normal”—to try harder to go unnoticed—and I’d think, “Why are they doing that? They’re making it so hard for everyone.” I wondered why the effeminate boys couldn’t act a little more masculine. I wished that the not-so-femme lesbians I saw would just put on a skirt and wear a little makeup.
I see the hypocrisy in my thinking now, but it has taken me a long time to understand what exactly was going on inside me. I had never been completely and totally feminine. I was a tomboy some of the time and a feminine girl too. I felt very comfortable both ways. So why wouldn’t I be more accepting and compassionate about the lesbians that I’ve seen in my adult life who are less than ultra-feminine? Complex, multifaceted fear is the answer to that question. I had a fear that if someone noticed a not-so-feminine behavior or characteristic in me, they would know that I was a homosexual. And in my young, frightened mind, being “found out” as a homosexual was the worst thing that could ever happen to a person. I was taught and repeatedly reminded to have this fear—by society and by my church.
Had I been around when Rosa Parks was taking her stand, I might have been harsh and frustrated with her too. I would probably have suggested to her that she was causing an unnecessary scene and that she should just make things easier by sitting in the back of the bus. Why cause a stir, Rosa? Why do you have to draw attention to yourself, Rosa? You’re making things difficult for everyone, Rosa. Stop pushing the situation to a boiling point. So those gays who couldn’t hide or wouldn’t hide were essentially holding a mirror up to my face and reminding me that because I could hide and I did, I was a coward. And I was.
The more I read about other people’s coming-out process and the more conversations I have had with other homosexuals to whom I’ve reached out, the more I understand that my disdain for certain behaviors and images of gays is directly related to my own self-acceptance. Somehow I have to be able to rid myself of the negative stereotypes and the stigma of homosexuality. Even though I have known my whole life that I am gay and that there is nothing that I can do to change it, the fact still remains that I was taught that it is wrong, and my sensibilities have held on to those prejudices for more than thirty years.
Perhaps I could have hidden my homosexuality for the rest of my life, but that’s not how I want to live. Shedding more light on the argument that no one can say definitively what gay “looks like” does play into my decision to step forward, but it is not my most powerful motivation for coming out. I am standing up for myself, because if I don’t, I will never be whole. That my story might help others find comfort, safety, and understanding is a beautiful by-product of truth.
My Mom, My Brother, and Others
I love my mom, and I want to be closer to her. I am not ready to tell her that I am gay, but when I do I hope that she will accept me and love me. If she doesn’t, it will hurt, but I will find a way to survive it.
I told my brother, Chris, that I was gay during a phone conversation in 2006. He was going through a stressful time with his family. He had called me in a panic to tell me that at the age of thirty-eight he was going to be a grandpa.
His seventeen-year-old daughter had unexpectedly gotten pregnant. I did my best to be a voice of reason, telling him that this wasn’t the time to be angry with her and that the most important thing to focus on was that a baby was on the way. He was disappointed in her for being irresponsible and for lying to him about doing things she swore she wasn’t doing.
I encouraged him to think about the present and not get hung up on the recent past that landed her in such a precarious situation. I also told him that a lot of teenagers are sexually active, like it or not, and that most teenagers who are lie to their parents about it.
“Well, you didn’t do it,” he said. “You didn’t get pregnant. You were a good girl.” I recall thinking that I really didn’t want to tell my brother at that moment my deepest secret, but I felt that in doing so, I might offer some balance and objectivity to the conversation. I said, “Chris, you’re right—I didn’t have sex in high school. I hate to break this to you right now on the phone, but the reason I didn’t have sex in high school probably has a lot to do with the fact that I am gay. It was not difficu
lt for me to resist having sex with boys. I was a good girl, yes, but having sex and getting pregnant was never a worry for me.”
He barely acknowledged what I’d told him. He just said, “Really? I didn’t know that.” He said he needed to get back to work and got off the phone. He didn’t say that he’d call me back or that he wanted to talk to me about this at another time. I spent the next day feeling scared and anxious about it, and I called him. He didn’t pick up the phone, and I left a voice mail asking him not to mention what I’d shared with him to anyone. He never called back to assure me that my secret was safe with him, to tell me that he loved me no matter what, or even to ask questions about my life.
For most of Chris’s career in the Marine Corps, my being his sister has been a source of pride and joy to him. Even though it bothers him when other Marines make comments about his sister being pretty, he has always been proud of being my brother.
I know that Chris is proud of me and of the good things I have done with my life, but I’m not sure what his feelings are about my being gay. It seems a brother and sister who’ve grown up together, liking, respecting, and loving each other, should have an easier time discussing something like this.
For years I forfeited being with my partner during holidays because I wanted to be with my brother and his family, and I was put in a position of having to choose. Often I’d finish my tour a few days before Thanksgiving or Christmas, get off my tour bus in Nashville, pack another suitcase, and fly to where Chris and his family were stationed at the time. I was viewed as the sister who had no life outside of her career and nowhere else to be.
