Praise then darkness, and creation unfinished

Tuesday afternoon, a couple of days after not going to my high school reunion, I got email from the one person I most regretted not seeing, Dawn. She gave me the brief summary of what she's up to--family, job, location--and asked about me. I wrote back and gave her a summary, which included "I'm living in upper Manhattan (Inwood) with Andy and our cat (no children), and also have two wonderful long-distance sweeties. No alpha males (or alpha females) in the bunch, just a mostly quiet life that involves sometimes inconvenient amounts of travel. [She described her household as "cat, son, daughter, and alpha male".]"

I haven't heard back from her, and am starting to suspect I'm not going to. I'm disappointed, but if we were going to be back in touch in anything resembling a meaningful way (she'd googled me and found the Wikipedia stuff), this was going to come up, and better now than later. I can have an impersonal relationship--anything from buying a loaf of rye bread to doing freelance editorial work for someone--and not mention my beloveds. I'm not going to try maintaining a friendship, or creating a new one based in part on what we were to each other in high school, if I have to hide something this important. Because I don't have to and being out is not only good for me psychologically, it makes it a little easier for the next person.

Maybe I'm misreading two days' silence. Maybe she's taking a few days to think about it, and I'll hear back from her, with something in the range from "I couldn't do that, but if it works for you, that's cool" to "How does that work?"

[Belatedly friends-locking this because I pointed her at this journal, and if I am misreading her silence, or for that matter if she's thinking "okay, that's weird, but it's Vicki, maybe it's okay," I don't want her to see this right at the top.]

Someone has declared today "Blog Against Heteronormativity Day." For me, there's an element of "why is this night different?"--being out about who I am isn't a once-a-year thing. But, like many another day for a cause, it's not a bad thing to focus on either a problem or a celebration.

I was talking to my girlfriend last night, and she mentioned that she'd been looking at her high school's alumni/reunion page. It's set up with pictures of graduates, both yearbook and (if they so choose) current, and any comments the person adds. She'd looked at 200 or so people's comments, all from her graduating class, and none of them mention a same-sex partner.

It seems more likely that the other queers in her graduating class aren't interested in the alumni stuff, or that they don't feel this is a safe place to be out, than that she's the only one. (She hasn't put in any comments.) And after a while, that's self-reinforcing: if you see 200 people you used to know, none of whom is out about a same-sex partner on the high school alumni website, you're less likely to decide to be the first than if you happen to be the third person to be writing any comments, whether or not either of the other two mentioned a partner of any gender. And less likely to mention your same-sex partner than if, skimming 200 other entries, you see a few that are clearly by queer classmates, and possibly some that are ambiguous (I use "partner" for my loves of both genders, and did so even when I had only one partner, not of my own gender; or someone might write something like "I'm living happily in Chicago with my beloved" and mentions a non-gender-specific name).

[Thanks to supergee for the pointer]

Being out here is fairly easy.

Most of you already know me, and you're self-selected: you like me or think I'm interesting, and if you're on my friends list, I like you, find you interesting, or both.

That doesn't mean I'm prepared to tell the people at work that I'm bi and poly. Granted, it's a very heteronormative environment, and I have no job security whatsoever. But the converse of the latter is that I have little to lose, and as for the former, someone would have to go first. It might be easier if I had a present-tense girlfriend to be out about; talking about having spent the weekend with so-and-so is more natural, at least in that context, than coming out as bi to people who know only that I've been involved with cattitude for a very (pleasantly) long time.

[and because it's National Coming Out Day]:

I'm bisexual and polyamorous. With a strong preference for getting involved with people I already know well, and a not-as-strong gender preference for women.