I didn't really have the chance to "come out", so to speak. I was in high school when it sort of became public knowledge against my will. Our family had a small farm, with a pasture which was surrounded by woods on 3 sides. One afternoon, my cousin and I were "fooling around" in the back of the pasture after the horses had come in. What we didn't know was that my father had given our neighbors permission to hunt in the woods on our property that afternoon. I looked up after hearing a noise to see one of my classmates and his father with shotguns on the other side of the pasture fence. By the time school started a couple of weeks later, I was out.My senior year was pretty much hell. It consisted of constant harassment at school, and deafening silence at home. I left the day after I graduated. At that point, I had a skin as thick as a rhinos, so I had no intentions of getting back into a closet just because I was in a town where nobody knew me. In fact, I chose just the opposite. I wore pink triangle buttons on all my jackets, and died my hair purple. I took great pains to shock and disturb everyone around me. Mostly, I just pissed people off. Even people who wouldn't have cared a bit whether I was gay or not wanted nothing to do with me. I left home and created a new place that was just as hostile to me. I started to think that I would be happier in the closet.
I finally figured out, however, by the time I graduated from college, that I hadn't really "come out", I'd just become someone else. I was like some caricature of gayness that I'd developed in my mind.
So, I just stopped trying to be gay, and just was gay. I needed to have other aspects to my personality besides the flaming queen. I took a little time and figured out who I was. I still tell anyone who asks, and usually those that don't eventually. I still get crazy. I still wear buttons on my jackets sometimes. I'm still as proud as I ever was of being gay, I'm just proud of me as a whole now, too.
