Listen, I know you are so quick to fashion nooses for all
your problems, but loving other men is not one of them.
So let the rope fall and cut it loose, and hand over the knife to
your father instead as retribution. What you admit to him,
this “coming out," is not a mistake, like a baby grand piano
falling from a New York City rooftop and crushing several
passersby below. The only mistake is that your father will react
as if the closet is a basement, a dirty living space infested
with rats and last night’s leftover Chinese takeout.
Closets shelter the things that protect us, the things we wear
over our own bodies, whether they be hoodies or jeans
or sweaters, to guard the fragile epidermis underneath.
But being in a metaphorical closet is a way to shelter people
who should not have to be sheltered, because they have
committed no crime and are not disaster zone victims;
they are only people who love better than many of us know how.
When your first boyfriend proposed, he got down on his knees
and pulled out a ring from his pocket as a promise
to remain with you through better or worse, through drunk
pavement kisses and one-night stands, through sleeping alone
and mortgages that never end. But the only one who should be
getting down on his knees now is your father, and he should be
begging your forgiveness, for treating his only son like garbage
instead of a human being that took 9 months to make.