In my sophomore year, I dated one of my best
friends, Sharon, for around a month. At this time I was
also a resident assistant and a member of the varsity crew
team at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Wash.
During the first couple of weeks things were
great and we both respected the space we were accustomed to
as well as spending quality time together. In the back of my
mind I was not sure what I was doing or why I was doing it.
For me it seemed like the right thing to do and that it was
the next step of our relationship as friends.
I
knew Sharon was onto my secret when she had to pin me down
to make me kiss her, and then hear her say that I never
wanted to touch her much beyond holding hands. She knew the
one thing that I had tried to kill for so many years: I was
gay. I told her that I needed to take some time and go away
for a bit. I left on a Friday after classes with two of my
other friends, Nathan and Sarah.
We had planed a secret trip to talk about how
awful things had been going for us that semester. Our trip
was a 1,000-mile road trip into Canada and back. We had no
real plans beyond getting there and seeing some sights. I
returned home to find an e-mail from Sharon saying that she
and I were done and that she couldn’t believe that Sarah and
I had destroyed our friendship with her just so we could be
together.
What she didn’t understand is that Sarah and
I were supposed to spend the trip talking about how I was to
handle telling Sharon that I loved her deeply but to be with
her was to kill a part of myself each time I lied.
Sharon and I broke up in November. Three
weeks later was finals week and Sarah and I had still not
had the conversation about my sexuality. One night, Sarah
looked at me, cocked her head and said, “Ryan, I will talk
to you tomorrow.” With that statement I knew that she knew
and all the pieces had finally fit together on why Sharon
and I hadn’t worked out and why the whole time I was with
her I wouldn’t touch her.
The afternoon of Tuesday Dec. 17, 2003, was
the first time I ever talked with someone openly about whom
and what I was. I remember the extreme fear and
hopelessness as Sarah and I walked Tule Loop on campus. I
was so scared that she would leave me on the street and
never talk to me again. It was the same road that
transformed me into a rower and was now transforming my life
as I came out for the first time.
My transformation to a rower was not as hard
as some others on the team. In high school and in junior
high I was involved in football, basketball, track and
golf. It wasn’t until I had graduated from high school that
I really appreciated running and endurance sports. I guess
that was part of my draw towards crew. I didn’t start
rowing until I was in college.
In my first year with the crew team I
developed a family away from home. I believe that if it
wasn’t for them and my connection to the team that I
wouldn’t have stayed at PLU. I worked so hard to be the
best I could be. I remember running hills in the middle of
the winter rains by myself just to get better. In the
following spring it paid off and I was elected captain of
the novice men’s team.
Revealing a Secret
Sarah and Sharon are both rowers as well and
because of this they are two of my best friends. The more
Sarah and I walked the loop the more she learned about the
first 20 years of life. She learned about my experimenting
with guys when I was younger to the repression that I had
imposed on myself. She learned how I emotionally tortured
myself to fit the standards of growing up in a small Wyoming
town.
For me the first step was the hardest. I
don’t think I have ever felt so alone in all my life than I
did that night. I laid in Sarah’s lap crying for hours. I
cried because I was set free but at the same time I had
opened a whole side of my existence that I had kept in a
dark corner for far too long.
I cried because for me what it meant to be
gay was to be hated for something that you had no control
over and to die alone without the love of a spouse. I cried
most of all because for me death was analogous with gay and
to be gay was to die a long and painful death. The killing
of Mathew Sheppard and seeing the fallout from it in my
hometown, just 300 miles away, shaped my view of the gay
world.
I strongly thought that to be gay and from
Wyoming meant that my death was imminent. On Friday morning
I flew home. Sarah and I agreed that it was best for me to
tell my mom while I was home. I spent two weeks at home
crying myself to sleep and hiding from my parents.
I remember that Christmas my uncle looked at
me and said, “There is something very West Coast about you
now, but I can’t put my finger on it.” In the back of my
mind I was terrified that he knew and was about to say
something to my family. I also had to endure my two
cousins, who poked fun at me for all sorts of things, mostly
saying that I was a girly man. This was nothing new from
them. Our relationship had always been one of contention
and a desire to outperform each other. So the teasing was
just part of how we interacted but on this trip home it hurt
more than normal and made me think that they knew my dark
secret.
As my mom was preparing to leave town for New
Year’s Eve with my dad, I was sitting on the couch in the
living room crying. She kept trying to figure out what was
wrong but I wouldn’t tell her. I couldn’t tell her. She
left not knowing.
Keeping a Distance
When I got back to school a couple of days
later, I returned to a world that was comfortable. A world
that was planned and rigorous with workouts, class and other
work. Nevertheless, I ditched my workouts with the team
because I couldn’t stand for them to know that I was gay.
So, I developed a plan of distancing myself from the team. I
figured that when they did find out, they could walk away
and the pain for me wouldn’t be as bad. I couldn’t stand for
them to reject me and send me from their lives in shame.
So, I hid from them as I had hid from everyone else in my
life.
As the spring season went on in 2004 I told
my closest friends before others could tell them. I vividly
remember telling James, my best friend and pair partner. We
went to the grocery store together and he was going off
about how he didn’t think he could date another girl again
because they just kept playing with his heart and hurting
him.
He made the comment of, “Don’t call Simon and
tell him I am gay now. He doesn’t need to fly out here and
deal with me.” To which I responded, “James, we handle that
in house now.” He looked at me as if I was crazy and then
smiled at me. It was the kind of smile that said a million
things without having to say a word. We talked for a couple
more hours about life in general before I finally just said,
“James, I am gay.” His response was, “Well that makes a lot
of things make more sense.”
It was
in the middle of spring that my mom became concerned about
my mental health and summoned me home for Easter. On April
15, 2004 at 5:15 pm, I told my mom that I was gay. One of
her first questions was whether it was a crew thing to be
gay. I was shocked at first and then I told her that it
wasn’t. She then asked if she could deal with alcohol and
drugs. I think that she asked me those questions because she
was trying to make sense of how this had developed. She
knows how to handle drugs and alcohol but she hadn’t been
exposed to people coming out before. It was new and scary
for her. For the rest of the weekend, she would randomly
break into tears. I thought that I had killed her from the
way she reacted. I had caused her so much pain with just
four words.
Redefining Myself
After James, I didn’t tell any one else at
school until the summer. That was until I invited a friend
to go to Gay Pride with me around the Puget Sound area and
she didn’t understand why I wanted to go. I made a comment
about rainbows not really being my thing because I hadn’t
become that comfortable with myself. That summer I made it
to the three major prides in the Puget Sound area: Olympia,
Tacoma and Seattle. At the parade in Seattle I marched with
the Human Rights Campaign. It was one of the best
experiences of my life. From the parade and other
experiences of the summer I learned what it was to be
comfortable with myself.
That summer I also taught myself that being
gay was a part of me but it wouldn’t define who I was. On
the mirror in my room I wrote, “I will not let part of me be
all of me.” Every morning I looked at it and tried to work
out how I wanted to be defined as a person as well as how I
wanted to define myself.
I spent the fall of 2004 hiding from the
world. Being an only child I have mastered the fine art of
escapism and I fled to France to continue to work on myself.
While I was in France I heard whispers of what was happening
at school and that more and more people were finding out
that I was gay. At first I was furious that people would
feel that it was their duty in life to tell others something
about me. As time went on, I came to realize that it was
for the best that people were finding out when I was not
around. In my mind it would give them time and space to
process the fact that I had always been gay, but that I was
being redefined in their eyes.
When I
came back to school this January, I had no idea how I would
be treated. Once again I ditched out on my January workouts
as I hid once again. As the end of the month drew close, I
sat down with my two captains individually and talked to
them. I told them that if my sexuality became an issue, I
would walk away. Their response was that it wouldn’t be an
issue and if it ever was that they would take care of it.
As the season went on, guys I was dating
would come by and meet several members of the team and they
were treated with respect and loved as if they were any of
the girlfriends of the rest of the guys. I was so proud of
my teammates for the way they treated people I was dating,
but I was always slightly uncomfortable.
I thought that I could get away with just
having my teammates meet just the most important of whom I
was dating, but this past summer I moved into the Crew House
and with that, my old captains and other five housemates
wanted to know every guy I went out with and every guy that
I brought home.
My Teammates Meet My Dates
During this time they met one of my
ex-boyfriends and a couple potentials for new boyfriends.
My housemates also witnessed the start of new relationship
as well as its breakup in the last couple weeks. It was
with this relationship that they have learned that gay
relationships are just like straight ones.
I had one of my old captains, now a
housemate, sit me down and said, “PLU Crew is a family and
you are part of that family. That means that we care about
you and what to know who is involved in your life.” It was
with those words that my life with the crew team changed.
We had always been taught that to be a member of the team
was to be part of a family that was greater than you. We
were also taught to be a member of the team was to be part
of a legacy that started with nine guys and an unbreakable
will.
It was on that day that I decided that no
part of my life was to be held in shame when I was around
them. They are my family, an endless chain of brothers and
sisters to call my own. I know that every step I take I
take it with them at my side and with them I can do anything
I set my mind to.
This past summer, the guys, my teammates, my
brothers got to know me as I am. They had the opportunity
to know me as a gay rower who is just like all of them, and
works his heart out for something greater than himself in
the hopes of making the world a greater place. I have
always had my doubts about whether I was considered
different from the rest of the team; however, when it came
to electing our captains for this year I was honored with
being selected as one. I was shocked and so pleased.
I now have a passion for telling other gay
athletes to do what is right for them and be honest not only
with themselves but with those that care about them. Your
team will love you no matter what and if they don’t, then
you really aren’t on a team and your presence isn’t as
valuable as you think it is.
Ryan White is a
senior at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Wash.,
majoring in History and French. He is a captain on the
school's rowing team. Later in October, he will be
help host a forum on "Homophobia in Your Community."
Oct. 5,
2005
