Closet

I remember her smile. Energetic. Alight. Once the word was gay.

I thought she was just a happy person. That smile was natural cheerfulness. Later, she said, "Of course I was smiling, I was with you." That memory hits me now, as her words hit me then, right in the gut. Less butterflies, more gentle punch. I really had no idea, even after all that had happened by then, that her smile had been for me.

But, I knew that, long before I knew her smile was for me. She told me. Told our friends. Stories of romances and romps much more real than anything I'd achieved from "girl crushes" and the crushing weight of the label I couldn't claim while sleeping next to a man every night.

My first gut punch shouldn't have been a revelation worthy of imagined stomach trauma. It should have been unsurprising. Months and years of lighthearted flirting. Finding ways to make the impossibly mundane an avenue for innuendo. So when she said we could be something, I should have expected it, as the man beside me had. Instead though, I took weeks to convince. The man beside me helped her do it.

Weeks of secret messages, hidden handholding, and still more innuendo meant suddenly I knew what the inside of the closet felt like. It seemed cozy at first, plenty of room.  But before long, I was claustrophobic. I thought, "Even if I can't come out, I'll make some noise, see if someone hears." So it was that I got another gut punch, when my gay girlfriend with her exposed past, wanted to soundproof the walls. She dragged me out and now she won't even hold my hand. She had demolished my walls brick by brick, but now I found her stacking the bricks atop her already towering barricade. Such good timing too, as walls were going up all around us. I should have thanked her. Her barricade protected us both, though she hadn't seen what was coming any sooner than I had.

Unyieldingly oblivious, I felt the familiar lurch in my middle when she said it. Engaged. She advised I be the same. As quickly as possible. I could help someone, an immigrant or a gay man, another gender traitor, but the safest bet was the man who lie beside me already. It needed to be in the church and with our families or it would be suspicious. She hoped I'd come to hers because it just wouldn't look right for best friends not to support each other.

All our conversations were polite. Honest but shallow. Our families. Our obligations. Our daily annoyances. Was this love in another form? Love in the quiet agreement not to discuss what couldn't be changed? Or was it cowardice? Both of us choosing safety over anything messier, less certain. Or maybe there was no cowardice or love. Maybe there was only indifference for what amounted to, in the end, a few stolen moments in a stuffy closet.