Dating a Closet Case

Over the last few weeks I've been dating a woman who still has one foot in the closet. Sometimes that one foot drags her whole body back in. I've been out of the proverbial closet for a long time now and I'm never quite sure how to deal with other people's closets. I know only that I'm not about to go back to my own. (Hell, I think I sold the thing at a flea market a few years ago.)

So what to do when I'm invited out with this woman, a bunch of her friends, and her brother and brother-in-law. My first question is: who am I, as far as they're concerned? I'm her "friend," I'm told. Well, how am I supposed to act? I can act like "myself," I'm told. What does that mean? Well, I'm told, she is going to act like I'm her friend, so I guess I am supposed to follow suit. Given that I've never been her "friend" before, I guess I'm not supposed to act like myself after all--just some de-sexualized version of myself. (Gee, whatever would I wear?)

I've pretty much decided I'm not going out with them. It just seems like too much of a performance. Maybe if I cared more, maybe if I weren't as cynical as I am, I'd be up for the doing the "friend drag." After all, it's not exactly "simple" to be in the closet and not know how to get out. She's young; she's been with other women before, but not with other lesbians; most of her friends are straight. In that sense, I constitute a first.

But it's a big deal being a first for someone, especially when that person is not a first for you in any respect--it takes reminding oneself that there might be a discrepancy in perceptions about the significance of this affiar. It requires carefulness with the other person's emotions and creative boundary-keeping so that the wrong signals don't get sent. I like her and we have fun, but I'm nowhere close to being in love. Yet she has told me that right now, I'm the best thing in her life. In a few weeks, she will leave for Edmonton for the summer. In August, I will leave for New York for the year. This is a very short-term, casual thing. But how much carefulness is required and expected when one is the best thing in another person's life, however casual a thing one might be?

At times like this, I think it's more of an ethical dilemma dealing with someone else's closet than dealing with one's own. Eve Sedgwick was right: closets have their own epistemologies, and coming out does not eliminate closets. It just enables different closets to exist and lets us see the same old closets in rather more complicated ways.