Sissy

by Jacob Tobia

  By the way, I think you should have me as a special guest, because people under 18 can’t get into The Daily Show! :’(((

  Or, I could write a book! Then I could be a guest. YAY! Or, I’d be more than happy to just randomly come out of the closet on your show, “And now we have a special message from Jacob Tobia to anyone it may concern” “I’m GAY!!!” the end.

  You want to know what sucks? You can’t write to a celebrity you want to compliment without sounding like “I WANNA BE ON UR SHOW I LOVE YOU ETC. ETC. ETC.” Because I started writing some other complimentary stuff, and I realized how desperate and stupid it sounded. So I guess I’ll just keep my letter short (Especially because you probably won’t even read it), and wrap up with another thank you. I really appreciate you standing up for me; it really made me happy, because most of what gay people get are weird glances and awkward conversations. Being gay sucks enough without people discriminating against you, I mean I REALLY want to have kids, but if I ever did I would always feel guilty because I might’ve screwed them up for life. It really sucks, I wish like hell I wasn’t gay, but I am, shit.

  Thanks,

  Jacob Tobia

  P.S. If you get this could you send me an autographed picture or a little note saying “I got your letter!” It’d be cool to know if you actually read this. By the way, if you actually write back (which isn’t going to happen) don’t say anything about me being gay, I’m still in the closet over here. Thanks!

  P.P.S. The world didn’t end!

  P.P.P.S. If you could actually arrange for me to be in the audience or on the show or something, I WOULD LOVE YOU FOREVER! (I can act)

  P.P.P.P.S. Reading over this letter, it’s a really bad letter, and I sound like a desperate loser . . . OH WELL, I’ll send it anyways

  I sneakily saved the letter in a secret folder on my computer, printed it out, shoved it in an envelope, and sent it off to New York, with my parents none the wiser. As I suspected, I never heard anything back from The Daily Show or from Jon Stewart. Which is fair. As someone who now receives some fan mail, I would’ve seen a letter like that and solidly filed it under “Basketcase, Do Not Write Back.”

  That being said . . . Jon, it’s never too late to write back to an adoring fan. Especially one with a book deal. Or you could slip into my DMs if you want. Whatever works for you works for me. It’s chill.

  * * *

  —

  When my sixteenth birthday finally arrived, the pressure was on like Donkey Kong. My self-imposed coming out deadline was upon me, and I was officially late turning in the assignment—something that my overachieving ass has never stood for. I was never late with homework.

  Ultimately, the courage and confidence to pull the trigger came from the least (and, knowing myself, most) likely source possible: a church retreat.

  That September, following my August birthday, I went on a retreat called Chrysalis, a weekend retreat that brought together kids from Methodist churches all across the Raleigh-Durham area. It was just what it sounds like: You came into the retreat as a lil’ caterpillar, cocooned yourself up, went through your metamorphosis, and emerged from the retreat a spiritual butterfly. The whole thing was low-key gay as hell. Also, it was a boys-only retreat, so it was just a weekend where a buncha dudes got together, cried a bunch, hugged a ton, and became butterflies. No big deal.

  Perhaps you’re thinking this is going to be a story about falling in love for the first time on an all-boys church retreat. On that front, I’m terribly sorry to disappoint you. Despite my most sincere efforts, I never managed to hook up with a guy at church camp. I have many friends who did manage such a feat, but I have no game at all, and spontaneously start farting and burping any time I try to hit on boys.

  That being said, the retreat was an incredible time of personal growth for me. At Chrysalis, I continued my long tradition of using evangelical Christian methodologies and principles to come to the wrong conclusion. I’d been doing it for years, and this retreat was no exception.

  On the last night of the retreat, we were surprised with a ritual—the full cultiness of which I have only recently come to appreciate. Have you ever seen that documentary Jesus Camp? It was sorta like that.

  After an evening activity, they walked us from the dining hall to an undisclosed location. They’d taken away our cell phones and watches and any time-telling devices for the weekend, so I didn’t even know what time it was. I just knew the sun was down and that I was walking in the dark with a group of twenty teenage guys and twenty adult leaders.

  They told us to be silent, to pray, on our walk. I whisper-asked one of the retreat leaders what we were doing, where we were going. He said he couldn’t tell me. That I had to trust in the process and in God’s love. I realized we were heading back to the campground’s chapel.

  When we walked in, the chapel was completely dark except for a cluster of tea lights. In the center of the flames was a life-size wooden cross, big enough to actually crucify a person, with hammers and nails scattered across the floor. Each of us was given a red construction paper heart and told to pray over what had been keeping us from growing closer to God. We were then instructed to write this on the red paper heart, take it to the front of the chapel, and physically nail it onto the cross.

  Now, at the age of twenty-seven, this whole thing feels creepy to me. Why couldn’t they tell us where we were going? Why did the lights have to be off? Why did they have to have a life-size cross? Why did we have to physically nail the paper to the cross? Why did our parents think this was chill? (Come to think of it, I’m not sure if my mom ever knew about me doing this.) The only thing they could’ve done to make it more creepy and culty would’ve been for us to have actually nailed our own hands to the cross.

  But the thing that’s most striking to me about this ritual is that, at the time, I was really into it.

  It makes sense on some level. I was desperate for love. I was scared of who I was. I was vulnerable and wanted to grow closer to God, to understand myself better. I wanted to be in deeper community with my church and to feel more at home in my body and my life. If that meant I had to participate in a culty ritual in a dark room surrounded by candles in which I had to pretend I was crucifying a piece of paper, I was game.

  As creepy as the ritual was, it was transformational. It worked wonders. I sat in the chapel, praying in candlelight. What was keeping me from God? What was stopping me from walking with Her and having a deeper relationship with Her? In classic Jacob form, I came to the opposite conclusion than intended.

  Yes, I hated God for making me gay. I hated God for making me queer. But instead of trying not to be queer anymore, I decided that night that the only way to move forward in my faith journey was to forgive God for making me gay and finally embrace that the thing that made me different was the thing that made me beautiful.

  I stared down at the pen and the red paper heart and, after what felt like an hour, finally mustered the courage to write, I hate that God made me gay.

  I stood up from the wooden pew, walked slowly forward and fell to my knees. With tears in my eyes, I picked up a hammer and a nail, and I nailed that motherfucker into that cross so hard you’d think I was a butch lesbian.

  As the name “Chrysalis” would suggest, I emerged from that night a big gay butterfly with rainbow sequined wings. Through the power of an evangelical ritual, I’d been transformed from a commoner into a goddess, my faggotry ordained. After that night, I never looked back. I never allowed myself to hate who I was again. As strange as it may sound, the foundations of my pride, my identity, my ferocious queer self-love, were born in a ritual likely intended to make me hate myself.

  I left that night knowing a truth that I hold dear to this day: God didn’t just make me queer—God made me motherfucking fabulous. It is my God-ordained duty to share every ounce of that glitter with the world.

  * * *

 
; —

  With my newfound divine queer confidence, I finally started telling other people my truth: that I was as gay as the day is long.

  I thought of the first few people I came out to as open dress rehearsals in the lead-up to my parents. I made the strategic decision to come out to three people: my friends Kate and Meredith, and my brother.

  My brother was first. I don’t remember the exact evening I decided to tell him or what compelled me to do so. Though I can’t remember the context, I remember the conversation vividly. We were sitting in his room, watching TV or playing video games or something, and I started the conversation with what would go on to become my signature line:

  “There’s not really a way to preface this, but I want to tell you something.”

  The reason that was my signature line is because time was of the essence. Let’s be very clear: I knew that many, many people in my life already suspected I was gay. I knew there was suspicion out there about why I hadn’t ever had a girlfriend or hooked up with anyone, speculation about why I seemed to be so at home with femininity onstage. I wasn’t one of those queers who spent tons of time proactively covering their queerness. I didn’t have fake girlfriends. I didn’t try to make out with a bunch of girls. I didn’t adopt a more butch persona in order to cover things up. I just never named my queerness.

  So I knew that when coming out to people, I faced the very serious risk of them beating me to the punch. And I never let anyone beat me to the punch.

  If I took forever to just say the damn thing, people might get ahead of me and blurt it out before I could. Here’s the scenario I was trying to avoid:

  ME: Hello, dear friend/mentor/person from my community. I want to speak with you about something very important to me. I want to share something with you that is a vital part of how I understand myself, but something that I hope, once I share it with you, will not change the way that you think about me or compromise our relationship. It is something I have known about myself for many years, since I was very young, and it’s very important to me that—

  THEM: Oh my god, you’re gay!

  ME: DAMMIT YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO LET ME SAY IT FIRST WHAT THE FUCK COME ONNNN

  THEM: Oh . . . erm . . . sorry?

  *uncomfortable pause*

  THEM: . . . but also it’s fine!

  ME: Whatever, you ruined this. You ruined this whole thing. God, you’re such an asshole, Elaine.

  In order to avoid that scenario, I adopted the swift one-two punch of:

  “There’s no way to really preface this, but I want to tell you something”; and

  “I’m gay.”

  With my brother, the line worked like a charm. He didn’t beat me to it, though I could tell that if I’d gone on for five more seconds, he probably would’ve. He’d been waiting for this.

  “Oh thank god.” He sighed, relieved. “I’m glad you finally said something so I didn’t have to.”

  “Uh . . .”

  “So have you ever done anything with a guy?” he inquired, swiftly moving the conversation forward to the things that really mattered.

  And like that, I knew we were back to normal. In true bro fashion, my brother and I recounted almost every detail of our sexploits to each other while we were growing up. Because I didn’t ever have anything to report, it was mostly just my brother recounting his sexploits—vivid details of make-out sessions in movie theaters or heavy petting on the living room couch—to me, but it was a hallmark of our improved relationship as brothers.

  Which made the fact that he was inquiring about my nonexistent sexplorations with other guys a serious gesture of affirmation. By asking if I’d ever done anything with a guy, he was implicitly saying that who I was was fine, that we could still have every bit of the relationship we’d had up until that point, and that he remained sincerely interested in hearing about my sexual experiments and journey. In an early 2000s culture that taught straight dudes to be totally revolted by any mention of intimacy between two guys, I cannot emphasize strongly enough how radical this was.

  “I haven’t yet,” I informed him, realizing that the tables had completely turned. My brother wasn’t disappointed that I was gay, but he was disappointed that I wasn’t getting any. We were “The Tobia Boys,” and he wanted me to uphold the family reputation for being cool, romantically successful, and sexually active, even if it was with other dudes.

  He pushed further. “So what’s that like?”

  I didn’t really know how to answer that. What was being gay like? I hardly knew myself.

  “It’s like . . .” I stumbled. “I guess it’s like—you know what you feel for girls? I just feel that for guys, I guess.”

  “Oh, cool. Can I tell Jill?” Jill was his serious girlfriend at the time, who was at that point basically a member of our extended family.

  “Please don’t. I don’t want a lot of people to know yet.”

  “Okay, I won’t tell her. Your secret’s safe with me.”

  A few hours later, I got a call from Jill congratulating me for coming out.

  I imagine that my brother waited approximately five minutes after I’d left the room before calling her. She was so excited, and my brother was so sweet to me about everything, that I couldn’t even bother to be mad.

  * * *

  —

  My plans to come out to my parents after my sixteenth birthday were stymied every step of the way. Like most of my life, it was a comedy of errors. The timing was never right, or too much else was happening.

  Later that August, after I’d turned sixteen, my brother went off to college. The separation was a huge transition for my parents, and I realized I needed to give them some time before dropping the gay bomb.

  Then, a month later, my brother was busted for smoking weed outside his freshman dorm. My parents were (un/reasonably) upset by this, their perfect image of their firstborn child shattered. Once again, I gave them a minute to adjust.

  Then in October, my dad lost his job. And it was like, Fuck. I’m never gonna get to do this thing, am I? In terms of our family life, things went downhill pretty fast. Have you ever had an unemployed parent in your house? Most people have at one point or another. It’s the pits, and it certainly isn’t the best environment in which to be like, “Oh, by the way, I’m a fag!”

  So, my self-imposed deadline a solid four months behind me, I tried my best to maintain the facade. I tried to keep quiet, but every day became excruciating. When you’re ready, you’re ready. And I’d been ready for months. If I didn’t say something soon, I worried that it would just erupt out of me, unprompted, a cascade of fury and glitter and unicorn farts.

  The final straw came that December, at my best friend Paige’s sweet sixteen. She had a big dinner with a bunch of her friends at Carrabba’s Italian Grill, and one of the guests was her friend from school, Chris.

  Chris. Chris Chris Chris. Oh my God, Chris.

  At that point, Chris was my tormentor. He had many severe faults, so many that they were hard to rank. First, he was gorgeous. Second, he was charismatic. Third, he was artistic. Fourth, he was funny. Fifth, he was gay and open about it.

  A veritable monster, the idea of him clawed at my heart and pawed at my loins, running around in my fantasies, disrupting my focus in class, corrupting my oh-so-pure mind. And I’d never even met him in person. He was just an idea.

  Up until that dinner at Carrabba’s, I only knew about Chris secondhand. Paige had told me about him and I’d spent hours looking at pictures of him on Myspace and Facebook, but we’d never actually met. This was intentional on my part. Chris was too tempting. If I started hanging out with Chris, I knew I would try to kiss him, that we would start dating, and that my parents would wonder why I was spending so much time with this Chris fellow. If I started hanging out with him, my whole system would be compromised.

  So I kept my dis
tance until that unavoidable dinner. It was a torture chamber, because while most of Paige’s friends ran in completely different circles than mine, Paige happened to be friends with one girl from my church youth group, and she was there. So I was face-to-face with my crush for the first time, but unable to say anything without risking being outed to my entire church. It was the most unique of purgatories.

  As I twirled my pasta, Chris sat across the table from me, smiling, giggling, effortlessly gay. Tantalizing dimples in full view, unrelenting in his sweetness, his charm was radioactive, penetrating my heart from miles away, turning me slowly loopy.

  It took everything within me not to flirt with him, not to reach across the table and brush his arm, not to make too much eye contact or laugh too loudly when he made a joke. I ended up changing seats at the table so that I could get farther away from him, hoping that physical distance would make things a little easier, a little less obvious. In actuality, the distance only made things worse and more conspicuous. I must’ve spent half the dinner staring down at the other end of the table. I couldn’t stop looking.

  When the dinner was finally over, I drove home, my feelings oscillating wildly between despair and rage. I was furious that I couldn’t just flirt with him, angry at myself that I may have sabotaged one of the only chances I’d get to charm him and make him mine. I’d finally been around a real-life gay boy, one that I could ostensibly date, and I’d totally messed it up. I made myself so invisible that I don’t know if he even remembered meeting me after that dinner. My anger spiraled outward, at the world around me, at Paige for (unknowingly) setting me up, at my dad’s company for laying him off and making me wait so long to come out, at my brother for getting busted for smoking weed and putting my parents on edge, at the world for this entire mess.