Betty Dodson with Carlin Ross

Better Orgasms. Better World.

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"Is he your boyfriend?" Anna asks after I mention him for the second time. Anna is work friends with my two sisters, M and B. She's seventeen and has a mad crush on one of her friend's friends. "Who is he?"

"No, I don't like boys," I answer, non-chalantly, taking a sip of my blush wine. "He was my roommate's boyfriend. We were like.."

"An orgy," my sister M answers for me. "Orgy orgy." She smiles, texting away with her boyfriend.

"We weren't an orgy," I say, looking down and away. Though I probably wouldn't have minded. "We were just.. a really close trio."

This seems to settle the matter and the two of them get up to hop in the car. M is driving Anna home and picking up her boyfriend to bring him over. B was sitting in the corner of the room as well - she heard everything.

I honestly don't know how they felt in that moment. I imagine B was a little shocked since I have never mentioned my gayness so bluntly around her. She probably thought (like M did for a long time) that I was bisexual. I'm not sure if she really knew, or if she suspected, or if she even gathered from that sentence that YES - I'm gay.

That's the thing. I think I'm being so obvious - that my hints are so clear, that my puzzling clues are so barefaced, but I'm not sure they understand. I don't like boys.. what else could that possibly mean to them? I hope they make the leap to gay but I'm not sure they do. I think that's all I've ever said to my siblings. I've only ever said "I don't like boys" (twice to M now), never "and I am into girls". That part I saved for my mum during the moments I was feeling the most brave.

I don't know how I still have a heart attack when I'm coming out, but I do. Even when I'm just hinting at coming out. I sometimes get perturbed when people won't come out of the closet (bisexuals especially), but that's hypocritical. "Come out!" I'll think. "Just do it already, quit being a wimp!" But it's fucking hard, I tell you!

For the moment after those drunken words tumbled out of my mouth, the world stopped. I blushed harder than I have in a long time, hoping they would think it was the wine. My heart beat faster than the time I told my mother, and yet time slowed. Why is coming out so profoundly crazy? So incredibly hard? If I wasn't drunk, I know without a doubt I would have never mentioned my friend. I would have clammed up the moment the conversation even turned in a romantic direction. But because I was drunk, I dared to venture there. I dared to say the words I've been holding in for months. I don't like boys. I really don't.

And I have more to say to them. One day I need to tell them I do, in fact, like girls. I like some types of girls in particular. Right now I'm talking to a certain girl that I even plan on visiting soon.

That juicy little bit of information I'm sure I'll hang on to alone for a while longer. But at some point it needs to come out. Somehow. To someone. I'm surprised that after I made this announcement nobody had any questions. How can someone tell you they are gay, change your entire perception of them, tell them something you never knew about them  - and you not have any questions? I guess I want to clear things up without me being the one to clear them. Maybe if they were drunk too, they would have asked something. "Does that make you gay then?" "What about girls?" "Do you have a girlfriend?" Anything. I would have welcomed any question at all. Maybe they already knew, but I think more likely they were just too stunned or too weirded out to ask.

I know this is one of those 'last one to know' situations - my freaking dentist and random people I met at parties used to ask me if I was gay before I asked myself - but I think as far as my family is concerned, they have always been as in the dark, clueless, and as deliberately ignorant of the truth as I used to be.

And for the record, that's 4 out of 6 family members I've told. Next up will probably be my brother. I'd tell him tonight, over msn, while I'm still drunk if I had the courage but I think I've had enough of my heart beating out of my chest for one day, thanks. Maybe next time.