Coming Out
The story of Dr. Henry Anonymous
I was a freshman in college when I met my first gay person. Actually, that’s wrong, my Aunt Ruth was, is and will always be gay and my younger cousin was too. My point is that I went all the way through high school without a single peer self-identifying as queer.
This was the Eighties of course but it still amazes me. At Brown, my resident counselor was a handsome, athletic man named Donald. After basketball one day we were joking and I said something suggestive about “girls”. Without missing a beat, he said of himself in the 3rd person “Donald doesn’t like girls” to which I responded, “Is Donald gay?” Turns out, he was. A completely unremarkable moment but for how uncommon it was.
Donald wasn’t technically closeted - he was somewhere in the middle and has since become a proud gay man. But at the time, what struck me the most, was the bias against gay people and moreover, the difficulty and bravery of coming out.
All of which brings us to Dr. Henry Anonymous. Let’s start with his real name, Dr. John Fryer MD. Born in Kentucky in 1937, Fryer had a brilliant career, marked by one or two depressive episodes, often attributed to the stress of hiding his sexual identity. At the time, psychiatry had begun to publish it’s famous Diagnostic and Statistical Manual and classified homosexuality as a mental illness, a sociopathic personality disturbance. Various acts merited imprisonment. In 1972, Fryer entered the room of the annual meeting of his peers wearing a baggy suit, carrying a distorting microphone and behind a distorted white Nixon mask. His speech began with “I am homosexual. I am a psychiatrist.”
What’s always made this so poignant for me has nothing to do with sexuality, mental health or classifications. I see it from the perspective of the sufferer - the closeted person. Having had a mental illness since my early Twenties, I’m calloused to the scorn - to those behind my back murmuring things about “crazy”. It saddens me that the things we are, the ones we can’t help, are so mortifying that we live in shame.
A Doctor too afraid of professional blowback to lower the mask as he speaks his truth.
Closets are for clothing. You shouldn’t live there. I say this hoping for a wider reach for my exhortation to proudly be who you are. We’re all ashamed of something - being overweight, having bad teeth, something. These shame traps are the enemy and there is nothing better than casting them off. Being your true self, halos and warts is what others already know and love you for.
When you imagine your inner superhero, channel your pride. That’s the you that we all love - the individual, the quirky, the freakish.
We all come out at some point - it’s a birth rite and not a curse. It’s never too late to slay your secrets and get comfortable in all your glory.