That time my friends were so desperate to be "allies" they tried to force me to come out to them

The moment I meet Jenny and her sister Lacey, there’s something off about their vibe. They seem hyped up, overexcited, coiled and ready to spring. It feels like there’s something going on and I don’t know what it is.

I shared an office with Jenny for three years. That was in the 2000s; this is 2011. I work at another company now. At neither company did I choose to be out as gay in the workplace. Jenny is between jobs, and it so happens that one of my gay friends, John, is looking for English teachers for his department, so I put them in touch with each other. I figure John might let slip to Jenny that I’m gay, but I don’t care - after all, it would hardly be a surprise, and she knows me well enough. So as I head to meet Jenny and her sister, I’m well aware that she might say something like “John told me you’re gay”, we’ll end up having a conversation about it and it will be fine. I’m basically at peace with coming out to them.

Except something is strange. The moment I greet them by the station and we start to chat, I can tell that they’re febrile with some sort of unspoken anticipation, as if on the cusp of something salacious or juicy. As if me being gay is the most tantalising thing in the world. And I start to realise that none of this is about me.

We head to the Italian restaurant, and that’s when the interrogation begins.

They’re still ridiculously excited for no apparent reason, which causes me to keep my guard up. It’s clear that they’ve decided that this is the evening I’m going to come out to them and it’s going to be AMAZING. They’ll finally get to act out the role of female best friend to a gay guy, like in their favourite movies. And so I’m subjected to a series of leading questions about my friendship with John and how I know him. None of it is about Jenny’s job application, John’s work, or either me or John as a person, it’s all just designed to build up to a grand revelation on my part - a revelation which they’ve decided in advance is coming, without consulting me.

I deliberately play it casually but keep my cards close to my chest. When I answer vaguely that I met John via a website, a flicker of frustration flashes across Lacey’s face that I’m not coming out as quickly, jubilantly or voluntarily as she expected, and she responds “Which website?” She already knows exactly which website, as John told her, so there is no genuine curiosity here - rather, the aim is to pin me down and force me to come out to her and her sister on their terms, right before the spaghetti arrives. So I don’t play ball. They’re visibly muted when I deflect the question.

Somehow they finally get it into their heads that the evening isn’t going to go the way they want, that I’m not going to come out to them. That I won’t be led. The rest of the evening is uneventful. My adrenaline is still running high.

What was missing that night was any sense of them being supportive or caring, which was odd in the extreme as they had both been so many times. They were kind, generous people, but somehow a script was playing out; their usual inquisitive, empathetic natures had been overruled by a kind of template absorbed from pop culture. My being gay, something that had been a central point of trauma in my life and that I had learned to conceal and compartmentalise as a survival mechanism, was reduced to something that would be fun for them. There was no evident understanding of why I’d chosen not to discuss my sexuality for so long despite being otherwise close to them, or why I might not want to be out in the workplace or in a social circle full of people in the same industry as me. My not coming out was something they hadn’t foreseen or prepared for. They were so enraptured by a preconception of what my being gay would be like for them that they didn’t stop to think about what it was like for me.

I swear to God, if Jenny had just said “By the way, John mentioned that you’re gay, I hope you’re OK with us knowing that. Obviously we support you,” or something along those lines, it would have been no big deal. I would have appreciated it. Indeed, I wonder how differently things would have gone if Jenny, the quieter of the two, had taken the lead in the conversation rather than her sister.

Four years later, we’re all in a castle at Jenny’s wedding. Her new husband works in aviation, and is the type of guy who makes jokes like “QANTAS stands for Queers And Nancies Trained As Stewards” when in company. Last time I bought him a birthday cocktail - a White Russian - he jokingly accused me of ordering him “the gayest drink on the menu”. He didn’t know I was gay. But that’s exactly the point.

Jenny’s father gives an impassioned speech about how the key to happiness and fulfilment in life is to expect nothing. A couple of people thank me for introducing the happy couple to each other. Jenny and I have a final conversation that’s awkward and thick with things unsaid. Then her husband cracks a one-liner about “motorboating her boobies” in front of the entire table including Jenny’s elderly parents, and her mother says nothing but looks immensely sad.